Letters, We Get Mail, CCLXXI



[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters271.html#Gunthar2000 ]

Date: Wed, October 26, 2011 9:36 pm     (answered 31 October 2011)
From: "Gunthar2000"
Subject: Expose AA Website

EXPOSE AA is a group of people united for the purpose of:

  • Exposing AA as a dangerous religious cult.
  • Helping others to overcome substance abuse.
  • Endorsing new perspectives in recovery.

There are no dues for Expose AA membership. We are an abstinence based, on-line support group. Our common goal is freedom from all addictive substances rather than moderation or switching vices. We do not endorse any single method for achieving sobriety. Sobriety is a choice, and the best recovery plans are developed focusing on an individuals needs. There are no sponsors at Expose AA. We are friends united toward specific goals. You are an Expose AA member if you choose to be one.

http://expaa.webs.com/

This new site has a community forum that allows you to send private messages, make friends, and all kinds of other goodies.

The forums will be moderated by myself, as well as others from the ST community who are willing to volunteer.

This is a free website and so no money will EVER be made off of this venture.

Furthermore: This website will remain up as long as the provider hosts the site. I will not change my mind and take this site down due to lack of participation, or for any other reason.

Feel the need to write a lengthy article about AA. Contact me through the community pages and maybe we can dedicate a full page to your work.

This is a team effort folks — I've set up some of the basics, now I need your help to make this work.

Sincerely...
Gunthar2000

Okay Gunthar2000,

I wish you luck in your venture.

And have a good day now.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
**     "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil
**       is for good men to do nothing."
**         ==  Edmund Burke (1729—1797)





[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters271.html#Natalie ]

Date: Thu, October 27, 2011 1:31 pm     (answered 31 October 2011)
From: "Natalie"
Subject: Your anti AA site

Wow...I remember finding your site years ago when I was (at 18 years sober) pulling away from AA.....just from plain old growing out of it. I was intrigued. I just feel sad now that after all these years...you're still so unhealed around this and maintaining this site. I will pray for you. Staying that upset at something for so long doesnt feel healthy. I hope you find peace and forgiveness with everything and everyone. I hope the same for myself and am working on that....yea I suck at it....but I want to forgive and Bless....do you?

Natalie

Hello Natalie,

Thanks for the letter.

I'm happy to inform you that I am healed quite well, thank you for your concern. I have 11 years of sobriety now, and I'm doing just fine.

Continuing to oppose evil and criticize wrong things does not mean that someone has not "healed".

Do you not oppose any evil things? If not, then you have no morals.

Have a good day now.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
**     If you've sold your soul to the devil, in effect, it's
**     profoundly human to talk yourself into believing that
**     what you got in exchange was worth the price.
**       ==  The Archdruid Report
**       http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/05/tyranny-of-temporary.html





[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters271.html#Buzz_Man ]

Date: Fri, October 28, 2011 4:57 pm     (answered 31 October 2011)
From: "Buzz Man"
Subject: Your site http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-aalies.html

This is the biggest load of CRAP I have ever seen online. Anywhere. EVER ... And I may start a Facebook PAGE to let everyone know this is the case.

Thanks for the enlightenment and ... enjoy your drinking.
Buzz
1DaaT

Hello Buzz,

Thanks for the letter. I notice that you did not supply a single fact to contradict my facts. You just complained that you don't like what I'm saying.

So please do start a Facebook page. And come up with some accurate, documented, facts to fill it. You could start with:

What is the REAL A.A. success rate?

Out of each 1000 newcomers to A.A., how many will pick up a one-year sobriety medallion a year later?
Or even several years later?
And how many will get their 2-year, and 5-year, and 10-year coins? Ever?
How about 11 years and 21 years?

(HINT: the answers are here.)

Then you could continue by telling everybody about the A.A. death rate, and the A.A. rates of binge drinking, and arrests, and divorce, and suicide.

Then you could put the frosting on the cake by telling everybody about Bill Wilson's insanity and sexual exploitation of newcomer women and financial dishonesty.

So yes, please tell everybody the facts. And don't forget to tell just where you get your facts.

And have a good day.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
**     Everybody is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.
**        ==  Senator Patrick Moynahan





[The previous letter from Meatbag is here.]

[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters271.html#Meatbag ]

Date: Fri, October 28, 2011 11:44 pm     (answered 31 October 2011)
From: "Meatbag"
Subject: More Random Comments

Didn't get your last response, but I found it on your website pretty easily.

Hi again, Meatbag,

Yes, Hostmonster.com screwed up the email for a few days, so I didn't get answers sent out.

"Take them down to the river and dump them." I would find that too cruel even for a cockroach, and I hate cockroaches. And yeah, cats would definitely be a problem with goslings that little. I have a pair of cats myself, and while I love the little bastards, I know full well they like their bird meat (well, the older one does; I've never seen the younger one catch anything with a backbone). My family used to have chickens and turkeys, and we had to keep my older cat far away from them when they were chicks. She stayed away on her own once they were bigger than her, though.

Yes, that was really cruel. Just another bureaucrat who didn't know what she was doing, and was too arrogant to ask, and too inconsiderate to care. Just interested in enforcing the rules ("pets"), and in pleasing the complainers next door whom she then evicted.

The Sixties? Didn't I hear something about that in history class? *ducks and covers*

Honestly, I would love to buy all of these whiny rich people one-way tickets to Somalia. Only problem is, I'm not one of those poor millionaires, so I can't afford them.

The kicker about my family being Republicans? We're a middle-class family that no longer has the income to consider ourselves middle-class. Especially my dad, who can't really live on his own income (he often has to borrow money) while living in a one-bedroom apartment in a poor neighborhood. He's poor enough that I qualified for the Pell Grant under his income. Guess what happened to the farm? We got foreclosed on, because Bank of America wouldn't adjust my parents' mortgage. Certainly didn't help their marriage any.

Bummer.

As for military wages, heaven forbid Congress invests much money in cannon fodder and actually start seeing the cannon fodder as living, breathing human beings. Oh no. Save that money for the shinier, fancy high-tech toys that don't have needs.

Indeed.

One thing in the Japanese filmmakers' favor is that they don't expect us to actually believe those creatures actually exist in real life, so willing suspension of disbelief kicks in. That willing suspension of disbelief belongs in the movie theater, not outside of it. Well, except for books, video games, and television shows, of course.

As far as I'm concerned, Windows can phone home all it wants, as long as it stays out of my way. Giving me a nag box with a 15-minute timer before forcibly shutting down Windows that doesn't even let me get rid of it completely, just postpone it to appear four hours later at the latest, is about the furthest thing possible from staying in my way. Come on, Microsoft. Every bit of software I have ever used that had updates which required restarting gave me a "Restart Later" button, so that I can decide when to do so. None of them had a fucking timer. And none of these were critical software which has absolutely no business shutting itself down for any reason.

Yep.

And yeah, Sims 1 is a lot of fun. While it's not typically a good idea to run games in a VM, due to limited graphics card emulation, Sims 1 is old enough for that to not be a big deal, and it never really required high-spec machines to begin with. Interestingly enough, Sims 3 runs in Wine, but not its two predecessors. (While Sims 3 seems fun enough, it's a very different game from Sims 1.) If you get bored of vanilla Sims 1, the game has a lot of mods and other custom objects. Good place to start for those is CTO Sims, which stores files from now-dead sites (which is a lot of sites, considering the game's age) and has an active forum. You'll need to register to access half of the site's files, and make ten posts in the forum to access the remaining files.

I've started playing the older SimCity games myself. Would it be blasphemy to say I prefer SimCity 3000 over 2000? That's mostly because the power and water systems are less finicky in that game. 2000 does have the advantage of having cities that are able to be loaded into games like SimCopter and Streets of SimCity, where I can explore and wreak havoc in my own cities (speaking of havoc, if there's ever another SimCity game, a physics engine would be awesome for disasters). Now if only I could get Streets of SimCity to work.

Also, if you don't already know, EA apparently released the source code for the original SimCity game under the GPL and donated it to the OLPC program. There's a good chance it's in your repositories. If not, you can find it here
http://www.donhopkins.com/home/micropolis/.
EA still controls the SimCity trademark, so it's called Micropolis.

Ah, thanks for the tip. No, I didn't know that. I hope that some hackers are working on it now, and improving it. There were always a few things that I wanted to change, like the fact that when the archologies take off into outer space, it just wrecks your city, and you are left with a lot of holes in the ground. I wanted to go with them and set up a new city in space.

That, and the thing that when your city was mostly archologies, every other building had to be a police station. One third of all of the land had to become police stations, or else the crime rate goes through the roof. You couldn't do something sensible like put the police stations inside the archologies.

But the name Micropolis? I'm surprised. I didn't know that name was in the public domain now. It used to be a popular brand of disk drives. But I guess that is ancient history now.

Yeah, I still have that sticker on the bottom of my laptop. Ironically, my gaming rig doesn't have that sticker, since I bought an OEM version of Windows 7 (which raised the cost of building my machine by over $100, I might add) and chose to keep the sticker with the case rather than spoil the appearance of my system (never had a very pretty or high-spec machine until I built that thing). Windows 7 is better than Vista, but that's not hard to do.

It really doesn't help my opinion of Vista that my main experience with it is through an eMachines system that my parents bought when Vista was brand new. It barely had the specs to run Vista, let alone run it well. My dual-boot XP/Linux machine (no way a VM would run well) that was old even when I first got it and had half of the specs ran far better on either OS than that thing did with Vista. My parents are no longer allowed to buy computers without either me or my brother checking it out first.

Oh, I also remember getting sent to a new high school that just opened a few years back, because the old one got overcrowded (that experience makes it hard for me to take the anti-abortion "people in your generation are missing" argument seriously). Vista was out at the time, but the school opted to have XP installed on the new computers instead. That says a lot about Vista. No wonder Microsoft had to rename and rerelease it when they finally fixed the damn thing.

And on another computer geekery-related note, I think I finally found the perfect OS for my other, ancient laptop (hereby referred to as "Marvin", to distinguish from my modern laptop [which is named AM, by the way]) from 1996, with a 133 MHz Pentium processor, 40 MB RAM (apparently upgraded from the original 8 MB, from what I dug up), and a 1.4 GB hard drive. The previous owner had apparently installed Windows 98 SE to it (sadly, he didn't include the install disks). I got Marvin a few years back to see what all I could do with a machine that old and weak. Quite a lot, apparently. I even got a PCMCIA wifi card (selected for good Linux compatibility) for it and got Marvin to go online and load a decent amount of websites. I was, and still am, hesistant about keeping a system with an obsolete version of Windows that lacked the specs to run even the lightest modern anti-virus well online, so I've been keeping an eye out for a good Linux distro for it.

It's been a rather difficult search, since it seems most developers define "older hardware" as something more like the aforementioned dual-boot system ("Deep Thought"), rather than Marvin. That, and the distro would have to be able to boot from floppy, since, while Marvin does have a CD drive, it can't boot from it. Damn Small Linux seemed like a good choice, but the display showed inverted colors. I also tried DeLi Linux, but I found it to be a pain to configure right, and it had poor documentation. Now, BasicLinux
http://distro.ibiblio.org/baslinux/
appears to be a very viable option. I tried out the provided QEMU image, and it seems very usable for me. It does have good documentation for a small distro, it installs from floppy disks, and Marvin is more than powerful enough to run it. BasLin does seem to require me to use the terminal more than I would prefer (my preference is "hardly ever"), but that's to be expected for a distro intended for machines this old, and it's nothing I can't handle. Now if only I could access a machine other than Marvin that has a floppy drive. My college seems like a good place to check. Maybe there's a room with older machines lying around. Maybe.

I still have machines with floppy drives. Need a boot floppy made?

Have you messed around with Knoppix and Morphix and things like that? They put out CDs that contain the entire Linux operating system on a CD, and you don't have to install it on the hard disk. You can, but you don't have to. You can just run it off of the CD, and only use the hard disk for a swap space, and some storage. As you can imagine, it is really compressed and stripped down, and small. Good for old machines.

And somewhere, in the back of my mind, I seem to remember a little utility that you can put on a floppy, that will make a bootable floppy, and when that boots, it gives you the ability to go boot a CD. That was specifically for older machines that could not boot a CD directly. I used it once, a long time ago, and it worked. Alas, I don't remember the name of it. But I would guess that it's still around, out on the Internet somewhere.

Now for a non computer geekery-related note, I always find it amusing when Steppers defend Bill Wilson and other creeps in the cult by saying "we're not saints". Since when was sainthood a prerequisite for acting like a decent person? I'm not even expecting anybody to actually be a decent person, just act like one. Since when was that an unreasonable request?

Yes, really. When is asking people to just behave in a decent manner demanding that they be saints? That is another dishonest A.A. dodge.

"Please don't rape the underage girls who come to the A.A. meetings."

"What?!! We are not saints! Quit being so demanding!"

Anyhow, it's getting late. Good night. You're a fun person to talk to.

You have a good night too.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
**     Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many
**     things which cannot be overcome when they are together,
**     yield themselves up when taken little by little.
**       ==  Plutarch  (46 AD)

[The next letter from Meatbag is here.]





July 24, 2011, Sunday, a side trip to the Fernhill Wetlands this summer:

Canada Goose family
Canada Goose family with 5 offspring
The children are eating oatmeal. The parents are the ones who are standing back. The father is the tall one who is watchfully standing guard. The children are, of course, being children. They are always hungry — just bottomless little pits.


Mama Duck+Duckling
Mama Duck plus Duckling
They are eating oatmeal that I gave them.


Mama Duck+Duckling
Mama Duck plus Duckling

[More gosling photos below, here.]





[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters271.html#Tim_T ]

Date: Mon, October 31, 2011 1:21 pm     (answered 1 November 2011)
From: "tim t."
Subject: just an opinion

I find it very comical that you are looking down on the steps of alcoholics anonymous with such secrecy.

Cowardly, if you will.

Why don't you identify yourself, stand up and be proud of what you believe in. Most sober alcoholics do, and they freely admit that they couldn't do it by themselves. They give credit where credit is due.

Hello Tim,

Thanks for the letter.

I do not hide behind any name. I use "Orange" as a pen name. My birth name is Terrance Hodgins, and I live in Forest Grove, Oregon.

Actually, I have printed my real name in this web site many, many times, often in reponse to Steppers who don't believe in anonymity.

Look here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here...

That isn't nearly all of them, but that's enough for now.

So is it now "Alcoholics Non-Anonymous"?

When did you decide that there is a *cure* for alcoholism? I am an alcoholic, I will always be an alcoholic — either recovering or practicing. Somebody told me once that if I am shot, I go to the hospital and they remove the bullet, after a few months scar tissue starts to form where the bullet entered after about a year I will most likely fully recover from it and hopefully feel no pain. Does that make me bullet proof? Or does that make me a recovered gunshot victim? I am not cured of gun shots. If you do not understand this concept you should keep it to yourself. Opinions can kill, if you have some experience with it why don't you share that, it might help someone. Experience, strength and hope is what AA shares not opinions.

That is some badly broken, convoluted logic. Please define the word "alcoholic". A.A. uses three or four different definitions of "alcoholic", and mixes them up, which really confuses the issue.

We've been over this before, but I guess it's time to reprint the definitions again:

The definitions are:

  1. An alcoholic is someone who habitually drinks far too much alcohol.
  2. An alcoholic is someone who is hyper-sensitive to alcohol, almost allergic to alcohol, perhaps a genetic alcoholic; someone who cannot drink even one drink or his drinking will spin out of control and he will become readdicted to alcohol.
  3. An alcoholic is somebody who cannot quit drinking — he is "powerless" over alcohol.
  4. An alcoholic is an insane sinner who is full of disgusting character defects and moral shortcomings and resentments and barely-contained anger, and is a prime example of self-will run riot and instincts run wild and selfishness and self-seeking and the Seven Deadly Sins, although he doesn't think so... etc., etc., ...

When I call myself an alcoholic, I usually mean definition 2, and only occasionally definition 1, but never definitions 3 or 4.

  1. By definition 1, I stopped being an alcoholic more than 11 years ago.
  2. By definition 2, I will always be an alcoholic.
  3. By definition 3, I wasn't an alcoholic, because I could quit drinking, and I did. I was not "powerless over alcohol". I even quit drinking without any help from A.A., because I quit drinking two weeks before I was ever sent to an A.A. meeting.
  4. By definition 4, I was never an alcoholic. I was always a nice drunk. People liked having me at their parties because I was so much fun to have around when I got high. (But, as one friend said, "Even nice drunks die of cirrhosis of the liver...")

So when you say that you are an incurable alcoholic, what are you talking about? What behavior can you not change?

Your gunshot analogy is ridiculous. You do not routinely go to a bar to drink lead, or get shot.

  • If you get shot, and you survive it, nobody expects you to become immune to gunshots.
  • And if you give yourself lead poisoning, and you survive it, nobody expects you to become immune to lead poisoning.
  • And if you poison yourself with alcohol, and you survive it, nobody expects you to suddenly become immune to alcohol poisoning.

Don't be an anonymous idiot, the steps are not a cure for anything. They are designed to help some people to live life happily without alcohol.

If the Steps are not a cure for anything, why do Steppers sell them as a cure for alcoholism and drug addiction at treatment centers?

The Steps were not "designed". Bill Wilson merely wrote down the practices of Dr. Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman's pro-Nazi Oxford Group cult.

"Early AA got its ideas of self-examination, acknowledgement of character defects, restitution for harm done, and working with others straight from the Oxford Groups and directly from Sam Shoemaker, their former leader in America, and nowhere else."
== William G. Wilson, Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age, page 39.


Where did the early AAs find the material for the remaining ten Steps? Where did we learn about moral inventory, amends for harm done, turning our wills and lives over to God? Where did we learn about meditation and prayer and all the rest of it? The spiritual substance of our remaining ten Steps came straight from Dr. Bob's and my own earlier association with the Oxford Groups, as they were then led in America by that Episcopal rector, Dr. Samuel Shoemaker.
== William G. Wilson, The Language of the Heart, page 298, published posthumously in 1988.

Bill Wilson was being dishonest when he listed Rev. Sam Shoemaker as the leader of the Oxford Groups. Sam Shoemaker was the Number Two man. Dr. Frank Buchman was the leader, the founder, and the author of those "steps", but Bill didn't want to mention Frank Buchman's name because Frank Buchman had a horrible reputation for his praise of Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler and the Nazis, and his unpatriotic draft-dodging schemes during World War Two.

Happy is the key word. Practicing alcoholics are restless, irritable and discontent. Alcoholics use the steps to see that alcohol either caused or compounded most of the problems in their past. If you drink for 20 — 40 years and ignore everything around you, it becomes a way of life. Meetings and the steps are designed to help people face their challenges instead of trying to drink them away. Nowhere in the steps does it state that we are try to stay quit, it really has nothing to do with alcohol.

And that is psycho-babble bullshit. Again, the meetings and the steps were designed by Dr. Frank Buchman to brainwash people into his cult. They were not designed to make people happy. They were designed to make people slaves of Frank Buchman. Then Bill Wilson used them for the same purpose. He retired to a luxurious home in the country, driving a Cadillac car, being supported by those alcoholics whom he had hoodwinked.

If you have tried the program and it did not work for you that is fine, continue to be restless, irritable and discontent. But why create a website talking trash about something that has saved lives and helped people to become happy contributing members of society.

Alcoholics Anonymous kills more people than it saves, and it needs criticism. A.A. just raises the death rate in alcoholics, and raises the rates of binge drinking, and arrests, and divorce, and suicide, while producing a zero-percent improvement in the sobriety rate of alcoholics. That is not good. (Check out those links.)

AA has one primary purpose; to carry it's message to the alcoholic who still suffers. What is your primary purpose? I have read through your website and I cannot clearly identify one. What I have identified is a scattered, scared, and angry individual. Kind of like a practicing alcoholic.

No, A.A. has many purposes, including perpetuating itself by lying to alcoholics.

In service Tim

You have a good day too, Tim.

== Orange

P.S.: My primary mission is to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
**     "When the story becomes the truth, the actual facts just get in the way."
**     All Things Considered, NPR, 12:54 PM 2011.10.25





[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters271.html#LD ]

Date: Sun, October 30, 2011 6:39 pm     (answered 1 November 2011)
From: "LD"
Subject: first woman sober

We have the first recorded instance of any woman to achieve sobriety. Her name was Jane Sturdevant and she is listed by Dr. Bob with 12 months of sobriety dating her entrance into AA in February of 37. You can read about her in DBGO.
(DBGO == "Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers")

The second woman was Florence Rankin. She came into AA in September of 1937. There are letters and questionnaires located in the GSO archives that attest to this. In her Big Book Story she indicates she has not been tempted for the past year which might suggest she had at least one year of continuous sobriety at that time.

http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-bigbook.html

ld p.

still banned from aa history lovers yahoo

www.aabibliography.com

Hello LD,

Thanks for the history. It's good to get all of those little historical details correct. I shall have to research that some more and correct that page.

I am curious: The one thing that I didn't hear mentioned was whether Jane Sturdevant stayed sober, or relapsed and left A.A.

Since she so totally disappeared from A.A. history, and nobody ever mentions her name — she seems to be another A.A. "non-person" like Florence Rankin — I can only guess that she probably didn't stay sober in A.A., so "A.A. history lovers" don't like to mention her.

Interesting. This bears checking out.

Oh, and isn't the Yahoo "A.A. History Lovers" forum a laugh? They only love the mythology, not the truth. Don't you dare tell the truth, or you will get banned.

They remind me of a pagan newsgroup that used to be hot on the Newsnet more than 20 years ago, where everybody worshipped Thor and Wotan, and recited Norse mythology as if it were real history. Those people actually took it very seriously, and were true believers in it. They could go on and on about how Thor did this, and Loki did that. Their knowledge of the mythology was impressive. They were, of course, nutty as a fruitcake.

Well, the devoted fans of Bill and Bob remind me of that. "And then the magnificent Bill Wilson and the legendary Dr. Bob laid the hands on Bill Dotson, A.A. Number Three, and made him get up out of his bed and walk. It was a miracle."

Yeh, right.

Have a good day now.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
**     "I was beginning to see that I would require implicit faith,
**     like a small child, if I was going to get anywhere."
**       ==  The A.A. "Big Book" Alcoholics Anonymous, 3rd Edition, Page 259.





July 24, 2011: Sunday, another side trip to the Fernhill Wetlands:

Duckling
Duckling eating oatmeal

Ducklings
Ducklings

Ducklings
Ducklings
Now that they have eaten a bunch of oatmeal, they are ready to take a nap.

[The story of Carmen continues here.]





[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters271.html#James_G ]

Date: Mon, October 31, 2011 6:53 pm     (answered 2 November 2011)
From: "James G"
Subject: All is not well at the AA History lovers AA Yahoo Group

Hi Terry,

I thought this would amuse you... some good old infighting woo hoo

http://www.aabibliography.com/

Thanks for the clarification on joining the OP forum — I'll have a look around and post soon.

Jimmy

Hi Jimmy,

Thanks for the tip. When it rains, it pours. The previous letter, which was about A.A. history, was from LD, and he mentioned that he was still banned from the Yahoo AA History Lovers forum. (Just too much telling of the undesired actual facts about A.A. history.)

Have a good day now.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
**     "When the story becomes the truth, the actual facts just get in the way."
**     All Things Considered, NPR, 12:54 PM 2011.10.25





[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters271.html#Richard_B ]

Date: Mon, October 31, 2011 10:31 pm     (answered 2 November 2011)
From: "Richard B."
Subject: Forced feeding and monetary gain

Lately I've come to think of A.A. as — perhaps more than anything else — a shady publishing operation whose products are "offered" to people under conditions of duress.

Is there ANY demand whatever for the Big Book outside of A.A. and the various Twelve-Step-associated rehab rackets? Any at all?

I think I smell money.

Richard B.

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the thought. I totally agree. Alas, the A.A. publishing scheme is only one arm of the octopus.

  • Another arm is the treatment center racket. That's even more money.
  • Another is the proselytizing true believers seeking to "carry the message" to unwilling victims.
  • Another is the propaganda machine that plants plugs for A.A. in every TV show, magazine, professional journal, movie, and newspaper that they can.
  • Another is the quack "healers" who promote A.A. as a cure or treatment for "alcoholism".
  • Another is the militant subcults like the Pacific Group and the Midtown Group, which are just sexual exploitation societies.
  • And then there are all of those meetings where they reverently read the Big Book out loud and fawn over the grandiose babbling of a lunatic, and insist that Bill's Way is The Only Way to survive.

Have a good day now.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
**     "It finally dawned on me that just because one's motive
**     isn't money doesn't mean one's motive isn't selfish.
**     (There is more than one form of profit.)"
**        ==  Janet S.





[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters271.html#Richard_M ]

Date: Tue, November 1, 2011 6:11 am     (answered 2 November 2011)
From: "Richard M."
Subject: Do you have any idea what the mortatly rate was before AA...almost 90% So I will take 50% all day long.

Hello Richard,

Thanks for the question. Alas, you are misinformed. You have been lied to by the A.A. propagandists.

Alcoholics never had anything like a 90% death rate. The death rate of alcoholics back in 1850 was the same as it was in 1950, and it's still pretty much the same now: about 50%. Approximately half of the alcoholics get a grip, and change their bad habits, and live, and the other half don't.

Back in the eighteen-hundreds, the Washingtonian Society sobered up hundreds of thousands of alcoholics. President Abraham Lincoln praised them for their work. Then there were many other sobriety clubs and organizations, like the Keeley League and the WCTU. Read this short history of the "recovery movement" for more information on them.

The vast majority of those people who recover from alcohol abuse and alcohol addiction do it without Alcoholics Anonymous or any other cult religion or "support group" or "treatment". The NIAAA's 2001-2002 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions interviewed over 43,000 people. Using the criteria for alcohol dependence found in the DSM-IV, they found:

      "About 75 percent of persons who recover from alcohol dependence do so without seeking any kind of help, including specialty alcohol (rehab) programs and AA. Only 13 percent of people with alcohol dependence ever receive specialty alcohol treatment."

The story that 90% of the alcoholics died like people trapped on a sinking ship was just Bill Wilson's grandiose lying about how all of the alcoholics died until the magnificent Bill Wilson went to the mountaintop and made conscious contact with God and received (or invented) a wonderful new cure for alcoholism. There is no truth to it. That is just the bragging of a compulsive liar who was trying to scare the suckers into joining his cult.

Near you, alcoholics are dying helplessly like people in a sinking ship.
The A.A. Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, William G. Wilson, Chapter 11, "A Vision For You", page 152.

"To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face."
The Big Book, William G. Wilson, page 44.

We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control.   ...   We are convinced to a man that we are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse, never better.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 3, "More About Alcoholism", page 30.

Doctors are rightly loath to tell alcoholic patients the whole story unless it will serve some good purpose. But you may talk to him about the hopelessness of alcoholism because you offer a solution.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, page 92.

Maybe you have disturbed him about the question of alcoholism. This is all to the good. The more hopeless he feels, the better. He will be more likely to follow your suggestions.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, chapter 7, "Working With Others", page 94.

Unless each A.A. member follows to the best of his ability our [Bill Wilson's] suggested [required] Twelve Steps to recovery [cult religion practices], he almost certainly signs his own death warrant.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 174.

The truth is that A.A. has contributed nothing to the world-wide sobriety rate. A.A. just makes things worse. A.A. just raises the death rate in alcoholics, and raises the rates of binge drinking, and rearrests, and divorce, and suicide, while producing a zero-percent improvement in the sobriety rate of alcoholics. That is not good. (Check out those links.)

Have a good day now.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
**     It has been my experience that people who have no vices
**      have very few virtues.
**         ==  Abraham Lincoln


Hi Richard,
As usual, the reply is in the attached web page.
Have a good day now.
== Orange

*              orange@orange-papers.info       *
*          AA and Recovery Cult Debunking     *
*          http://www.orange-papers.info/      *
*        http://www.orange-papers.info/forum   *
**     "Now I know what it's like to be high on life.
**     It isn't as good, but my driving has improved."
**       ==  Nina, on "Just Shoot Me", 13 Jan 2006.


[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters271.html#Richard_M2 ]

Date: Thu, November 3, 2011 4:58 am     (answered 4 October 2011)
From: "Richard M."
Subject: RE: Do you have any idea what the mortatly rate was before AA...almost 90% So I will take 50% all day long.

I don't open attachments from people I don't know. Just wondering how someone could be so against a program that does nothing but good things. It tells people not to be selfish, self-centered and fearful. AA only wants a dollar a meeting (only if you can afford it). You call AA a Cult but what harm are they causing ?? No profit motive, no leadership, and most cults isolate their members where AA's are encouraged to live their life to the fullest.

Hello Richard,

You can read the same answer at
http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters271.html#Richard_M.

About the rest of your letter: You are imagining that A.A. is a good organization, not a cult that just lied to you about the death rate in alcoholics.

A.A. does not teach people to be spiritual, or not "selfish, self-centered and fearful." That, by the way, is the standard A.A. putdown of alcoholics. A.A. hypocritically claims that they want to reduce the stigma of alcoholism, but A.A. routinely teaches that alcoholics are really selfish, dishonest, in denial, unspiritual, and really disgusting lowlifes.
Look here: The "Us Stupid Drunks" Conspiracy.

A.A. rakes in millions of dollars per year, not "a dollar a meeting". And that is only the tip of the iceberg. The book sales are a lot more than that. Then, the really big money is in the A.A. true believers who sell 12-Step treatment for anything from $7000 to $40,000 for 28 days of religious indoctrination at the treatment centers. In that regard, A.A. is just like Scientology. The "recovery industry" is a $20 billion per year racket.

A.A. most assuredly has leadership. It starts with the oldtimers at the local meeting, 13th-Stepping the new girls, and extends all the way up to the Alcoholics Anonymous Board of Trustees and General Manager in New York City, where A.A. General Manager Greg Muth authorized suing alcoholics in Germany and Mexico for printing and giving away their own literature. Then that "wonderful spiritual organization" committed perjury in Mexico and Germany — against fellow A.A. members — to keep their illegal monopoly. (Click on that link and read the whole story.)

A.A. is organized crime, not a wonderful group where people are "encouraged to live their life to the fullest."

Have a good day now.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
*
**     Therefore we [AA] have the full benefits of the murderous political
**     dictatorships of today but none of their liabilities.
**     William G. Wilson, Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age, pages 105—106.
**     The full benefits of murderous dictatorships?
**     What benefits? Benefits to whom?
**     And what liabilities of dictatorships does A.A. not have?

[The next letter from Richard_M is here.]





[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters271.html#Peter_F ]

Date: Tue, November 1, 2011 4:31 pm     (answered 4 November 2011)
From: "Peter F."
Subject: Are You Drug Dependent? Don't sweat it.

Find out why:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dr-peter-ferentzy/drugs-are-you-dependent_b_1065863.html

Peter Ferentzy, PhD
Author of Dealing With Addiction — why the 20th century was wrong
http://www.peterferentzy.com

Okay, Peter, thanks for the link.

And I love your clear thinking in this article. Yes, why do we have such a Puritanical attitude towards "drug dependency"? Now don't get me wrong — I am strongly opposed to people killing themselves by taking too many drugs, or the wrong drugs. But the idea that anybody who ever uses drugs is morally inferior is just plain nuts.

And some people just have to have drugs and medications to make it through the day.

Personally, I am addicted to coffee. I have been dependent on coffee for all of my adult life. And I'm not being funny or sarcastic or making light of the situation. The alkaloids in coffee are truly addicting drugs.

I have quit coffee at times, and gone through withdrawal, and got very nasty headaches out of it. And I went months without coffee when my wife and I were planning a baby, because the best medical evidence is that caffeine contributes to chromosome damage, so if you want an undeformed sperm to fertilize the egg, the best bet is to abstain from caffeine. I felt like I was walking around in a fog, waiting for the day to start. There is no reality before the morning cup of coffee.

And like any good junky, I have lots of periphernalia. I have half a dozen different coffee pots that range from French Presses to an Espresso machine. And a burr grinder, and measuring spoons and tamping tools and an electric kettle. No junky has more 'fits than me.

I maintain that I am not morally inferior for being dependent on coffee for feeling right. I figure that as long as it isn't hurting anybody, not even me, nobody has room to criticize.

And thus I grant other people the same freedom.

Personally, I would decriminalize all drugs, and let doctors, not police, deal with the problem of people who over-use drugs.

Have a good day now.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
**     There is often as much independence in not being led,
**     as in not being driven.
**       ==  Tryon Edwards (1809—1894), American theologian and editor


Date: Sat, November 5, 2011 5:02 pm
From: "Peter F."
Subject: RE: Are You Drug Dependent? Don't sweat it.

Thanks for the comments, Orange. I depend on coffee too, and everybody depends on things.
It's just plain normal.
Best
Peter

Peter Ferentzy, PhD
Author of Dealing With Addiction — why the 20th century was wrong
http://www.peterferentzy.com





[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters271.html#John_F ]

Date: Thu, November 3, 2011 8:49 am     (answered 4 October 2011)
From: "John F."
Subject: Effectiveness of the 12

Thank you for your fantastic thorough non-biased article. Your research has affirmed what I have felt for a long time. As a clinical social worker I've tried almost everything that I can get my hands on to educate some of my colleagues about 12 step and its never ending flaws, however I frequently get shot down — e.g. he's insensitive, he's not a Christian, and blah blah. Thanks again for your post and I will share this with as many folks as I can.

Hello John,

Thanks for the thanks, and thanks for your work to get the truth out too.

I find it disgusting and appalling how people who try to tell the truth about quack medicine are routinely slandered: "not a Christian, not spiritual, against God..." The A.A. promoters don't answer with facts, they just engage in ad hominem attacks. That tells you a lot about the true nature of the 12-Step organization.

Real doctors and real healers discuss the merits of various medicines and treatments without resorting to such personal attacks.

Have a good day now.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
**    A.A. is not a "self-help group", it's an
**    "elf-help group". You are supposed to pray
**    and beg for an invisible "Higher Power",
**    like a leprechaun, or Cinderella's Fairy
**    Godmother, to solve all of your problems
**    for you and grant all of your wishes.





More Letters


Previous Letters









Search the Orange Papers







Click Fruit for Menu

Last updated 8 March 2013.
The most recent version of this file can be found at http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters271.html