Date: Wed, October 20, 2010 1:35 am     (answered 5 November 2010)
From: "Deeke K."
Subject: 10 years!

I am happy for you, Terry!
Enjoy your freedom.
And thanks again for every page of Orange Paper you wrote.
Deeke

Hi Deeke,

Thanks for the thanks, and the good wishes. You have a good day too.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
**   I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act;
**   but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.
**      ==  Buddha

May 20, 2009, Wednesday: Day 20, continued: A Canada Goose family with Orphaned Goslings This family is very unusual — they have adopted two orphans. Ordinarily, Canada Geese just do not adopt strays or orphans. But this family has. Both of the two small ones are orphans that the parents adopted. You can tell that the two small ones are really orphans from other families, rather than just small goslings, by the yellowish cast to their baby down. They are much younger than the four larger goslings. Canada Goose goslings are very yellow when they hatch out, and they gradually lose the yellow and turn gray and brown as they get older. So the four larger goslings are the biological children of the parents, and the two smaller ones hatched out in other families later, and got lost, and were accepted by this family. And the two orphans are not related either. They hatched at different times, in different families. What was funny about this family was that the four older goslings did not hassle or bother the small newcomers at all — they were quite accepting, but the larger orphan picked on the smaller one a lot. It was as if the older orphan was saying, "Hey, I've got a good thing going here. Don't ruin it. Two orphans is one too many. Go away." And the larger orphan would bite the younger one and try to drive it away. But the little one refused to go, and after about a week, the larger orphan quit hassling the younger one and accepted its presence.

[More gosling photos below, here.]

[The previous letter from Arni is here.]

Date: Wed, October 20, 2010 1:23 am     (answered 5 November 2010)
From: Arni S.
Subject: Re: paper on attrition rate

Hi again, Arni,

>
> I don't know where you get the idea that "The experience of the true
> alcoholic and drug addict is that you remove the substance and they go
> insane."
>

Maybe we should define our terms. I agree that some badly-addicted people will become frantic and desperate and hyper-active when they go into withdrawal. But I would not call that "going insane" in the correct meaning of the word. It isn't like paranoid schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. After a few days of withdrawal and detoxing, the "insanity" disappears and they become more like ordinary people. That is not "going insane" because the supply of the sustance stopped. In fact, it is much more like a return to insanity. People start doing something else with their lives, besides just feeding an addiction.

> The whole classification of "Problem Drinker" versus "Alcoholic" is
> merely a false dichotomy.
>

Yes, it is false dichotomy. Whether somebody is a "problem drinker", or a "heavy drinker", or an "alcoholic" is really just a subjective judgement call. Exactly how much do you have to drink to qualify as a "problem drinker", or a "heavy drinker", or an "alcoholic"? Where is the dividing line?

Besides, you have not defined the word "alcoholic". A.A. uses three or four different definitions of the word, and mixes them up, which just clouds and confuses the issues. Look here for the definitions.

> Heck, you can worship anything from Satan to Adolf Hitler as your Higher
> Power and not violate the Steps.
>

Of course the Steps ask you to believe. They even demand that you believe.

1. Believe that you are powerless over alcohol and cannot manage your own life.
2. Believe that you are insane, and believe that some ghost or "Higher Power" will restore you to sanity.
3. Believe that some "God" will manage your will and your life for you if you "turn them over" to "Higher Power".
4. Believe that there is some sane reason for listing all of your sins and moral shortcomings.
5. Believe that somebody besides your sponsor gives a rat's ass about your list of sins as you read it out loud.
6. Believe that you have to waste a whole step just getting ready for a ghost to fix you.
7. Believe that you can get your flaws and defects fixed by begging a supernatural being to give you a miracle on demand.
8. Believe that you should waste your time writing a list of everybody that you ever hurt, angered, or pissed off.
9. Believe that they really want to see you again, and hear your apology.
10. Believe that repeating all of the previous steps again and again, in an infinite loop, is a good way to live. Also believe that you are going to be wrong a lot, and that sheepishly admitting that you are wrong again and again is a good thing to do.
11. Believe that you really can contact "God" in a séance, and that "God" will give you secret work orders and the power to carry them out.
12. Believe that you will get a "religious experience", or a "spiritual awakening", as a result of doing the previous 11 steps. Also believe that you really should go recruiting and get more people to join the cult.

> You pretend to believe in God when it is useful to you, but you were
> really an agnostic all along.
>

You tried to believe? That is crazy. You tried to believe so that you could conform to the cult and jabber the same religious slogans as everybody else?

Would you "try to believe" that all of your problems were caused by the Great Evil Galactic Overlord Xenu, so that you could fit into Scientology?

> later declare that you never believed that "Higher Power" really exists
>

This assumes that faith is permanent. You belong to the cult of your upbringing and nothing will change it. In your worldview there are no converts. I really did make an honest attempt. Not out of longing for any sort of dogma but for the guidance I needed not to harm my fellows.

That is a bunch of nonsense. "Faith permanent"? You never had any faith. You just made a ridiculous attempt to believe in some cult religion, and it did not work. You were not able to successfully brainwash yourself into believing the irrational dogma.

We do not "belong in the cult of our upbringing". Yes, we are born into a culture and a bunch of ideas and memes, but that is not "a cult". See the cult test to learn what a cult is.

It is good that you did not want to harm your fellows. Now who fooled you into thinking that promoting the 12-Step cult religion would not harm your fellows?

I still do things once in a while I am not proud of but prior to pluggin the jug I would not have thought more of it. I amend my wrongs and do my best to have good relations with the people I meet. I needed all of it to get where I am.

Now that sounds pretty sensible. But if, when you say "I needed all of it", you mean that you needed A.A. indoctrination, I disagree with that.

I guess the thrust of why I am writing you at all is that I know people that would be dead or in the gutter if not for Big Book AA.

Please prove that statement. Every time A.A. has been tested for real effectiveness, it has been proven to be a failure. Alcoholics Anonymous does not save lives. Involvement in A.A. has been shown to:

1. raise the rate of binge drinking,
2. raise the rate of rearrests,
3. increase the costs of hospitalization, and
4. raise the death rate in alcoholics.
5. In Great Britain, Doctors Orford and Edwards found that a whole year of A.A.-based treatment was no more effective than just having a doctor talk to the alcoholic and his wife one time for one hour, telling him to quit drinking or he would die.
6. And although this has not been formally tested and measured, the evidence is growing that A.A. also raises the suicide rate in alcoholics.

I would suggest that those recovered people would be dead if they had not gotten a grip on themselves and just quit drinking. The cult religion and bad teachings about alcoholism are of no help. In fact, they raise the death rate.

I know people that have made harm against their family so deep and lasting one would not think it repairable but after using Big Book AA have mended the past and moved on to happier concerns. I guess that I just wanted to stand up for the recovery I have seen.

Again, a few anecdotes do not prove that A.A. works. Especially not the fundamentalist "Big Book A.A.". It's nice that those people quit drinking and apologized to their families. That hardly justifies the existence of Alcoholics Anonymous. What you are ignoring is the fact that people do just quit drinking and recover. They do it without A.A., or within A.A., just the same. A.A. is of no help.

Have a good day sir ;)

You have a good day too.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
**    And the believers said, "If you want what we
**    have, and are willing to go to any length to
**    get it, then, here, drink this koolaid."

[The previous letter from Robert G. is here.]

Date: Wed, October 20, 2010 7:51 am     (answered 6 November 2010)
From: "Robert G."
Subject: Re: Dear Mr Orange.

Okay, lets use your method of disection of the discussion. First of all, if you have chosen your higher power to be Satan, golden calf, stone idol or a parakeet (I like that one) that is between you and your concept of a higher power. AA is NOT in the business of picking out your higher power, that is your business. I know, you are convinced that we are a religious cult. Gotta tell ya, that in 25 years all I've seen tells me the exact opposite. I've seen people asked to please leave a meeting for dragging out the king james bible and reading from it during a meeting. That is directly in opposition to the Traditions of AA.

That is highly revealing. Alcoholics Anonymous is an anti-Christian religion. You can worship a rock or a motorcycle or a parakeet, or even Golden Calf or Beelzebub, but Heaven help you if you dare to bring a Bible into the A.A. meeting and read from it. The Bible is not "Council-Approved Literature". Bill Wilson's lies about God are okay, but don't you dare to read the words of Jesus Christ.

Funny how the group secretary never mentions that to the priests and ministers in whose church basements A.A. meets.

Perhaps at one time back when Side Show Bill Wilson, the Con Artist was running around, they may have tried to infuse their religious views into this. Over a period of time, the traditions where formed and we came to see and understand that the path to recovery is not to be littered with the bodies of those who would not see things in the religious light of others. Want your Higher Power to be a Light Bulb? Well, buba, if that is YOUR CONCEPT of a power greater than you, so be it, as long as it works for you, fine. YOUR CHOICE! Got that? Read it again. YOUR CHOICE! The only real point to this is that the real alcoholic's problem is a lack of power. Finding that "power" to deal with the problem is the answer that is sought in AA. NOT RELIGION! It's a shame that so many get wrapped around the axel on that one. Has a tendency to make an argument like your sound almost valid.

All of the jabber about "any Higher Power, even a light bulb", is just more propaganda and a diversion from the truth. The truth is that you have to believe a lot of crazy religious things to imagine that "Higher Power" is going to work the 12 Steps for you and perform miracles for you. In case you haven't noticed, the Steps demand that "God" do a lot of things for you, or else the 12-Step program can't work. Six of the twelve steps actually demand miracles from God:

• Step One says that we are powerless over alcohol, so God must control our drinking for us, or else we will die. And Step One also says that our lives are unmanageable (meaning: we cannot manage our own lives), so by implication, God must manage our lives for us.
• Step Two says that we are insane, and that only God can restore us to sanity, so we are demanding that God do that for us, too.
• Step Three says that we are turning our wills and our lives over to the care of God, so God has to work for us and take care of us from then on, or it blows the whole 12-Step game.
• Step Seven demands that God remove all of our "defects of character" and "moral shortcomings". And Bill Wilson also wrote in the Big Book that God will also remove our desire for drink — "That is the miracle of it.   ... We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us." (The Big Book, 3rd edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 3, More About Alcoholism, pages 84-85.)
• Then, in Step Eleven, we pray for God to make us understand Him better, and to give us our work orders for the day, and then to give us the power to carry out those orders. One of the fundamental beliefs of both Buchmanism and A.A. is that God will reveal himself to us if we truly seek Him, so He had better do it.
• And finally, in Step Twelve God is supposed to give us a "spiritual experience" or a "spiritual awakening" as our reward for having done the preceding eleven steps.

So are you going to try to tell me that faith in a light bulb can do all of that for an A.A. member?

OKay, first off lets get the terminology straight. There is NO cure the the disease of alcoholism, only recovery from the effects drinking through abstenence. Period. If you are an actual real alcoholic, than to drink is to trigger the disease again and off to the races.

There is no such thing as "the disease of alcoholism". There is the bad habit of Alcohol Abuse (DSM-IV 305.00), and there is the serious medical condition of Alcohol Dependency (DSM-IV 303.90), but there is no such disease as "alcoholism". So of course there is no cure for a disease that does not exist.

Obviously, if someone is habitually drinking too much alcohol, the answer is to either cut down or totally quit drinking.

I agree that some people get sensitized to alcohol, and cannot drink in moderation. I am also one of those people. The jury is still out on the question of what causes such sensitivity to alcohol, nature or nurture, genetics or environment. Still, sensitivity to alcohol is not a disease any more than sensitivity to peanuts or bee stings is a disease.

This brings us to a very delicate and sensitive point that most AA's either will not see or will not acknowledge in any manner. I'm a little different as you may have alreay guessed, so I like to talk about the "skeleton in the closet" or the "elephant in the room". Many who are directed to AA or wander in the door, are NOT alcoholics at all. Let me repeat that in case you missed my point, alreay guessed, so I like to talk about the "skeleton in the closet" or the "elephant in the room". Many who are directed to AA or wander in the door, are NOT alcoholics at all.

I agree that the health care system and justice system have gone way overboard in forcing non-alcoholics into Alcoholics Anonymous. Look at this list of creeps who were sentenced to A.A. meetings. Such sentencing is illegal and unConstitutional.

But that does not change the fact that Alcoholics Anonymous is a cult religion that does not solve alcohol abuse or alcohol dependency problems.

WHAT??? That's right. I would, in my own experience estimate that fully 65% of those that waddle in the door, hang around and leave, aren't even a real alcoholic and don't really belong in AA as there is no true benifit for them. Some are mentally ill, some are one time or two time DUI Offenders, who aren't an alky, but have poor judgement and the court sends them to us. Some are, as is mentioned in the Big Book (I know that makes you grit your teeth) only heavy drinkers and will stop with sufficient reason. Some can have a period of heavy drinking and than return to normal social drinking for the rest of their lives as they are not a real alcoholic. AA doesn't bar anyone from sitting down at a meeting as long as they have a desire to stop drinking (so they say, hahaha). Truth be told, many come in that don't belong, or the Money grubbing Treatment Centers send them in, knowing full well they aren't an alcoholic, just having mental issues, social issue, judgement issued, or marital issues.

Again, arguing that non-alcoholics get forced into A.A. meetings does not change the fact that A.A. does not work on the alcoholics either.

And you are trying to imply that it is just the non-alcoholics who are dropping out of Alcoholics Anonymous. Where is your evidence? What are your numbers?

What does all that do to the "MAGIC NUMBERS OF RECOVERY?" Well, it means that fully 65% to 85% are drop outs, perhaps even more. Now, what does all that really mean? Not a damn thing my young friend! NOTHING. The numbers are all smoke and mirrors to make silly arguments like yours sound valid. IF you actually care about the human condition and want others to have a happy and joyous life, who cares what they call themsevles or really think? Sending in the NON Alky's to meeting does them a grave injustice. And gives the outward appearence that AA DOES have a horrible rate of success.

You still have not supplied a shred of evidence that A.A. has any real healing or help to offer to alcoholics. You try to dismiss numbers that you do not like without having any numbers of your own to offer in rebuttal.

You gotta be kidding me? Snitches to report who is attending or not attending??? Hahaha!! Not in any 25 years of my life have I ever seen that!! haha. Did you just pull that out of your hat, or did some moron actually tell you that??? I can't believe you even wrote that. If you say it out loud, you'll hear how silly it sounds. Almost like a poor B movie. Do you think that the underfunded and understaffed Parole System can actually find the monies to employ snitches to go to AA meetings on a regular basis and keep track of all the coming and goings of the people that are there??? Oh My Goodness, that is so funny!!! Thanks for the great laugh!

You say that you have not seen snitches in 25 years. Your failure to see is not evidence. The "underfunded and understaffed parole system", as you call it, obviously has a lot of free slave labor available to it — a lot of parolee victims who are eager to get into the good graces of their parole officer by doing something for him. You cannot know who walks out of the A.A. meeting and reports to his parole officer who was or was not at the meeting.

And you totally ignored the issue of sponsors reporting to the parole officers. That happens all of the time. Telling parolees to get a sponsor is standard practice. And sponsors are free, too. So that solves the problem of "underfunded and understaffed" parole officers. The parole officers use the A.A. sponsors as unpaid unofficial deputy parole officers.

If you have been in A.A. for 25 years, I assume that you must have been a sponsor a lot of times. Are you really trying to tell me that you never wrote up a report to a parole officer, or answered a phone call from a parole officer, and gave a report on somebody? Do you expect me to believe that you somehow managed to avoid having even one parolee as a sponsee in 25 years?

The way that you ignored and dodged the issue of sponsors giving reports on parolees, and pretended to laugh it off, indictates to me that you have probably done it.

Bobby G.

Have another good day.

'Bye.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
**     Being surrounded by a group of people who keep
**     telling you that you are powerless over alcohol,
**     and that your will power is useless, is not
**     getting "support". It is getting sabotaged.
**     With friends like them, you don't need any enemies.

[The previous letter from Paul is here.]

Date: Wed, October 20, 2010 2:04 pm     (answered 6 Novemeber 2010)
From: "Paul B."
Subject: Re: AA

Well thank you for your enlightening response.

You made some good points but I still think your wrong on several things. I need to take some time to re-read through it, at work right now and can not absorb all of what you said but I can say this I surely pulled some deep anger out of you, you certainly have a deep anger of AA and a weird understanding of terriosts, that concerns me?

Hello again, Paul,

Wow. I just cannot count how many Steppers have brought up the "anger" or "resentment" red herring, but here is a list of a bunch of them. Bill Wilson and A.A. teach that you are "axiomatically spiritually wrong" if you "have a resentment". Or, as you hint, even mentally ill. That is total nonsense.

What is really ironic is that, in your previous letter, you were the one who said, "I suppose you think they should build a god damn mosque at ground zero too." If that isn't an angry resentment, I don't know what is.

The policy that you cannot be angry or "have a resentment" is a standard cult characteristic, one that is good for crippling people and keeping them from getting angry at the con artists who are foisting a fraud on them.

• Here is the Cult Test question: 68. Don't Feel Your Own Feelings.

• And here is the Cult Test answer for A.A.: 68. Don't Feel Your Own Feelings.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
**     Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob never got their thinking
**     out of the Middle Ages, and they seemed to resent
**     anybody else who had.

[The previous letter from David is here.]

Date: Wed, October 20, 2010 8:41 am     (answered 7 November 2010)
From: "david b."
Subject: RE: AA (of course!)

Well, its helped me. I am no longer drinking. My wife and family are much happier and fully support my involvement. Based on my 3 years of being in AA I must say that your statement above is false and that your site, though lengthy, does not prove what you are saying either.

That is an assumption that is not supported by the facts. You are offering a testimonial as evidence. That is a standard cult trick. They always trot out a chorus line of poster children who swear that the cult is just the greatest thing, and made their lives so much better. Tom Cruise jumps up and down on the couch and swears that Scientology is the greatest thing in the world. And it restored him to sanity, too.

When A.A. was put to the test, in actual controlled medical tests, it was a failure that just increased the relapse rate and the death rate in alcoholics.

Congratulations on your sobriety. You did it. No cult religions did it for you.

By the way, I think you will find that what your family really appreciates is that fact that you are not drinking alcohol any more, not the fact that you spend a lot of time at your new religion. How would they react if you were to go back to heavy drinking while still attending lots of A.A. meetings? How much would they appreciate A.A. then?

I am not ignoring it and I am not creating a "false dichotomy" either. The question is simple: do you spend time helping addicts get off their addictions. I am not talking about whether your site helps people get away from AA. (I am not talking about if it helps them understand politics or propaganda tactics etc. either.)

Yes, that is a false dichotomy. What you are asking is, "Do you help people by going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and parroting cult religion slogans at sick people, or do you not help anybody?" That is a false choice that you are offering.

Since A.A. does not actually improve the situation of alcoholics at all, going to A.A. meetings and sponsoring people is not "helping people to get off of addictions".

Now I don't like to brag about myself or talk about what I have done in the past, but I will reveal that I have facilitated SMART meetings in the past. Now, I find that my time is best spent working on this web site. A lot of people have told me that it really has helped them, by giving them true and accurate information when they needed it.

So yes, that is helping people to get off of addictions.

On the other hand, going to 12-Step meetings and parrotting Bill Wilson's lies to the newcomers is not "helping addicts to get off of their addictions". Giving confused and sick people misinformation makes things worse, and makes it harder for them to recover.

I am not talking about self examination and introspection. I should have been more clear. Self examination is a good start but without others helping us with our "reality checks" we often find that we are not really seeing reality at all. We may have difficulty recognizing our own BS but it is often easy to see it in others. That is where I come in. The purpose of my email is to help you with a "reality check".

The whole rap that you just delivered is pure Buchmanism. It was Frank Buchman's Oxford Group cult that had the sponsors "helping" the beginners with their confessions, to "call them on their BS".

For example, if a newcomer resisted accepting some of Buchman's evil ideas like that it is really okay and spiritual to lie to get more people into the cult, the sponsor would accuse the sponsee of being "egotistical" and "selfish", and "You think you know everything? You think you know more than Frank Buchman?". Yes, those beginners had trouble recognizing their own BS, like their belief that it was wrong to lie and exploit.

I seriously doubt that your purpose is to help me with a reality check, but go ahead and continue with your "reality check".

Speaking of which, I should help you at the same time. Why don't you do a serious fearless and searching moral inventory and ask yourself,

1. "Why am I so reluctant to learn the truth about Alcoholics Anonymous?"
2. "Why do I ignore the sky-high A.A. failure rate?"
3. "Why am I so willfully ignorant of Frank Buchman and the Oxford Group, and how it created Alcoholics Anonymous?"
4. "Why am I so willing to gloss over what Bill Wilson really was and did?"
5. "Why am I so determined to defend the teachings of a couple of con artists?"
6. "What will really happen to my life if I discover that Alcoholics Anonymous is a fraud?"

Good things about Bill W? AA? Really??

That makes no sense. I said recommendations of good things, not recommendations of evil cult religions. Of course I'm not going to recommend the lies of Bill Wilson and Alcoholics Anonymous.

My web site is "dedicated" to telling the truth about addictions, recovery, alcoholism, and methods of treating drug and alcohol addiction. That includes debunking all of the cult religions that claim to have magical spiritual cures for drug and alcohol problems: Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, Scientology, The People's Temple, Synanon, and a few other obscure cults.

So it isn't a question of either "tearing down" or "making the world a better place". That is another false dichotomy.

No it isn't. I have listened to CD's of old Jack Benny shows with the commercials included and there are doctors recommending cigarettes like toothpaste. My father used to smoke as did my mother. They did not quite until the 60's when it became public knowledge that it was bad.

Oh Jeez Louise! You are offering commercials for cigarettes as evidence? Of course the tobacco companies were lying and promoting cigarettes as wonderful healthy things. They have been doing that, and killing people, for most of the twentieth century. That is not evidence that sane, honest, realistic people didn't know that cigarette smoking was harmful to their health.

And no, Lois Wilson did not object to Bill's tobacco addiction only because it was "immoral". That was Bill Wilson's lie, as he tried to minimize his addiction: "His wife is one of those persons who really feels there is something rather sinful about these commodities..."

As in, "she was just one of those Puritanical bitches." Bill Wilson often put Lois down with little jabs like that. It's just like how he wrote in the To Wives chapter, while pretending to be Lois, that she was selfish and dishonest and silly to think that she was too good to need God:

      We wives found that, like everybody else, we were afflicted with pride, self-pity, vanity and all the things which go to make up the self-centered person; and we were not above selfishness or dishonesty.   ...
      We thought, on the whole, we were pretty good women, capable of being nicer if our husbands stopped drinking. But it was a silly idea that we were too good to need God.
A.A. Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 8, To Wives, page 116.

This is not the example I was talking about. She was nagging bill later when they knew it was bad.

Later? No way. Bill Wilson put that story in the Big Book, so it had to have happened before the Big Book was written. That would make it 1938 or earlier.

Talk about a "false dichotomy". I am supposed to believe that everyone who claims to have conscious contact with God has to be perfect. If there not, either their is no God or they are lying about having any contact! Sorry. Can't pick up what your putting down.

Again, you are exaggerating. I never said "perfect". I said that Bill Wilson made claims of being in constant contact with God. For example, Bill delivered this sermon about Step 11 that claimed that Bill and the other elder A.A. members were constantly communicating with God:

Step Eleven suggests prayer and meditation. We shouldn't be shy on this matter of prayer. Better men than we are using it constantly.   ...
...
Here we ask God for inspiration...
...
What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration becomes a working part of the mind. Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely on it.
      We usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be...
The Big Book, 3rd & 4th Editions, William G. Wilson, pages 86 to 87.

(Or did He?)

I am not saying that some people did know/believe that it was unhealthy. But it was not part of public perception that early. Again, as I have said the general consensus was quite different.

That is another invalid argument. You keep referring to the "general consensus" as if it was more important than the truth. Bill Wilson was obviously not listening to God, Who really did know the truth about tobacco. So you can dimiss all of Bill Wilson's claims of "spirituality" and having a hotline to God. And you can throw Bill's books like the Big Book and "12 Steps and 12 Traditions" into the trash can. Bill Wilson was not talking to God.

The tobacco issue is not a minor concern. It is the point where the entire fake spiritual edifice of Alcoholics Anonymous falls apart.

This is just patently false. Bill, nor anyone else, was claiming that the man was "spiritual" at the beginning of his recovery. Bill defines Spirituality/Spiritual Awakening as the ability to be able to do, feel and believe things that the person could not do before. The person demonstrates a greater amount of humility, tolerance and service etc. Obviously this man does not represent what Bill held as "spiritual". I repeat my previous email: The smoking issue for this man and wife was a moral issue and bill's point was simply that an argument about the morality of smoking was not worth it at that time.

Excuse me, but there is every indication that the smoker in that story was Bill Wilson himself. Bill Wilson is the guy who refused to quit smoking, and argued with his wife about it, and smoked himself to death, while claiming that smoking was really okay, and completely compatible with a "spiritual" life. Bill Wilson was also the one who had a bad habit of throwing screaming drunken temper tantrums to get his own way, and kicking out the door panels and throwing a sewing machine at Lois.

And again, why didn't this "spiritual" A.A. member quit smoking after he became "spiritual"? You claim that "Bill defines Spirituality/Spiritual Awakening as the ability to be able to do, feel and believe things that the person could not do before." Well, he couldn't quit smoking before. Why couldn't he quit after the "Spirituality/Spiritual Awakening" took effect?

Your claim that "an argument about the morality of smoking was not worth it at that time" is a lame cop-out. Tobacco smoking is the biggest killer drug addiction on the planet. Tobacco kills far more people than alcohol. Alcohol abuse kills about 100,000 U.S. citizens per year, plus about another 13,000 from fatal automobile accidents caused by drunk driving. Tobacco kills 430,000 U.S. citizens per year. And you don't think it was worth the bother to tell the truth about tobacco?

Are you really claiming that we can't disturb those poor feeble-minded alcoholics by telling them the truth about tobacco? It's okay to lie to alcoholics about tobacco if that will help to get them into the Alcoholics Anonymous cult?

Furthermore, the argument is not about "the morality of smoking". It's about the death rate of smoking, and the health problems with smoking. It's about the same problems as occur with drinking alcohol. Trying to claim that the argument is just about "the morality of smoking" is another red herring, trying to divert attention away from the point, and reduce the discussion to a theological argument about morals.

The man's sobriety was in danger precisely because he was not spiritual. Bill has described himself, as well as other alcoholics, in the beginning of recovery as "savage" "selfish" etc. I know I was. But ask anyone who knows me...I'm not now! I am definitely more "spiritual" if that word means to be less self-centered, selfish, dishonest etc.

But Bill Wilson wrote in the Big Book that the smoker in question was "a most effective member of A.A.":

Though he is now a most effective member of Alcoholics Anonymous, he still smokes and drinks coffee, but neither his wife nor anyone else stands in judgement.
== the "Big Book", Alcoholics Anonymous, in the chapter "The Family Afterward", on page 135 (3rd and 4th editions)

I do not deny the above at all. But the point again is public perception not what Doctors knew. What did the average person like Bill and others (including my parents! etc.) think about smoking at that time (1930's -1950's)? While I agree with you that Doctors may have been in the know about smoking and health (and I doubt they all were). So what? You are assuming that the average person knew then what the average person knows now about smoking! Hence my statement of your lack of objectivity regarding this issue.

Again, the public perception, and the ignorance and stupidity of the "average man" does not override the truth, or change what God knew. Bill Wilson claimed to be spiritual and listening to God, and you keep claiming that nobody knew — or only a few people knew — how bad tobacco is. Well God knew, and either Bill Wilson wasn't listening to God, or God didn't bother to tell Bill Wilson the truth. You choose which one you think it is. And that isn't a false dichotomy.

The way I see it, there are only these logical possibilities:

1. God did not know, in 1938, how bad tobacco is for peoples' health.
2. God knew, but God didn't tell Bill Wilson. (Perhaps God wanted Bill to die, for things like lying about God and promoting a fascist cult religion.)
3. God lied to Bill Wilson, and told him that smoking was completely okay, and compatible with a spiritual life.
4. God told Bill Wilson the truth, but Bill Wilson didn't hear The Voice of God.
5. God told Bill Wilson the truth, but Bill Wilson chose to ignore the Voice of God just like how he ignored the voice of Lois, because Bill wanted to keep on smoking.

So you choose. Which is it? And if you can think of another logical possibility, let me know.

Ah yes, there it is. The standard cult claim that "being angry", or "having a resentment" is a spiritual defect, and somehow just wrong. As if it is wrong to be angry at criminals who kill sick people with cult religion and quack medicine.

Look here for a list of previous Steppers' raps about resentments.

And again, "the context" is irrelevant. Bill Wilson claimed to be spiritual and constantly talking to God, Who allegedly knows more than the ordinary people.

I never said it was. What I am implying is that your lack of understanding of the context in this example demonstrates, at least in part, that your are not to be trusted when it comes to evaluating Bill W. or AA in general.

I don't have any "lack of understanding" there. The tobacco story is a great example of just how phony Bill Wilson's "spiritual" teachings really were. That's why I chose to begin that web page about the crazy phony spirituality of Bill Wilson with that story from the Big Book.

I have no doubt that you think you are doing the right thing. I just do not believe that you objectively see yourself. Therefore I do not think you objectively see AA. The above "context" discussion is meant as an example to provide the evidence.

This is not to say that AA is perfect. And for sure just because I think you lack objectivity and that your dedication to this site is unhealthy, that does not make AA perfect. I prefaced my first email by stating that I knew Bill W. was far from perfect and probably not very spiritual as we tend to think of the word. But he did start an organization that has helped me! And that is true no matter what you write!

You do not seem to understand what the word "objectivity" means. "Objectivity" does not mean, "Let's not criticize other people's cult religion beliefs. After all, maybe there is some truth to their teachings. Maybe our planet really is ruled by the Evil Galactic Overlord Xenu, like Scientology says. Maybe A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada really is the Earth's Guru for the next 10,000 years, like the Hari Krishnas say, and maybe it really is okay to cheat and short-change your customers to get more money 'for God'. Maybe Rev. Sun Myung Moon really is the Messiah. Maybe tobacco really is okay for your health. Maybe Bill Wilson and Rowland Hazard and Cebra Graves really did talk to God. So let's not criticize those nice cult religions that kill people."

No. What "objectivity" means is this:

1. Get a bunch of alcoholics, a few hundred or more, from somewhere, like a drunk driving traffic court, or a hospital treatment center.
2. Randomly divide them into two equal groups.
3. Send one group of them to Alcoholics Anonymous. Give nothing to the other group. Tell them that they are free to go home and drink themselves to death if they wish to.
4. Several months or a year later, or several years later, check up on them and see who is sober, and who is still drinking, and who is dead, and who is in jail, and so on.
5. Compare the results from the two groups to see what A.A. really did for the alcoholics who went to Alcoholics Anonymous.

Now that is objectivity.

Again, all the best!
David

You have a good day too, David.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
**     "People always come up to me and say that my smoking
**        is bothering them... Well, it's killing me!"
**           ==   Wendy Liebman

[The next letter from David is here.]

May 20, 2009, Wednesday: Day 20, continued: Canada Goose Goslings, with the two adopted orphans It is easy to see that those two small ones are really much, much younger than the others. There is no doubt that they are from different broods than the four larger goslings. I also see that the small orphan on the right likes to cuddle up with one of its big brothers for warmth. It looks like the four larger goslings are three boys and one girl. The girl is the smaller one standing over on the left, and the other three large ones look like boys. I can't really tell the sexes of the two little orphans, although I would guess that the one on the left is a boy, from its aggressive behavior. After you have looked at the goslings for enough years, you do actually start to see them as little boys and little girls. They really start looking like little boys and girls. They have the same hormones as us: the boys have testosterone, and the girls have estrogen and progesterone. And those hormones do the same things to them as they do to us: The boys turn into hulking little monsters who want to fight to prove how strong they are, and the girls turn into these dainty feminine little things who have no interest in fighting.

[The story of Carmen continues here.]

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Last updated 8 March 2013.
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