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Date: Thu, March 29, 2012 11:22 pm (answered 4 April 2012) Thank you so much for putting your whole heart into this. It is beautifully written. Deep, thorough and it pulls no punches. Blessed be. James
Hi James,
Thanks for the compliments, and you have a good day too.
== Orange
Date: Wed, March 21, 2012 6:27 pm (answered 4 April 2011) Ray sent you a message. "Hadn't heard of the NA studies:" http://www.facebook.com/notes/just-for-today/the-efficacy-of-aa-and-na-part-1/208568309243765 http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=208574315909831
Hello Ray, Thanks for the links. Those pages are great. I didn't know about all of those tests and
studies either. His list is longer than mine. Now I have to memorize all of that.
Have a good day now.
== Orange
Date: Fri, March 30, 2012 1:12 pm (answered 4 April 2012) Well we do disagree on much, and I and you will accept that I believe. I don't trade Jesus, and my faith in him for anything else, but I recognize where we learn new things and new ideas and that is knowledge from God, in my opinion. I have yet to meet a perfect, sinless leader, including Bill Wilson. I'm sorry if you thought I was rationalizing his behavior, I was not.
Hello again, Chris,
I also have faith in Jesus Christ. But I have none in Moses. He was just another warlord.
And you know, "faith" isn't worth the scriptures it's printed on.
Personally, I don't care if you have faith in Jesus, or Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny.
What matters is what you actually do, not what you "believe".
Do you follow the teachings of Jesus, or do you follow
the teachings of the Nazi sympathizer
Dr. Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman?
I'm glad to hear that you weren't rationalizing Bill Wilson's behavior.
I see so much Grace in the Old Testament versus how the New Testament is so interpreted and become a bunch of Pride (for feeling you are doing everything right in God's eyes) and self-righteousness judgement of others, which is not what I believe God wanted us to gather. I had forgotten about Moses, for all the 'bad' we see he caused in retrospect, we certainly don't focus on that when we teach about Moses and the Deliverance he brought, do we?? I suggest we do that with non-biblical leaders as well, like Bill Wilson. Shall we trash the Constitution because it's leaders were sinful in ways to....? Not sure I see the alignment between Buchanan and AA, sure similar 'steps' in the beginning, but there is more in AA than Buchanan's BS.
You put "bad" in quotation marks? You don't think that robbing
and raping and mass murder and genocide and ethnic cleansing are really bad?
Are those crimes okay if they are done by "the right people"?
Especially if done to "the wrong people"?
What "Deliverance" did Moses bring us? I know that he took some slaves away from the Pharoah,
but that isn't that big of a deal. And then he made up 10 rules that are not that great of a set
of standards, either.
You are still trying to minimize and deny the actions of a guy who just robbed
and killed everybody else who wasn't part of his tribe or his religion.
He murdered all of his neighbors and stole their land, and then he wrote some
books where
he bragged about all of the people that he had killed, and
all of the virgin girls that his army kidnapped and made into sex slaves and raped,
and he bragged about
what a great guy he was and how he talked to God and God was on his side.
You know the old saying, "The history books get written by the guys who win
the wars."
I've seen a lot of good in AA, and also alot of bad in AA. I've seen alot of good in Evangelicalism, and I've seen a lot of bad (you get that privilege when you are leading). The result is this, I (only me) see a lot more Tolerance & Love, with Humility (which kills self-righteous judgmental posturing) in AA then Evangelicalism. So for me, and my alcoholism, I'll stay in AA, and for my Christian Religious experience & growth, it has for sometime and I suspect will continue to not be within the realms of Evangelicalism. I'm glad we could speak honestly and from where our heart is currently taking us. I wish you only the best in Life, you and your loved ones....... and Have a Blessed Easter, and new insights etc concerning the Death and Salvation of man, through Jesus Christ. Chris S. "Saints have a history, and us Sinners have a future"...
Okay, so you have chosen Alcoholics Anonymous rather than the teachings of Jesus Christ.
(See The Heresy of the Twelve Steps.)
Oh well, have a good day and a good life now.
== Orange
Date: Sat, March 31, 2012 9:37 pm (answered 4 March 2012) Hi: After 14 years in AA I've had enough of the AA "people, places & things", which, incidentally, I am not as "powerless over" as AA brainwashed me into believing I was. I stopped drinking in August '97. I've actively sought fellowship in "the fellowship" and countless times have come away from my interactions with AA members feeling very agitated very, "restless, irritable & discontented." Why this is I cannot say. Not drinking is good for me but outside of that my experience with AA has been an ongoing ordeal interspersed with the occasional debacle! Whether I am right or wrong I cannot say. But I cannot escape the fact that by going to AA regularly (approximately 3-4 times per week) and doing what I can with the suggestions of recovery, unity & service using the AA Big Book and principles therein as a guideline for living (or a "blueprint for living") continues to cause me lingering, low level depression and anxiety. We humans are given a well honed sense of self-survival as well as the ability to both recognise stupidity and not feel obliged to participate in stupidity. Of the precious time given to me I have spent countless hours and contributed instalment payments of a few dollars at every meeting I attended only to now feel greatly disappointed in AA. Many things you wrote or quoted regarding old men chasing girls young enough to be their granddaughters are as true here in Australia as they are elsewhere. I do not know what else to say. I am pleased (I am reluctant to use the word "grateful" because it is rather loosely thrown around at meetings) I found your site. I have not read everything on your site yet but believe it's a good collection of AA stuf! Sincerely Yours, — Peter T
Hello Peter,
Thank you for the letter. I'm glad to hear that you are doing well. Congratulations on both
your sobriety and your awakening.
That uncomfortable feeling that you get at A.A. meetings is quite understandable.
It is really depressing and damaging to constantly harp on how bad and sinful you are, and
to confess that
you are insane and stupid and evil and selfish
and weak and powerless...
That's bound to make anyone feel bad.
And it destroys their self-confidence and ability to think for themselves clearly.
(That's why brainwashers use
the confession technique.)
Have a good day now.
== Orange
Date: Sun, April 1, 2012 11:09 am (answered 4 April 2012) Expecting People to be 'Freer' Than They Want to be — An Ironically Totalitarian Approach to Addiction http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dr-peter-ferentzy/expecting-people-to-be-fr_b_1393979.html
Peter Ferentzy, PhD
Hi again, Peter,
Thanks for the article.
Have a good day now.
== Orange
Date: Mon, April 2, 2012 12:27 pm (answered 4 April 2012) Hey, Orange. How's April treating you?
Hi again, Meatbag.
April is rainy. And this has been going on for months. So far, I counted one day of real spring.
If you look at the map of the USA on the evening weather report, you see that the jet stream is dipping down
and shoving clouds and rain on Washington and Oregon, and everybody else in the country is cooking.
Everybody else brags about the winter that didn't happen, and they already have drought and wildfires
and tornados.
And we get more clouds and rain.
And the weather man is saying that we may not get spring this year. That's how April is.
I think part of the problem is, mental illness in general is not well
understood enough to just fix the problem, even with common mental
illnesses like depression. It's trial and error. For instance, there's
this study that shows that antidepressants are only slightly more effective than active placebos. That might explain why it often feels like my anti-depressants aren't doing much, if anything. They didn't do anything to prevent the psychotic features of my depression. I had to get an additional med for that. Yes. I was just reading The Emperor's New Drugs, by Irving Kirsch, which talks about that problem. Antidepressants may be one of the biggest hoaxes in medicine. Quite often, they are no better than placebos. So how did they even get approved by the FDA? By a bureaucratic slight-of-hand: Prove that a new drug works just as well as some other already-approved antidepressant. But the gotcha is that the other antidepressant doesn't work either, and should never have been approved, but it got approved by other deceit and trickery. On another note, I do remember you writing about having prosopagnosia for a while as a result of your alcohol usage. It sounded quite familiar, except I never realized there was anything unusual about living that way. I once followed the wrong teacher as a kid, because she had the same hairstyle as my teacher. Apparently, prosopagnosia is common in autistic people. It's probably a lot scarier when you've had the ability to recognize faces and lost it, though, than never having the ability at all.
Yes, prosopagnosia is a bitch. It's so embarassing to not be able to recognize people,
even people that you spoke to an hour earlier.
Fortunately, most of that has healed in the last 11 years. But not all.
I still cannot remember faces like I used to.
I have a friend who has had prosopagnosia since birth. He is also slightly autistic. Asperger's Syndrome, I think.
He is the one who taught me about prosopagnosia. He explained that he likes to get friends who
have very distinct features, so he can easily recognize those features. Like with me, he can recognize
the long gray-blond hair and beard immediately.
And Andrew, do you really want to argue with a disabled person about what is and isn't insulting to people with disabilities? Yes, a person with Down's Syndrome certainly can learn to feel angry about not having the same abilities as an average person, since the average person is preferred in society. Also, a black woman can learn to hate the color of her skin, since white people are preferred in society. And the lives of both are often frustrating and difficult, because abled people and white people make their lives difficult and frustrating. If a person in a wheelchair can't enter a business, it's because the business made it difficult for that person to enter the business. Also, consider one thing: is a person of average intelligence (and we'll pretend the concept is in no way questionable) inherently limited because they don't have the brains of Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein? No? Then why is a person with Down's Syndrome inherently limited? And what kind of view of life do you have that every life is tragic? Yes, nobody gets to live forever. Why is that automatically tragic? It's the stuff in-between birth and death that makes a life worth living. Don't go around dismissing that part like it's worthless. And this is coming from someone with depression, of all things.
Okay, I'll let you argue with Andrew on that one.
Have a good day now.
== Orange
[The next letter from Meatbag is here.]
[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters299.html#Andrew_S ]
Date: Mon, April 2, 2012 7:37 am (answered 5 April 2012) I wrote:
My advice to someone who thinks that they have a drinking problem is to work down a list of meta-data regarding therapy efficacies. Start at the top with Motivational Interviewing and CBT, give them a sincere shot. If they don't work, move down the list. If nothing works, you'll slowly pass from acupuncture, homeopathy and AA into Scientology and trepanning. The higher the efficacy rate for the general population, the more likely you are to respond to the therapy *ceteris paribus*. Of course, you can always go into spontaneous remission as well. You replied:
Again, your jabber about "what works" is repeating an A.A. fallacy: that "programs" "work". There is no program or treatment that works to make addicts quit their addictions. What works is people really deciding to quit, and then getting a grip and quitting their bad habits and changing their lifestyle. It is not a matter of joining the right group or working the right program, or getting the right treatment, and having it "work" and make you quit drinking. This is a false dichotomy you are presenting. You are making it seem as if either a person must accept personal responsibility and go it alone OR they must work a program. When a person humbles themselves and makes themselves accountable to another person (hopefully a licensed therapist, counselor or doctor) they come closer to the goal of personal accountability. We must solve our problems FOR OURSELVES, but we do not solve them BY OURSELVES. Having a support network of loved ones, family, friends and medical professionals makes our recovery stronger and more likely. I am advising that people take an open-minded attitude toward trying a variety of therapies. I am surprised you take umbrage at that.
What I take umbrage at is the talk about "what works". A.A. does not work.
One of the standard A.A. recruiting lines is like, "I did the Church program, and that didn't work.
Then I did the V.A. program, and that didn't work. And then I joined A.A., and that worked."
In fact, there are stories like that in the Big Book.
Such a testimonial ignores the fact that the speaker had years of experience with failing to quit
before he finally quit and stayed quit. He failed until he did it right.
And coincidentally, he also joined A.A. because he was now desperate enough to try anything.
The speaker assumes that programs are supposed to "work" and make him quit drinking, which
is not the case.
So your suggested procedure, of try one thing and see if it works, and then try
something else and see if that works, and go down the list that way, trying even
ridiculous quackery like "homeopathy and AA into Scientology and trepanning",
is not a good approach to the problem.
You are still implying that some program or treatment will eventually "work",
and that it's just a matter of finding the right one.
No. People who won't get a grip and really quit will go through the entire list and then die. And they do.
Your most recent argument is quite different. Now you are saying that people should see real
licensed therapists, counselors or doctors. I agree with that. But the other half of the sentence —
"When a person humbles themselves and makes themselves accountable to another person" — is just
Dr. Frank Buchman's confession routine.
Confession is not the cure for alcohol or drug addiction.
You try to mask the cult confession routine by talking about "personal accountability",
but it is still Frank Buchman's confession routine that Bill Wilson copied.
Then you made some sweeping, unsupported claims:
The Harvard Mental Health Letter reported:
And
the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
of the National Institutes of Health reported
So who, besides Alcoholics Anonymous promoters, says that you need a
"support group", or a "support network"?
Like any other life problem, a multi-pronged approach is best. Yes, the patient must make moral and spiritual progress. But that doesn't preclude exercise, medical care, talk therapy, medication or group therapy. That sounds partly reasonable. Especially, do not overlook nutrition. However the "make moral and spiritual progress" line is of course pushing nonsense. That is just a veiled way of trying to shoehorn A.A. in the door. Are you really encouraging people not to seek therapy or counsel, OA? You're starting to sound like the AA alligators you hate so much. No, I'm just rejecting the idea that if you try enough "programs", even absurd quackery like homeopathy and trepanning and cult religion, that one will "work". Solving your problems by yourself helped you. That doesn't mean that therapy, self-help books and medical attention won't have a positive impact for other people. Careful there. Which things will "have a positive impact"? What A.A. has been shown to do is make matters worse, like increasing the rate of binge drinking and increasing the death rate. So just randomly trying out a lot of different things — even fraud and quackery — will not necessarily cause positive results. Therapy galvanizes people to change. Therapy can provide insight into our problems. When we meet medical professionals, hopefully we find a caring empathetic person who can provide us with the tools to change. That's a big maybe. And what "tools to change"? That's another A.A. slogan. And this is no different than solving a problem like overeating or obesity; your doctor can't slap the fork out of your hand every meal, but they can provide you with strategies, medications and support that make the struggle easier. Yes, by all means let's send people to doctors who know what they are doing, and not to 12-Step quacks. Also, OA, have you noticed that the surveys you quoted to me are nearly 60 years old? How can you claim to be a rational source of information when you rely on such dated data that you believe is flawed and incomplete? Fundamentally I agree with you, but you must hold yourself to the same rigorous standards that you hold the AA defenders to. Your humble servant, Andrew
Which surveys are 60 years old? And does that make them wrong?
(That is of course the propaganda trick called
Dismiss by Antiquity —
just claim that something is bad because it is old.)
Does information suddenly become wrong if it gets old?
If so, then the entire Big Book is wrong because it is 75 years old.
Even worse, the Big Book is just recycled Buchmanism, which is more like 90 years old,
and Frank Buchman just recycled the religious teachings of
Henry B. Wright of Yale University,
which are even older, and Wright just recycled even older stuff that he got from Robert E. Speer.
So it's really some old garbage, so it's all wrong, right?
Need I even mention that fact that the Bible is nearly 2000 years old, and parts
of the Old Testament are really ancient?
So, is the Bible totally invalid now that it is much older than 60 years?
Date: Mon, April 2, 2012 7:51 am (answered 5 March 2012) I wrote:
Your argument (as usual) is lengthy and confused. The experiential data of person A in regard to person A is not a testimonial. The testimonial would be person B or person A discussing person's A's experience with person C in order to to convince person C that AA works. I am talking about person A's particular experience in relationship to their particular history and response to AA. You responded:
Hello again, Andrew, AO, I believe that you are being intentionally obtuse with me. The biographical data about someone's struggle with alcohol can be a variety of things depending on how it is presented and arranged. It could be a memoir, it could be a testimonial, it could be a medical history, it could even be fictionalized into a play. If it is presented in order to persuade others to use AA, it is a testimonial. If it is relayed to doctor, it is a medical history. Just because AA has used it as a testimonial, or that stories like that are used as testimonials, that doesn't mean it loses all validity for all of its communicative purposes.
Excuse me, but no. A testimonial does not change into medical data just because someone recites
his testimonial to a doctor.
Now if the doctor issues a report describing the patient's condition in medical terms, then
that is medical history. When a doctor like
Dr. George E. Vaillant reports this result from
using A.A. to treat a group of alcoholics for eight years, it's medical data:
Now that is medical data.
You don't have the credentials or the moral right to tell an alcoholic that you know with certainty that the therapy that they believed cured them didn't actually work. Why? 1) You don't have enough data about their life. 2) You're not a doctor. 3) You're not a drug counselor. 4) You have a strong bias against AA. If there were a person who empirically had their life improved by AA, you would deny it as a matter of principle.
As one judge said, "There are some things that are self-evident, like finding trout in your milk."
Old cult religion does not cure alcohol addiction or drug addiction. Period. Now if you think that it
does work, let's see the clinical tests where A.A. worked to cure "alcoholism".
You want to talk about credentials? What credentials do you have to be defending and promoting an
old pro-Nazi cult religion from the nineteen-thirties as a quack cure for alcohol abuse or drug addiction?
I sincerely believe that AA has had a positive impact on my life because I rebelled against it and created a personal program of recovery for myself. It encouraged me to think rationally about recovery by questioning its principles. It introduced me to people who had adopted abstinence as a personal philosophy. It encouraged me to develop my spirituality. It was a temporary step on my journey to sobriety.
So you believe. Belief is not evidence of efficacy.
(That is the propaganda trick and logical fallacy of
Belief Equals Truth.)
I am not an AA stalwart, and I do not prescribe it for other people. Please explain to me why you ( a layman with no information on my particular struggle with alcohol) know better about my life than I do.
If A.A. is really so great, why don't you prescribe it?
The answer to your second sentence is, "I know that a Nazi philosophy is not going to make your life better."
And that is what Buchmanism is. Even the author of the Serenity Prayer,
Reinhold Niebuhr, said so:
The whole Alcoholics Anonymous program is just reheated Buchmanism. And it is not good for people.
Teaching people that they are just disgusting sinners who cannot think for themselves, and that they
should just surrender, and that they are powerless over alcohol, produces very bad results.
You can't because you don't. I know my life better than you do. It's silly and disrespectful to believe otherwise. I believe that you know your life better than I do, I don't second-guess your attitudes toward your own sobriety. Andrew I do not need to know everything about your life to know that the Alcoholics Anonymous philosophy and theology are bad. It has nothing to do with your life, and everything to do with what Alcoholics Anonymous is. I doubt that your life has been greatly improved by practicing Buchmanism or the A.A. religion because that isn't the nature of the beast. I would have the same reaction if you told me that you had profited immensely from practicing the teachings of Chairman Mao or Adolf Hitler. Or Rev. Sun Myung Moon, or Rev. Jim Jones, or Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, or Swami Prabhupada, or any other crazy cult leader.
Date: Mon, April 2, 2012 8:16 am (answered 5 March 2012) You wrote:
And addiction is not a "baffling and perplexing paradox". That is just one more high-falutin' A.A. slogan. Doctors understand addiction pretty well. Heck, I understand addiction pretty well. If you understand all of the issues surrounding addiction, please explain the following: 1) How can any biological entity that depends on eating and procreation forgo eating and procreation for their drug of choice? Easy. The drug acts as an immediate painkiller and in the short term makes the biological entity feel better. So every time the animal is in pain, it wants more painkiller. 2) How can a human neglect or abuse their child as a result of their drug use? The instinct to protect our offspring is one of the strongest instincts. The desire to kill pain is even stronger than the instinct to care for the children. 3) What is the correct and most efficient policy the state should adopt regarding drug addiction? Quit promoting the 12-Step religion. Use therapies that improve the situation, rather than make it worse. That means "evidence-based" therapies that have been clinically tested and shown to produce good results. A.A. has been clinically tested and shown to produce bad results. 4) If an addictive intoxicant is used in the commission of a crime, should the penalty be greater, lesser or the same? The same. 5) How should people who sell drugs be treated by the criminal system? That depends on the drug and the amount. For things like distributing small amounts of pot, I'd let them go. For making and distributing speed, which is highly destructive, I'd have to consider whether they are themselves also addicts, supporting their habits, or just profiteers. I'd send the former to a rehab camp, and the later, put them in prison. Other drugs like heroin also fall into that range. 6) How should someone who loves a drug addict treat them?
With love.
If that question was intended to elicit a prescribed treatment program, then the
question is far too broad and generalized. There isn't any simple one-size-fits-all
answer for drug addiction. Different people drink or drug for different reasons.
Some people suffer from mental illnesses like Bipolar Disorder or PTSD or
schizophrenia or NPD or depression; some have physical diseases and pain that they
are trying to fix by self-medication, including the pain of dying from alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and malnutrition;
and some have psychological issues like childhood
abuse — physical, sexual, or mental. There are actually too many different
causes to list here. The cure depends on the ailment. Again, this is why people
with addiction problems should see real doctors, not 12-Step quacks.
But if you want a list of hints and techniques that have worked for me and other
people, you can read:
How did you get to where you are?
7) How do we reduce the social harm of drug addiction? Decriminalize all of the less harmful drugs, and make the others available under strict conditions so as to actually control their use. Right now the only people who control the drug use are the bosses of the drug cartels. Take the money and the power and the control away from them and give it to us. 8) Why is there more drug addiction in marginalized social groups such as Native Americans, the GLBT community and African-Americans?
Isn't this one obvious? People get their land and their culture stolen and destroyed,
or they get kidnapped and enslaved, or they get hated and feared because they are different,
and then they are told that they are an inferior race or group, just worthless disgusting immoral people,
and that makes them very depressed, so they try to get stoned and forget the whole thing.
You just hit on why A.A. raises the rate of binge drinking. Telling people that
they are powerless and insane, and incurable sinners, and guilty of all kinds of
things, makes them drink more.
Have a good day now.
== Orange
Date: Tue, April 3, 2012 6:30 pm (answered 9 April 2012) Orange, I really enjoyed your recently letter from Mike O. He's dead on the money. Even for folks who don't have much (or anything) in the way of family and friends, there are many less dangerous and screwy options. And of course, they're not limited to recovery groups. That's something to be wary of, becoming recoverycentric. It reminds me of an old friend of mine who got clean shortly after I did, unbeknownst to me. We crossed paths years later, and one of the things we agreed on right away is that we did not want to talk about the shit from our using days. It's junk, and more importantly, junk that's already been sifted through, then either unloaded or accepted. Instead, we talked about the positive things we were doing in our lives now, and would like to do in the future. To me, that seemed like a much more productive use of time. I certainly enjoyed it more, that's for sure. Unfortunately, it would seem that so many in "recovery" seem to think that simply not engaging in self destruction behavior is the epitome of human achievement. I still firmly believe that while not doing bad things is good, doing good things is really what one should be striving for. It's understandable enough early on, but when 20 years later, a guy is still coasting on not doing wrong, that doesn't really cut in my mind. To be fair, I could stand to be a bit more productive myself, but hey, it's coming along.
Rock on dude,
Hello Taylor,
Thanks for the letter, and I couldn't agree more. Sometimes, wasting the rest of ones' life rehashing
the same old garbage over and over again seems like a fate almost worse than death.
And yes, there is so much more to life than just not drinking and doping.
Have a good day now.
== Orange
[The next letter from Taylor_W is here.]
Date: Tue, April 3, 2012 11:59 pm (answered 6 April 2012) The sale of your site, "orange-papers", was mentioned to me today by a long time member in A.A. — Charlie Bishop Jr., The Bishop of Books. Is there any truth to this? I see no indication of you doing so on your site.
Yours in service,
Dr Bob's Farewell Talk ( http://www.silkworth.net/aahistory/drbob_farewell.html )-
Hello Jim,
No truth to it. That is just somebody's wishful thinking.
I have actually gotten only one request to buy it, half a dozen
years ago, and obviously didn't take them up on the offer.
Have a good day now.
== Orange
[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters299.html#Jim_M2 ]
Date: Fri, April 6, 2012 11:11 pm (answered 12 April 2012) Hello Orange (have a first name?),
I believe that Charlie Bishop Jr. was miss informed then. Not sure where he got such
an idea of your site being for sale. I visit your site fairly often and find it very
interesting. I had your site, at one time, mirrored on silkworth.net. I decided to
remove it for now, but for now, I do have a link to your site on my off site links
directory located here: There has been a few emails about my posting your link on my site, but I am one who believes in both sides of individules beliefs — the good and the bad, if you will. I believe in the truth and truth can be found on yours and my site. Thanks for the reply. Jim
Hello again, Jim,
Yes, just a rumor. By the way, I also have Silkworth.net listed on my links page, too,
both your web site and chat forum, here:
http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-links.html
I like Silkworth.net because you have collected such a wealth of old documents and information,
both the good and the bad.
Have a good day now.
== Orange
[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters299.html#Hetu-Ahin ]
Date: Wed, April 4, 2012 2:36 pm (answered 9 April 2012) Thanks. I will read the horror stories etc. I will say only two people have told me to shut up ot leave or AA, and they were soundly rounded upon by other aa theists. One question for now.
We may start out as agnostics. We may then come to view the group or recovery process as our higher power, looking to other people for strength. Gradually, we accept a vague notion of god, which grows to a more specific monotheistic god. We may even begin to pray to and dialogue with this god. Eventually we come to know the one true God. Why do you regard that as dodgy? It just describes what Bill W thought, and some others think, will happen if an agnostic starts out on the steps. And actually I know of one case where that did happen. So somebody got converted. That happens to people outside AA too. Sad, but a fact of life.
Hello again, Hetu-Ahin,
What is dodgy about it is that it is
a bait-and-switch trick.
Alcoholics Anonymous was advertised as a quit-drinking program. But it turns out
that the real effect of the program is to convert the newcomers into belief in
"the one true God" of Alcoholics Anonymous.
That is Deceptive Recruiting,
and it is a common characteristic of evil cults.
Why do I stick with AA rather than getting involved somewhere else? Well, for the moment, I get a lot out of the fellowship. Unlike you, I think that if you take the God illusion out of the steps you are left with great addiction psychology. The meetings (the ones I go to) provide lots of useful insights into details of recovery, and more besides. They also help me remember that I can't safely drink ... in the past I have actually forgotten that I am an alcoholic, diseased, not normal in relation to drink, with a permanent physical allergy, (hypersensitive dopamine system) and spiritual malady (tendency to go insane once I have a drink).
Addiction psychology? You think that Bill Wilson had any insight into the psychology of addiction?
Like this nonsense?
That is the entire A.A. program:
declare yourself weak and insane, and then
surrender yourself to God, and hope that God will save you.
Have you ever checked out any of
the other recovery groups, like SMART or SOS or Lifering?
Those guys can also talk to you about how you should not drink alcohol, and you can get good advice
without getting dosed with the philosophy of
an old pro-Nazi cult religion from the nineteen-thirties.
By the way, the "tendency to go insane once I have a drink" is not a "spiritual malady".
One of the things that I object to about Alcoholics Anonymous is how
they twist words around
to have the most ridiculous meanings,
and this is one example of that.
Being hypersensitive to the effects of alcohol is not a "spiritual malady".
It may be a medical problem, and it may be a psychiatric problem,
and it may well be a genetic condition,
but it is not a "spiritual malady",
or a "spiritual disease".
You, if you are really an atheist, should notice that.
As soon as they start talking about spirits, you should head for the door.
Have a good day now.
== Orange
Date: Fri, April 6, 2012 11:54 am (answered 9 April 2012) Hi I find your site interesting but I wonder who you are and if you are a layperson or a professional. Is there a reason that you do not identify yourself or your qualifications?
Wes O.
Hello Wes,
Actually, I broke my anonymity many years ago. My name is Terrance Hodgins and I live in Forest Grove, Oregon.
The reason for the anonymity in the first place was because I was in the odd situation of living
in housing that was owned by the same corporation as ran a fraudulent "treatment center" that
gave me
a cocaine-snorting Internet-child-pornographer child rapist as a sobriety counselor.
I didn't want to end up homeless for telling the truth and challenging the expensive hoax that is
called "treatment".
But things have changed, and I am living in a much better place now, and they cannot retaliate
for me telling the truth. I continue to use the Orange name because it has been my pen name for so
many years that it's an old habit, and many people know me by no other name.
Coincidentally, that so-called "counselor" was just rearrested last week.
Look here.
I am not connected to academia, although I like to joke that I have a Ph.D. from the School of Hard Knox.
I dropped out of Berkeley in 1966 at the height of the psychedelic revolution. (And yes, I inhaled.)
You can find more biographical information here:
How did you get to where you are?
Have a good day now.
== Orange
Last updated 8 March 2013. |
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