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Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee — I think I'll get a beer? 
hi orange.... i thought that herberts quote was in the first addition of the big book... perhaps one of those quotes you find right under the title of a story. i think it was the last story in the first addition and aa merely moved it into the second addition when it removed that story... what do you think? buck doggerel
Hi Tim,
Yes, that quote was first used by one of the other first edition Big Book authors,
Ray Campbell in "An Artist's Concept",
and then Bill Wilson kept it and re-used it in the appendix about spiritual
experiences in the 2nd edition, while he threw away Ray Campbell's story.
The big question all along has been, did everybody from the 1st guy on down
screw up? There is still an ongoing debate about that. An acquaintance
has done a lot of research on it. He has published a paper at:
http://www.geocities.com/fitquotation/
that concludes that the quote comes from somebody else.
UPDATE: That is a dead link now. A local copy is here:
Survival_of_a_Fitting_Quotation.pdf.
And still, now I'm hearing that somebody else is saying that it is
from "The Pathology of Trauma" by Herbert Spencer,
2nd edition, Edited by J.K.Mason, page 192.
I haven't been able to get my hands on a copy of that book to verify
that. I'm at the point where I don't believe any of that stuff until I
see it for myself, so I'll go see.
Have a good day.
== Orange
UPDATE: It turns out that Herbert Spencer never wrote any book titled "The Pathology of Trauma". That was just a red herring. See Michael's investigation of this, here.
Dear Orange: I can't thank you enough for your wonderful online book. My own AA issues are simply that I have acquaintances who are 12-steppers and the degree to which that vocabulary has seeped into the larger culture, including the workplace and even "spiritual" groups that may be otherwise of use. For me the big rocking importance of your work is the exhuming of this most important hidden cultural history, a turgid stream still flowing through the meme-pool, especially in the US. I feel that these pseudo-ideas and their polluted vocabulary provide the whole cloth from which to shape the face and form of Bertram Gross's "Friendly Fascism" here in the US. The organizational morphing is of course fascinating (setting aside the AA spinoff) from the Oxford Movement to Moral Rearmament...and now Global Reconciliation? My "godparents" in my Episcopalian baptism were MRA enthusiasts. Well-to-do upper middle class, they would go on retreats at Interlaken I recall. I never learned much about it from them. It's wonderful to be able to place these things. (Did you ever hear of the Technocrats? I had a black sheep uncle who was apparently enthusiastic for them.) Forgive me if I've missed a search engine (do you provide one?), but I would dearly like to re-find your fantastic AA/Buchman phrase list, now deeply embedded in the popular cant. It certainly reinforces my own superstition about never using any buzzwords in my own speech or writing. Some on your list were:
> "Let go & let God" Many thanks for your fine work. It should be used as a Middle School text, honest! (BTW, you might enjoy Sankara Saranam's "God without Religion.") Mary G. W.
Hi Mary,
Thanks for all of the compliments.
I had never heard of the Technocrats. I'll have to look them up.
The web site doesn't have a search engine yet, but I'm looking into that.
That would be a great enhancement.
In the mean time, the two lists that you are looking for are:
And the "Group Mind" thing first popped up in Buchman's MRA speeches
here,
and "group-think" is listed in the Cult Test
here.
I'll have to check out that Sankara Saranam book. Thanks for the tip.
Have a good day.
== Orange
Agent Orange, Your website is impressive. I admire your sticking to the tried and true debating technique of proving the inherent flaw or advantage. I have been sober for almost twenty years. For eleven of it I have not attended meetings or had a sponsor. My latest period of "abstinence" has lasted about a year and a half and is much more deliberate than previous absences. I wish I could say that it was principled but it was really personality oriented. I just got sick of the crap dished out at the personal level. I won't say that I'll never return (especially after spending some time at your site) but it is increasingly unlikely. Bill's demons always made him real to me and that genuineness served as an antidote to the urge to join others in his deification. I never went any further and put two and two together by applying rigorous logic. I understand now that I had been taught to do otherwise. Your compiled research also satisfies my long-standing curiosity about the extent of the Oxford Groups on AA. I see the word sanity in Step Two completely differently now. I no longer have to try and resolve the dissonance between my AA experience, my school training and my personal recollection anymore. I was many things when I was introduced to AA but insane wasn't one of them. Which brings me to my first suggestion: Stop saying Bill was insane. He was one sick puppy but not psychotic.
Hi Clay,
Thanks for an unusually cogent letter, and thanks for all of the compliments,
and congratulations on your sobriety.
I admit that I am sometimes overly enthusiastic about calling Bill Wilson a raving
lunatic, but there is lots of room for debating just how sane or in contact with
reality he was.
A quick note about my qualifications: I was an Honor Graduate from the US Army's Behavioral Science course. Our textbook was the DSM-III R. Narcissism is a personality disorder. Depression is an affective (i.e. mood) disorder. Bill's reality testing mechanism and ego boundary were quite intact. These two factors are essential in diagnosing psychosis, a thought disorder. He was mildly, yes mildly, delusional at times. Based on anecdotal evidence he may very well have been bi-polar. Altogether unpleasant but charming I'm sure.
Yes. That question just came up in another recent letter, where we
were talking about the question of "Was Bill Wilson
totally disconnected from reality, a completely delusional raving lunatic,
or was he just coldly lying and manufacturing propaganda to promote his new cult?"'
Look here.
I think that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Still, I have to ask, just what kind
of a man, and what kind of a mind, makes up such outrageous grandiose lies for 20 years and foists
them on sick people? I'm sure that Bill Wilson rationalized his behavior by saying that
it was for the good of the alcoholics, but after 10 or 12 years of pushing A.A., he had to know its real
failure rate. In fact, he did know it, and occasionally spoke of it, and yet he still
went right on telling his grandiose lies about how wonderful A.A. was, and how wonderful he
was, and foisting his con on sick people.
What kind of a person is that? (I think that is characteristic of narcissism.)
How can a sane man even keep a straight face while he raves that his cult is
the greatest
medical and spiritual development of all time?
Bill Wilson also didn't mind exiling dissidents and condemning them to death by alcoholism.
See the story of Ed.
What is such a total lack of compassion or concern for the welfare of others,
if not one of the characteristics of a psychopath, or at least one of the characteristics of
a narcissistic personality disorder?
My second suggestion: get someone professional to edit your pages. Tighten it up. Agreed. I am still going back through stuff, trying to condense it and eliminate repetition. That's about it. I wouldn't overlook though, Bill's attempt to force mega-vitamin therapy on AA as more proof of his demented personality. In Pass it On it is described but minimized. Taken together with so much that was unrevealed by the book it amounts to much, much more than just "Bill being Bill". Now that's an interesting subject. I haven't explored that much. I know about it, but never considered it important. I'll have to reconsider that. Also, it would seem that investigating MRA regarding eugenics might prove to be useful. Race purity though selective breeding and the elimination of misfits was quite popular amongst the tony set Buchman courted. Not to mention the Nazis. Oh yes. Hmmm.... That is a great subject. That is something that Paul Diener was quite aware of, in connection with fascist philosophies (look here, and search the page for the words 'untermensch', 'ubermensch', and 'Superman'). Thanks for your time.
Sincerest Regards,
Thanks for the letter. You make some good commments. And I wouldn't mind further exploring
the whole issue of Bill Wilson's mind — narcissistic, delusional, psychotic, bi-polar, or just criminal?
And have a good day.
== Orange
[2nd letter from Clay:]
Date: Sat, October 22, 2005 Agent Orange, Thanks for your reply. My point about making a forensic diagnosis of clinical insanity for Bill hinged on the narrow, technical definition that involves the individual's reality testing mechanism and ego boundry. Before starting my reply I searched out a current definition and found this:
*Psychosis:* In the general sense, a mental illness that markedly interferes with a person's capacity to meet life's everyday demands. In a specific sense, it refers to a thought disorder in which reality testing is grossly impaired. Accordingly, I think it is quite possible to apply the "certifiable" label to Mr. W. G. Wilson. However, Bill's grandiosity regarding the building of Alcoholics Anonymous remains problematic for me. Big things come from big visions. When you asked what kind of a man continues to tell promote himself and his organization as the greatest thing since sliced bread when the honest facts showed otherwise, I was instantly reminded of P. T. Barnum and his "Greatest Show on Earth". Of course Barnum wasn't selling recovery from one of the worst scourges of mankind. At any rate, at some point in the life of a large corporation or project someone has to have the eyes to see it as it will be, not as it is. Coupled wiith the energy to take the idea and implement it, great and sometimes terrible things can result. At times Bill lacked the physical energy but was always able to manipulate. Maybe this will help illustrate: In 1991 on a vacation to South Dakota I wrecked my car at Mt Rushmore. After getting my car towed into Rapid City I decided to take in a meeting. At that meeting I was invited to stay with some AA guys who shared a large house in town. As a result of that stay and through connections of one of the young men I got to go to the mountain that is being sculpted into a image of Crazy Horse. I got to meet the family who does this and go up to see the work first-hand. For years Korczak Ziolkowski blasted and bulldozed away at an entire mountain by himself and then with his wife, Ann. Now his ten children carry on. If you are unfamiliar with this amazing confluence of art and engineering, check out the Crazy Horse Memorial. Thats one Big Vision. For a long time, no matter where I was I considered my home group to be the North Kansas City Group. The membership list was pretty long. One day I went through it and realized that many members simply didn't come to meetings. I asked my sponsor about it and he said that many had just moved on and had built lives for themselves that didn't really include A.A. anymore. They weren't sore or disappointed, just gone. At the time I though it selfish of them, I couldn't understand how they did it. now I am one of them. I suspect there are a number of us. Ironically it was Bill who wrote in the Big Book about "returning to the mainstream of life". My sponsor told me that that was the point. Take care and keep up the good work.
Sincerely,
Hi Clay,
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I agree about that funny gray line
between grandiose world-shaping plans and madness. There is also a similar
gray line between entrepreneurs and con artists.
Way back, 20 years ago, during an earlier high-tech boom, a friend and I
were discussing some of the con artist promoters we had met in the computer
industry. I was asking, "What is the real difference between a bombastic con
artist and an overly-enthusiastic promoter of a new computer venture (that fails)."
My friend answered, "Little or none. Whether the guy is a con artist or a brilliant
entrepreneur is largely determined by the profits that result, which is sometimes
just a matter of luck. The kinds of guys are the same."
I wondered whether my friend was a little hard on enthusiastic entrepreneurs.
Still, I can't help but feel that when somebody deliberately, calmly lies to sick
people about what medicine or treatment might cure them of a deadly disease, that
some very important ethical line has been crossed.
Oh well, have a good day anyway.
== Orange
I have no idea why you are so scorn by AA. But if it did not worked for you. Why dont you leave us alone and let us believe what we want to beleave. What is your gain I don' know and is not significant. To me it seems that you have wasted too much of your precious life minding some one alses bussiness. I hope that you never have to live the way that I did because of my alcoholism. And I wish the best for you I 'm a member of AA and I live and let live. Let our cult be our cult.If that keep us away from the vicious state of mind of alcoholism please let it be . Respectfully jorge T.
Hello Jorge,
You are welcome to believe whatever you wish to believe. I have said many
times that I don't care if some burned-out old alcoholics want to gather
in church basements and tell each other that they are
the chosen people of God.
Such sad cases are irrelevant in the big scheme of things.
But where they go wrong is when they promote their cult religion as a cure
for a life-threatening illness. That is quack medicine at its worse, and
it kills people. It is morally wrong to produce a river of misinformation
about A.A. and alcoholism, constantly bragging about how well A.A.
works, when it does not work.
And those believers do not have the right to
promote their religion
by using
the criminal justice system and health care system to shove more people into
their meetings. That is both illegal and immoral.
Have a good day.
== Orange
I found your site to be very interesting and true. I found it while looking for a definition to the words "dry drunk," which were used in an advice column (Dear Prudie) today.
You are on the right track. My own (very recent) ex-husband was one of those
who had to leave his family for the AA cult.
As you point out through statistics, many people are abusing alcohol because they have mental health problems. These people are not equipped to interpret and apply the 12 steps in a practical way. They will twist the dogma to rationalize the symptoms of their mental disorders — then their AA group will validate these delusions. These people are vulnerable to the AA cult. They may stop drinking, but they have only treated a symptom of their problem — not their disease.
Hi Kelly,
Thanks for a powerful and moving letter. Sorry to hear about your troubles. That sucks.
I don't know what it is going to take to put an end to such B.S., but I'd
like to find out.
Oh well, have a good day anyway.
== Orange
Hope this finds in you in good spirits. Yes, it does, thanks. Thought I would let you know I use a lot of your info in my Big Book Study group on Saturday nites. It drives a few nuts but what the hell. Almost 60 and I am still a disseminator of dangerous information and obsessed with AA history. Now that is funny. Just as a note I have been in AA for about 25 years now and my views have changed often and radically through the years. I tell newbies to read the BB to spot the BS at the tables including mine. I often suggest they disregard the 3 chapters to the wives, to the emploters and the family afterwards. I have reached the point where I do not really care if they stay but really do care that they start to get their lives in some sort of order whether it be AA, Smart, etc or by themselves. The BB state we are not a cure all and we know little. However the BB does say this is a program and a book about God and I make no bones about that. Far out. Somebody who is into telling the truth. How rare, but how wonderful. You previously had a link to download the whole site which I did and I was going to print it out til I discovered how many pages it was. That was when I truly recognized all the work and effort you have done in your site. As we say in AA ; what a dedicated "avocation!" Thank you truly. I am sure you have helped many who were having doubts whether AA was right for them or not.
Thanks for all of the thanks.
Yes, the archives are back. I just finally got back on line, and uploaded all of my accumulated
improvements and expansions from about the last year. It's a major update.
Now the web site is really huge — it went from 16 megabytes to 80.
I went hog wild with a scanner and old books of photographs of the Oxford Group and A.A. history.
Check out the new history of A.A. and the Oxford Group.
Once again, you can download the entire mess in one big collection of .ZIP files,
(or .tar.gz Linux archives). But this time around, it is 11 files, not 4, and it's
an 80-megabyte download.
The real reason I write however is I was wondering if you knew what happened to aadeprograming? I wanted to print out a few articles that I lost and the site seems gone. Reggaes (sp?) site also seems vanished. Do you know if Aadeprograming will be back? Alas, I don't know what is up with Apple (aadeprogramming.com). I haven't had any communication with her in a couple of years. A few years ago, her web site disappeared for a while because she was tired of maintaining it, but she brought it back because of popular demand. Unfortunately, I don't have any email address for her other than her old email address at aadeprogramming.com, which of course does not work now. If I got in contact with her and got her okay, I wouldn't mind mirroring her web site. I have almost all of her old pages archived for my own collection. There is really some good stuff in there, and I would be happy to keep it on line. But I need to get her okay, so if anybody out there knows how to contact her, please let me know. Thanks in advance
Bruce J.
You're quite welcome, Bruce, and have a good day.
== Orange
Dear Orange, thank you for lifting the blinkers off of my eyes. Your site has been a revelation to me I was wondering if you had any current information about the splinter groups occurring within AA itself? Or if you had any further information about contemporary circuit speakers? I write with particular attention to:
Your research & documentation has been educational and life saving for me and I hope that you could continue your researches into A.A. today that is fragmenting and forming separate cells within the entire organisation. I know that the situation in the states is more profound than in Europe but it is an almost certainty that this trend of splintering will continue as is the nature with all social groupings e.g; religious/political groups. People need to be warned of these fundamentalist AA splinter cells before we start seeing liquor stores and bars being targeted by suicide bombers. I joke and exaggerate but 10 years around AA has taught me not to put anything past them.
Yours
Hi Oliver,
Thanks for the letter and all of the compliments, and the heads-up.
This is all news to me. I had not
heard of those sub-sects before, but I shall strive to learn more.
But somehow, I am not suprised at all. I've been wondering if that would happen.
It seems like it is a natural development in the life cycle of many cults,
just like you said.
I was just reading
a book about Amway
that described the same kind of thing happening in Amway, right
down to the super-star leaders controlling sub-sects and making huge
amounts of money by selling tapes on how to succeed.
In fact, they made most of their money by selling tapes and books about
how to succeed at selling soap, rather than by actually selling the soap.
Have a good day.
== Orange
Wow, for someone dismissive of AA, you sure seem to spend a lot of time and energy writing about it.
Hello, DA,
Yes, I have sunk a lot of work into this web site. Can't you honestly figure out why? Haven't I said why enough times?
By the way, I will "let it go already" when you do. A.A. has been foisting its
particular brand of voodoo medicine on sick people for 65 years now. Don't you
think it's time for A.A. to "let it go already"?
At the end of your introduction, where you finally get down to brass tacks as to why you're doing this:
"I just can't help but think that there must be some better way to handle such problems than a method that is obviously not working, the currently-used 12-step program. I can't help but think that a lot of people might be better off if they got some other treatment or therapy besides cult religion and voodoo medicine." 'Obviously not working' is a pretty broad statement, no? Have you talked to every person who's used AA's 12-step program to stop drinking?
That is bad logic, very bad logic. You assume that everybody is clear about causes and
effects, and what caused them to quit drinking and what didn't,
and that they will accurately report results. Not so. People are routinely fooled by
quack medicine.
Read Dr. David Duncan's story
of how some quack doctors ran
a fake kidney treatment clinic for years, and lots of the quacks' patients insisted that
they had received "excellent" medical treatment.
I was just over at the Scientology newsgroup, and the usual crazy true believers over
there were insisting that Scientology is the cure for everything, and that it really works
well, and is just the most wonderful organization.
Heck, if you ask Tom Cruise, he will tell you that Scientology is the only valid
cure for alcoholism — you should go to Narconon and let them mess with your mind.
Do you really believe that Tom Cruise is right?
If not, why not?
Why would you believe some A.A. members when they say that the Twelve Steps work great
for quitting drinking, and not believe Tom Cruise when he says that Scientology works
great for curing all of your mental disorders, including alcoholism?
What it all comes down to is this: You don't figure out whether medicines or treatments work
just by asking the patients if they like the medicine, or by asking them if they think
that it works. You compare the results
from a group of patients who got the medicine or treatment with the results from a
similar group of patients who did not get the treatment, and see what the differences are.
That test has already been done with Alcoholics Anonymous, repeatedly, and the results were always number
2 or 3 — either no better than no treatment, or really bad results from A.A. treatment of alcoholics, like
increasing the death rate,
increasing the rate of binge drinking,
and
increasing the rate of re-arrests for public
drunkenness.
Read the file on
the effectiveness of the 12-Step treatment.
As for the rest of the paragraph, that's your opinion — just as AA didn't work for you, what you prescribe may not work for others. What is your idea of 'better off' any way? Dry for a day? A year? The rest of one's life?
You are twisting my words and grossly misquoting me.
I never said that A.A. did not work for me.
I said that I never did the A.A. program at all.
I have never done the Twelve Steps, I never had a sponsor,
I don't believe in the Big Book, and I don't
believe in Bill Wilson or Doctor Bob.
Nevertheless, without any A.A. "help" at all,
I have almost 5 years clean and sober now.
My 5th-year anniversary is coming up in just 3 weeks.
So my program is working just fine, thank you anyway.
I was tempted to join A.A. and just throw my logical thinking mind into
the trashcan and become a babbling giggling mindless true believer, just so happy to be in A.A. and N.A.,
but I just couldn't quite do it.
I was too aware of what was going on. I could see that the real cost of joining and working
the program was to become a phony — Fake It Till You Make It and Act As If.
You are also attempting to use an
Escape via Relativism
— "maybe one thing works
better for one person, and maybe another thing works better for others..." to try to assert that
A.A. works for some people.
Nope. That's bad logic and just another attempt to claim that A.A. works, which it does not.
A.A. boosters routinely point to a few people who quit drinking because they decided that
they really wanted to live, and were sick and tired of being sick and tired, and then A.A. falsely
claims that it "made them" quit drinking. Wrong. A.A. cannot claim all of the cases of
spontaneous remission and declare them to be proof that "A.A. works".
Remember that the "no-treatment" group of people
who just do it alone
gets just as many or more successes than A.A. does.
A.A. simply does not increase the amount of sobriety in this world.
Now, what is my idea of 'better off'? How about clean and sober for many years? Like 5 or more?
Or better yet, sober for the rest of your life? I think that is better off.
Does A.A. cause that? No. A.A. produces no better a success rate than going it alone and getting
no help at all.
It seems to me that your mixing the treatment industry, public health policy, the 12 steps, Bill Wilson's life, the actions of some people, religiousity, and I guess some antiquarian ideas of the Oxford Group into a tarred-brush condemnation of anyone who tries AA.
Again, wrong. Again, you are twisting my words and misrepresenting my statements.
(That is the standard propaganda trick of
Misrepresent Your Opponent's Position.)
I do not issue a blanket condemnation of everybody who goes to an
A.A. meeting seeking something that might help them.
I condemn the A.A. organization, the A.A. headquarters, the program,
the 12 Steps, the bad theology, the Big Book, the deceptive and
dishonest A.A.-boosters and propagandists, the corrupt money-grubbing 12-Step treatment centers,
coercive recruiting, deceptive recruiting,
Frank Buchman and his lies, his Oxford Group cult, and
Bill Wilson and his lies, but not the alcoholics who are sincerely
trying to save their own lives.
The alcoholics are the victims of con artists like Frank Buchman
and Bill Wilson, not the villains. The alcoholics are also the victims
of the old-timer A.A. recruiters and propagandists who continue to push that
12-Step routine even though they have many years of experience in seeing the
program fail, and know full well that it doesn't work.
I am not into blaming the victims.
So you ran up against a few kooks, egomaniacs, pervs, and downright nasty folks. Guess what? You'll find those types in any group, and it seemed like you let this particular batch really get under your skin, enough to devote many MB of web space to denouce and entire social movement. That's a sweeping generalization if I ever saw one.
Now that is the standard alcoholic's trick of
Minimization and Denial.
You are also using the propaganda trick of
Divert Attention Away From the Point:
"It isn't A.A. that is wrong; it's just the nuts and kooks who go to A.A. that mess things up."
Again, you are trying to misrepresent my position.
I criticize Bill Wilson and the Big Book and his demented theology and his lies
and his worthless 12-Step program,
but you try to claim that it's just that I didn't like some of the nutcases that I encountered.
There is a lot more wrong with A.A. than just some bad counselors or a few kooks.
Oh, and now you are blaming the A.A. members for A.A. being bad.
I am not into blaming the victims, but A.A. is.
A.A. blames the victims at the start of every meeting, where they read from
the Big Book, page 58, which says that reason that the 12 Steps don't work
for people is because those losers are "...constitutionally incapable of being honest
with themselves... They seem to have been born that way..." That is blaming the victim,
even while Bill Wilson also, in a slick piece of double-talk, declares that it isn't their fault.
It isn't their fault because they were born that way, but it is their fault that the 12 Steps
don't work on them, because they are hopelessly defective.
(Bill sure isn't going to say that it's the fault of the 12 Steps, now is he?)
By the way, Alcoholics Anonymous is not a "social movement" any more than Frank Buchman's
cult religion was. You haven't even changed the phrases or the language from
what the Oxford Group used to
grandiosely describe itself. Haven't you noticed that?
A.A. really is Buchmanism.
If you investigate further, I think you'll find AA members (or whatever they call themselves) of all hues, dispositions and stripes. Yes, from the jackasses you encountered, to those for whom this other — often overlooked — AA slogan is much closer to their hearts: "To Thine Own Self Be True." — From a happy 12-stepper, sponsor-free and sober
Yes, there are A.A. members of all stripes and hues, and I have in fact
said so repeatedly.
And that has nothing to do with the 12-Step program being a complete hoax
promoted by a lunatic — Bill Wilson.
You are again trying to divert attention away from the point. I am criticizing the ineffective
and harmful A.A. program that fails to cure alcoholics,
and you keep trying to change the subject — and shift the blame — to some of the people who are
going to A.A. meetings this week.
Basically, you are just trying to proclaim the old A.A. slogan,
Oh well, have a good day anyway.
Agent Orange, My name is Mark H. and I am a member of AA and have been for the last nine months. Your 'website' was brought to my attention by another AA member in a joke during a meeting. I consider myself an open minded person who likes to get all the facts before making a judgement on anything. I am not going to go into my whole life story, however the long and short of it is that I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, left when I was twenty, drank alcoholically for 8 years whilst trying literally every drug available. I was homeless, jobless, worthless and hopeless. I have nothing and no attempt to quite any of my vices worked ever....... and believe me I tried. I have a family member who was fortunate enough to find AA and has been clean and sober for 7 years, this amazed me as this member of my close family was close to dying so I am grateful for AA for there part in that person still being in my life.
Hi Mark,
I am glad that you are feeling better. But you are really confusing cause and effect there.
You assume that somehow A.A. made you quit drinking, rather than that you did the work yourself.
Answer this: Why didn't you go to A.A. eight years earlier? You could have saved yourself a whole
lot of suffering if you had, it seems. So why wait so long before going to A.A. and quitting
drinking and getting your life together?
The answer is: You didn't go to A.A. earlier, or quit drinking and doping any earlier, because
you were not ready to quit yet. You didn't want to quit yet.
Only when you had suffered enough that you were convinced that you really wanted to and had to
change your life did you quit drinking and doping and also go to A.A..
You say that you tried to quit earlier. No you didn't. You only thought you wanted to quit, but you didn't
really want to quit. You just wanted the pain to stop. You went right back to getting high
as soon as the urge hit because you didn't want to quit then.
But when you were REALLY convinced that you had to quit, and wanted to quit, then you did.
You also coincidentally went to some A.A. meetings, and some of the people there fooled you into
thinking that you were quitting because of them.
Seeing the change in that person and the utter powerlessness of my own life as far as alcohol and my other addictions is concerned led me through the doors of AA. This was the best decision of my life (if you could call my existence a life) I haven't touched a drink or a drug for 9 months a for that I am grateful. I am a 28 year man who was incapable of showing my feelings because I had no concept of emotions but upon reading some of your website I was over come with sadness that someone could dedicate so much time to bad mouthing, running down and generally making derogatory comments about a fellowship that so many people rely on, value and accounts for a large portion of there ability to keep away from alcohol something which they were unable to do before they found the AA rooms. What makes me sad is seeing friends die from quack medicine and cult religion. I don't envisage you putting this letter on your website due to the fact that it's content is upbeat and pro AA but I have to say that just writing it has made me feel a whole lot better and made me realise that I have a choice today as to whether I let narrow minded, negative people affect my day or not, and my decision is, not! Believe it or not, I really do not practice censorship unless it's really necessary. I am a firm believer in freedom of speech (unlike Yahoo). If you had bothered to read the letters files you would have seen a lot of pro-AA letters. If you look in the last file of letters or so, you will soon see this letter, too. If I have a problem or resentment against someone, my sponsor and other people in AA tell me to pray for the bastard so rest assured that you will be in my prayers for sometime to come.
Such language:
"Have a resentment"... "If you have a resentment, then there is
something spiritually wrong with you."...
That is just such standard A.A. cult-think. I can't even estimate how many times I've heard that
particular bit of thought-stopping nonsense. That is the kind of stuff that A.A. puts out that really
cripples people. (Don't feel your feelings,
and
Don't trust your own mind.)
Get back to a meeting. Mark H.
Now why on earth would I want to "get back to a meeting", other than maybe to pick up a five-year coin?
Oh well, have a good day anyway.
== Orange
Hi, am really enjoying your website and it has saved my sanity! AA in the UK is a limited company ( a bit like Inc in USA and I understand that AA is AA Inc in USA) but when I did a search it did not show up. So I'll ring Companies House (where limited companies are registered and find out more.) I want to see their accounts.
Hi Frank,
Yes, in the USA, A.A. is actually two corporations, one for-profit, and one non-profit:
Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. is the profit-making publishing house, and
the General Services Organization is the non-profit. The last I heard, all of the stock
of the for-profit corporation is owned by the non-profit, so the money flows towards the
non-profit. Both are New York State corporations.
If you find out anything of the finances of the English companies, I'd be interested in
seeing it, just out of curiosity.
The pressure to join AA from my group facilitator is strong. He himself is a member. I could go on but you know all the rubbish that happpens in AA meetings. Frank Wood
Yep. Thanks for the note. Have a good day.
== Orange
Hi, Without getting all long here.... I'm glad you are back online. A couple weeks ago, I noticed that your site was shut down, for lack of money-maint. I knew this most important site would return. Hi Andy, Thanks for the letter. Yes, it was just a hassle with the domain name registrar. Can you believe that they would not take cash, and had to be paid with a credit card number? I begged them to take the money for a month, and they just wouldn't do it. Too wierd. Anyway, that is taken care of. And next year, I'm going with a different name registrar. The last couple-few days I've been looking for info about the shutdown of the site... I start looking, and then just start reading... as always; straight-away jumping from icon to subject to another icon... God, I love your site Orange! Thanks for all of the complements. Try to publish this extensive study in book-form, Sir.... the Whurld needs to know. I've read alot about AA, and finally found this site a couple years ago. I keep thinking about that, but the problem is that paper just doesn't make it any more. The links don't work. I find that I really like writing in the HTML format. And then updates are impossible if you just print it on paper. I'm not really done with this yet. There is a lot more to do, eventually. I hope you are well. These days of late, I'm not. When I was sober and happy, I read about AA, and a couple months ago finally found, and could define my "Higher Power." It was right in front of me for about 7, of my 8 months, 10 days... that being; reading about the founding of AA, and all the bullshit since. I read The Small Book a couple times, and knew I was in the wrong program at that point. My sponsor's sponsee told me at a meeting one night that Tom was the guy slapping "the woman" around for sex, and that he was drinking again. My sponsor gave me a dose, saying: "I can't sponsor you anymore.... I have a job .. I'm going to in a couple weeks. Walks away, and comes back saying: "tell Tom (my friend in recovery) ((that he was also sponsoring)) that [I] need to tell him that [H]e can't sponsor him anymore either. Bummer. Where my friend and I were at this time, we had been reading more about AA than the Big Book, and let me tell ya....a lot of "the Managers" didn't even want to try discussing with us what we had already learned about this nutzoid cult. AO, what pisses me most-off about AA, is what I've read about the US court system pushing this inept program on ppl in trouble with the law, and the un-constitutionality of that process.
Yeh, that is one of the things that really bothers me too.
It might not be so bad if it actually worked, but when you combine total
failure with obnoxious cult religion, it's hard to see how sane people could
promote such a thing.
I think that to a great extent, the judges and politicians simply
do not know what it really is.
A.A. runs a great publicity machine and constantly cranks out a stream of
deceptive propaganda and plants favorable plugs on TV in The West Wing and
ER and Hill Street Blues, and has most people thinking that A.A. is a really good organization
that has helped millions of people to overcome alcoholism.
So, I keep saying my piece, trying to get the truth out there.
Cheer up, obviously somebody is reading this and learning something, because
my generous ISP who has been hosting this for free for four years now wants to get
paid for the bandwidth usage because it has gotten so large — now over 4 gigabytes a
month of downloading, and rising.
Somebody is doing a lot of reading.
Orange, I hope you will respond to this note....you've done great work. (today, I read, as I recall, Letter 7. (Pitch Black) What a retard.... lmao (you shouldn't have entertained him as long as you did.... lmao) Yeh, but where else could I get such a great example of cultish thinking? That guy was in a class by himself. I mean, I just couldn't make up stuff that twisted. You keep-up the good work, Sir. (ma'am?) It's a guy, and thank you. I wrote you a long letter a couple months ago.... didn't get it finished, then lost it, to finish. Sure would like to get in contact with you, preferably not with your immediate site here. I don't want to know who you are, and never would even consider inquiring. Your studies, and the best book I've ever read about AA was, AA: Cult or Cure?, Bufe (2nd Ed.) AO, you stay anonymous...for all of us, okay? :o) Andy... a friend indeed. :o)
Okay, thanks for all of the complements, and have a good day.
== Orange
Kind Sir, I find your /Orange Papers/ presentation of the provenance of Works Publishing, One Hundred Men, the financial records &tc. very interesting and at least on the face of things have no reason to believe or disbelieve the entire account. I've read most all the published accounts, i.e., most or all of what you cite in your bibliographic notes ('cept the daughter of Dr. Bob book, /Children of the Healer/, I think it's called), including Matthew J. Raphael, Kurtz, Hartigan, /Pass It On/ &tc. ... and I may have read the Dick B. /Akron Genesis/, too. I'm still reading Dr. Bob & the Good Oldtimers. I'm discouraged that your section called Birth of Big Book II: An Analysis of Excerpts from "Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age" is "Author unknown," because there doesn't seem to be any way for an observer such as myself to "verify" whether or not the facsimiles of those financial statements et. al. are legitimate. I suspect that they certainly are. Is there some independent means to vouch for their authenticity? I haven't any reason to challenge the anonymity of the author of An Analysis of Excerpts from "Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age" But It would be nice to have something a little more concrete, in terms of getting all that available for public consumption, with more easily "verifiable" references/footnotes, I mean. I suppose anybody can publish anything they want, but your Big Book I & II seems to be *the most radical departures* from the commercially available "historical" record in your entire on-line book. Again, I have no reason whatsoever to differ with the /factual/ accounting you've given/reproduced — I /suspect/ it is accurate. I simply don't know. I may or may not agree with some of your opinions, but that's not important. Is there now, or will there be a more "accessible" rendition of the events surrounding Bill W.'s appropriation of authorship/stipends pertaining to the Big Book? Am I missing something? Web pages are OK, but is there something a little more tangible?
Also, the following hyperlink is dysfunctional:
aapubliccontroversy.com I'm curious about smoothing else. Henrietta Seiberling says, "His hand 'writes' dictation from a Catholic priest, whose name I forget, from the 1600 period who was in Barcelona Spain." Now that obviously isn't the St. Boniface who Bill W claimed "channeled" him portions of the 12&12. Wilson's practice of spirit mediumship is there for all to see in /Pass It On/, and the Boniface issue is covered to some extent in /The Soul Of Sponsorship/. I think you bring that up in your Papers. But this reference of Seiberling's to "channeling" is what some of us would like to have much more information about, including more firsthand accounts, letters &tc. I should also mention that the reproduction you've provided, Original /Big Book/ assignment of copyright to Works Publishing, Inc. document. <http://www.orange-papers.info/images/orange-BB-cpyrite3.gif> is too small to be legible. I hope you might find a few moments in the not-to-distant future to answer my question(s) RE authenticity. I'd be grateful. I don't know exactly how I might repay you, but it never hurts to ask.
Best,
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the letter.
You have brought up a very good subject — how to verify history, and how to ferret out the truth.
You asked about the facsimilie of the financial statements, whether there was
"some independent means to vouch for their authenticity?"
The answer is no and yes... That is, the Alcoholics Anonymous headquarters refuses to
open the historical archives to anyone except bona-fide pro-A.A. propagandists who can be
trusted not to tell the truth about what they find in there. The A.A. leaders would not even
let news teams from ABC or NBC look at the records in the archives. That alone tells you a lot about the
"rigorous honesty" and "spirituality" of the A.A. leadership.
Let me clear up some confusion there:
I collected all of the supporting documents —
the financial records, stock prospectus, stock certificates, copyright
form, and other supporting documents —
from several other places,
including from the now-defunct web site www.aapubliccontroversy.com.
And there was a different "anonymous" who obtained and published
the financial report from Works Publishing, Inc., June 1940.
Unfortunately, I don't have any absolutely iron-clad way to verify them, like producing the
originals in a court of law.
But we can do a pretty good job of verifying them by double-checking
a lot of known facts, and seeing how well that alleged financial report correlates with
established and verifiable history.
Many people have now posted the contents of the first edition on their
web sites, and AAWS is not suing or making a legal challenge
to such apparent blatant copyright infringement. The reason that they
don't sue, and won't sue, is because they will lose.
When they lose such a court case, that destroys all of the foreign
copyrights that are based on the mere assumption that the American copyright is valid.
They would shoot themselves in the foot worldwide by taking a case to court.
Their failure to even try to protect their copyright is in itself evidence of its invalidity.
The A.A. leadership was quick to
sue A.A. members in Mexico and Germany (and commit perjury against them)
for copyright infringement when those
foreign A.A. members "carried the message" by printing their
own literature and giving it away or selling it
very inexpensively, but AAWS won't sue anybody in the USA.
As one judge said, "There are some things, like finding trout in
your milk, that are simply self-evident."
Those things can be verified.
If that financial report were a fraud, who could have carefully
fabricated such a coherent fraud?
It would be a lot of work to fabricate such a hoax.
And then to only post it on one obscure and short-lived web site?
Why bother?
The copyright form is
orange-BB-cpyrite.gif, and
orange-BB-cpyrite2.gif (back side), both of which are quite large
and very easy to read.
The image "orange-BB-cpyrite3.gif"
is the document where Bill Wilson sells the invalid copyright to Works Publishing Inc.,
and it is also large enough for easy reading.
Tom Powers, who co-authored the book "Twelve Steps and Twelve
Traditions" with Bill Wilson, was a neighbor of Bill's in Bedford
Hills, and often participated in the spook sessions at Bill's house.
PASS IT ON describes that.
And Francis Hartigan, Lois Wilson's private secretary, wrote another
biography of Bill Wilson, and for it, he went and interviewed Tom Powers,
and verified a lot of that stuff.
See: Bill W., A Biography of Alcoholics Anonymous Co-Founder Bill
Wilson, Francis Hartigan, 2000.
Susan Cheever also verified the spook nonsense
in her book My Name Is Bill: Bill Wilson — His Life and the Creation
of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And she was one of the true-believer "special people" who was allowed
access to the A.A. historical archives.
About the word "channelling": Henrietta Seiberling didn't use
that word. I did, because that is a fair description of the whole
necromancy project. It didn't matter whether Bill was talking to
ghosts while he laid on his couch and heard voices, or scribbled on a piece of paper, it was all
channelling.
For more about Bill's occult dabblings, look in "The Heresy of the 12 Steps",
here,
and
"The Funny Spirituality of Bill Wilson and A.A.",
here.
But the description of automatic writing that Henrietta Seiberling gave us is unique.
I too would like to read more about it, but alas, she's dead, and isn't
going to tell us anything more
(unless we get out the Ouija board and candles, and conduct a séance,
and start talking to her spirit...).
Oh well, have a good day anyway.
At last I have got your email. Well, what can I say, except your website has given me the most encouragement to leave AA. Are you still battling for the cause — the website seems to have not been updated.
Hi James,
Now the web site is updated, finally.
It is a cult. It makes you loose your old self completely. It made me feel very uncomfortable, and I feel for those who are still trapped into it. There is only one flaw in your analysis: did Wilson actually intend to mislead the members — or was he sincerely trying to help, by the only means necessary?
Ah, thank you, thank you. You win the prize for most interesting question of the month.
I have pondered that question a lot, and
have asked several times,
Did Bill Wilson really believe what he was saying? Did he "drink the koolaid", as
the expression goes?
Was he "smoking his own dope"? Or was he clearly aware of the fact that he
was exaggerating and lying?
Unfortunately, I cannot get inside his head to get a 100% certain answer to that question.
I can't talk to the dead
like Bill Wilson claimed to do, so I can't
conduct a séance and ask Bill what he was thinking. I can only guess.
My best guess is that it's half-and-half. To some extent he did believe what he was saying
— he really was narcissistic and delusional —
and to some extent
he knew that he was lying and exaggerating, but he felt justified in doing
so "to help others".
When Bill Wilson
exaggerated how many new A.A. members there were, and Bill's secretary
Ruth Hock corrected him, Bill said, "Oh, Ruth, you're spoiling my fun."
Like Nina Brown said,
Bill's fervent belief that he was justified in lying to get people into A.A. is itself a sign
of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
That does, of course, create circular logic: It's okay to lie and exaggerate and
deceive people about the real A.A. success rate in order to get more people into
A.A., because A.A. is such a wonderful organization that has helped so many alcoholics.
There is no doubt that Bill Wilson knew full well what a failure A.A. really was, and yet
he still went on promoting it for another 20 years, grandly proclaiming that it was a
great success, even the greatest medical and spiritual discovery of the 20th century.
What kind of a mind is that? What kind of a man is that?
Francis Hartigan, Lois Wilson's private secretary, reported:
If you only get 5% sober to start with, and then half of them eventually relapse,
that is only a
21/2%
success rate. That is total failure. And Bill Wilson knew that.
Likewise, Nell Wing, who was a secretary of Alcoholics Anonymous for 35 years, and Bill Wilson's
personal secretary for many of those years, as well as A.A.'s first archivist,
reported:
And yet Bill Wilson still promoted A.A. as the greatest sobriety program of all time, the only
thing that really worked. So was Bill a psycho or a cold heartless criminal?
It may be that AA works as a cult, but it was never intended that way.
That is questionable.
There is a lot of evidence that Bill Wilson really did intend A.A. to function
as a cult.
Anyway, thanks for a great read — pretty damn funny as well. James (ever been to SR forums? Man would they hate to see you there).
SR forums? I don't know what they are.
Thanks for the compliments, and have a good day.
== Orange
UPDATE: I learned that the "SR forums" are Sober Recovery forums, a pro-A.A. forum where people repeat 12-Step dogma at each other.
[another letter from James]
Date: Thu, October 20, 2005 For the replies. Given me food for thought... www.soberrecovery.com Where you will be hounded off like vermin. I personally would love to see you thrashing it out over there — there is a lot of people "under the spell" of lunatic Wilson. Take care — thousands of ex steppers are behind you. James
Hi again, James.
I'll have to check out that forum, and see if I feel like another war this week. :-)
Have a good day.
== Orange
Dear Orange: I've been visiting your site for some time and I've read almost all of it over the past year or so. I found it through a link from a Web log. I notice you haven't have any updates recently, although there was a time when your site was down and then it was restored. Hope all is well. This is quite some work you have up on the Web and it goes far to help people who might be confused about 12-step programs. Like W.C. Fields, I am reluctant to join any organization that would have me as a member. But I was in AA for four years. I'm grateful to have been sober for nine years this very week. I won't bore you with my tale of woe. You've been there and done that yourself and, judging from what you have posted, you must have had a tough go of it. You spent an awful lot of energy and time debunking the many myths of Bill Wilson, Bob Smith and the AA Amen Corner. Here's why I left the group: It began to dawn on me that I got into something more than I bargained for when I started "in the rooms," as they say. After 18 months of sobriety, my self-diagnosed co-dependent wife decided to end our marriage. This occurred after we had had almost a complete year of great marriage during which time I was sober and going to meetings. She was going to Al-Anon on occasion and it seemed like we were getting better together. Suddenly, it all changed. She said she could see no future in our relationship anymore. Perhaps foolishly, I allowed my sponsor — a trained professional, mind you — to counsel us in an effort to save our marriage. I realize now that a true professional in his capacity would have disqualified himself from this paid family counseling job. There is just too much of a dynamic here for it to work — too much at stake, and too many encumbrances in relationships to allow for trust and openness. But, blinded by the program, I had faith in his ability to help us heal our marriage. Not only didn't our weekly sessions work, but I think the counseling made it worse and probably hastened the end of our relationship. There might not have been anything salvagable at that point, but we split up and I didn't drink. I recovered. She cried every time she saw me for a year afterward. I couldn't understand what happened between us and why it had to end. She couldn't ever say why. She left the area and has since remarried. I continued to go to meetings. Almost exactly a year later, I began to date. I got involved with a woman who was outside of AA. I was honest from the start about my condition — arrested alcoholism. We hit it off. Another year went by and we got engaged. We married six months later and I moved from the area. Life has never been better. I spoke with a former sponsor — one who sponsored me before the professional person had — who I had expected to congratulate me on my marriage and my new life. To my dismay, he expressed to me astonishment and disappointment that I had not sought his permission to remarry. He was utterly sincere. My marriage came after four years of sobriety, and roughly two years after our association as sponsor/sponsee had ended. I moved to a new job to be with my new wife in a city about two hours away from where I had lived and had become sober. It was easy to disengage myself from AA. I just didn't go to meetings. I worried at first, having learned from AA that I was doomed to drink. But I had no desire to drink. Nor had I any desire to associate with people who wanted to run my life for me, people who by virtue of not drinking for longer periods than I had — and some who had just recently stopped shaking — seemed somehow superior to me and felt they had an obligation to to tell me what to do, how to think, what to feel. Yet they continue to say that they live one day at a time and are only a prayer away from a drunk. I have one old AA buddy with whom I visit and communicate who understands how I feel. He is something of an outcast in his group — the people I left behind — but he told me one of the most profound things I remember: If I ever felt that I needed help, I knew where to turn — I knew my way back to the rooms. He doesn't think I am destined to fail merely because I don't spend time with other alcoholics. He knows and I know that if I end my sobriety, it will be because I have chosen to end my sobriety — to drink — and for no other reason. What a concept! This is a truly sober thought, devoid of superstition, loaded language, cultish behavior or psychobabble or religious overtones. I think after 30 years of drinking, including 13 years trying to get sober through various programs and court-ordered AA attendance, and now nine years of sobriety, I know the stakes. I know what awaits me if I should drink. I don't want that life anymore. I've tried keeping in touch with my old sponsor, the one who counseled me through the end of my marriage. He has chosen not to stay in touch despite several overtures on my part to maintain the friendship. I have left the group and he has nothing to do with me. So be it. I would graciously receive him if he should wish to contact me again, but I'm done trying to contact him. I'm grateful that I had the experience in AA and the experience outside of AA. I met some good people in the group. There are times when the rooms are dominated by nut jobs. I have had AA control my life and I have wrested control back from AA and, despite it all or perhaps because of it, I'm a better person. That's my AA experience. Feel free to use this or not, at your own discretion. Thanks for your insightful site. By the way, I quit smoking cigarettes through hypnosis almost four years ago. Life has never been better. — Jay V.
Hi Jay,
Thanks for the letter. Sorry to hear about all of your troubles, and
congratulations on your success. It sounds good. And thanks for all of
the compliments. And yes, I will use the story. More grist for the mill.
Have a good day, and a good life.
== Orange
Greetings! Stumbled across your amusing site this evening. In your "Letters" section, you ask "Please tell me, which of my quotes from the /Big Book/ or 12x12 [/Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions/] is incorrect? " Go to your section "Letters II". About halfway down, you misquote: # "At some of these [steps] we balked. We thought we could find a softer, easier way. But we could not." The correct quote is: "We thought we could find an easier, softer way." (p.58)
Hi, Mike,
Okay, thank you. You're right. That was a typo. (In defense of myself, you might
notice that I got it in the right order 20 other times in the web site. You might also notice
that it does not change the meaning any.)
It is obvious you have found /your/ way. Self-righteousness is arrogance. Unfounded self-righteousness is abrasive. Sound familiar? You're the expert. "But obviously you cannot transmit something you haven't got." (p.164) Have a drink for me! Mike C.
Well, your last line really says it all, doesn't it?
I guess that is what A.A. "spirituality" really comes down to.
Oh well, have a good day anyway.
== Orange
I really like your site. So much good info. Helps cement my decision to "leave THE GROUP" almost two years ago. Only after reading your site for the last couple of days have I been able to admit to myself that I was in a cult. Here's a poem I wrote today that's probably not too good but very therapuetic. Thank you so much for your website. It means the world to me and I'm sure it has and will help a lot of people. sorry about the spacing. I couldn't fix it.....
Judge, judge away
Hi Rita,
Thanks for the letter, and congratulations on your escape from the cult.
And thanks for all of the compliments.
(Oh, and fixing the spacing was no problem. (But then, I have magic tools.))
Have a good day.
== Orange
Why are you so against AA? Its a great program. Harmless. Free. Turns thieving, lying, angry drunks into law abiding, educated, honest people. I am one of them and my two brothers too. My dad and sister attended for a couple of years and chose different paths... no harm done. You seem to have anger about AA. What's that about?
Walter
Hi Walter,
Thanks for the letter. In answer, I almost don't know where to start. So all I can say is,
start at the beginning, at
the introduction, and then go from there.
For just the shortest possible rebuttal, I would have to say that no, A.A. is not harmless or free.
It costs some people
their marriages, some their sanity,
some their lives.
And
some people pay a fortune
to a so-called "treatment center"
that charges many thousands of dollars to
foist ineffective 12-Step "treatment" on its victims.
Just read the web pages for the answers to all of the rest of your questions.
Have a good day.
== Orange
Hi, I have been reading material and am interested in a few things if you have time. I have my own opinions about AA and such and wondered what was you motivation for the site. Did you try AA and come to these conclusions? Are you a sociologist? I think the discussion is good overall — I bet you get a lot of "negative" mail from AA'ers.
Thanks,
Hi Tom,
Thanks for the letter, and thanks for the complements.
Essentially, yes, I did "try A.A.", and didn't like it.
Actually, the correct wording would be "pressured into A.A. as a condition of not being homeless."
The introduction
tells the basic story. Also see the description of "bait-and-switch treatment" programs
here.
About the motivation for creating the site, that is funny. I never set out to create any such
thing. I was just going to write a 30-page essay about A.A. and what I saw as its failings and
why it was inappropriate for use in treatment programs.
I wrote such an essay. And then I added a little more, and a little more, and was appalled when
it grew to 60 pages, and then 90. It used up so much paper to print out for friends who wanted a copy.
Then I found "Apple's" web site, aadeprogramming.com, and offered it to her. Together, we split it
up into a bunch of web pages and added HTML formatting, and up it went.
Then I came up with more stuff and wanted to update the pages all of the time, but Apple didn't, so
I ended up getting hosting on Yahoo Geocities, and put it there. It was there for almost 2 years and
then somebody seems to have complained that they were "offended" or something, because
Yahoo erased it all one Sunday morning
without warning or explanation. Blitzed all of my email too.
So I was on Tripod for a while, but outgrew that, and ended up having to get my own domain name and
web site, hosted by the generosity of Al Guevara at
Tucson WebDesign.
And here we are. What a long strange trip it's been.
So why do it? Well, I hope that getting the truth out might help somebody some time or other.
A few people say that it has helped them, so maybe it's happening.
I am also hoping that maybe the treatment of drug and alcohol
problems will eventually be improved. What is being done now is so bad that it can hardly be
any worse. But I don't expect that things will get any better as long as some frauds and incompetents are allowed
to monopolize the field. They don't want to give up the money, so they will continue to scream
that their methods are great.
So there is a lot of heat and smoke in this field.
No, I am not a sociologist. I was a biology major, but that was a long time ago.
And yes, I get plenty of hate mail. It's funny how many A.A. members have told me to go get drunk.
But I'm not going to do it. I'm just stubborn enough that Hell will freeze over before I give
them that satisfaction.
(So, wow! Do you know what that means? It some goofy way, A.A. *really is* keeping me sober after all!)
Oh well, have a good day anyway.
== Orange
/Orange/ /I have enjoyed what I have read so far and will comment further when I have read more. Have you read "Liquor the Servant of Man" by Smith and Helwig copyright 1939 reprinted 1948 Garden City Publishing Co. good reference about the disease aspect of alcoholism. Thanks again Dave/
Hi Dave,
Thanks for the thanks. I had not heard of that book before. I'll have to check it out.
Have a good day.
== Orange
...For the Orange Papers. You clever bloke you! Stick to it Orange, your site saved my mind. James in the UK Hi James, Thanks. And have a good day.
Dear Orange I've been going to meetings of AA for 14 months and lately I've become tired of listening to the same thing over and over. I've being looking in the Web for people feeling as I do, "sick and tired" of AA's "spirituality" and slogans. Lately, when sharing about the so called Higher Power and telling that I didn't "hand over" nor "pray on my knees humbly", I was told by a couple of "old timers" to "fake it to make it". When I first started to go to meetings I was starting to lose control of my drinking, I mean, blackouts, drink and drive,,, and I knew I had to do something about it. I chose AA because ACT (a British voluntary organisation to help/counsel to control addictions) were so fully booked that I had to wait several months to get an appointment. Well, first it was OK, I saw people looking well, joking and I was very lucky as in my first meeting the chair didn't mention God nor the steps, he was a very down to earth guy. I stayed sober since I started (well, actually my first day in AA was my third without drinking at all) and the first months I felt OK, although I never read any literature, just some pages were enough to put me off, luckily. I guess I was so mentally fucked up after so many years of drinking like a fish that I wasn't listening to all the repeated shit. The thing is that I'm glad to have read your opinions because AA is not for me. I can't be a believer without thoughts of my own and I don't believe any of the crap about "spiritual disease". I guess that AA can be OK for some people who are so fucked up that they don't dare to think or that they are alone and need to feel part of something. For me it was OK to put myself together but I think is a dangerous religious cult (Spirituality + God, whichever is your concept of Him = Religion, in my book), even if there are very nice people in the rooms trying to help others. Just to finish, I find most dangerous to make people believe that if they leave the rooms they'll drink again inevitably and they'll die because it's proven that "alcoholism is a fatal progressive illness": Once I shared that it was illogical to talk about progressive in the sense that if you stop drinking the illness is still there "progressing", that if the alcohol was worst after some years it was because you were fucking older and your body couldn't stand it as well as when you were younger... Well, the old timers didn't like it much. What I want is to stop drinking or maybe, in a future, control my drinking if I find that I matured enough. If I want spirituality, I can always take a trip or meditate... Other thing that annoys me is the way that almost everybody in the rooms believe that the only cure for alcoholism is AA and never discuss any scientific trials or different ways of looking into the problem. They always say that they are the only ones who understand, that the doctors, philosophers, psychologists are all mistaken. Oh, God, and this is not a cult. They could fool me.. Sorry for the length and, please, stay there with your research which is so valuable. Un abrazo cordial (Kind regards) Armando (a Spaniard living in the UK)
Hi Armando,
Thanks for the letter and the story, and thanks for all of the compliments.
Naturally, I whole-heartedly agree with what you said.
The first thing I reacted to was,
"...I find [it] most dangerous to make people believe that if
they leave the rooms they'll drink again inevitably and they'll die..."
Yes, exactly. I often use
the story of Dumbo the flying elephant as an analogy
for belief in the A.A. program. Dumbo believed that he just could not fly without his
"magic flying feather" that the crow gave him.
One day, Dumbo lost that feather and went
into a panic, and immediately fell from the sky, and nearly died before the crow could
convince Dumbo that he really could fly without the feather.
Unfortunately, some alcoholics actually do crash and burn when they lose their "support system"
because they think that they are powerless over alcohol.
Teaching them that they can't handle life by themselves doesn't seem like it's doing them a favor.
You are absolutely right about the goofy concept of alcoholism "progressing" even while you are not drinking.
It does not progress, other than the fact that you are getting older.
I actually did relapse once, 14 years ago, after 3 years of sobriety. And you know what happened?
I started right back at the place where I had left off. It didn't take me very long at all
— just one month — to build
back up to the level of drinking where I was at when I quit.
But I did not start up beyond that point. My tolerance was the same,
and I wasn't any heavier of a drinker than I was when I quit.
It took more years to get worse than that.
And in truth, you really are recovering during those sober periods. There is no doubt in my mind that
my 3-year sober period back then is responsible for my good health now.
When I quit this last time around, the doctor expected my liver to
be a real mess. We were both pleasantly surprised when the lab tests came back and said that my liver
was just fine.
I know that those 3 years of letting it repair the damage and get itself back together before the next
onslaught of alcohol kept it from being destroyed. So I was in fact really recovering from alcoholism
during that period of sobriety, something that the A.A. people don't seem to like the sound of, for
some odd reason.
I think that the whole idea of alcoholism progressing even while you are not drinking is just
another grim fairy tale intended to scare the children into being good.
Maybe that works on some people, but personally, I'd rather hear the truth.
Lastly, you said:
"Other thing that annoys me is the way that almost everybody in the rooms
believe that the only cure for alcoholism is AA and never discuss any
scientific trials or different ways of looking into the problem. They
always say that they are the only ones who understand, that the doctors,
philosophers, psychologists are all mistaken."
Brother did you hit the nail on the head.
That is one of my biggest objections to A.A., too.
It is obvious that a lot of them just don't want to hear anything but their favorite superstitions.
Their
anti-intellectual prejudice
and
arrogance
is monumental.
My favorite example of that is
the almost unbelievable article
where a true-believer A.A. member who happens to be a doctor tried to convince other doctors that
they should just stop thinking scientifically and analytically,
and just "come home" to Alcoholics Anonymous.
Oh, and really lastly,
you said,
"actually my first day in AA was my third without drinking at all".
Yes. Do you know how common that is? (I already had 2 weeks of sobriety when they shoved me into a "treatment
program" that required that I go to A.A. meetings 3 times a week.)
That is one of the things that reveals that A.A. is not causing people to quit drinking.
People quit because they want to live; because they have come to the conclusion that more drinking is
going to kill them, or ruin their lives, or end their careers, or wreck their marriages, or all of the above.
And they are just sick and tired of being sick and tired.
So people quit drinking, and then also go to some A.A. meetings to see if they can learn anything
helpful there, and A.A. tells them that they are sober because of the A.A. program.
Even Nan Robertson, who was a real A.A. enthusiast and true believer, wrote in her book that
most of the new A.A. members had already quit drinking.
Check it out here.
Oh well, have a good day anyway.
== Orange
I am interested in knowing more about this theory of A.A. as a cult. I attended A.A. for many years, and felt really bad throughout most of that time. When I began to drink, suddenly the majority of the unconditional friends I had in A.A. just split. Although I don't believe that drinking is good for me, I feel better than I did when I was going to A.A. I am also interested in the credentials and history of the writer, "A. Orange". Do you have an agenda? Please respond.
Okay, Hi Jen,
Sorry to hear about the difficulties you are going through. I can
sympathize. A.A. will certainly make you feel bad. All of the constant put-downs:
"You are stupid, and
selfish, and self-seeking, and just want to feel good.
You are always wrong.
You can't think right. You aren't really very spiritual,
and on and on." I wrote a web page on that,
The 'Us Stupid Drunks' Conspiracy
And I've heard so many times the story that all of the "true friends" who offered
"unconditional love" disappeared the instant that someone started drinking again.
It's like they are afraid that it is contagious. (Oh yeh, I forgot. It is contagious —
it's called
codependency —
spiritual cooties that you get just from being in the
same room as a "practicing alcoholic".)
You know, there is a third path, one that is neither A.A. nor drinking.
They don't have to be alternatives
(and they are not really alternatives, even though A.A. constantly
says that they are alternatives). Just gleefully
abstain from both alcohol and A.A. meetings. Enjoy sane clear-headed freedom without
polluting your brain with either A.A. or alcohol. That's what I'm doing, and I like it.
As far as credentials go, and general history of the writer,
I wrote all of that before;
look here.
The idea of A.A. as a cult is examined in "The Cult Test",
here.
There is both a general test that is applicable to any group or organization that
you might be wondering about, and then there is a set of answers for Alcoholics Anonymous.
Note that you can bounce back and forth between the questions and answers by clicking on
the numbers of the questions and answers.
Do I have an agenda? Yes, of course. (Doesn't everybody?)
I have already answered that question before, so I'll just point you to
the answers here.
But note that it is not a "hidden agenda" —
look here.
Have a good day and a good life.
== Orange
Hello, I just read your page about AA and Bill Wilson, and I am just curious... what is your objective in this report? You seem to have gone to educated lengths to make what to you see is an obvious point..... but I fear I missed it. What are you getting at with this?
Respectifully,
Hi Tony,
Thanks for the letter. I don't know which web page you mean — I've
written a lot of them.
But in general terms, what I am getting at is that I want to get the
truth about A.A. out there —
I guess that will do for starters.
Have a good day.
== Orange
I don't represent A.A. or any group. Sorry, I don't understand what you mean by failure rate. It's basically your choice, no one twists your arm and makes you stay in A.A. at least the groups I have been associated. It's your choice what do you want to do?
Hi Russell,
Thanks for the letter.
What I mean by failure rate is people go to A.A. and don't quit drinking.
The A.A. program does nothing good for them.
It even
makes a lot of people worse off.
It even
makes some of them dead.
And a lot of people most assuredly do get their arms twisted to go to A.A..
Judges routinely sentence people to A.A. or N.A. meetings for drunk driving
or drug and alcohol problems, or even for screw-ball things like pornography
and indecent exposure.
Read this.
And the so-called "treatment programs" almost always insist on A.A. or N.A. attendance
(3 meetings per week, at least) as part of their program.
The centerfold of the
November 2002 issue of the AA Grapevine
revealed that 61% of the current membership were coerced, forced, or pressured into
A.A. by the criminal justice system or perversions of the health care system, and the
A.A. organization does absolutely nothing to stop or discourage
the coercive recruiting.
They like it; they brag about it; it's where they get most of their new members.
And please don't be telling me that nobody
"makes you stay in A.A. at least the groups I have been associated [with]."
Really now; I'm not that blind.
As if nobody has ever come to your meetings with a slip of paper that they *have to*
get signed or else they go to jail...
A.A. IS NOT FOR alcoholics, oh no never was for the people that need it, oh know! It is for the people that WANT it. Growing up on a farm that had mules I had to water them, naturally you want them to drink but if they don?t want to you can?t make them. Now that is the funniest statement I've heard in a while. A.A. is not for alcoholics? I think Bill Wilson might have something to say about that. And why do judges sentence drunk drivers to A.A. meetings if A.A. isn't for alcoholics?
It is actually the opposite of a Cult, it has no leaders. They usually ask 1 dollar donation for coffee and trivial expenses. Lots of groups say if you don't have a dollar then take one out of the basket,
Whether something is a cult is NOT determined solely by whether it has a charismatic leader, or
whether they steal all of your money.
See the cult test
for a more complete list of cult characteristics.
A.A. had a charismatic leader — Bill Wilson, but he's dead now.
That is not unusual. Lots of cults worship dead leaders, like Scientology, the Hari Krishnas,
and believe it or not, some surviving members of the People's Temple still worship Jim Jones.
And I hear that David Koresh still has some nutty followers too.
The fact that the leader dies does not suddenly make a cult into a non-cult.
And some cults do steal all of their victims' money; and some don't.
Ones that do or did: Jim Jones' Peoples' Temple, Moonies, and Scientology.
Ones that didn't or don't: Heaven's Gate, David Koresh and the Branch Davidians,
and Alcoholics Anonymous.
It doesn't discriminate against anyone for race, creed or color, belief or no belief in god. Yes, plenty of cults are quite happy to victimize just anybody, regardless of their race, creed, color, sex, religion, or country of national origin. The failure rate is stated in the book,
Oh no it is not. Bill Wilson lied like a rug, and declared that three quarters of
the people sobered up —
half immediately, and another quarter later.
Bill also wrote in the original manuscript of the Big Book that
thousands had recovered, back when there
were only between 40 and 70 A.A. members in the whole world.
CORRECTION: In the manuscript for the first edition of the Big Book,
Bill wrote "more than one hundred men and women" recovered.
In the second edition, Bill changed that to "thousands".
Now and then Bill did talk about people who relapsed and failed, but Bill always
blamed them for
failing to work the Steps correctly.
Bill often practiced scare-mongering and said that you will relapse like how this guy did
if you don't do Bill's 12 Steps, but Bill never admitted that the 12 Steps don't work.
And sometimes Bill Wilson
complained about how difficult
recruiting was, how few people wanted
to join A.A., but that was not Bill Wilson honestly admitting that A.A. had a horrendous failure rate, and
that the 12 Steps didn't work at all.
Look here for an analysis
of Bill's statements about the A.A. success rate.
it's not concerned with people that say it doesn't work, if you don't go then how can it work. The problem is that even when people do go, it still doesn't work. Dr. and Prof. George E. Vaillant is a member of the Board of Trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., and he just loves A.A. and thinks that all alcoholics should be shoved into A.A. to get "an attitude change" by confessing their sins to "a high-status healer". Well, Vaillant set out to prove that A.A. works. He spent many years shoving A.A. on his patients at the Cambridge-Sommerville [Massachusetts] Program for Alcohol Rehabilitation (CASPAR), and he tracked his first 100 patients for 8 years. He found that A.A. was a total failure that just increased the death rate. See his report here.
Now that is a loaded question. How do you define the word "alcoholism"?
It's just like the word "alcoholic". A.A. uses three different definitions for the
word, and gets them all mixed up, which really confuses the issue.
The definitions are:
When I call myself an alcoholic, I usually mean definition 2, and only occasionally
definition 1, but never definition 3.
So you tell me what you think the word "alcoholism" means,
and then I will tell you whether I've got it.
If so if you don't want it for yourself, then ask yourself this, if you have children and they become or are Alcoholic then would you not let them try A.A. as a treatment. There is absolutely no one that I love or anything that I care more for than my children. If they become alcoholic I hope they find the doors of A.A. and WANT it, if not they may or may not make it. If they want to explore alternative treatment objectives I?m cool with it good luck, however if it doesn?t work the doors of A.A, are always open and it?s free.
If my children had an alcohol problem, I absolutely would not send them to Alcoholics Anonymous,
not any more than I would send them to Scientology.
By the way, A.A. is not free. They want your will and your life (that's Step 3), and they also
want your mind and your soul.
You can't trust everyone in A.A. nor can you trust everyone anywhere on the face of the earth, but some of them you can trust completely. There is a bond between some of the members and I that is wonderful. A drug alcoholic consular put it to me this way when I ask him if A.A. was a cult think, think, think, I have thought and Yes, you can often get smoozy feelings of brotherhood in a cult. Unfortunately, those "true friends" will abandon you in a flash if you do something that they don't like. A previous letter complained about that just a little while ago. I think that A.A. has kept me out of cults and saved me from the most dangerous cult of all. It's the cult of believing my own bull manure.
Again, we see how the cult teaches self-contempt.
"You can't trust your own thinking." —
Don't Trust Your Own Mind.
You should read about
The Lizard Brain Addiction Monster before
you decide that the "bull manure" is your own.
Thank you for your time Russell R. You have a good day too.
Wow, what planet are/were you living on??? How much spin can you put on a story to further your own agenda??? Obviously, with your superior education and that of your colleagues, you failed to read what you quoted from ?Alcoholics Anonymous? pg, 58. Actually AA has a success rate of 100 %. People may have a success rate far lower, because they refuse to get honest about who and what they are. AA itself never claimed to have a corner on the getting sober market, but, given your projections of possibly even a negative success rate, isn?t it interesting that there are millions of people right now who are remaining sober for lifetimes as the direct result of implementing the principles contained in the 12 steps??? Spontaneous remissions??? I hope you have one of your own There is nothing worse than an educated person who?s ego takes him/her into territory that reveals the reality of their ignorance. What a waste of tuition ? or perhaps you should just quietly smoke another rock? Bruce B.
Hi Bruce,
Thanks for the letter. You know, it doesn't matter what it says on page 58 of
the Big Book; A.A. still does not have a 100% success rate.
The only way you can possibly make that claim is by playing extreme word games
with qualifiers:
That is just the standard old propaganda tricks of
Lying With Qualifiers
and
Observational Selection
— i.e., "Cherry Picking".
What page 58 of the Big Book really proves is that Bill Wilson was a skilled propagandist, and that
he knew how to do Enron-style accounting.
(Just transfer all of your losses off of the books and hide them somewhere else.)
You claim that
That is the grandiose Big Lie of Alcoholics Anonymous.
They routinely make that claim but that is not true at all.
If you think that it is true, then please show me the documentation.
Oh, and by the way,
there are no "principles"
in the Twelve Steps.
They are cult religion practices that
Bill Wilson learned from Frank Buchman and his Oxford Group cult.
Read
the history of A.A. and the Oxford Group.
And yes,
spontaneous remission
is real. Thank God for small favors. It would be a Hell on Earth
if we were really powerless over alcohol. But we are not, so we can quit drinking alcohol
without wasting our lives and our minds on a cult religion. Oh happy day!
Bill Wilson bragged that his magical new 12-Step religion would
give people "Heaven on Earth",
but he was really offering us a miserable Hell of slavery in a cult.
No thanks. Glad I don't have to do that.
I find your
extreme anti-intellectual attitude funny.
You keep complaining about my education. The truth is, I dropped out of college when I went to
Berkeley and changed my major from Biology to LSD in 1966.
I did the whole hippie thing, living on a commune in New Mexico and tripping for years.
Fortunately, LSD left me with most of my brain cells intact, and I even managed to rescue a few of them
from alcohol. And now you find that to be too educated for your tastes?
Well yeh, of course. In A.A.,
everybody is supposed to be a blithering idiot
--
"Keep It Simple, Stupid!"
Oh well, have a good day anyway.
== Orange
[2nd letter from Bruce B.:]
Date: Mon, October 31, 2005 Thank you for your response. These pages are very helpful. I've not seen anyone spin the AA literature or entirely misquote it to the extent that you have in an effort to make their case. (I am sure that my reply will not meet up to your standards for grammatical correctness, so please spare me the English lesson.)
Standard propaganda trick:
Sarcasm and Condescension.
Care to discuss some real facts? Since I have learned that it is truly unfair to engage in a battle of wit with an unarmed person, I will reserve further comment. It suffices to say that you have illustrated my point beautifully. Many thanks. More Sarcasm and Condescension. Don't you have any other strings on your harp? A wonderful day to you as well.
Hello Bruce,
In your subject line, you refer to the web page on
The Effectiveness of the Twelve-Step Treatment,
but you have not talked about a single point or issue there,
nor disputed one fact that I presented there.
Would you care to discuss some actual facts, or are you going to just
sneer and run?
Oh well, have a good day anyway.
== Orange
Your website is full of non-sensical opinions. You spent a lot of time trying to figure out why AA didnt work for you. Which is really just a way of justifying your drinking.
Hi Thomas,
Thanks for the letter.
And stop right there. That is just the standard A.A.
ad hominem attack routine:
"Don't ever consider what he has to say; just accuse him of not wanting to quit drinking."
That is baloney.
The truth is, I am just 2 weeks away from my 5th anniversary off of alcohol, and
only 5 weeks away from my 5th anniversary off of tobacco. So I don't need any
"justification for drinking".
And I never said that "A.A. didn't work for me."
What I said is:
Nevertheless, I still have almost 5 years sober.
AA works now and it always has. You are correct (although your exact numbers probably are not) in regards to recovery rates being small.
How can you claim that A.A. works and at the same time admit that the recovery rates are small?
And what happens to that small recovery rate when you subtract
the normal rate of spontaneous remission
from it? Doesn't it go to zero?
Have you read the file on
The Effectiveness of the 12-Step Treatment?
But there are a number of those who's best chance is in AA. Says who? The only cure is total and complete abstinence from alcohol. That isn't necessarily true either. It is true of some people, including me, but some other people really can just taper off into moderate drinking. Read about this: Alcoholism and Treatment, Rand Corporation Report R-1739-NIAAA. Doctors & hospitals worlwide agree that AA has done what they never could, which is why they keep suggesting AA to their alcoholic patients. What doctors? How many doctors? Are they nutcases like this crazy doctor who declares that if you want to be really happy, you should just stop thinking and "come home" to the A.A. cult? The last thing I wish to say is that AA does not claim to offer solutions for anything other than alcoholism, including Drug addiction, eating problems, mental dissorders, bi-polarism (whatever that is) etc.... As a matter of fact it's quite the opposite. AA has a singleness of purpose which is to help alcoholics to achieve sobriety. Right, the zillion other 12-Step groups like Narcotics Anonymous, Al-Anon, Alateen, Cocaine Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Schizophrenics Anonymous, Prostitutes Anonymous, and Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous do that. I'm sure you've probably received a lot of e-mails like this one, but I want you to know that I wish you well. I'll keep a good thought for you and I hope that one day you'll be a productive and sober member of society, like a lot of good people that I know personally in AA.
Best Regards,
Actually, I wish you well too, and hope that you recover someday.
In the mean time, have a good day and a good life.
== Orange
Last updated 14 March 2015. |
