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Sincerely,
Hi Eric,
Thanks for all of the compliments. You're laying it on so heavy that I'm in danger of
getting a fat ego and having to go to an A.A. meeting to "get my ego deflated".
(Just kidding.)
And yes, it actually has been two years now that I've been working on this.
And Doctor Bob really is an interesting case, isn't he? He generally has the reputation
for being the wise, reserved one who sort of kept Bill Wilson from going off on
tangents. But another picture of Doctor Bob is emerging, too — that of a dogmatic,
autocratic petty tyrant — a fool who grovelled before his wife as she searched his
pockets to see if he was sneaking booze into the house, but who was a harsh tyrant to
his children.
The most damning information about Doctor Bob comes from his own daughter,
Sue Smith, who described in her book Children of the Healer
how he forced on her the older man Ernie Galbraith, A.A. Number Four,
the author of the
Big Book first edition story, The Seven-Month Slip.
Sue was in love with her high-school sweet-heart Ray Windows, but Ray was only
a janitor, so Doctor Bob didn't like him. So Doctor Bob used Ernie Galbraith to
break up Sue and Ray.
But Ernie Galbraith turned out
to be a constantly-relapsing philanderer. A.A. didn't sober him up at all, or make
him holy.
Doctor Bob should have gotten
a huge hint about Ernie's character from reading Ernie's autobiographical
Big Book story —
the seven-month 'slip' was seven months long,
not just some little lapse after seven months of sobriety.
But no, Doctor Bob couldn't see it.
Ernie's story was removed from the second edition of the Big Book, but it took Sue many more years
to get divorced from Ernie. Then she finally married Ray.
What a heart-breaking story. Alcoholics Anonymous was a personal disaster for
Sue Smith, and did nothing for her but get her married to a repulsive old alcoholic
for 20 years.
Oh well, thanks for writing. Have a good day.
— Orange
 Sir,
I have just come across your website by accident, and discovered
your lamentable critique of Alcoholics Anonymous; a diatribe with all the
intellectual rigour of a Mickey Mouse cartoon.
yours sincerely
Hello Ken,
Your letter is a good example of the debating technique called
"ad hominem" —
attack the speaker, rather than refuting his statements.
You accuse me of all kinds of things,
but you never actually offer any facts to back up your statements, or to disprove
my statements.
You are unhappy that I quote Spencer. You somehow feel that it is inappropriate
for me to quote one of the eminent defenders of Darwin's Theory of Evolution —
a man who argued for science with facts and logic — a man who argued against
blind faith and dogmatic religion.
You complain:
What Spencer wrote was:
And what I actually wrote was:
That is curious because Herbert Spencer was actually a social Darwinist
whose
attitude towards alcoholics was something like, "Let them all
die. Getting rid of such inferior people will just help to
clean out the gene pool."
And Herbert Spencer was actually arguing against religious
beliefs, and in favor of Charles Darwin's new theory of evolution,
in 1864.
Nevertheless, that quote sounds like good advice.
So let's really, honestly, investigate Alcoholics Anonymous,
without rejecting criticism of A.A. before investigation of
all of the facts...
I did not claim that Spencer supported my case. I said that Spencer's
suggestion — investigate the facts before jumping to conclusions
— sounded like good advice.
Then I devote the whole rest of my web site to
gathering and investigating the actual facts, like
If you have any real facts to offer, I'd love to see them.
I am always interested in more facts. I am interested in the truth, above all.
So please send your facts.
And any supporting documentation that you have will also be most welcome.
But please, send real facts, not hearsay, rumors, or anecdotal stories.
Hand-picked stories about a few poster children,
like Bill Wilson put in the Big Book, prove nothing.
(Wilson always left out all of the stories of A.A. failures.)
The best information
is scientifically-conducted tests with controls. Carefully-done surveys can
also be informative.
I'd especially like to see the results of the British tests of Alcoholics Anonymous.
(I hear that they showed that A.A. didn't work at all.) Have you heard about them?
Have you read the report?
You imply that I am not really an alcoholic. Brother, how I wish that accusation
were true. (I wasted so many years and blew so many opportunities.)
Everybody who knows me agrees that I'm an alcoholic.
My ex-wife says that I am one.
My A.A.-indoctrinated counselor said
that I was an alcoholic.
My doctor says that I'm one.
My doctor said, "Quit drinking or die. Your choice."
My doctor even said that I was a "late-stage alcoholic",
and said that the death rate for them was the same as for cancer — 50%.
The only people who say that I'm
not really an alcoholic are a few A.A. people who can't stand the idea that I have
successfully, happily quit drinking without A.A. or the Twelve Steps.
They always want to say,
Well, yes I am, unfortunately.
You say that Alcoholics Anonymous does not have the answer to alcoholism.
Now there I agree with you, totally.
But then you also say,
Sorry, but you are wrong. You must be completely ignorant of the whole history
of Alcoholics Anonymous, and you also haven't bothered to read either the Big Book
of Alcoholics Anonymous, or my web pages, either.
Bill Wilson always claimed that A.A. did have the answer,
and he even said that A.A. *was THE answer*.
Just to make sure that I wasn't imagining things, I grabbed one of my copies
of the Big Book, and turned to the very first page — the very first paragraph — of the
foreword to the first edition, and read:
So not only did Bill Wilson claim to have a working cure for alcoholism that had already
cured over 100 alcoholics, he also claimed that he had a "spiritual" way of
life that would be good for everybody else too.
And Wilson also claimed that the Big Book was a precise manual that told exactly how
to recover from alcoholism. That is claiming to have the answer.
And even before that, in
the Prospectus for the stock offering for the 100 Men Corporation, which
raised the money to finance the writing and printing of the Big Book, Wilson wrote:
In the spring of 1935 Mr. Wilson went to Akron, Ohio, on
business. While there he communicated his ideas to three other alcoholics.
Leaving the three men, he returned to New York in the fall of 1935, continuing
his activities there. These early seeds are now bearing amazing fruit. The
original Akron three have expanded themselves into more than seventy.
Scattered about New York and in the seaboard states there are about forty. Men
have even come out of insane asylums and resumed their community and family
lives. Business and professional people have regained their standing.
In all, about two-hundred cases of hopeless alcoholism have been dealt with.
As will be seen, about fifty percent of these have recovered. This, of course,
is unprecedented — never has such a thing happened before.
This work has claimed the attention of prominent doctors and institutions who
say without hesitation that in a few years time, as it gains impetous,
thousands of hitherto incurable cases may recover. Such people as the chief
physician of Charles B. Towns Hospital and psychiatrists of the Johns Hopkins
Hospital at Baltimore express such opinions.
Again, Bill Wilson claimed to have a great new cure for alcoholism, one which
had already made many "hopeless" alcoholics recover —
"never has such a thing happened before" — and one which
he said some doctors believed promised to liberate great numbers of
alcoholics from hospitals and sanitariums.
Wilson even claimed a very high success rate for his "spiritual"
treatment program — he said that 50% of the alcoholics recovered.
(Unfortunately,
Bill's claims were fraudulent.)
Also note that Wilson used the word "recovered" — past tense —
in both of those quotes. He didn't say that alcoholics would never fully recover,
or that there was no answer for alcoholism, or no cure, or that alcoholics had to
stay in recovery for life.
Wilson said that they had recovered as a result of his new "spiritual"
treatment.
Only later did he change his story to
Wilson continued to claim that A.A. was the answer — even the
only answer for alcoholism —
in both the Big Book and in his second book, Twelve Steps
and Twelve Traditions:
Note that there is no third choice: either sink or join A.A..
The Big Book and 12x12 also say:
...they had found the only remedy...
Any willing newcomer feels sure A.A. is the only safe harbor for the
foundering vessel he has become.
Quite as important was the discovery that spiritual principles
would solve all my problems.
We will seldom be interested in liquor. ...
And above all:
Bill says that you will die from alcoholism if you don't follow his
instructions and work his program and do his 12 steps. (Bill also implied
that only his 12 steps embodied the real spiritual principles
of the Cosmos.)
Then, Bill Wilson spent many years
touring the country,
grand-standing, breaking his anonymity, and selling A.A. as the
answer to alcoholics' problems.
By 1944, Bill Wilson was the most famous "anonymous" person
in America.
Then Bill Wilson and Marty Mann even went and
testified before Congress,
pushing Alcoholics Anonymous as the solution to the nation's alcohol
problem. (That was, of course, a violation of the Eleventh Tradition, which says that
Alcoholics Anonymous is supposed to be a program of attraction, not promotion.
And talk about breaking your anonymity — you just can't do it any bigger than
by publicly testifying before Congress as the leader of Alcoholics Anonymous.)
So you can discard your statement that A.A. has never claimed to have
the answer to alcoholism. It has always claimed to have the answer,
and Wilson claimed that Alcoholics Anonymous was THE answer.
Oh, and one other thing: Please write to
the Hazelden Foundation
(in Center City, Minnesota, USA), and tell them
that A.A. does not have the answer to alcoholism, so please quit charging people
$15,000 for a 28-day stay where they teach the patients The Twelve Steps as the answer to
all alcohol and drug problems. And also tell
Hazelden to quit teaching A.A. members how to use the police and judges to force more
people into A.A. meetings as part of their 12th step work. (See
The Hazelden Little Red Book.)
You leave us with a big question: You say,
"Alcoholics Anonymous has changed, and improved the
quality of my life beyond my wildest dreams"
even while you also say
that A.A. does not have the answer to alcoholism. So what exactly did A.A.
do for you if it didn't save you from alcoholism?
Is it going to be the "wonderful brotherhood and fellowship" rap, or will it be
the religious "brought me to know God and gave me a spiritual way of life" rap?
Looking forward to seeing your facts. Have a good day.
--Orange
[Letter 2:] Dear Sir, I would prefer to address you by name, but you don't supply one. I am certainly not going to call you 'Orange' I appear to have been mistaken. Apparently you are an alcoholic. I'm left wondering why you have so much antithesis toward AA, but you don't say. I have often thought about breaking my anonymity. But so far, it looks unwise, as it would create problems that I don't need. You are equally mistaken about me. Working-class to the core, such stiffness as I have comes from encroaching age. Haughty? - afraid not. I am eminently approachable. I live too close to life to afford such dubious luxuries. British I must confess to, 'tho I don't brag about it; (we all have a cross to bear.)
Okay, so I guess I've been watching too much Public Television, and my imagination
is getting the better of me. :-)
It is difficult to engage in 'ad hominem' argument with someone one doesn't know from Adam. - in fact, impossible- it becomes a tautology. You're doing it again, right there. I take issue with what you are saying; not who you are. You take issue, but you don't supply any evidence to support your opinions.
The old chestnut about Scientific Fact is whistling down the wind as far as
I am concerned. It would be an understatement to say it doesn't impress me.
Karl Popper I am impressed by. He coined the notion of the 'Negative
Hypothesis.'
That is dangerous thin ice you are walking on. You dismiss scientific thinking
and facts as worthless?
You imply that Alcoholics Anonymous is not based on Science, and
has no scientific basis. I agree with that
statement. But what *is* A.A. based on, then? Superstition?
Faith in
the strange theology of William G. Wilson? Wishful thinking? Voodoo medicine?
For your information, a great many things, including the effectiveness of A.A.
as an alcoholism treatment program, can be tested, using the scientific method,
no matter whether they are "based on Science" or not.
For example, we could most assuredly test
my joke ballerina tutu program, or
the Baskin Robbins ice cream cure, scientifically. And we could do it right alongside
testing A.A.. What we would do is: Get a group of 400 alcoholics from somewhere,
maybe a hospital or a court. Perhaps take 400 people who were
convicted of drunk driving, who have
been identified as "alcohol abusers" by a counselor or doctor,
and send them to one of four programs, randomly selected:
And that, dear sir, is the heart of the scientific method. Do you think that is an
unfair test? I don't.
Parts of that test have already been done. The first two, the ballerina dancing,
and the ice cream treatment, have not, to the best of my knowledge. But
the last
two have. And the results were that No treatment at all was better than
A.A..
Lastly, if you dismiss facts as worthless, then what do you use as the basis
of your life? What do you trust? What do you base your decisions on?
Are you a follower of
Buchmanism who believes
that the rational thinking mind is all a mistake,
an illusion to be gotten rid of?
In fact, how are we to argue or discuss anything, if facts are worthless, and to
be dismissed if we don't like them?
I am reminded of the quote from the American Revolutionary War hero (to you,
the "American Rebellion villain")
Ethan Allen, the leader
of the Green Mountain Boys in their capture of Fort Ticonderoga,
who had this to say on the subject:
Indeed. If you dismiss all scientifically-determined facts as worthless because you don't
like them, or don't understand the scientific method, then upon what facts or method
of argument shall we base our discussion?
What methods of logic or thought are acceptable to your mind?
What kind of critical, skeptical, or logical thinking do you approve of, if any?
How shall we get some facts?
Bill Wilson's ouija board?
Shirley MacLaine's channelling?
By the way, you also just pulled an Ad Hominem attack on James Randi.
Upon what basis do you call him a con artist? Is the thinking of skeptics and
other people "of the James Randi persuasion" really
completely superficial and indiscriminate? Do you have any facts to support
such a denunciation?
Bill Wilson is not AA, any more than God is Religion - now your invective, weighed against various personalities within the movement, or anyone involved, is 'ad hominem.'
That becomes yet another
bait-and-switch stunt.
Ad Hominem is based on "attack the speaker, rather than
the argument." I enjoy showing Wilson to be a liar by attacking his statements.
"My invective", as you call it, is based on a huge stack of facts.
I criticize Bill Wilson not just by calling him a liar, but by specifically listing
what lies he told, and telling what the truth is.
Just read the web pages on
You would appear to have a personal grudge against AA, which, in and of itself, is fine, — you may be perfectly justified. Perhaps you were badly treated by someone in AA or whatever. But I am curious as to how this has turned into what appears to me as a vendetta, and a determination to trash the movement. It is obviously doomed to failure, and is absolutely 'whistling down the wind'
"The movement" resembles the Bataan Death March more than anything
else.
Worse yet, A.A. still uses covert coercion to force more people into its meetings.
Every time you see somebody getting a slip signed, you are seeing another victim
of A.A.'s coercive recruiting schemes. (Perhaps you don't see it so much in England;
I hear that it is *much* more common in the USA than in England.)
A.A. is simply an evil cult, not a self-help group.
(I know that some of the individual members are quite well-meaning,
really nice people, but that does not make A.A. a good organization.)
A.A. is no more helpful or beneficial than Scientology, another cult based on
*non-Scientific* irrational babble.
Scientology also has a phony drug and alcohol
rehabilitation program called Narconon that claims to use
Scientology "principles" to "fix addicts' minds."
(And a couple of my best friends were Scientologists, and wonderful people,
and that's how I know so much about Scientology. They were wonderful people,
but that doesn't make Scientology a wonderful organization.)
You are absolutely, unquestioningly, entitled to your viewpoint. But it will remain your viewpoint. You are the one who is stuck with it. You know that. I know that. You can no more bring down AA by railing against it, than King Canute could command the Sea to recede.
I want to end some specific bad practices. I doubt that I will ever see the
end of
the Alcoholics Anonymous religion, per se.
(Likewise, I doubt if I will ever
see the ends of Scientology, the Hari Krishnas, or the Moonies. Heck, I still
actually get email from followers of
Frank Buchman. Believe it or not,
some of those nuts are still around.)
As I have said before, I don't care if some
crazy burned-out alcoholics want to huddle in church basements and convince each
other that they are
God's chosen children.
I feel sorry for them. They are pathetic.
But I do want to end:
What do I get out of AA? - it teaches me Honesty, with which I make painfully slow and imperfect progress. The fact that this has to do with me, and me alone, is what I have brought into the programme myself. There is a lot more besides, and a lot more to be said, but enough for now. I must work. I look forward to your reply, - I don't think we have finished crossing swords just yet - perhaps even discovering your name.
regards,
How can you make claims to "Honesty" (with a capital 'H')
when you dismiss a lot of facts
out of hand, just because you don't like them, or don't like where they came from,
or don't like who said them?
On what basis do you decide that you like some
facts, and will be "Honest" about them, while you automatically dismiss other
facts as being worthless? (Besides the obvious bias you have against "Science"
and skeptical thinking.)
How is that "Honesty"?
It looks more like what Bill Wilson called
"prejudice".
And it also looks like what Herbert Spencer called "contempt prior to
investigation."
Or does "Honesty" just mean that you have learned to beat up on
yourself and believe
all kinds of negative things
about yourself, and then
confess or "admit" those things in meetings,
because that is what you were told you had
to do, or else you would die of alcoholism?
Inquiring minds want to know.
By the way, I am still waiting to see some actual new facts here, rather than
just more Ad Hominem attacks on skeptical thinkers like James Randi.
And you seem to have forgotten about your absolute statement,
Oh well, have a good day anyway. I'm looking forwards to your next set of "facts".
— Orange
[Letter 3:]
Dear Sir, Ken H. Where you have .2 and you wrote under it this was found in the third edition of the Big Book page 42, I got my book out and checked it with what you said and you did NOT quote it exactly. If you are quoting pages incorrectly then how much truth is in your whole site? AA has saved millions of lives so what do you or anyone else care if its bull crap? If it saves peoples lives I think that's enough Are you a paid counselor? If you don't agree with AA then at least be honest in what you are telling people. You may kill people by not speaking the truth. Cathy
Hello, Cathy,
It took me a while, but I finally figured out that your ".2"
meant "point two" or "item two", not two tenths of something.
What you are reading is paraphrased, not direct quotes. Most of that web page is
paraphrased. You have to go down to item four to see a direct quote.
It is clearly indicated by the fact that it is indented, block-quoted, and
displayed in a different font to make it stand out as a quote. Also, many
of the other direct quotes are also in quotation marks.
What I wrote is this: (Note how it is now formatted as a quote, because I am now
directly quoting myself.)
That statement is really assembled from several pages.
I referred to pages 41 to 42 because that is where the major items come from —
the "prophesying" of "strange mental blank spots" where
"will power and self-knowledge will be useless".
The "powerless over
alcohol" and "unmanageable lives" phrases come from
Step One, of course, which is printed on page 59.
The line "His defense must come from a Higher Power" comes from
the bottom of page 43.
And frankly, I forget where I read the line "There you are,
facing ruin again, and still you can't stop. The more you struggle, the worse
you get." But it's paraphrased from another one of those
standard "you are powerless" sermons.
I am surprised that you are incapable of recognizing any of those famous items as
coming from different parts of the Big Book. But whatever...
On to some more important points:
Anything else, including no treatment at all was
better than A.A.. But Professor Vaillant is such a true believer in the
12-step religion that he still wants to send all of the alcoholics to A.A.
anyway, to "confess their sins to a high-status healer", even
if it won't save their lives.
— Orange
[Letter 2:]
Orange
Hello, Cathy,
I don't know if that is a trick question or not, but the apparent answer would be,
"Either one or zero, depending on whether he kills himself on booze or
finally quits drinking."
Then you say,
Now I agree with that, within limits. We can obviously rule out grossly illegal
or immoral methods, which I'm sure you didn't mean. (Be careful with absolute
words like "whatever".) But what works? That is the big question, isn't it?
Then you ask,
I'm getting tired of repeating the list, but here goes, one more time:
All of that is in addition to courts telling drunk drivers
"90 meetings or 90 days in jail."
No other cult in America gets away with such stuff.
Is that enough items for you?
Then you say,
I can sympathize with that. My father died of alcoholism, too. And you know, he
went through all of the programs, a few years between them,
and none of them worked. Oh, they all worked for a while, but none of them
worked in the long run. First, there was the
Veterans Administration, and then he did a couple of years in a
Christian Brotherhood monastery
(relapsed the first day out of the monastery), and then he did 7 years
in A.A.. A.A. kept him sober longer than anybody else (7 years),
but he still went out and died drunk.
Now I don't blame A.A. for his death. He made his own choices, the same as we all
do. If I go out and kill myself, it's my own stupid fault and nobody else's.
But remember that the reverse is also true: If I stay sober and don't die from
alcoholism, then I get the credit, not some program.
The last part of your letter says that you would have been happy if he would
have gotten sober some way or other, and ...
I understand. But wishful thinking does not
help anyone. Imagining that Alcoholics Anonymous has a working program is simply
wishful thinking. All that happens is, a few people out of the river of people
who go through the
rooms decide that they like the cult, so they stick around while they quit
drinking, and then A.A. takes the credit for their successes. If the A.A. program
actually worked, I would be all for it. I could even agree with the
rationalization that
I think it's pretty safe to say that all of the people
you see sitting in the rooms would have quit drinking anyway, without
A.A. or the Twelve Steps.
The real numbers say that
50% or more of all alcoholics finally just quit, rather than die, and 80% of them
do it alone, without any "treatment".
Lastly you say,
Yeh, well, it came as a big surprise to me to find that voodoo medicine
and faith healing was actually the national
official "treatment program" for a deadly medical condition (not 'disease').
Oh well, have a good day anyway.
— Orange
Myself, I have 20 1/2 years of sobriety so his legacy and program works. The most important AA slogan we have is to thine own self be true. Bill knew he was wrong to cheat on Lois but to him, sex felt good. It's strange how women have such power over men biologically. These women were individuals too and they could've refused his entreaties and flirtations. God has blessed me with being a homely man. And I do know that women are an oppressed sex. I don't get along too good with attractive women. Fortunately I have a beautiful wife thanks to my sobriety. Yes, men are generally foul creatures and so sexually driven that they'll forsake concious and morals for the opposite sex if they are so empowered. Leaders are magical people and they are needed in order to provide humanity with direction when we are floundering as a species. Yet, leaders are flawed. Every woman, man, and child has a part to play in our world so we must let ourselves play the roles and fate will sort out the winners from the losers and in heaven there will be no more secret sealed archives. Brian
Hello Brian,
Congratulations on your two decades of sobriety.
But I can't agree on the
cause of your sobriety. I suspect that you are
confusing cause and effect
with correlation or coincidence. It's just like Dumbo's Magic Flying Feather.
(Remember the Walt Disney movie Dumbo?)
He couldn't fly until he got that magic feather; then he could.
Dumbo just "knew" that the feather was the cause of his success.
Likewise, many A.A. members are convinced that their sobriety was caused
by the 12 steps, or by going to meetings, or by some other part of the
A.A. program, rather than by the fact that they are sober because they
are not swallowing alcoholic drinks any more, and that was their own
choice and their own accomplishment. They ignore obvious factors
like that they quit drinking because they got tired of the down side,
the horrible negative consequences of drinking.
They got sick and tired of being sick and tired.
They decided that they wanted to live.
They did all of the hard work and A.A. took all of the credit.
This is a common problem. Quackwatch wrote:
Before agreeing to any kind of treatment, you should feel confident that it
makes sense and has been scientifically validated through studies that
control for placebo responses, compliance effects, and judgmental errors.
You should be very wary if the "evidence" consists merely of testimonials,
self-published pamphlets or books, or items from the popular media.
Especially note the lines:
That is precisely the problem with a few A.A. survivors (out of hundreds
of failures) claiming that A.A. or
the Twelve Steps made them quit drinking.
Only a well-designed test can be trusted, and all of those tests have shown that
A.A. does not make people quit drinking. A.A. scores no better than any other
treatment, or no treatment at all.
Again, it's the same old problem as:
That goofy logic is
the same logic as A.A. uses to insist that it's a proven fact that
going to A.A. meetings and doing the Twelve Steps causes people to
quit drinking.
My answer was,
Boys do." ]
Bill Wilson's sexual infidelity is not a major point; it is just
another hypocrisy.
Other faults were far more important:
Bill Wilson's sexual infidelity pales beside big problems like that.
If the A.A. program really worked, and cheating on his wife was his
only hypocrisy, I'd also be ready to label him a great man.
But he was just a sleazy con artist and a fraud.
But there is one aspect of that sexual infidelity that we should not
overlook:
Bill was exploiting women who came to A.A. seeking help
with their alcoholism. It would have been a very different thing
if Bill Wilson had had affairs with women outside of A.A., but that isn't
what Bill did. Bill chose
to act as a sexual predator and victimize women who were sick, weak,
shaky, and desperately seeking help. That is unconscionable.
That is not the behavior of a healer.
Any doctor who screws his women patients gets his license to practice
medicine revoked.
I strongly disagree with the statement,
He was just feathering his own nest so that he never had to work again.
He made a lot of loud grandiose claims of success when he had
nothing but failure to show for his cult religion.
Bill Wilson didn't even introduce new concepts about recovery from
alcoholism or a more charitable attitude towards alcoholics.
Bill pointedly overlooked the contributions of
the
earlier temperance movements
like the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the Washingtonian Society,
and the Keeley League.
Bill was really not much different from all of those phony TV evangelists who were
sent to prison in the last couple of decades. I seem to recall that they
were also fundamentalists and Republicans, too. (They had good reason
to want to "get big government off of the little businessman's back."
Those darned pesky laws against grand theft and criminal fraud were such
an inconvenience... — A problem that a Republican corporation called
Enron would run into a little later.)
Oh well, have a good day anyway. Thanks for writing.
— Orange
-R.S.
Hi, R.S.,
Many cult members like to imagine that their cult
is The Wave Of The Future, a big movement that is sweeping the world,
ushering
in The New Age of Peace and Enlightenment, and A.A. is no different.
A.A. members call it things like
"The Movement".
A.A. members imagine that A.A. is actually some new
enlightened mode of recovery from alcohol or drugs that will sweep the
world and reform "the recovery community",
rather than just
a recycled, tired old cult religion
with no new answers to anything.
And of course they reject any information that does not accord with their
own beliefs; it has to be wrong, automatically, because it doesn't
accord with their own beliefs. That circular logic keeps people brainwashing
themselves endlessly, and never learning anything different.
(Oh, and by the way, here is where Scientology is not "just in it for
the money." Some cynical branch managers may be, but the rank and file
actually do believe that Scientology has fantastic new technology [LRH tech]
that will solve all of their mental problems and give them great mind powers
— even immortality.
— Which leads to the following item:)
In A.A.,
The Promises are even written up as a formal list.
Bill Wilson promised members a whole lot more than just sobriety or survival.
Conversely, they say,
"Don't Leave Five Minutes Before The Miracle!"
In addition, it just seems to be a common human trait that
people wish to feel that their suffering was for some higher purpose. It is
a lot easier for people to believe that they went through Hell so that they would be
prepared to help others, than to believe that they went through Hell solely because they
made some foolish choices.
One item that is missing from the list is, of course, a charismatic leader.
The current A.A. leaders, like the executives and trustees of A.A.W.S.
(Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.), do live very comfortable
lives and enjoy a lot of status and prestige, but they seem to me to
be almost irrelevant (except for
the crimes that they commit).
A.A. is one of those cults with dead leaders, like the Hari Krishnas or
Scientology or Siddha Yoga, where current members now just worship the
dead founders.
Bill Wilson and Doctor Bob are of course the dead saints
of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And last but not least, the members actually do quit and leave.
All of the above items imply that members stay in the group.
Some do, but not for very long. A.A. suffers from a horrendous dropout rate.
The A.A. clubhouse has a revolving door on the front of it.
The A.A. G.S.O.'s own surveys
have shown that 81% are gone after a month, 90% are gone after 3 months,
and 95% are gone after a year.
And the attrition continues, with
even 20-year old-timers dropping out.
A.A. even has to use
coercive recruiting
techniques to keep its numbers up. It isn't growing any more.
So thanks for the question. That was a good one.
Have a good day.
— Orange
Last updated 27 April 2014. |
