— "Pamela D." wrote:
> this is sooooo far from the truth it's sick.  you ever been to an
> aa meeting?  get a grip!  paranoid psycho!

You obviously have not really read many of my pages, have you, or you would know the answer to that. Start with the introduction, which explains why I wrote the rest of the pages:

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

=====
*               Agent Orange             *
*            orange@orange-papers.info         *
*      AA and Recovery Cult Debunking    *
*   http://www.orange-papers.info/   *
* Heisenberg said, "I'm not really sure if    *
* that even was Shrödinger's cat.   I think  *
* he might have used somebody else's cat..." *

[ Pamela's second letter: ]

WELL I'VE BEEN INVOLVED IN AA FOR 13 YEARS AND I WAS THROUGH TREATMENT AND COUNSELING OVER THE YEARS AND AT NO TIME HAVE I EVER EXPERIENCES WHAT YOU DESCRIBED IN YOUR INTRO.

I AM NOT A DIE HARD, AND PROBABLY WOULD OF LEFT IF THE AA PEOPLE CAME ONTO ME LIKE YOU DESCRIBE, BUT THEY NEVER AT 100'S OF MEETINGS I'VE ATTENDED ALL OVER WISCONSIN HAVE THEY EVER DISPLAYED WHAT YOU DESCRIBED AS "CULTISH BEHAVIORS". NEITHER DID THE TREATMENT CENTERS OR COUNSELORS I'VE BEEN TO.

As Carl Sagan liked to say, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Just because you were lucky to not see the bad side of Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

I get lots of reports of bad stuff. Alas, some of the most dramatic stuff reads like,
"This is the program I'm in, and these are the horrible things that are going on. But please don't print this letter or I'll get in big trouble."
That leaves me in the position where I know more than I'm telling. I really wish I could print those letters, but I can't.

Besides, further down in this letter you change your mind and start describing such cultish behavior in your own A.A. group.

I HAVE NEVER PICKED UP A DRINK SINCE 4-19-89 13 YEARS NOW, AND I OWE IT TO THE WONDERFUL LOVING PEOPLE IN AA. ANOTHER POINT IT HAS SAVED MY MARRIAGE, AND TWO OF MY BROTHER'S AND THERE FAMILIES.

Congratulations on your sober time. You did it. Nobody else did it for you. Nobody but you holds your hand every Saturday night. You don't owe your sobriety to anyone else or anything else but you.

You are confusing cause and effect with coincidence or correlation. A.A. did not make you stop drinking any more than the rooster's crowing makes the sun rise. Why didn't you just tell the A.A. members to drop dead, go away, and quit interfering in your life, like so many other people do? Because you were sick and tired of being sick and tired, and wanted to quit. So you did quit. You get the credit for that, not A.A..

This is a common problem. People imagine that if they did some of the Twelve Steps, and then they quit drinking, that the Twelve Steps made them quit drinking. It's also called Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc. Meaning: It happened after 'something', so it must have been caused by that 'something'. Not valid logic at all.

Now I'm sure that you are quite convinced that somehow either the 12 steps or A.A. meetings or the Big Book or something "made" you quit drinking, but they didn't. All of the fair and unbiased tests of A.A. have shown it be be completely ineffective. It has a zero percent success rate. Even one of the members of the Board of Trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., Professor George Vaillant of Harvard University, discovered that when he tried to show that A.A. treatment of alcoholics works. Instead, he found that A.A. kills. He came up with a zero percent success rate for A.A., coupled with the highest death rate of any of the programs that he examined.

Read my answer to Brian, another A.A. old-timer, for more on this subject.

NOTHING IS PUSHED, NO ONE IS KICKED OUT, NO WEIRD VOODOO IS GOING ON. AND DEFIANTLY NO SPECIFIC RELIGION IS PUSHED, YOU CHOSE YOUR OWN CONCEPT OF GOD.

You choose your own concept of God, and then your sponsor corrects it and tells you what you should really believe. It just is not possible to Work The Steps unless you believe in a willful micro-managing, order-dictating, wish-granting, prayer-answering, defect-removing, message-transmitting, authoritarian God. Check out The Bait And Switch Con Game.

YOU CHOSE YOUR OWN BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY WE DIDN'T DO A GOOD JOB MANAGING OUR OWN LIVES WITH THE "BEAST THOUGHTS" YOU TALKED ABOUT, SO WE TURN IT OVER TO SOMETHING THAT HAS OUR BEST INTEREST AT HAND. A PROGRAM TO HELP US LIVE VS DIE FROM OUR OBSESSION TO CONTINUE TO DRINK AND SELF-DESTRUCT.

Just because you royally screwed up once, and made some mistakes, doesn't mean that you can't learn to do it right.

And the ridiculous A.A. theology says that you can use anything as your Higher Power, even a bed pan. Since when does a bed pan have your best interests at heart? Notice the conflict that statement creates. A.A. loves to brag about all of the atheists it has, and how A.A. offers complete religious freedom. But if we accept your statement about "turning it over to Something that has our best interests at heart" then we lose our freedom of religion. We must have a Higher Power who has our best interests at heart (and will do something about it). Thus we get nudged towards belief in the official A.A. version of God. That's an example of the A.A. Religious Freedom to Religious Conformity bait-and-switch strategy.

The idea that you have to "turn it over" and "surrender" is defeatist. Besides,

• When did God say that it was okay for you to turn your will and your life over to Him?
  
• When did God say that He would be happy with you being a quitter, and surrendering and giving up on yourself?
  
• When did God say that He would fix everything for you, while you do nothing but passively wait for him to remove your "moral shortcomings" and "defects of character" in Step Seven?
• When did God say that He *really would* take care of you if you regressed to being a helpless ("powerless") baby?
  

OF COURSE IT IS A "PROGRAM" WITH STEPS AND IDEAS OF HOW TO STAY SOBER. IT IS ONE OF MANY, BUT ONE OF THE MAIN ONE'S THAT WORKS FOR MANY. WHERE YOU GET YOUR SUCCESS RATE FROM AA IS ABSURD.

Like it or not, I get the A.A. failure rate from

1. the A.A. G.S.O.,
2. Bill Wilson, and
3. Professor George Vaillant, who is one of the members of the Board of Trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc..
4. And I also get it from every other good test of A.A. ever done.

THE ODDS OF RECOVERY IN ANY PROGRAM OUR BAD BECAUSE OF THE NATURE OF THE "BEAST/ADDICTION". OF COURSE WHEN YOU GO TO AN AA MEETING THAT'S WHAT THEY DO THERE WORK THE PROGRAM OF AA, IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT LEAVE.

I can leave, but the people who get sentenced to A.A. by a court or parole officer cannot.

IT DOES NOT GO WITHOUT SAYING THERE MIGHT BE SOME SICK GROUPS OUT THERE DOING CULTISH THINGS THAT YOU MAY HAVE BEEN EXPOSED TO, THEN REPORT IT TO NEW YORK AA OFFICES THEY WILL SEND SOMEONE TO MONITOR IT AND DISBAND IT IF IT IS USING THE AA PROGRAM INCORRECTLY.

The A.A. police are powerless over A.A.'s "loving therapists and counselors", aren't they? A.A. can't fire them for malpractice, because A.A. isn't their employer. All that A.A. can do is delist the most obnoxious of groups, isn't it? Besides, the things I described in the introduction are standard A.A. dogma, like "You are not really sober; you are only abstaining, if you aren't going to meetings and doing the 12 steps." Nobody is going to get kicked out of A.A. for pushing stuff like that.

COUNSELORS THAT SHOVE THINGS DOWN PATIENTS THROUGHTS IS THAT COUNSELORS BELIEF NOT A AGENT OF AA IN DISGUISE. IT'S THAT COUNSELORS WAKO IDEAS AND CONTROL ISSUES TO FORCE HIS PATIENT TO DO AS HE THINKS IS BEST. HE DOES NOT REPRESENT AA EVEN THOUGH HE PUSHES "THEIR VIEW".

No, they are not agents of A.A. in disguise. They are agents of A.A. and N.A. in plain sight. They don't hide their membership in, or love of, 12-step organizations. They openly declare that they are recovering in A.A. or N.A., and going to meetings all of the time, and declare that you must, too.

AA GETS REPRESENTED UNFORTUNATELY BY A LOT OF WAKO PEOPLE, BUT TO JUDGE A GOOD GOAL WHICH AA HAS, TO OFFER ONE WAY OF ALCOHOLICS TO ACHIEVE SOBRIETY, WHAT BAD CAN COME OF THAT TO HELP PEOPLE LIVE.

Unfortunately, all kinds of bad things can come from it. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. A.A. kills. Read on.

THE TWELVE STEPS HELP THOSE WHO DON'T KNOW HOW TO WORK THROUGH ISSUES SUCH AS YOU DID.

The Twelve Steps are a formula for building a cult religion, period.

SOME ARE FROM LOWER LIFE STYLES WHO HAVE NO CLUE, AND NEED HELP WITH STEP BY STEP WORKING THROUGH SOME PRETTY HAUNTING EXPERIENCES AND GUILT IN THEIR LIVES. BY WORKING THE STEPS WHICH IS IN SIMPLISTIC EASE FORM HELPS MANY PEOPLE BE FREE FROM PAIN AND PAST HAUNTINGS. AS WELL AS SHAME, GUILT, REMORSE OF WHAT WE DID, WHICH BY THE WAY IS ONE OF THE REASON'S AN ALCOHOLIC CONTINUES TO ABUSE THEMSELVES WITH ALCOHOL BECAUSE THEY FEEL LIKE A PIECE OF SHIT AT THE BOTTOM OF SOMEONE'S SHOE.

The Twelve Steps cause more guilt, not less.

AA HAS THE MOST UNCONDITIONALLY LOVING HUMAN BEINGS I'VE EVER FOUND.

The "unconditional love" concept is itself another cult trap. It means that you cannot feel your own feelings — you must always just smile and pretend that you love everybody else. The slogan is, "Don't take somebody else's inventory." See what Kramer and Alstad had to say about it.

CALL DAY NIGHT, RICH OR POOR, MONEY NO MONEY, UGLY OR PRETTY, DOESN'T MATTER THEY WANT TO HELP FREE OF CHARGE NO CATCH EXCEPT THE WONDERFUL GOOD FEELING OF PURPOSE AND USEFULNESS IN LIFE. PLUS THE NEW COMER REMINDS THEM OF WHAT THEY DON'T WANT TO GO BACK TO AND IT HELPS THEM STAY SOBER SEEING A NEW COMER'S PAIN 1ST COMING INTO A MEETING.

Yes, some of the people in A.A. are compassionate and well-meaning. But that does not mean that the over-all effect of the organization is good.

THE PROGRAM IS SPIRITUAL IT DOESN'T LIE ABOUT THAT, BUT IT CERTAINLY NEVER SAY "YOU MUST BELIEVE THIS OR ELSE YOUR GOING TO HAVE TO LEAVE!" THAT'S ABSURD.

Absurd? Then why did Bill Wilson brag about doing it? In his second book, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Bill wrote the story of Ed the atheist, whom Bill and the other A.A. elders drove out of A.A. for refusing to believe in God as Bill dictated. And more to the point now, Bill then said that the proper strategy to follow now was to keep the unbelievers in A.A., and convert them into believers.

Bill Wilson most assuredly insisted that we had to believe all kinds of things. Just read chapter 4 of the Big Book, "We Agnostics" for a non-stop rave about how we all have to discard "Reason" and human intelligence, and just "have faith" in Bill's favorite delusions.

The claim that you don't have to believe anything is a bait-and-switch stunt — first you don't have to believe, and then you do. First, A.A. tells you that "A.A. requires no beliefs," but then you have to believe everything they tell you, and have blind faith in the proclamations of Bill Wilson:

I was beginning to see that I would require implicit faith, like a small child, if I was going to get anywhere.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, The News Hawk, Page 259.

THE MEETINGS AND COUNSELORS YOU WERE EXPOSED TO ARE A SMALL FEW WHO HAVE WACKED OUT A GOOD PURPOSE INTO THEIR OWN AGENDA'S. ALL GROUPS OF POLITICAL, RELIGIOUS, OR ANY OTHER LARGE GROUPS ALWAYS HAVE A HANDFUL OF WACKO'S. TO JUDGE THE WHOLE THING IS NOT FAIR.

One of the problems with A.A. is that any group can do anything. Nobody is in control. We have to judge the whole, because it is the whole that is promoting the whole thing, including the wackos.

You can't hide behind the excuse that you aren't responsible for what other groups do. That's the standard A.A. blame game:
1.) We won't accept any blame for what other groups do. We have no control over them. It isn't our fault.
2.) We will take credit for all of the good things that other groups do. Aren't we wonderful? Isn't A.A. wonderful?

BILL WILSON WAS A SPIRITUAL PERSON WHO'S EXPERIENCES AND BELIEF'S I'VE COME TO BE SHOWN IN MY OWN LIFE NOT BY AA, BUT BY GOD WHOM IS MY HIGHER POWER. SO IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE IN GOD YOUR EXPERIENCE WON'T HAVE THE SAME EFFECT AS BILL'S, BUT TO SAY HE IS WRONG FOR WHAT HE EXPERIENCED AS WELL AS MANY 100'S OF 1,000'S OF PEOPLE SINCE HIM, IS WRONG ON YOUR PART. WE ALL FIND OUR WAY DIFFERENTLY. BILL HAPPENED TO HAVE ONE WAY.

Bill Wilson was a con artist, a thief, a liar, a fraud, and a phony holy man, not a spiritual person. He took, not gave. After he got done robbing A.A., he never had to work again. Read about how he stole the Big Book and the Big Book publishing fund and set himself up with a lifetime income.

Bill's "spiritual" cure for alcoholism was a hoax. All he did was repackage Frank Buchman's cult religion to create Alcoholics Anonymous. Bill knew that he was faking the numbers and cooking the books when he bragged about how successful his "spiritual method" for treating alcoholism was.

DON'T BASH SOMETHING THAT'S FREE AND HARMLESS.

It is not harmless. A.A. kills. Professor Vaillant proved that. So did several other researchers.

A.A. is also not free. Oh, yes, the open meetings are. But it isn't free when they charge your health insurance plan for at least $1500 for "alcoholism treatment" while they indoctrinate you with the 12-step religion.

And did you know that 12-step "treatment" centers like Hazelden and The Betty Ford Clinic charge prices like $15,000 for a 28-day stay which emphasizes indoctrination in the 12 steps? That isn't free at all. That's a bloody fortune.

UPDATE: 2014.12.16: The prices have gone up to $30,000 to $40,000 for 28 days in celebrity rehabs.

YOU CAN JOIN OR NOT, YOU DON'T OWE MONEY IF YOU DON'T WANT TO, LEADERS CHANGE AND THEIR GOAL IS SERVICE TO GIVE BACK WHAT THEY SO FREELY RECEIVED FROM THE OTHER LOVING PEOPLE OF AA. GIVING IS BAD? I WAS EXTREMELY GRATEFUL TO THE PEOPLE OF AA WHO STAYED UP WITH ME IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT TALKING TO ME WHEN I WANTED TO DRINK. TRYING TO TALK ME OUT OF KILLING MYSELF. ALL FOR FREE AND TO HELP THEM FEEL GOOD ABOUT GIVING AND STAY SOBER BECAUSE THEY NEVER WANTED TO FEEL THE WAY I FELT AGAIN. WHAT'S THE "CULTY" CATCH?

I have always said that having some friends who give you moral support and encouragement can be very good. But real friends do not then turn around and try to convert you to their cult religion.

I WAS EXPOSED TO ONE GROUP THAT THE REST OF US HEARD WAS CULTISH. ONE GUY WHO WAS VERY CHARISMATIC STARTED A GROUP AND HE WAS VERY INTIMIDATING AND PREYED ON PEOPLE WHO WERE LONERS OR PEOPLE WHO WANTED TO FIT IN TO CLICKS OR BE POPULAR BUT NEVER WAS. HE TOOK TERRIBLE ADVANTAGE OF THEM. 4TH STEPS WERE SHAMEFUL, AND THEY WERE TREATED LIKE ARMY RECRUITS ETC. NOW I COULD HAVE TURNED FROM AA, BUT THAT WAS NOT AA, THAT WAS ONE WACKO CONTROL FREAK HARMING MANY GOOD PEOPLE. THEY WERE SHUT DOWN.

What did you just say? They were shut down? How?

• What happened to "every group is independent"? How do the A.A. police stop people from meeting?
• Who is the big boss who dictates which groups will be shut down?
• How does he decide who will get shut down? What are the standards? What are the rules, and where are they published?
• How do they enforce the shutdown?
• What happened to the rap about how you are not responsible for what other groups do, and can't take any blame for what they do, because you have no control over them?
• Now you tell me that you do have control over them, and can shut them down if you don't like what they are doing?

OPEN YOUR MIND UP WOULD YOU. STOP BEING PARANOID AND SUPERSTITIOUS.

You had better look in the mirror. It isn't me who is trying to sell superstition, "spirituality", and faith healing.

SO YOU HAD SEVERAL BAD EXPERIENCES I AM SORRY FOR THAT, BUT GESH THE WEIRD EXTREME COMMENTS ARE SO DISTORTED AND UNTRUE IT'S BORDER LINING ON SICK YOURSELF. PARANOID SKIZO OR SOMETHING. I'M SORRY, BUT MY BROTHER IS PARANOID SKIZO AND HE HAS VERY WAY OUT IDEAS. HE'S NOT CAPABLE OF SEEING PEOPLE ON A SMALL LEVEL CAN RUIN A LARGE GROUP BY MISREPRESENTING THE LARGE GROUP. HE JUST TAKES IT AS "ALL AA" IS A CULT.

So are you telling me that your own brother criticizes you for being a cult member?

THAT IS TO GENERALIZING TO ASSUME SUCH A SIMPLISTIC IDEA. ALL WHITES ARE PREJUDICE, ALL BLACKS ARE POOR, WHAT! TO GENERAL, AND NOT TRUE! WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR FACTS, SOME OTHER WACKO PERSON. YOU SHOULD BASE YOUR RESEARCH ON A COUPLE 100 PEOPLE QUESTIONNAIRE VS A SMALL GROUP OR OTHER WACKO'S WITH YOUR OWN EXPERIENCES SIDING TOGETHER AND JUDGING A TRULY GOOD FUNCTION TO HELP OTHER ALCOHOLICS ACHIEVE SOBRIETY.

Where do I get my facts? Well, among other places, from the "wacko" leaders of Alcoholics Anonymous, like the G.S.O. and Professor Vaillant. Also from the Big Book. Also from Bill Wilson's other books like 12x12 and Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age. And from a lot more books. See the bibliography.

You sound like you are now recommending some good, fair, scientific testing of A.A., just like all of the stuff I have described in the web page on The Effectiveness of the Twelve Step Treatment. The idea is that you take 200 alcoholics, or 1000 alcoholics, and put half of them in the A.A. program, and give the other half nothing — no treatment at all, and then, after a year or several years, you compare the two groups, and see how well they did. When that test was done, the group that received no treatment at all did better than the A.A. group. That has happened repeatedly, in several different tests.

THAT'S THE BAD AND CULT YOU THINK THEY ARE? HELPING OTHERS BY NOT THINKING OF OURSELVES IS NOT WRONG. WHEN WE DRANK WE HURT A LOT OF PEOPLE BY OUR SELFISH ACT OF DRINKING AND THE PAIN WE CAUSED OUR FAMILIES TO WORRY ABOUT US IS UNBELIEVABLE. THEY DON'T SAY WE SHOULD FEEL SHAME, ETC. WE ALREADY DO YOU IDIOT! WE COME THERE TO TALK ABOUT THE EXISTING SHAME AND GUILT DRINKING CAUSED US AND TO WORK THROUGH IT. YOUR MISSING THE WHOLE POINT OF THE AA PROGRAM, YOU DON'T GET IT AT ALL.

I do get it. I understand exactly what A.A. is supposed to be. Unfortunately, that is not what it is.

MY OPINION IS BASED SOULY ON MY OWN EXPERIENCES WITH AA. I DON'T VOLUNTEER, NOR AM I A DIE HARD. I ATTEND MEETINGS ONCE A WEEK JUST TO MAINTAIN MY POSITIVE OUT LOOK AND TO HELP OTHERS IF THEY NEED A HELPING HAND. MANY DON'T HAVE FAMILY OR FRIENDS LEFT, AND MANY ARE SO FAR FROM A SPIRITUAL PROGRAM AND LOST AND HOPELESS THEY NEED A FRIEND. IT'S LIKE A BIG BROTHER OR BIG SISTER PROGRAM IN A SENSE. WE LOVE PEOPLE WHO HAS NO ONE LEFT OR WHO CAN'T LOVE THEMSELVES UNTIL THEY CAN LOVE THEMSELVES AND WANT TO LIVE AND NOT KILL THEMSELVES ANYMORE. "LOVE" IS FREE AND AA'S BASIS IS TO GIVE AWAY WHAT WE WERE SO FREELY GIVEN BY PEOPLE WHO LOVED US TILL WE COULD LOVE OURSELVES. BILL EXPLAINED SOME PROFOUND EXPERIENCES HE HAD, SOME "LIFE TRUTHS" THAT ALTERED HIS THINKING TREMENDOUSLY. CULT NO, A BLESSING THAT HELPED HIM STOP DRINKING. WHO CARES IT HELPED HIM AND WAS FOR THE SOUL GOOD OF HIM. ANYTHING THAT DOESN'T HURT US AND IS FOR GOOD IS GOOD.

Bill Wilson had some experiences all right, but it is questionable just how profound they were. While Bill was in Towns' Hospital, sick, detoxing, going through delirium tremens and alcohol withdrawal, and whacked out on medications, the Oxford Group cult attacked his mind and converted Bill into one of their own. Undoubtedly, Bill's "religious experience" and conversion to Buchmanism were helped by the hallucinogenic drugs like belladonna that Dr. Silkworth gave Bill.

I HAVE HAD THE SUDDEN SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE BILL TALKED ABOUT, SOME DO SOME DON'T. I WAS SAVED BY MY GOD NOT BY AA. THIS IS MY PERSONAL BELIEF. GOD LEAD ME TO AA BECAUSE HE KNEW I'D BE HELP THERE. MAYBE YOU WOULDN'T WHO KNOWS, MOVE ON AND STOP TRYING TO MAKE A MOUNTAIN OUT OF A MOLE HILL. IT'S SO DISTORTED. IT'S LIKE THE WACKO'S WHO WATCH THESE CARTOONS MADE FOR KIDS. THINKING THEY SEE A SEX ORGAN ON A CHARACTER OR SOMETHING. LIKE A KID SEES THAT. IT'S THE ADULTS WARPED SICK MIND THEY HAVE THAT SEES IT AND HAULERS ABOUT IT THEN THE KIDS SEE IT THEN IT EFFECTS THE KIDS. THE KIDS IF NOT POINTED IT OUT BY SOME WACKO THEY WOULDN'T EVEN OF PAID ATTENTION TO IT. SO IT WAS A ACCIDENT IN A DRAWING. EVEN IF IT WAS INTENTIONAL WHO CARES IN MY HOUSE I WOULDN'T DRAW ATTENTION TO IT CUZ THAT'S WHAT THE PERSON WOULD WANT YOU TO DO. THIS WAY IF I DON'T MY KIDS WON'T KNOW AND WON'T BE EFFECTED. IF OTHER KIDS SAY THEIR PARENTS TOLD THEM TO LOOK FOR THIS SICK THING ON A CARTOON THEN I WOULD HAVE TO EXPLAIN TO MY KIDS. IF YOU DRAW ATTENTION TO IT, IT BECOMES A BIGGER PROBLEM THAN JUST LETTING OTHERS HAVE THEIR VIEWS.

Are you trying to tell me that everything will be okay if I just don't criticize Alcoholics Anonymous? The problems will all go away if we don't talk about them?

I AM NOT AN ACTIVIST. I JUST HAVE A BROAD MIND AND I AM NOT A CONTROL FREAK PEOPLE HAVE ALL SORTS OF PLACES TO GO TO SOBER UP AND DO WHAT THEY WANT, SO LET THEM. WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL. I DON'T AGREE WITH ALL OF THEM, BUT I DON'T WANT TO BAD MOUTH THEM, I JUST DON'T GO THERE PLAIN AND SIMPLE.

PLEASE CORRECT ME IF I'M OFF BASE, BUT FROM WHAT I READ YOU ARE VERY DISTURBED AND DISTORTED IN YOUR FINDINGS AND VIEWS.

Okay, have I corrected enough of your thinking yet?

Oh well, have a good day anyway. Thanks for writing.

— Orange

[Letter 3:]

YOU ARE MISSING SO MANY THINGS. YOUR MISINTERPRETING SO CLEARLY IT'S RIDICULOUS.

A.A. DIDN'T SOBER ME UP AND STOP MY DRINKING. NO KINDING! I GOT SICK AND TIRED OF BEING SICK AND TIRED. AA IS A SUPPORT SYSTEM OF LOVING PEOPLE THAT WHEN I GET THE OBSESSION EARLY ON TO DRINK OR THE TEMPTATION TO DRINK I CAN GO TO A MEETING AND TALK ABOUT IT. THE OBSESSION LESSONS AND I ALSO HEAR STORIES OF REMINDERS OF HOW TERRIBLE IT WAS OUT THERE. THIS REMINDS ME I DON'T WANT TO GO BACK THERE AGAIN. IT ALSO GIVES ME AN OPPORTUNITY TO HELP A NEW PERSON STAY SOBER TODAY. HELP NOT DO IT FOR THEM. AA CAN'T IN AN OF ITSELF KEEP ME FROM DRINKING WHO SAID IT COULD. IT IS THE PERSON WHO TAKES PERSONAL ACTION TO NOT PICK UP THE FIRST DRINK. AA IS A SUPPORT SYSTEM TO HELP ME DO THAT. MOST "NORMAL PEOPLE" DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT IT'S LIKE TO OBSESS OVER ALCOHOL AND THE WAY IT MAKES US FEEL. IT'S AN ESCAPE AND A STATE OF MIND THAT IS WHERE THERE IS NOT A FEELING IN THE WORLD OR CARE IN THE WORLD. AA PEOPLE UNDERSTAND AND DON'T JUDGE ME AS BEING CRAZY AS "NORMAL DRINKERS" DO. THEY JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND AND THEY SHAME ALCOHOLICS WITHOUT KNOWING.

You are displaying a number of the standard cult attitudes:

1. We are different from outsiders ("normies").
2. Only another cult member understands.
3. Outsiders will persecute you — they will shame you — so you can't trust anybody but another cult member.

But I wasn't writing about your ideas of alcoholism; I was writing about Bill Wilson's ideas and the standard A.A. dogma, because that's what all of the other groups are pushing, and that's what gets shoved on the newcomers. And that's what is being sold in the Big Book. Also, note that no matter how enlightened your understanding of A.A. or alcoholism may be, the ridiculous declarations of Bill Wilson in the first 164 pages of the Big Book will not be changed, updated, or fixed at all. AAWS just released the fourth edition of the Big Book, and they didn't fix a single one of Bill's delusions. Not one. And they won't fix them in the fifth or sixth editions, either, because they consider Bill's religious babbling to be sacred scripture that simply cannot be changed.

POWERLESS AND UNMANAGEABLE MEANS UNDER THE INFLUENCE. NOT WHILE SOBER! WHEN WE DRINK WE WANT ANOTHER DRINK AND SO ON AND SO FORTH. WHEN WE DRINK THE RENT DOESN'T GET PAID, THE HOUSE FORECLOSES, THE FAMILY GETS HURT, WE GET DUI'S ETC. ALCOHOL MEANS MORE TO US THAN LIFE ITSELF WHEN WE ARE UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF IT, WE WOULD GIVE UP LIFE ITSELF TO KEEP DRINKING ONCE IT'S IN US. WE DO THINGS WE NORMALLY WOULDN'T DO IF SOBER. THE THEORY IS CORRECT I AM POWERLESS AND LIFE BECOMES UNMANAGEABLE ONCE I DRINK. THIS IS A REMINDER AND ADMISSION STEP TO THAT FACT. NOTHING MORE. WE ARE ALSO POWERLESS OVER SOMEONE ELSE THAT CHOOSES TO DRINK. WE CAN'T STOP THEM.

I agree that I am powerless over alcohol after I get 6 or 8 drinks in me. I just want to really go for it and *really* feel good. "The hell with tomorrow; don't worry about tomorrow; don't think about how you will feel tomorrow; let's just feel grand tonight."

But that is *not* what Bill Wilson was talking about when he made up Step One.
Bill Wilson did not say that "POWERLESS AND UNMANAGEABLE MEANS UNDER THE INFLUENCE."
That is your own interpretation of Step One, not the official A.A. interpretation. Bill was using Frank Buchman's Oxford Group "principle" that "You have been defeated by sin, and are powerless over it. You are insane, and only being changed will restore you to sanity." (Being changed into one of Frank's followers, that is...)

The usual A.A. lecture on "powerlessness" says that you have no control over alcohol, drunk or sober, period. A.A. dogma says that you cannot keep from taking that first drink, no matter how much you may wish to stay sober. Bill Wilson was quite insistent on that point. He wrote in the Big Book:

As soon as I regained my ability to think, I went carefully over that evening in Washington.   ...   I now remembered what my alcoholic friends [Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith] had told me, how they had prophesied that if I had an alcoholic mind, the time and place would come — I would drink again. They had said that though I did raise a defense, it would one day give way before some trivial reason for having a drink. Well, just that did happen and more, for what I had learned of alcoholism did not occur to me at all. I knew from that moment that I had an alcoholic mind. I saw that will power and self-knowledge would not help in those strange mental blank spots. I had never been able to understand people who said that a problem had them hopelessly defeated. I knew then. It was a crushing blow.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 3, More About Alcoholism, pages 41-42.

AA HAS BEEN A PLACE I GO TO HELP ME STOP DRINKING IT DID NOT IN AND OF ITSELF STOP ME. MOST AA'S THINK THE SAME THING. IT "HELPS" NOT END ALL BE ALL. OF COURSE WE TAKE CREDIT FOR STOPPING AND CHOOSING TO STAY SOBER.

Good. It sounds like your group is saner than average. But that stuff is not the official A.A. position, or the teachings of Bill Wilson, or what the average coerced newcomer is indoctrinated with. And it isn't what other A.A. proponents are selling. Check out Jillian Sandell's article on "powerlessness".

POWERLESS DOESN'T MEAN SITTING AND WAITING FOR GOD TO TAKE A MAGIC WOUND AND CHANGE OUR LIFE. ACTION TO CHANGE MUST COME FROM US "WE DO THE FOOT WORK" THE OUTCOME AND POWER COMES FROM GOD AND US WORKING TOGETHER.

I agree that the Lord helps those who help themselves. But, the fact remains that the only part of the Twelve Steps that actually says anything about really fixing you is Step Seven, where you beg God to remove all of your "defects of character" and "moral shortcomings". You don't do anything to fix yourself. You just beg God and then passively wait for God to fix you. There is no "plan B". (The fact that you have your own, better, ideas about self-healing does not change what the Twelve Steps actually, really, say. This isn't a game of "Words mean just what I choose them to mean.")

NONE of the Twelve Steps actually tell you to heal yourself or to fix yourself (or to quit drinking, or to help anyone else quit drinking). Quite the opposite: the Steps tell you to hurt yourself:

1. Induce feelings of helplessness, self-doubt, and inadequacy by "admitting" that you are powerless (Step One), and by
2. declaring that you cannot manage your own life (Step One), and by
3. declaring that you are insane (Step Two).
4. Surrender your will and your life to the cult (Step Three).
5. Induce feelings of guilt by making lists of every sin or mistake you ever committed in your entire life, and then confess them all to somebody else (Steps Four through Ten). That really messes with people's minds; it doesn't heal them.
6. Induce more feelings of self-doubt and inadequacy by coming to believe that you are so terribly defective and flawed that only God can remove all of your defects and shortcomings (Steps Six and Seven).
7. Induce an attitude of passive dependency and infantile narcissism by just begging God to solve all of your problems for you and take care of you (Steps Three, Six, and Seven).
8. Induce more guilt by making lists of everyone you ever harmed or offended (Step Nine).
9. Dabble in the occult, and practice channelling (Step Eleven) and become delusional, imagining that the noises in your head are The Voice of God, talking to you all day long, and telling you what to do.
10. Become more delusional, by imagining that you have had a spiritual experience or spiritual awakening from practicing Bill's cult religion (Step Twelve).

Those problems with the Twelve Steps are likely the reason why A.A. treatment has a higher death rate than no treatment at all.

I HAVE A MEETING I WILL ADDRESS MORE LATER.

Good. I'll be around. Email anytime.

[Letter 4 from Pamela D.:]

the 12 steps are just tools to help us through a process of grief from the wreckage of our past drinking.  it is helpful to help us deal with our lives.

No, they are actually tools for converting people into members of a cult religion. Those "tools" served Frank Buchman, who invented them, very well while he built up his cult in the nineteen-twenties and -thirties. Then Bill Wilson learned that cult technology from the Oxford Groups while he and Doctor Bob were members of that cult.

the program is full of paradoxes.  by being powerless and turning our lives over to a higher power, our higher power gives us the power to be a better person. 

Baloney. "The program" is full of contradictions, errors and outright lies. A.A. members say all kinds of things, and when you catch them in contradictions and inconsistencies, they say that it's just a paradox, just a wonderful paradox.

For example, you began your second letter by insisting that you had never, in your 13 years in A.A., ever seen the kind of abuses I had described in the introduction. But before you finished that letter, you were describing even worse abuses that you had seen with your own eyes. That is a contradiction, not a paradox.

And declaring powerlessness does not paradoxically make people more powerful. It weakens people, and undercuts their ability to stay sober. That is one of the ways in which Alcoholics Anonymous indoctrination increases the death rate of alcoholism. That has been clearly established by good, impartial, tests of the Alcoholics Anonymous program.

All of that jabber about paradoxes is just another cult stunt designed to make you stop thinking. If everything is paradoxical, and defies logic, then what is the use of trying to think?

it sounds as though your agnostic or atheist.  i'm not sure. 

No, I'm not. Actually, it is none of your business what my religious beliefs are, and they should not be relevant to a discussion of whether a treatment program for alcoholism actually works. But just for your information, I am neither an atheist nor an agnostic. I just try to be sane and realistic in my religious beliefs. (If A.A. is not a religion, why do you care so much about my religious beliefs?)

however, no you can't have a door knob etc. for a higher power, but it is said that way because the logic is to not make the newcomer think were a religious organization going to be pushing "God stuff" on him.  that is not our intent. 

So, you admit that you deceive the newcomers, to keep them from getting the wrong idea?
You hide the intense religiosity of the Alcoholics Anonymous program from the newcomers by telling them things that you know are not true at all (lies), like that they are free to pray to a doorknob?

That is called "deceptive recruiting", and it is a standard practice of most all evil cults.

That is also a good example of the Bait-and-Switch con games of Alcoholics Anonymous. First, you tell the newcomer that he can believe in anything, even Doorknob Almighty, but that is really just a mind game designed to fool him into thinking that you are open-minded and tolerant of other viewpoints. Eventually, he will learn that he has to believe in the Alcoholics Anonymous version of God in order to work the 12 steps.

again since when have i ever or anyone i know experienced a sponsor stating that's fine believe in the door knob, but later telling me i have to believe in God or i will drink again.  what!  if some one individual is doing this that is there wrong not aa. 

I've read and heard plenty of stuff that contradicts what you are saying. A.A. literature contains stories of people doing things like using a bedpan as their Higher Power. And again, just because you haven't seen something happening doesn't mean that it is not happening.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

And yes, such ridiculous behavior "is A.A.". All of the stuff that is done by A.A. members is A.A.. You can't always use the dodge that it isn't A.A. because you don't like it, or The Council doesn't approve of it, or it goes against The Traditions, or something. If A.A. members are doing it in A.A. meetings, or doing it to the newcomers, then that really *is* A.A..

And even if it is just thinly-veiled propagandists like Jeff Jay, Jillian Sandell, or Warfield and Goldstein publishing ridiculous cult philosophy lectures and spreading misinformation about alcoholism, that is still a part of the larger Alcoholics Anonymous organization.

aa has specific traditions and groups are not supposed to be run that way.  nor is anything to be crammed down any ones throats so if it is being tell the person to run and go to a different group.  for crying out loud it's a free program and it's a support group. 

A.A. has some "traditions", but they are pretty meaningless. Members violate them whenever they feel like it. So does the A.A. leadership. Read Anthony's and Mitchell K.'s descriptions of A.A.W.S. at work.

we are not professionals we are basic human beings trying to stay sober one day at a time.  you read way too much into this.  many things in this world probably seem cultish to you.  doesn't mean it is. 

I'm reading too much into it? Or are you not reading enough into it? Aren't you playing ostrich, keeping your head stuck in the sand, refusing to see any problems with A.A.? (You are in denial.)

Let me ask you one question: When was the last time you called a judge on the phone and strongly insisted that he never sentence another person to A.A. meetings, because A.A. is just a free, voluntary support group, not a cult religion or a cure for alcoholism, and you don't want people forced to go to your meetings? Did you ever do that? Did you ever write letters of protest to the court, complaining about coerced A.A. attendance? Or do you just happily sign all of those court slips, while pretending that it isn't your fault that people are coerced into A.A.?

If you really believed in freedom of religion, you would sign the slips at the beginnings of the meetings, so that the coerced people could leave immediately. Have you ever done that?

I know of one guy who did that. He said that he didn't really want coerced people there; that it was a violation of the traditions. He said that they were free to stay after they got their slips signed, if they wanted to, but they didn't have to. They were free to go if they wanted to. Heck, he even told them to bring a big handful of different-colored pens the next time, and he would use the pens to sign off on all of their meetings at once, to save them the trouble of coming back again.

But before you take the credit for his enlightened behavior, let me tell you that he quit A.A. and hates it, because of the sponsors killing mental patients by telling them to stop taking their medications, and then those mental patients committed suicide. He's one of the old-timers who gave me a lot of the dirt on A.A.. And he has been in and out of A.A. for the last 30 years now, so I have no doubts that he knows what he is talking about. (How many years have you been around A.A., 13?)

it's a program with specific biblical based steps to help a person spiritual, mentally, emotionally, and physically heal.  it is not a cure! 

Once again, no it is not. The 12 steps are not Biblical at all. They were derived from the "principles" of Frank Buchman's cult religion, the Oxford Groups. The 12 steps are a formula for brainwashing people into being cult members. Heck, even A.A. literature, like Lois Remembers, by Lois Wilson, describes how Bill Wilson adapted the Six Practices of the Sane from the Oxford Groups to write the Twelve Steps. Really do go read The Religious Roots of the Twelve Steps.

And how can you say that A.A. is not a religion, if you believe that its Steps are based on the Bible? That's another one of those contradictions... Are you going to try to tell me that the Bible is "spiritual, not religious"?

it's a helpful aid.  i don't think anyone in aa has said to me if you don't have aa you won't stay sober. 

Just like how you had never, in your 13 years in A.A., ever seen cultish, abusive, behavior in A.A.?

i happen to have a brother that found religion and that's worked for him, great!  i don't shame him and say that.  to each there own. 

Is that your brother who calls A.A. a cult?

so confusing cause and effect with coincidence or correlation or your other comment.  i do see the cause and effect, it is not a coincidence or a correlation. 

That's wishful thinking. You are seeing what you wish to see, and nothing more.

Please explain *precisely how* you determined that there is a cause-and-effect relationship — not coincidence or correlation —

1. between doing the 12 steps and not drinking, or
2. between going to A.A. meetings and not drinking, or
3. between believing in the A.A. version of God and not drinking...

I really want to hear your answer to that, because all of the doctors and scientists who have tried to establish such a relationship with valid tests have failed to find any such cause and effect relationship. Not even A.A.-trustee Prof. George Vaillant could find any. They all discovered that A.A. does not work at all.

it is fact aa has been helpful in helping me to stay sober.  for one year i stayed away from aa i was depressed and many of my old using behaviors and ways of thinking came back.  i finally decided to go back to aa and it helped with the depression, stress, fears, loneliness, and brought me out of that funk. 

Are you saying that you did a year of sobriety without A.A.? So A.A. is not really essential, is it?

So, you were unhappy without Alcoholics Anonymous?

You are overlooking the fact that there really is such a thing as cult withdrawal. People who leave cults are often miserable, depressed, lonely, and very confused. They don't have anybody to order them around and tell them what to think and what to do, so they feel lost. They aren't surrounded by the cult, so they feel lonely. They don't have the cult telling them that they are special, that they are The Chosen people, doing the Will of God, so they feel like their lives are going nowhere. They feel like existence is pointless. Sometimes, it takes many years to recover from a cult. Or, they don't recover — they relapse and return to the cult, like you did.

it is a positive group getting together for a positive reason.  what is so wrong with that.  so they have specific ways of doing things that's why it's call a program cuz it has one, a program with steps and a founder with 100 other people's input into the big book, it was what worked for many people and still does. 

Worked to do what, exactly? You are all over the map with that one. You have said that it doesn't make people quit drinking, that it doesn't cure alcoholism, and then you say that it works. What works? Precisely what does it do?

that it kills people, your insane that aa kills people.  that's a strong word.  i think people kill people, but the aa program was probably warped out to fit some sick persons needs.  are you not well enough to know sick people from well people and enough to tell people who come to you to seek out a different group or people who are healthy.  i mean gesh!  there are rapists and child molesters i'm sure sitting around those tables just like there are at an ameritech office.  you just can't be so naive to think all groups and individuals in aa are working the aa program as it was structured and intended to help people.

Yes, it is a strong word. But that is what Professor Vaillant (a member of the Board of Trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, remember?) proved with his own research. You keep on repeating the Big Lie that A.A. works, but you provide no proof or evidence to support that statement. I'm providing plenty of evidence to support my statements. Go read the file on The Effectiveness of the Twelve-Step Treatment. All of the valid tests of A.A., even Vaillant's own, have shown that A.A. does not work at all, and in fact, even increases binge drinking and raises the death rate, which means that A.A. kills.

who's a quitter or who said God would fix our shortcomings!  who said that, you did and once again the wrong interpretation is understood by you again.  i'm beginning to see how narrow minded and one tracked you are.  your very biased in your findings and twist things in your very one sided understanding. 

Twisted? Excuse me, but what part of Steps Six and Seven do you not understand?
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

And what part of Bill's sermons do you not understand?

And, while you are accusing others of not understanding things, what part of these two sentences do you not understand?

1. "...there is compelling evidence that the results of our treatment were no better than the natural history of the disease."

2. "Not only had we failed to alter the natural history of alcoholism, but our death rate of three percent a year was appalling."

Now that is plain English, not something all twisted around. You have to do some pretty fancy tap-dancing and twisting of words to turn such an admission of total failure into a declaration that the program works great and saves millions of lives.

others probably have your view too, great, but there is other ways of interpreting this. 

What other ways of interpreting things? Either you speak the truth, or you don't.

if you turn one's will over and defects etc. at no point does that mean your powerless and should be a "baby" and just sit there and wait for the flash of light.  how warped of think and narrow your mind is. 

What part of Step One do you not understand?

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.

And Bill Wilson wrote:

We had approached A.A. expecting to be taught self-confidence. Then we had been told that so far as alcohol is concerned, self-confidence was no good whatever; in fact, it was a total liability. Our sponsors declared that we were the victims of a mental obsession so subtly powerful that no amount of human willpower could break it. There was, they said, no such thing as the personal conquest of this compulsion by the unaided will.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 22.

The fact that you don't like Bill Wilson's teachings changes very little. It is Bill Wilson's opinions, and not yours, that get repeated in every A.A. meeting.

God or a power with "good" as it's goal has a better plan for us than we did when we were drinking, and for some of us even when we sober up. 

Are you trying to imply that A.A. is a power with good as its goal?

You are now pushing a fascist agenda, you know. You are saying that because people made mistakes before, and drank too much, that A.A. should now be allowed to run their lives for them — because it has "a better plan".

some of us still act and behave inappropriately like a drunk even when we stop drinking.  so it is sobering up in all aspects of life.  women stop sleeping around and acting like horrors, men stop hitting on women like they were horrors, and they learn to stop thinking like a drunk by hanging around people who learned to live a more productive moral and ethical life. 

You seem to be getting into the "dry drunk" lecture now. You miss the point that lots of people act terribly even without any help from alcohol. You are also getting into the standard A.A. negative stereotype of "The Alcoholic", "thinking like a drunk". And just how do drunks think? Are you going to tell me that all alcoholics think just like Bill Wilson did?

the big book and bill wilson never once said they didn't believe in God. 

I never said that Wilson didn't believe, in spite of his pretending to have been an unbeliever in chapter four of the Big Book, "We Agnostics". (But that's not too surprising — Bill even pretended to be a woman in the "To Wives" chapter.) What I always said was that Bill Wilson was a crazy religiomaniac — a religious maniac — and a fanatical true believer.

actually it's stated over and over how God in the aa program is the solution.  he states it plan and simple.  however, when God is mentioned to a newcomer sometimes they leave the program before they find out what it's about.  it's the cults and religious wacko's that these people hear about that makes them right away think aa is a cult etc. just cuz they hear the word "God". 

So, you are admitting that you don't tell the newcomers the truth about the God part of the program because you are afraid of what they will think. You are afraid that they will walk out if you tell them the truth. You are admitting that you are practicing deceptive recruiting.

This is how Bill Wilson described that routine:

When first contacted, most alcoholics just wanted to find sobriety, nothing else. They clung to their other defects, letting go only little by little. They simply did not want to get "too good too soon." The Oxford Groups' absolute concepts — absolute purity, absolute honesty, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love — were frequently too much for the drunks. These ideas had to be fed with teaspoons rather than by buckets.
Not-God, Ernest Kurtz, page 46,
and
Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age, William G. Wilson, pages 74-75.

So, Bill Wilson hid the extreme religiosity of his program from the newcomers, sanctimoniously proclaiming that "they didn't want to get too good too soon" when they just wanted to get sober, and did not want to join a fanatical cult religion. You just admitted that you are doing the same thing — practicing deceptive recruiting, hiding the religiosity of the program from the newcomers, because you know that they won't come back if you tell them the truth about what a bunch of religious extremists you really are.

funny thing is the people who stay in aa for many years all have a belief in God and the people who relapse and can't stay sober don't have a God.  many have found this through research. 

Please prove that statement. Where did you get that idea? What test, survey, study, poll, or other "research" told you that the relapsers didn't believe in God, while the sober people did? I mean, REALLY, show me the research. You made the claim, now back it up.

In addition, you are playing the Either/Or propaganda trick:
"Either stay in A.A. and believe in the A.A. version of God, OR ELSE you will relapse and not stay sober."
What happened to the other logical possibilities? What about the people who do not believe in the A.A. God, and who don't go to A.A. at all, but who stay sober anyway? There are millions of them, too, you know. In fact, the Harvard Medical School reported that 80% of those people who successfully quit drinking for a year or more do it alone.

Also, you deny that A.A. is a religion, and yet you also say that those who stay in A.A. for many years all have a belief in God. That's another one of those contradictions...

so who cares if aa loves God and has steps and states that by turning our human will over it will help empower us to be and do better things in our life.  it doesn't just happen cuz we ask.  it's processes of living life better and for the good of people.  loving others "do unto others as they would have done unto you".  each step is taken from the bible actually, so i would challenge you to look into how the steps were formulated and see where they found God stating each one of those steps. 

No, the 12 steps were not formulated from the Bible. They were formulated from the teachings of the Hitler-loving minister Dr. Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman. Have you bothered to read the file on The Religious Roots of the Twelve Steps yet?

there is a bible called the serenity bible showing where each of the steps were taken from the bible and highlights it throughout the bible.  God wants us to come to him as children.  not as a child literally, but with wonder and openness and question. 

Yes, I know about the Serenity Bible. It's another one of those pieces of A.A. propaganda that you should be ashamed of. Here's the Serenity Bible's description of how the A.A. program changes people's religious beliefs:

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.
Serenity, A Companion for Twelve Step Recovery, Complete with New Testament Psalms & Proverbs, Dr. Robert Hemfelt and Dr. Richard Fowler, page 78.

So the A.A. program, which you claim is not a religion, will gradually change newcomers' minds, and shove them through a religious conversion, and make them come to believe in "the one true God" of Alcoholics Anonymous.

see you take things so literal you can't see beyond the statement to the true meaning.  i think there is a disorder that people have that can't let them see cognitively past the face value of a sentence.  maybe you should look into that.

I don't play cultish word games. I believe that words mean what they mean, period. It is cults that claim that everything means something else.

In Alice in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass, Humpty Dumpty said,
"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."
That is fine for fairy tales, but here in the real world us sane people use words to mean specific things, and do not always try to look beyond the words to find the "the true meaning" Maybe you should look into that.

Eric Hoffer wrote about cult doctrines:

When some part of a doctrine is relatively simple, there is a tendency among the faithful to complicate it and obscure it. Simple words are made pregnant with meaning and made to look like symbols in a secret message. There is thus an illiterate air about the most literate true believer. He seems to use words as if he were ignorant of their true meaning. Hence, too, his taste for quibbling, hairsplitting, and scholastic tortuousness.
The True Believer, Eric Hoffer, pages 79 to 80.

Again, we see the practice of looking beyond the words, to find the "true meaning". This is old hat; Hoffer was especially writing about the Nazis, just after World War II.

to generalize again that aa kills.  well, i and many of my aa friends that have been sober using the aa program for 10-20 years are not dead so what!  that is to general and way off  the crazy train path.

How many? During those 20 years, how many thousands of people came looking for help, got disgusted with your "spiritual" program, and went away? How many died after you gave them the standard A.A. misinformation about alcoholism? What has your real success rate been over the last 20 years? Don't just point at a dozen surviving old-timers and then claim that the program works great. You really only have a few dozen left out of thousands, don't you? That is what you call massive failure.

you are a member of aa by walking in the door.  the only requirement for membership it says in the tradition is to want to stop drinking there are dues and fees for membership.  did you ever read the traditions? 

Yes, I've read the traditions. I even own a copy of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, and criticize it in the file "Us Stupid Drunks". Anybody can make up a bunch of phony instant "traditions". It is quite another matter whether people actually practice them.

You haven't really read many of my web pages, have you? If you had, you would know that I criticize A.A. for not following its own traditions, so of course I've read the traditions.

so your references continually go back to your own writings siting others findings, but warping them out.  aa you can come or go, belong don't belong.  so if people are giving aa a bad name and people who your talking to are not smart enough to ask questions of what's truly supposed to be going on then oh well they lose out on something great.

That's funny. You are afraid that stupid people will miss out on your wonderful program?

And you complain about me citing other authors? Bill Wilson is the one I cite the most. But I don't "warp him out".

aa is not religious!  you can be from any denomination, Buddhist, hindu, etc.  all religions have a God, and they all believe that God to be spiritual. 

Wrong again. You just don't know anything about anything about world religions, do you? Buddhism does not believe in a God or any supreme being of any kind. Not all religions are like yours.

And A.A. is most assuredly religious. Just look back through this letter and count all of the times that you have talked about God, and said that God is the answer. That's a religion, no matter how reluctant you are to admit it.

we don't have to agree on who's God just having one is great. 

Sure. Surrender to the great god Lucifer. Give him your soul in trade for him making you quit drinking. It'll be okay, because all gods are just the same. Just having one is great.

again bill wilson formed his steps off the bible and after the oxford group who were a church group trying to stay sober and had had some success with there approach to "helping" not fixing people.

No, once again, the Twelve Steps ARE NOT based on the Bible, they are based on the fascist cult religion of Dr. Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman, the Oxford Groups.

Bill Wilson's own wife Lois wrote about how Bill wrote the 12 steps as part of the Big Book, in December of 1938:

By this time Bill was ready to start the fifth chapter, "How It Works." He was not feeling well, but the writing had to go on, so he took pad and pencil to bed with him. How could he bring the program alive so that those at a distance, reading the book, could apply it to themselves and perhaps get well? He had to be very explicit. The six Oxford Group principles that the Fellowship had been using were not definite enough. He must broaden and deepen their implications. He relaxed and asked for guidance.
      When he finished writing and reread what he had put down, he was quite pleased. Twelve principles had developed — the Twelve Steps.
Lois Remembers, Lois Wilson, Page 113

So give it up. The Twelve Steps are not based on the Bible, or derived from the Bible, at all.

so again i don't agree with your findings, and so lets agree not to agree. 

What's that supposed to mean?
I'm going to continue to tell the truth about A.A., regardless.
I don't know for sure what you will continue to do, but I can guess...

i hope your not hurting people who could have found hope in the help from aa. 

Such arrogance. You blindly dismiss all evidence of A.A. hurting people and increasing the death rate, and just complain that you hope some people haven't been hurt by being warned about the negative side of A.A.? Don't worry. Far more often, I find that people are relieved to hear that they aren't alone when they decide that A.A. is just a crazy cult, and that they'd really rather get sober without A.A., just like I did.

look at the catholic priest's right now.  the churches purpose is good, but some priest don't do good.  is that the catholic church for that priest responsibility for abusing boys, no!  the purpose of catholic belief's is good, but people don't always do good. 

Wrong again. You are displaying bad logic one more time. Yes, the Catholic Church is most assuredly responsible for the child abuse and molestation that has been done by priests. The bishops and cardinals covered it up, and protected the priests, rather than fire them, and even reassigned the priests to other parishes, leaving those priests free to do it all to some other children, again. Cardinal Law just admitted as much, and resigned over it.

As President Harry Truman used to say, "The Buck Stops Here."

Likewise, A.A. is responsible for the bad things that go on in A.A.. You can't just rationalize it all away by saying that nobody is responsible, so lets just forget it.

bill wilson never claimed to be a superstar etc.  aa people are grateful to him that's all, he is a founder that's all.  HE'S WASN'T WEIRD AND FREAKY NOR DID HE SAY STRANGE THINGS.  FURTHERMORE, NOR IS ANYONE IN THE GROUPS I'M IN.

Have you actually read the Big Book? I get all of those weird, freaky quotes of Bill Wilson out of the Big Book and his second book, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. And I don't need to twist any words. He was such a raving lunatic with such outrageous delusions of grandeur that it's pretty easy to make him look weird and freaky just by quoting him. Have you read the file The Funny Spirituality of Bill Wilson and Alcoholics Anonymous? It's loaded with such quotes.

AGAIN LET'S AGREE TO DISAGREE. 

Why?

MY OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE PROVES BEYOND A SHADE OF A DOUBT THAT IT'S AND ADDED HELPFUL SUPPORT SYSTEM. 

Actually, the only thing that your experience really proves is that you like Alcoholics Anonymous. It might even make you feel good, but that does not prove that it is a "helpful support system". You already said that you did a year of sobriety without A.A., so it can't really be very necessary for sobriety.

MANY HAVE BECOME GOOD FRIENDS TO ME.  I'VE WATCHED PLENTY OF PEOPLE USE AA TO HELP TURN THEIR LIVES AROUND.  IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU HAVE A BONE TO PICK WITH THEM.  REMEMBER IT'S YOUR BONE, WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO PROVE OR DESTROY AA. 

Go read the lists. I've already typed them in:

• What's Not Good About A.A..
  
• The 12 Biggest Lies of A.A..
  
• The Bait and Switch Con Game.
  
• Recruiting Mind Games.
  
• The Cult Test.
  

That should do for starters.

YOU EVER HEAR OF THE SAYINGS TO EACH THEIR OWN OR IF IT WORKS DON'T FIX IT.  WELL, MAYBE YOU SHOULD LEAVE IT ALONE CUZ IT WORKS FOR MANY, MANY PEOPLE. 

Well, it is broken, badly broken. It doesn't work as a therapy or quit-drinking program at all. It's a cult religion that uses the legal and medical systems to force more people into its meetings.

I PERSONALLY HAVE AT LEAST 5-10 THAT HAVE SOLD SOBRIETY OVER 10 YEARS WITH THE "HELP" OF AA.  SEE CUZ WITH OUT THE REMINDER OF OUR PROBLEM IF WE DRINK AND WHAT WILL HAPPEN.  SOMETIMES WE FORGET OR CHOSE TO FORGET BECAUSE WERE JUST NOT REMINDED OF IT CUZ WERE NOT THINKING CLEARLY THAT MAYBE WE CAN DRINK AGAIN SOMEHOW SOME DAY.  THE OBESSES OF ALL ALCOHOLICS BY THE WAY.  THEN BAM!  OUT THE BLUE WHEN NOT PREPARED WE THINK ONE DRINK WON'T HURT, AND WE ARE NOT HELD ACCOUNTABLE ALSO WE'VE CONVENIENTLY FORGOT JUST HOW TERRIBLE IT WAS FOR US OUT THERE.  WHAT EVER THE REASON, IT IS JUST HELPFUL TO HAVE A CONTINUED SUPPORT GROUP IN AA. 

Go read the file on the Lizard Brain Addiction Monster. I talk about the same stuff there. A.A. has no monopoly on that kind of information. And you sure don't have to spend the rest of your life in meetings just to understand that the little monster will keep on wanting a drink. You just tell him "No." And that saves a zillion hours wasted in meetings.

IT'S FREE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD AND FUN.  IT BECOMES A FAMILY IN MANY WAYS. 

It isn't free — they want your will and your life, just like any other cult. And yes, it becomes your family, just like any other cult.

SO YOUR ENTITLED TO YOUR OPINION, BUT JUST LIKE THE WEIRDO AA'S YOUR A WEIRDO IN THE OTHER DIRECTIONS.  EXTREMIST AND NARROW MINDED ALWAYS TRYING TO FIND THE BAD IN SOMETHING AND PROVE IT WRONG. 

Once again, it is far more than a matter of just differing opinions. People are being sentenced and otherwise coerced into attending 12-step meetings. How would you like it if you were sentenced to attend *my* re-education program where I will teach you what is wrong with *your* thinking and *your* morals? (And if you don't perform satisfactorily, and please your sponsor so that he sends in good reports on you, then you will be in big trouble, and will probably get put in jail...)

WELL, UNTIL THEY FIND A CURE WITHOUT SOME OF US GOING TO THE GATES OF DEATH TO DRINK AA HELPS THE PROCESS TO HELP SOME WHO OTHERWISE WOULD HAVE DIED. 

Actually, "they" have found a cure, a very simple cure: Just quit drinking, and stay quit.

SO DON'T TELL ME THEY DON'T HELP, THEY NEVER PROFESSED TO BE THE CURE.  THEY JUST WANT TO HELP.  IT'S UP TO THE INDIVIDUAL TO STOP DRINKING AND CHANGE THEIR SHORTCOMINGS. 

Then why do they use the courts to coerce people into joining their organization? Why does the Hazelden Foundation even teach A.A. members to indoctrinate officials with the message that they should send people to A.A.?

SO ALL THIS OTHER GARBAGE IS BACK ASS BACKWARDS AND TWISTED AND WARPED INTERPRETATIONS. 

Tell that to George Vaillant.

PROBLEM A PERSON THAT'S BEEN THERE ONE TIME LOOK FOR ANY EXCUSE NOT TO HAVE TO BE THERE.  TAKING ONE THING SOMEONE SAID AND TWISTING IT.  DOES THAT MAKE IT GOSPEL, NO. 

What on earth are you talking about? You are degenerating into incoherency.

ALCOHOLIC'S ARE IN "DENIAL" REMEMBER WE'LL DO ANYTHING NOT TO HAVE TO GET HELP IF COURTS ARE FORCING US TO GET HELP.  SO WE'LL TELL BAD STUFF JUST TO NOT HAVE TO GO. 

Thanks for once again demonstrating the arrogance of Alcoholics Anonymous. You think that anyone who finds fault with the evils of A.A. is just "in denial" and trying to avoid getting help? Go read the file "Us Stupid Drunks" for more of your attitude.

And now you are also showing that you do like to have the courts sentencing people to your religion — you call it "COURTS ARE FORCING US TO GET HELP." So please do not again pretend that you are innocent in that regard.

IT'S ALL A MISUNDERSTANDING.  SO WHAT IF A COUNSELOR SAYS AA WORKS!  WELL, IT DOES IT GIVES A PERSON A FREE SUPPORT GROUP AND STOPS LONELINESS, SO WHAT'S SO WRONG WITH THAT.  AA TALKS ABOUT NOT HAVING TO DO IT ALONE.  WE "HELP" NOT CURE.

THE PAROLE OFFICER, JUDGE, WHO EVER THAT'S THEIR PROBLEM FOR SENTENCING THE PERSON TO ATTEND AA MEETINGS.  THEY SEND PEOPLE TO COUNSELING FOR CHILD ABUSE ETC.  SO  AA IS A FREE SUPPORT GROUP WITH PEOPLE WITH  THE SAME PROBLEM AS THEM THAT WILL FREELY HELP THEM, SO WHY NOT SEND THEM THERE.  WHAT A WONDERFUL THING AND PURPOSE THEY HAVE IN AA.

A.A. is a religious cult, not a free therapy program. It does not cure or treat alcoholism. It does not work at all, remember?

Treatment of alcoholism is just one excuse that the 12-step religion has for sucking people into the cult. But there are plenty of other excuses, ranging from overeating disorders to sexual obsession to diabetes to being a compulsive gambler. The 12-step program is real snake oil — supposedly able to cure or "treat" anything.

And coercive recruiting is not just the judge's fault, or just the parole officer's fault. The Hazelden Foundation teaches A.A. members to go indoctrinate the judges, police, doctors, and ministers, and tell them to force people into A.A., in order to "help them." And A.A. has been doing that for 60 years now. (And they learned that trick from the Oxford Groups, so it's been going on even longer than that. Ebby Thacher, Bill's sponsor, was recruiting out of a courtroom by the Oxford Groups — specifically by Cebra Graves and Rowland Hazard. Ebby was sentenced by Judge Graves, Cebra's uncle, to try the religious cure for alcoholism, as an alternative to going to jail for habitual drunkenness.)

That is another standard dishonest stunt that A.A. members pull: claim that they aren't individually responsible for the standard practices that they are all collectively doing.
"What, me? I didn't force anybody into A.A.. It was my friend Sam who went and talked to the judge. I just sign the slips when they come to the meetings. I'm innocent."

"YOU ARE NOT REALLY SOBER; YOU ARE ONLY ABSTAINING, IF YOU AREN'T GOING TO AA MEETINGS AND WORKING THE STEPS."  WELL, OH WELL SOMEONE SAID IT.  DOESN'T MEAN YOU HAVE TO BE A AA THUMPER.  LIKE I SAID AA ISN'T A BAD THING AND DOESN'T KILL YAH. 

Yes, you have said it, but you don't know what you are talking about. People who know a lot more than you have said that A.A. does not work and does kill people, including Professor George E. Vaillant, the long-time Trustee of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.. (Oh, and he's still a Trustee, and still telling everybody to go join A.A..)

I'D RATHER BE ADDICTED TO AA THEN TO ALCOHOL IF I HAD A CHOICE TO TELL YAH THE TRUTH.  ONE WILL KILL ME AND ONE AT LEAST WANTS TO HELP SAVE ME. 

Yes, that is the choice that you seem to have made. But it is not an either/or choice. It isn't EITHER spend the rest of your life in A.A. OR ELSE you will suffer death by alcohol. (That's the propaganda trick called "The Either/Or Technique", and it's bad logic.) Most alcoholics who successfully quit drinking don't then substitute addiction to Alcoholics Anonymous for addiction to alcohol. In fact, most alcoholics who quit drinking don't even use Alcoholics Anonymous at all. The vast majority of them take one look at A.A. and walk out, and go do it their own way. And they do just fine anyway.

SO LIKE I SAID YOU CAN'T TAKE EVERYTHING SO SERIOUSLY, LIGHTEN UP. 

Hey, I'm light. Go read my jokes about recovery, and spoofs of A.A..

MANY THINGS YOU CAN AGREE WITH AND THE REST LEAVE.  THAT'S ONE OF THE SAYINGS IN AA "TAKE WHAT YOU WANT AND LEAVE THE REST" 

Yes, I know. It's also one of the standard bait-and-switch stunts. First it's "Take what you want, and leave the rest," and then it's "You can't ever leave." And then it gets even worse: They say that you must do all of Bill Wilson's Twelve Steps all of the time, or else you will die:

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

So much for "Take what you want, and leave the rest."

YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO, SAY, BE ANYTHING IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SO WATCH IT.  I'VE HEARD SOME PRETTY WARP IDEAS OVER THE YEARS ABOUT AA, BUT THE PEOPLE WHO KNOW THE MOST ABOUT IT HAVE BEEN AROUND IT LONGER THAN A COUPLE MONTHS.  CAREFUL THE PERSON DIDN'T GET THE WRONG IMPRESSION ETC.  AGAIN A DRUNKS DENIAL LOOKS FOR ANYTHING TO REJECT ANY METHOD OF RECOVERY WHEN THEY DON'T WANT TO STOP.   I'M DONE WITH THIS.

Again, you are demonstrating the arrogance of A.A.. Anyone who disagrees with you is just an alcoholic in denial, trying to avoid recovery?

ALL YOUR REFERENCES GO BACK TO ARTICLES YOU'VE WRITTEN AND QUOTED SOMEONE ELSE.  WONDERFUL!  IT'S THE SAME PEOPLE LOOKING FOR BAD IN SOMETHING THAT HAS GOOD INTENTIONS.  STOP HURTING THINGS THAT DON'T HURT OTHERS, AND WHY DON'T YOU FOCUS ON REAL CULTS AND SATAN WORSHIPERS ETC. 

You really are not paying attention, are you? Bill Wilson is, by far, the single most-quoted person on my web site. No contest. Nobody else even comes close. (You were complaining about me quoting his "weird and freaky" statements, remember?)

• Do you really think that Bill Wilson was just looking for the bad in Alcoholics Anonymous?
• Do you imagine that he didn't know what he was talking about when he talked about A.A.?
• Do you think that I'm being unfair to A.A. by quoting Bill Wilson?

Lastly, you say, "STOP HURTING THINGS THAT DON'T HURT OTHERS".
Well, that is the whole problem, isn't it? A.A. does hurt others. A.A. hurts more people than it helps. A.A.W.S. Trustee Professor George E. Vaillant showed that Alcoholics Anonymous actually has the highest death rate of any alcoholism treatment program around, remember? A.A. kills. That is what you call "A THING THAT HURTS OTHERS".

HAVE YOU EVER EXPERIENCED GOD WORKING IN YOUR LIFE.  WHEN YOU DO HE WILL LET YOU KNOW IT'S FROM HIM, AND HIM ONLY.  HE MAKES HIMSELF KNOW IF YOU LOOK  AND LISTEN.  IF YOU DON'T THEN YOU WILL NEVER EXPERIENCE HIM BECAUSE HE ONLY COMES TO THOSE WHO ASK FOR HIM.  ARE YOU AFRAID TO SEEK AND FIND? 

I could say a lot here, but I'm not going to get into a bragging contest about religious or spiritual experiences. Suffice it to say that your religious experiences, no matter how great you consider them to be, have nothing to do with whether A.A. is harmful to a lot of people, or whether A.A. is actually an ineffective alcoholism treatment program.

By the way, you are once again showing that A.A. is a religion. When I criticized A.A., you responded by accusing me of being afraid to seek God, and of not experiencing God. That is not only religion, it is also extremely arrogant religion:

• Do you really think that you have a monopoly on God or spiritual experiences?
• Do you really believe that the A.A. dogma, especially the Big Book, is the indisputable Word of God?
• Do you really think that anyone who disagrees with you is disagreeing with God?
• How do you know that God hasn't sent me on a mission to clean out the temple?

HUMANS FAIL AND CAN'T SEE EVERYTHING OR KNOW EVERYTHING IN THIS WORLD ON THERE OWN.  TOGETHER AS A GROUP AND PUTTING ALL OUR EXPERIENCES TOGETHER WE BEGIN TO TAP INTO THE BIGGER PICTURE. 

Baloney. Where did you get that goofy idea?
If you put together 100 fools, you get a group of 100 fools, not a wise man.
That's just like all of those public opinion polls that imply that the collected opinions of 1000 ignorant, uninformed, couch-potatos will somehow add up to wise counsel for the future of America.

And once again, yes, I know the standard A.A. church doctrine about collective opinions. I have read the 12 traditions. I have my copy of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions in my hands, and on page 132 I read:

"For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority — a loving God as he may express Himself in our group conscience."
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 132.

Besides, who decides what the "group conscience" really is?
It is always the old-timers who dominate the rap with their well-practiced sermons. They decide what God is saying today.

WE ARE MEANT TO HELP ONE ANOTHER, GOD WORKS THROUGH PEOPLE TO HELP ANOTHER PERSON.  SO AA BELIEVES IN GOD, IT WAS NEVER HIDDEN.  YES, COUNSELORS SOME BELIEVE IN AA, SO WHAT THAT'S OKAY.  DOESN'T MEAN ALL COUNSELORS DO.  THERE ARE AGNOSTIC COUNSELORS AND ATHEIST COUNSELORS TOO.  THERE ARE SEPARATE GROUPS TARGETING A DIFFERENT APPROACH TO RECOVERY GO PICK ON THEM THEN TOO. 

That is bogus, broken, logic. Just because there might be an atheistic counselor out there somewhere doesn't make it okay for the A.A. true believer counselors to shove their cult religion on their patients. Besides, I said that I wasn't an atheist, remember? So please stop trying to imply that I'm just an atheist who doesn't like any religion. I just don't like your cult, for a lot of good reasons.

YOU WILL FIND ALL GROUPS HAVING STRUCTURE LOOKING LIKE A CULT I SUSPECT, BUT IT DOESN'T MEAN THEY ARE, IT'S CALLED STRUCTURE AND PROCEDURES AND RULES NOT CULT. 

Wrong, totally wrong. Broken logic again. Once again, you are revealing that you haven't even read my web pages, have you? Go read The Cult Test. It will tell you precisely what a cult is, and how you can tell the difference between an ordinary church or religion, and a cult.

SO REALLY STOP TAKING THINGS SO SERIOUSLY. 

Seriously? Have you read my jokes yet?
(Please send me some of your recovery jokes that poke fun at Bill Wilson and Alcoholics Anonymous. Heck, send any general-purpose recovery jokes. The only ones I don't want are the "Us Stupid Drunks" jokes that A.A. members like to tell to put alcoholics down.)

OPEN YOUR MIND BROADER THAN WHAT IT IS.

Please can the arrogance. You keep accusing me of having a narrow mind. But you apparently won't even read the words of Bill Wilson or Professor Vaillant when they say things that you don't want to hear. And I've read all of the standard A.A. books, and many of the less common ones, and even lots more pro-A.A. propaganda. (That's where I get all of those quotes that you don't like, remember?) See the Bibliography.

How many anti-A.A. books have you read? Why don't you read a dozen anti-A.A. and anti-cult books to open your mind and help cure your narrow-mindedness? You can start with:
Alcoholics Anonymous, Cult or Cure? by Charles Bufe, and
The Real A.A., by Ken Ragge.
Both are now free to download on the Internet, so they won't even cost you any money. So you have no excuse for not reading them, other than stubbornness and narrow-minded willfulness.

(Oh, and I actually own 3 copies of the Big Book, 1 copy of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, and also have copies of several other 12-step books from A.A., N.A., and even O.A., Over-eaters Anonymous. How many anti-A.A. or anti-12-step books do you own and read?)

(Heck, if you want free, you could also try actually reading my web pages, just for a change. You repeatedly ask questions, like whether I believe in God, or 'what is a cult?', to which you would already have the answers if you actually read my web pages.)

One of my favorite quotes in response to that "Keep An Open Mind" slogan is James Oberg's remark:

— Orange

[Letter 5 from Pamela D.:]

YES, IF YOU THINK ABOUT INSANITY WHY DID YOU KEEP DRINKING OVER AND OVER EXPECTING DIFFERENT RESULTS. SOME HOW CHASING A DREAM THAT YOU COULD HANDLE IT, THAT IT WOULD BE DIFFERENT THIS TIME.

No, not quite right. The part about thinking that I could handle it is true, but none of those other lines are. You are reciting the standard A.A. stereotype of The Alcoholic again.

AA TALKS ABOUT THE INSANITY OF OUR THINKING UNDER THE INFLUENCE AND IN OUR THINKING WHEN WERE STONE COLD SOBER STANDING AT THE GROCERY COUNTER READY TO BY A BOTTLE ONE MORE TIME. THAT'S PRETTY INSANE TO THINK SOBER YOU COULD HAVE ONE DRINK WHEN AS SOON AS THE STUFFS IN YOUR MOUTH YOUR OFF TO THE RACES. MAYBE SIR YOUR NOT A TRUE ALCOHOLIC. COULD YOU BE AN ABUSER OF ALCOHOL, BUT NOT AN ALCOHOLIC? MAYBE THAT'S WHY YOU CAN'T SEEM TO UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF AA. IT'S AGAIN LIKE TRYING TO EXPLAIN TO A NORMAL DRINKER WHAT KIND OF THINKING AN ALCOHOLIC HAS, THEY JUST DON'T GET IT.

There is that avoidance technique again: If I don't conform to your stereotype of The Alcoholic, then you try to claim that I'm "not a real alcoholic". That is just a mind game where you try to ignore all of the alcoholics who don't act the way that you expect. Read the previous letters — Ken H. from the United Kingdom tried to do the same thing, too.

Everybody who knows me, including my doctor, says that I am "a real alcoholic".

And yes, I actually do "get it". I understand what you are saying. I understand the concept of A.A.. I just totally disagree with you.

You seem to be having trouble believing that I could actually know all about A.A. and still disagree with you. You think I must be missing the point or something. Well, that's because I can accept a few facts that you are denying:

1. A.A. just flat-out does not work. It has a failure rate that is basically 100%.
2. I know that A.A. is a cult religion, not a therapeutic program.
3. The "treatment program" is hocus-pocus nonsense, pseudo-science and psycho-babble, just the tenets of an old cult religion.
4. You have been indoctrinated in the dogma of the cult, and you believe all of that nonsense, but I don't.
5. You are in denial, and refuse to see any facts that conflict with your current beliefs. You are as much in denial as any alcoholic who insists that he doesn't really need to quit drinking. You insist that you don't need to learn the truth.

[Letter 6 from Pamela D.:]

SPONSORS - KEEPERS, TAKE CARE OF YOU, ETC. WHAT! HELL NO! THEY DON'T ENABLE AT ALL, AND THEY DON'T STAND FOR DENIAL SHIT AND MANIPULATION AN ALCOHOLIC JUST SOBERING UP LIKES TO DO. SOME ALCOHOLIC'S NEW IN THE PROGRAM PLAY GAMES JUST TO BE TAKEN CARE OF AND DRIVEN AROUND ETC. THEY USE THE SPONSOR MANY TIMES VS THE SPONSOR "BEING A KEEPER". SO WHERE ARE YOU GETTING THIS INFO. TWISTED EVERY POINT AROUND, WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM?

What are you talking about? I never said that sponsors would take care of people and wait on them. What I did say was that some members are very narcissistic and expect God to take care of them and to solve all of their problems for them. That's Step Three: We turned our wills and our lives over to the care of God...

I do recall having used the word "keeper", but that does not mean "servant". It means something more like boss or jailer.

Just to make sure I wasn't too far off base, I just grabbed my dictionary:
The American Heritage Dictionary, Second College Edition, says:

keeper
1. One that keeps, esp.:
   • a. An attendant, guard, or warden.
   • b. One who has the charge or care of something.

[Letter 7 from Pamela D.:]

SPONSORS ALSO ARE NOT THE HIGHER POWER. THERE IS A SAYING JUST LIKE THAT IN AA. "NEVER PUT YOUR SPONSOR ON A PEDESTAL, SO IF THEY FALL, YOU DON'T FALL". THEY ARE HUMAN AND MAKE MISTAKES. THEY ARE "HELPERS", BUT NOT ENABLES, POWER HUNGARY ETC. "MORAL" MEANS THE PRINCIPLES OF THE EXPERIENCE THAT WE FIND RIGHT AND WRONG IN AN INVENTORY OF OUR DRINKING HISTORY

Don't worry, I definitely do not put Alcoholics Anonymous sponsors on a pedestal.
I will probably never mistake one of them for God.

[Letter 8 from Pamela D.:]

SO THE INVENTORY IS TAKEN TO SHOW A PATTERN OF THINKING THAT THE ALCOHOLIC SO OBVIOUSLY PRACTICE AND HAS WHILE DRINKING. RATIONALIZATION TO DRINK, MINIMIZING DRINKING, JUSTIFYING DRINKING, BLAMING OTHERS, LYING, MANIPULATING, HARMING OTHERS. ARE GOOD DIDN'T GET US DRUNK NOW DID IT. IT'S NOT ABOUT SHAMING US IT'S ABOUT LOOKING AT REALITY AND UNSHAMING OURSELVES. LIFTING THE MONKEY OFF OUR BACK, FREEING US OF OUR PAINS. IT'S A RELIEF AND FREEING EXPERIENCE TO SEE A PATTERN AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE THAT WE HAVE A DISEASE IT'S NOT NECESSARILY US AS A PERSON, BUT THE DISEASE THAT MAKES US DO TERRIBLE THINGS TO OUR SELF AND OTHERS. THE TERRIBLE THINGS HURT US AND CAN EVEN KILL US. YES, BY ALL MEANS IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER MANY AA'S ADD POSITIVE ATTRIBUTES TOO. WHAT EVER WORKS! HOWEVER, IT IS NOT SHAMING IT IS LIKE CONFESSION.

You're doing it again: trying to push the standard stereotype of The Alcoholic. Maybe you were all of those things — a liar, blaming others, manipulating, rationalizing, minimizing, harming. But I wasn't. I just drank too much alcohol, until my doctor told me to quit drinking, or I would die.

You see, stereotypes don't work. People are all different. You are pushing a program that is really only appropriate for one patient: Bill Wilson.

And alcoholism is not a disease, no matter how much you like to see things fit into your little pattern. The "disease of alcoholism" is like the "disease of candyism", which is the illness that children get from eating too much candy.

While you like to imagine that you are being "rigorously honest" while you do your Fourth Steps, you are actually using the idea of alcoholism as a disease as a big fat cop-out, to avoid taking responsibility for your own actions:
"It wasn't me, the disease made me do it.".
That's just like Flip Wilson's character "Geraldine", who was always proclaiming,
"It isn't my fault. The Devil made me do it."

And yes, I can understand how you find it an immense relief to start believing that "the disease" made you do all of those things — that it wasn't really you doing them. But that is still just a cop-out.
It was you who did all of that stuff, not an imaginary disease.
It was you who wanted to get high.
It was you who wanted to feel good.

And since when is confession not shaming?
Are you proud of your "sins" and "wrongs" and "moral shortcomings"?
Do you brag about your crimes during your Fifth Steps?
Do you believe that God gives you extra Brownie Points for confessing really juicy stuff?

You are in denial.
You are so totally out of touch with your own feelings that you cannot even see that doing a Fourth Step and listing all of your "sins", "wrongs", "defects of character", and "moral shortcomings" actually makes you feel guilty.

You are getting fooled by the standard cult practice of engineering experiences. Robert J. Lifton called it Mystical Manipulation, and described it as,

• Everyone is manipulating everyone, under the belief that it advances the "ultimate purpose".
• Experiences are engineered to appear to be spontaneous, when, in fact, they are contrived to have a deliberate effect.
• People mistakenly attribute their experiences to spiritual causes when, in fact, they are concocted by human beings.
  Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, by Robert Jay Lifton; W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1963.

Of course, you could have avoided a whole lot of pain just by skipping the whole routine.

[Letter 9 from Pamela D.:]

I CAN'T CONTROL WHAT NEW YORK'S DOING IF I DON'T ATTEND THE MEETINGS AND KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON. I CAN ONLY CHANGE THE ONE'S I KNOW ABOUT. THAT'S WHY WE HAVE A CENTRAL OFFICE IN EACH CITY, SO EACH CITY CAN HELP MEETINGS THERE, BUT IF THEY DON'T HELP THEN GO FARTHER UP. IT'S LIKE ANY BIG ORGANIZATION. HELPS NOT ALWAYS GIVEN AND CHANGE EITHER JUST CAUSE YOU ASK MANAGEMENT. REMEMBER THEY ARE PEOPLE AND PEOPLE MAKE MISTAKES, DROP BALLS, OR MAKE BAD DECISIONS. KEEP ASKING GO HIGHER AND HIGHER UP MEETING, CITY, STATE REP, AND NEW YORK, YOU HAVE SECRETARIES, GSR'S, BOARDS, ETC. KEEP GOING TILL SOMEONE HELPS. EACH GROUP IS SELF SUPPORTING. REMEMBER THE TRADITIONS AND HOW AA IS SET UP PLEASE READ THEM.

There you go again. That's another cop-out.
What happened to "grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty"? (Big Book, page 58.)
In your second letter, you spoke of the New York headquarters with high regard. You described how you can contact them, and they will monitor meetings for you, and shut down groups that do not meet with your high standards. But when I point out the crimes that the A.A. leaders in New York are committing, you suddenly claim that you have nothing to do with them.

Don't you vote and elect those leaders? Of course you do.
Don't you send them money, a percentage of every basket collected, and also the proceeds from the book sales? Of course you do. How long do you think they could stay in business if you didn't send them the money?
Get real. Who do you think you are fooling?

Once again, you are just playing ostrich, and sticking your head in the sand, and trying to avoid seeing anything wrong with Alcoholics Anonymous. You are also minimizing and denying the problems, just like your stereotypical "real alcoholic".
Denial isn't just a river in Egypt.

[Letter 10 from Pamela D.:]

YES, IT'S A DISEASE, BUT ONCE YOU STOP DRINKING IT'S MORE A "THINKING PROBLEM"

No, it isn't a disease. It is habitual behavior that leads to physical illness. Cancer, tuberculosis, and diabetes are diseases. Drinking too much alcohol is a form of behavior.

THERE IS NOT MEDICINE TO TAKE, SO HUMAN HELP IS ALL WE HAVE TO HELP US STOP FOR GOOD.

It's funny that you would say that. Bill Wilson said that only God could save us. He said that human help did not help:

"Remember that we are dealing with alcohol — cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much for us. But there is One who has all power — that One is God. May you find Him now!"
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, pages 58 and 59.

Nevertheless, I disagree with both of you. The way the most people succeed is by doing it themselves, pretty much alone. And that isn't just my opinion — The Harvard Medical School says so.

IN A STUPOR UNFORTUNATELY WE DO BAD AND GOOD THINGS TO OURSELVES AND TO OTHERS THAT IS WHY THE "MORAL INVENTORY".

No, the reason that you do a moral inventory is because Bill Wilson was a member of the Oxford Groups, and they taught him to do moral inventories. They also taught him that alcoholism was caused by sin, and that confession was the cure for sin. So in A.A., you make long lists of your sins (renamed to "wrongs", "defects of character", and "moral shortcomings") and then you confess them (renamed to "admitting" them) to another group member. That is all old standard Oxford Group practices. Bill didn't invent anything new. And Bill didn't derive anything from the Bible.

WHERE IN THE BIG BOOK DOES IT SAY ALCOHOLISM IS A SIN?

It doesn't. It is implied by Bill Wilson's statements that you have to "admit" (confess) all of your "defects of character" and "moral shortcomings" (sins) and "resentments" — holding nothing back — in order to overcome alcoholism.

Bill felt that moral problems were the cause of alcoholism (because that's what Frank Buchman's Oxford Groups told him.) Bill wasn't much into the disease concept of alcoholism — that was Dr. Silkworth's idea. Bill just liked the sin idea.

Bill was really all over the map when it came to saying exactly what the real cause of alcoholism was. Standard A.A. dogma teaches us that alcoholism is a "spiritual disease" that is caused by

• sins,
• moral shortcomings,
• defects of character,
• resentments,
• instinct run wild,
• instincts gone astray,
• self-will run riot,
• self-seeking,
• selfishness,
• failure to practice religious precepts properly,
• nagging wives,
• defective relations, or
• inherited genes or inherited sins.

Also note that Bill was so confused that he thought that desires gave us "satisfactions or pleasures". They don't. Desires are an itch to go get some satisfactions or pleasures. Hunger, for instance, does not give us any satisfactions or any pleasure. It gives us a big pain in the belly that drives us to go find some food.

OUR BAD MORE CONDUCT MAKES US AS HUMANS FEEL SHAME. SOCIETY HAS SET STANDARDS OF CONDUCT AND WHEN WE DON'T ABIDE BY THAT CONDUCT WE ARE BAD, SO IN SOME RESPECTS IT IS A DISEASE, BUT CAN BE HELPED MY EVALUATING WHAT THE DISEASE MAKES US DO UNDER THE INFLUENCE THAT GETS US FEELING ASHAMED AND DO BAD.

It isn't a disease, and "the disease" isn't making us do anything.
We do what we want to do, and we do it because we want to feel good.
And yes, some people should be ashamed of what they do while drunk.
Some people should even quit drinking, because of what they do while drunk.

THE WHOLE THING IS A PROCESS OF IF I DRINK I DO THIS, IF I DRINK I DO THIS. THESE THINGS ARE "BAD FOR ME AND "WRONG" FOR ME. THESE THINGS DON'T MAKE ME A BAD PERSON, BUT THESE THINGS I WILL CONTINUE TO DO IF I DON'T SEE THAT THE DRINKING IS KILLING ME.

Now that is logical. That is the same thing as they say in SMART meetings.

IT'S TO HELP BRAKE DOWN DENIAL AND HELP US SEE WHAT WE'VE BECOME. SOME DON'T WANT TO SEE, SO THE STEPS HELP BRAKE THE DENIAL DOWN BEFORE THE DRUNK CHOOSE TO IGNORE IT AGAIN AND DRINK INSPITE OF HORROR CONSEQUENCES.

TO DRINK IS TO DIE, AND AA TAKES HELPING SAVING LIVES VERY SERIOUSLY. "TOUGH LOVE" TELLING PEOPLE SOMETIMES WHAT THEY DON'T WANT TO HERE, IT'S THE TRUTH AND THE TRUTH HURTS SOMETIME.

Again, you are just parroting the standard sermon about the stereotypical alcoholic. Bill Wilson thought that alcoholism was a moral problem, not a medical problem, and that's why he wanted to cure it with confession and prayer.

Not all alcoholics are "in denial". In fact, most aren't — that's just the standard A.A. negative stereotype of The Alcoholic, yet again — so not all alcoholics need something like a confession session to "break down the denial". Likewise, we don't need any "tough love" programs to crush our egos. (And we really don't need any more "tough love" boot camps to kill our children for us.)

Remember that 80% of all of the alcoholics who successfully quit drinking for a year or more do it alone, without the crazy A.A. program, or the 12 steps, or any confession sessions, or any praying and meditating until you think you are hearing the Voice of God in your head.

The truth is, most alcoholics do not fit A.A.'s stereotype of The Alcoholic, and most alcoholics are not helped by the A.A. program. — So there is absolutely no justification for using the criminal justice and health systems to force people into A.A. "for their own good" — to, as you called it, "make them get help".

Have you ever heard about the old Greek story of a guy named Procrustees?
Procrustees was a very welcoming host, and loved to get house guests. But when bed time came, he made every guest fit into his one guest bed — by stretching the short people, and chopping the feet off of the tall people.

Alcoholics Anonymous tries to fix all alcoholics the same way — by shoving the one-size-fits-all 12-step program on everybody, and by assuming that all alcoholics are just the same:
"They all have the same 'character defects', and they can't think correctly, and they are all in denial, etc...."

But that just isn't true.

[Letter 11 from Pamela D.:]

AA SAYS IN THE 3RD STEP A BELIEF IN A POWER GREATER THAN OURSELVES. WHY ACT LIKE AA NEVER SAID THIS. THEY DON'T HIDE THAT THEY WANT YOU TO GET A HIGHER POWER BUDDA, WHAT EVER. NOT GOD AS YOU THINK, BUT AS EACH PERSON UNDERSTANDS HIM. GOD IS YOU TO GENERALIZE ALL DIFFERENT GOD'S HERE. IT'S LIKE "KLEENEX" THERE'S A GENERAL TERM FOR MANY DIFFERENT BRANDS OF KLEENEX.

Baloney. Get real. It cannot be just any old Higher Power, and it cannot be a doorknob or a bedpan. We've already been over this.

And once again, please learn something about world religions before you start talking about them. Buddhism does not have a God or a Supreme Being or a "Higher Power".

And the word "God" is not generic at all. It is specific to the Christian religions. Only Christians use that three-lettered word. Jews use the word Yahweh, Hindus talk about Ram and Krishna (and many other minor deities), Moslems use the word Allah, and Buddhists don't use any word at all. Only an ignorant Christian could imagine that the word "God" is acceptable to all religions.

And A.A. does not allow you to have just any old supernatural being for your Higher Power. In the beginning, they say that you can, but they lie. That's just another bait-and-switch stunt. In order for you to work the steps, you must have a "God " who will:

1. make you quit drinking (Step One).
2. restore you to sanity (Step Two).
3. take care of your will and your life for you (Step Three).
4. listen to your confessions and maybe give a Rat's Ass about them (and, presumably, then grant absolution without a priest assigning any penance) (Step Five).
5. answer your prayers, and remove all of your "defects of character" and "moral shortcomings" (Step Seven).
6. answer your prayers, and teach you by sending you information and guidance, and sending you work orders for the day and the power to do the work (Step Eleven).
7. give you a religious or spiritual experience (Step Twelve).

So much for the freedom of religion in A.A..

[Letter 12 from Pamela D.:]

WORK WITH THE WILLING WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT? NOT ALL ALCOHOLICS ARE DONE, HAVE YOU EVER HAD A CHRONIC RELAPSER LIVE WITH YOU THEY WILL EAT YOU, BRAKE YOU, STEAL YOU OUT OF HOUSE AND HOME TO CONTINUE TO DRINK. SO YOU WORK WITH PEOPLE WHO WANT IT, UNFORTUNATELY, IT'S NOT ALWAYS THE PEOPLE WHO NEED IT THAT WANT IT. THAT'S NOT BAD IT'S REALISTIC.

Again, you are just pushing the negative garbage about alcoholics. The alcoholics who are really willing to quit are the 80% who do it alone, without any cult religion, by using their own will power and intelligence.

[Letter 13 from Pamela D.:]

WHERE DOES HUMAN "REASON" AND "INTELLIGENCE" COME IN, IN A PRACTICING NEWLY SOBER PERSON. THEY DO NOT ALWAYS HAVE THE RIGHT JUDGEMENTS, OR BEHAVIOR, OR GO DECISION MAKING CUZ THEY GET PRETTY SCREWED UP FROM THE DELUSION OF THE DRINKING LIFE STYLE. THEY CAN'T REALLY TRUST THEIR THOUGHTS WILL NOT GET THEM IN TROUBLE OR DRUNK. LIKE "I CAN GO TO A BAR AND NOT DRINK" WELL, NOT A GOOD IDEA. THEY PROBABLY WON'T DRINK, BUT IT'S JUST NOT A GREAT IDEA TO FREQUENT A BAR WHY TEMPT YOURSELF TILL YOUR STRONG ENOUGH TO HANDLE IT. EVENTUALLY AA'S CAN GO ANYWHERE IT'S IN THE BEGINNING WE'RE JUST NOT STRONG ENOUGH AND WE HURT AND HAVE FAMILY TROUBLE ETC. WE'D STILL LIKE TO ESCAPE WITH THE DRINK SO IT'S BEST WE WATCH OR HELP EACH OTHER STAY SOBER IN THE BEGINNING. OR KEEPING DRINKING BUDDIES AND HAVING THEM OVER TO DRINK AT YOUR PLACE THE DAY AFTER YOU SOBER UP. NOT TO SANE AND NOT REALLY "REASONING" NOW IS THE NEW PERSON IN THE BEGINNING. THEY HAVE NO CLUE, BUT LITTLE WHAT MIGHT AND MIGHT NOT BE HELPING GET THEM DRUNK. AA HELPS THE TO LOOK AT THOSE THINGS TO HELP THEM NOT DRINK, AND STAY SAFE.

There is that funny illogical twist again. I already described it on the "bait-and-switch" web page:
First, you are an adult, and then you are a child.

• First, you are a responsible adult who drinks too much, and you are causing your own problems, and it's all your own fault. Bill Wilson says, "After all, our problems were of our own making." (The Big Book, page 103.)
  
• Then, you are a responsible adult who makes the decision to quit drinking, and join A.A..
• Then, you are just a foolish child who isn't qualified to make his own choices any more. You must be supervised by your sponsor and the other A.A. group elders to keep you out of trouble, because "your thinking is alcoholic."
  • "Stop your stinkin' thinkin'."
  • "You have a thinking problem, not a drinking problem."
  • "Your best thinking got you here."
  • "Take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth."

— Orange

[ Letter 14 from Pamela D.: ]

cult attitude, this is insane!  cuz i believe it's helpful and it is a "program" with specific steps to follow.  there are plenty of "programs" with other ideas. 

It is still a cult, no matter what you believe. Your beliefs are irrelevant, really.
And the fact that there are other programs with other ideas is also irrelevant, and has nothing to do with whether A.A. is a cult.

this is the program i tend to lean to for support.  they do not run my life, nor am i shamed or coherced to keep coming back.  it's our choice.  they say it all the time "suggestions"  not rules or your out.

They say a lot of things, and contradict themselves constantly.

i believe your distorting a "good" thing.  if the purpose is towards good it can't be bad. 

"if the purpose is towards good it can't be bad."
That simple-minded remark really takes the cake.
You actually are completely disconnected from reality, aren't you?

All of these things started with "a purpose towards good":

1. Reverend Jim Jones' People's Temple
2. Chuck Dederich's Synanon
3. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's Communist Party
4. Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party
5. The War in Vietnam

we do not become worse people from experiencing love, hope, peace, serenity, giving, praying, etc.  all these things are good things.

That sounds okay.

again i am not a "big book thumper", so i take what i want and leave the rest.  i am not shunned for that.  to each there own.  i am very respected in aa, and i don't take bullsh..  so if someone were to say some of the things you've said others are experiencing i would ignore it.  i can't help people distorting things.   hey if it works for them, don't fix it.  what ever it takes to stay sober.

Yes, but newcomers get told different things. You yourself have admitted that you don't tell newcomers the whole truth, out of fear that they won't come back if you do.

i get the feeling you don't believe in the disease concept.  i do. 

"Believe in the disease concept". Now that's funny. You make it sound like a new religion.
...Hmmm... On second thought, IT IS A NEW RELIGION!

if i have a drink my inhibitions lower and before you know it my body wants more.  the consequences are pushed to the wayside once the drink lowers my inhibitions.  "normal drinkers"  don't crave more.  they are different in that respect.  do i hate them, no!  they just don't understand how a drunk can sit at the bar swearing i'm only going to have a "couple" and go home.  after banging his head on the bar drunk wondering why he can't stop.  it's physical, and mental.  this is my own experience.  again the alcohol makes us hit bottom, only alcohol can do that.  we have to get to the point we see it's killing us.  once we do help is helpful to maintain sobriety.  it's also helpful to give back what we got.  what's so wrong with giving?

You are comparing apples and oranges. Yes, alcoholism is bad, very bad. But that doesn't make Alcoholics Anonymous a good organization.

"sometimes quickly sometimes slowly it will always materialize if we work for it"

Always?
Such absolute terminology is cult talk. That's just as dumb as saying, "if the purpose is towards good it can't be bad."

And that quote from Bill Wilson's Promises is also a good example of the propaganda stunt of lying with qualifiers. Wilson's statement is only true "IF you work for it." (And who decides whether you did a good job of working for it? Bill Wilson, that's who.)
"You will ALWAYS get great benefits from my wonderful miraculous program, IF you aren't a spiritual slob."
Wilson made grandiose, sweeping claims, and then inserted a qualifier to cover his ass when they were proven untrue: "Well, she didn't work for it hard enough..."

bill states we have to work for "sobriety" it's hard to change our old "using" mentality, cheating, stealing, lying, etc.  just cuz we are sober doesn't mean we are cured. 

Obviously. I can see that.

nor just cuz we work the steps or pray does it mean God will remove anything. 

Bill Wilson says differently. In the Big Book, he says that God will just remove the desire to drink alcohol, just lift it right out of us.
Do you always refute the teachings of Bill Wilson, or are you just doing it for my benefit?

i believe in God more than AA.  bill wilson doesn't shy away from "God" in the big book, so if your new comers read, they would see what the "program" offers and know if it is for them or not.  so go if it's not, try something else then. 

Gee, that sounds so nice and liberal and easy-going. It would be, if you hadn't already revealed that you really like using parole officers and judges to force people into your groups, to "make them get help", as you called it. Those victims of your coercive recruiting schemes are not free to leave and go try something else, are they?

Have you written a letter to the judge yet, telling him that you believe in Freedom of Religion, so you do not want him to force any more people to go to A.A. meetings?

it's a "program" that i believe in.  it has a good purpose and it fits with my beliefs in God.  if it doesn't fit with others, oh well, move on.  don't bash something that works for so many people.  those stats you gave do not correlate with my experiences in AA groups.  there is so many remaining sober for 10-40 years that i am around that it works in my experience.  to hell with stats!

Well, now we are getting down to it, aren't we? You won't let your opinions be swayed by mere facts, will you?
Not even facts written by the A.A. General Service Office.
Not even facts written by one of the members of the Board of Trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. — Professor and Doctor George E. Vaillant of Harvard University.
Have you even read what Prof. Vaillant wrote, or are you determined to stay ignorant for your whole life?

By the way, the fact that some people have been in the cult for 30 or 40 years does not prove that A.A. made them quit drinking or kept them sober. All it proves is that they have been going to meetings for a lot of years. You routinely see cause-and-effect relationships where none exist.

And again, you are contradicting yourself. You have repeatedly said that A.A. did not make you quit drinking, God did, and then you point to a few old-timers and say that they prove to you that the program works.
If A.A. didn't make you quit drinking, then how do you know that A.A. made those other people quit drinking?
How do you know what made them quit drinking?

I can go over to the local Bingo parlor and find a bunch of old ladies with 20, 30, even 40 years of playing Bingo. That doesn't prove that the Bingo game is keeping them alive (even if some of them insist that Bingo is their life, and even if they really love the social circle that they find there).

this God thing is not like i sit on my butt waiting to be cured.  over and over in AA you must work for sobriety.  do what ever it takes to be sober.  it doesn't mean God will do it for you. 

I like your attitude, but Bill Wilson says differently. Are you going to refute everything in the Big Book? Good for you if you are. Would you like to write an essay on how Bill Wilson and the Big Book are full of bull?

working for sobriety means changing our negative self defeating wanting to die and cheat and steal and blame everyone else in our lives for the crap we got ourselves into.  by praying to "god as we understand him" "catholic, lutheran, Buddhist" what ever that understanding is it helps. i believe in the power of God.  so if your atheist or agnostic friends don't like it, leave!  why bash something that works for some people.

Geez Louise. For the third time, there is no Buddhist God.

And, for the third time, the Twelve Steps do not allow just any old God. It has to be a God who will 'Work the Steps' and do what the Steps say.

And for the third time, please quit accusing everyone who disagrees with you of being an atheist.

And why bash it? Well, how about because it's a Big Lie and hurts as many people as it helps?

cults to me work for the devil or for evil. 

How would you know? How many have you been in, or even visited, or even studied?
Have you even read The Cult Test yet?

Besides, do you really imagine that an evil cult will tell you that it is an evil cult?
No. It won't. They never do.
Cults lie and tell you that they are wonderful organizations, doing God's work, spreading unconditional love, hope, peace, serenity, giving, praying, etc..

at no point do i feel evil or do i feel lead astray. 

How could you feel anything? You are so out of touch with your feelings that you say you don't even feel any shame or guilt while you do your Fourth and Fifth Steps and list and confess every sin and crime you ever committed in your whole life.

we do not govern we are helpful members giving back what we were so freely given.

Yes, recruiting for the cult.

churches have "programs" and "beliefs", there are so many "programs" which have guidelines, beliefs, rules, steps, are they all cults? 

No. You still haven't read The Cult Test yet, have you? —Or you would know the answer to that question.
You keep on talking about cults, but you stubbornly refuse to learn anything about them...

anything with specific steps just doesn't mean "cult".  it depends on it's over all effects and purpose. 

You still don't know what you are talking about. Do some reading.
And whether a group is a cult or not DOES NOT depend on its overall effects and purpose.
Whether you understand it or not, there can even be cults for a good purpose. The big problem is that they rarely stay good. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

it's effects and purpose are for the good of "drunks"  true alcoholics, not people who can take it or leave it. 

And also go read about Professor George Vaillant's tests of Alcoholics Anonymous to find out its overall effects (which are not good). You still haven't done that, either, have you?

And the "purpose" is irrelevant. What A.A. actually does is what matters. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

it's not for the hard drinker or moderate drinker.  aa is for the alcoholic types.  if your not one you will never understand because you are obviously not one. 

There you go again. If I don't approve of your nonsense, then I'm not "a real alcoholic".
I couldn't possibly understand, or know anything, because I'm not a member of the cult.
"Only another cult member understands."
You really are doing a good job of demonstrating that A.A. is a cult.

it's not separating between people due to "cult" crap it's a fact i drink different than other people without the disease.  do you understand wanting a drink so bad yet the denial is so strong it lies to you and tells you it's okay even though you drink till you over dose on alcohol and end up in ER or detox with the worse case of delirium tremens.  do you understand that? 

Yes, I understand.

do you understand the complete obsession to drink inspite of consequences? 

Yes, I understand.

Do you understand that you are mixing apples and oranges again?
No matter how bad alcoholism is, it does not prove that Alcoholics Anonymous is a good organization.

insane to think we can over and over and over again while alcohol proves over and over and over again it wants to kill us.  call it evil vs good.  call it what ever you want. 

You are anthropomorphizing alcohol, which is a common Alcoholics Anonymous mistake.
Alcohol does not want to kill you.
Alcohol does not want to do anything.
Alcohol has no will.
Alcohol has no brain.
Ethyl alcohol is just a clear liquid, a flammable hydrocarbon solvent, with no more brains or will than a can of gasoline.

It is you who wants to drink alcohol because it makes you feel good.
It is all a matter of what you want, not what alcohol wants.

That is a prime example of the kind of misinformation about alcoholism that Alcoholics Anonymous spreads. That is just like Bill Wilson's statement that alcohol is cunning, baffling, and powerful. (See the Big Book, bottom of page 58.)
That sounds like a fun subject for a B-grade horror movie, but it isn't true.

(Imagine a movie like "The Slayer Solvent That Attacked Hollywood" — it hides in the back alleys and skulks around in the dark and ambushes unwary pedestrians, especially pretty young women who are alone. It is cunning, baffling, and powerful! It wants to kill you!)

i need others who do understand what i am going through.  i don't go to a group counselling session for divorce if i just lost a child to cancer.  the divorced group just wouldn't understand what the heck i'm talking about now would they.  you go where the people understand what exactly you go through.  alcoholism itself never claimed to be something people can understand if it did we'd have a cure for it now wouldn't we.  what exactly do you suggest people do.  just quit and move on?  well, that is not possible for some people.  we live with drinkers, we have friends who call and temp us, we live in drug house neighborhoods.  it's all around us. 

Now you are talking about Alcoholics Anonymous as a social club.
The fact that you like A.A. as a social club does not prove that the 12-step religion is a good thing, or that it has good effects, or that "A.A. works", or that any of the Alcoholics Anonymous dogma or doctrines are correct.

it's hard at first when you don't even trust yourself enough to stay sober.  we need  a positive influence to and a group who doesn't drink to combat all the temptation around us.  what is wrong with that.  if i had my old using friends over and hung  out with them then what's the point of stopping drinking if my life remains the same in other respects?  crazy!  eventually i'll drink it will temp me back into destroying my life. 

Now you are displaying the fears that they implanted in you. One of the standard cult practices is Phobia Induction — implant fears and phobias in the cult members, and make them afraid to leave the cult:
"You will lose your ticket to Heaven, and you will go to Hell, if you leave the group."
A.A. teaches that you will relapse and die drunk if you leave the group.
You probably don't even remember when they did it, do you? It was 12 or 13 years ago, when you were a beginner, that they implanted that belief in you.

But you are forgetting that you did leave the cult. You already said that you quit A.A. for a whole year, and you didn't relapse or die drunk, did you? You handled it just fine. All that happened was that you felt lonely and depressed, so you went back to A.A. to get another shot of your new favorite drug — A.A..

people gravitate to people who have the same goals, beliefs, etc.  so that is what i do.  i make new friends and with people i feel have my same beliefs and goals.  this is a normal function in life. 

That sounds okay. You are still just talking about a social club. If you dump the cult religion, Bill Wilson, the Twelve Steps, the Big Book, the official A.A. dogma, the misinformation about alcoholism, the hundreds of thought-stopping clichés and slogans, the deceptive recruiting routines, and the coercive recruiting schemes, then A.A. might be an okay social club.

so if you don't like what AA's about i suggest you look elsewhere. 

Hey, I'm right here, and I'm doing fine where I am. It's you who invaded my space, remember? I didn't force you to visit my web site. And since you haven't really read the pages — just looked at them and started complaining — you can't have suffered too much mental damage.

you sound like you have a hidden agenda a resentment towards aa that is driving you to destroy it. 

Sounds like? Hidden agenda?
You did read the introduction, didn't you?
You did read the bottom of the bait-and-switch page didn't you?
I have explained precisely why I feel that I have to tell the truth about Alcoholics Anonymous. I do not have a hidden agenda — it's an agenda that is right out front and on the table for all to see. It is Alcoholics Anonymous that has a hidden agenda:
"Let us help you recover from alcoholism. No, on second thought, let's addict you to our cult religion. Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God...."

so why not let us be and do what we want to do by being in aa, and you start your own "recovery program" with your beliefs and have all those other people join with you.  i think you'll find that once your group becomes large enough and your preaching your beliefs it will be started by you and be of your beliefs just like when bill started it.  it starts by a person and what that person believes.  if you don't like it or believe the same way move on. 

How cute. You can't stand to hear the truth so you tell me to move on. You ignore the fact that it is your organization that is forcing itself on complete strangers, using the police, judges, parole officers, therapists, and counselors to coerce more people into your cult. And then you want the critics to just go away and quit bothering you.

Heck, you go away and quit bothering those of us who want to recover without crazy cult religion. And also quit spreading your misinformation about alcoholism.

same with a group you'd start, maybe others would come to your group and think your running a cult and don't want any part of it.  a "group" has goals, beliefs, purpose, etc.  you can't get around that, and it's usually of the people who started it are passing on their findings.  this is why it's america!  you can do what you want, go where you want, believe what you want, yet you must respect others beliefs and let them live their own lives.  so you live your life and i'll live mine.  i don't push this on others, why then do you by forming a website "agent orange".  your pushing your beliefs, goals, values, and bashing others to put yourself up. 

Cute trick. You are trying to reverse reality. That's the propaganda trick called "Blame the Victim". It is you who is using the criminal justice and health care systems to force your cult on other people, and then you claim that I'm forcing my opinions on others by writing some pages and putting them up on a web site? Definitely cute.
Well, my web site doesn't have a gun, but the police do.
Who twisted your arm and forced you to visit my web site?
What judge sentenced you to come here?

so get off the "cult" thing all groups have "cult" looking structures.

Wrong. Totally wrong. You still haven't read The Cult Test, have you? You still don't know beans about cults.

groups are not all cult's just cuz they have beliefs, etc. 

True.

it's the purpose whether it be negative or positive that makes it a "cult". 

Wrong, totally wrong. Go read The Cult Test.

aa is for the good whether you like it or not. 

For the good? That's more bad logic. Being "for the good", or claiming to have a positive purpose, does not make something good. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. We have already talked about this, just a little while ago.

your good is defined different than mine, but it doesn't make mine or aa a cult or bad just cuz you think it does. 

Our definitions of good and bad are different? Perhaps.
I think that it is very bad to lie to people in life or death matters where their lives are really on the line.

Do you think that it is okay to do that to people?

Apparently so, because earlier, you told us how you practice deceptive recruiting, and don't tell the newcomers about the God part of the program, because you know that they will leave and not come back if you tell them the truth... I consider that evil. What do you call it?

that's your opinion it doesn't make your opinion reality to all.  it's like reading a psychology book about all the disorders out there.  if you read it you start thinking, hummm, i do that, i do that, ahhh i wonder if i'm manic depressive, etc.  everyone displays characteristics of a disorder, but it doesn't mean we have it.  so just cuz aa looks like a "cult to you doesn't mean it is. 

But if I accumulate a few hundred pages of evidence that it is an evil deceptive cult, then it just might really be an evil deceptive cult.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it just might really be a duck.

it may have a organized system of doing things and that's why you think it's a cult.  it has beliefs it follows well so does church and religions, political parties, unions, companies, etc. pick on them then!  groups all look like cults because of it's structures, but that doesn't mean all groups are cults. 

Wrong again. PLEASE go read The Cult Test, just so that you will have some idea of what a cult actually is, and won't say so many ignorant things.

again i believe it's it's purpose evil or good that makes it a cult. 

As usual, wrong again. Believe it or not, some cults, like Synanon, were started with the best of intentions, for good purposes, like as drug and alcohol rehab programs.

my experience around the tables has been of hope, purpose, love, kindness, giving, sharing, struggling through divorces, deaths, etc. people helping people with "God" not being hidden under the table.  it is express openly that is our beliefs as a group.  so if the new comer doesn't like it then leave and find your miracle elsewhere.  more power to yah!

Unless they are sentenced to A.A. meetings by your friends and associates, of course. Then they can't leave or get away from your odd-ball religious beliefs.

tell me what does work then huh?  what is your theory of recovery from this hideous disease that tempts many everyday to come back to it. 

That is very simple: Quit and stay quit.

Oh, and if you want to preserve your sanity, also avoid cult religions.

You might also want to try my simple Four-Step program:

• 1. I admit that drinking and smoking has gotten to be a real drag, and I am suffering so much that it isn't any fun any more.

• 2. I quit, and I'm staying quit forever.

• 3. Some of my friends may help me occasionally, but I'm mainly going to count on myself.

• 4. Whenever I am tempted to relapse, I will think about step one again, and remember why I quit in the first place. I will also remember what happened the last time I relapsed.

Go read The Lizard-Brain Addiction Monster. I've already written it all down.

why don't you focus on the solution rather than what you think is a problem.  if you have no answer yourself then shut up! 

Oh, I have an answer. It is very simple. It is:
1) Quit drinking and stay quit. (Done)
2) Tell the truth about A.A., to stop it from hurting people. (Work In Progress)

it's disgusting how you pick aa apart like you have an agenda or a hidden resentment to destroy it. 

Yes, I have an agenda. After seeing what A.A. is, I want to warn my friends about it, as well as anyone else who may be harmed by it. I also want to put a stop to A.A.'s deceptive and coercive recruiting practices.

who are you any ways? 

Really now. Have you no respect for the Eleventh Tradition? Don't you know what the word "anonymous" means?

what authority do you have? 

I have the same authority as any other American citizen: It is called Freedom of Speech.

what education do you have? 

Obviously, a whole lot more than you, because you have great difficulty with just reading and writing simple English. I've politely avoided mentioning it up to now, but since you brought up the subject of education, I suggest that you go get some — especially English Composition.

what do you do for a living? 

I'm a Tic-Tac-Toe International Grandmaster.

what makes you so concerned for people in aa? 

I have friends in recovery.

By the way, you are now giving us a good example of the propaganda and debating technique called Ad Hominem, which is "If you can't refute the message, then attack the messenger. Try to find fault with the speaker."

the statements you put in these emails have such loop holes to match them up against my experiences they just don't match up.  they are wrong in my eyes. 

You don't know what you have seen. Just because you see a dozen or two people in a room who have quit drinking does not prove that the Twelve Steps made them quit drinking, or that A.A. made them quit drinking.
You don't know what the cause is.
In fact, you have repeatedly said that God, not A.A. or the Twelve Steps, made you quit drinking. So you don't really have any evidence that A.A. works, do you?

Besides, you are deliberately blinding yourself, and only seeing what you want to see.
As I asked you earlier:

In your 13 years in A.A., how many thousands of people have you seen come to A.A. looking for help, and then quickly leave because they were disgusted or appalled by what they saw?
How many died after getting the standard A.A. miseducation?
How many just went out and died drunk in spite of A.A.?
What do you have left? A few dozen out of thousands?

So you really do know about the Alcoholics Anonymous Revolving Door problem.

i have an opinion and right to my beliefs etc.

Yes, but you do not have the right to use the justice system or the health care system to force those beliefs on other people.

doesn't make you wrong it just makes me chose another way.  "free will"  to believe and do what we think is right for ourselves.  "victims" we are not victims of anyone or anything

Good, now you are beginning to get the idea.
You are not a victim.
You are not even the victim of a disease called alcoholism, or of alcohol, which you imagine is cunning, baffling, powerful, and wants to kill you.
I mean that. You are not a victim of any of that stuff.
There is no such disease as alcoholism, and alcohol has no will or desires, or even any mind of its own.
Alcohol doesn't want to kill you.
Alcohol doesn't even know that you exist.

There is only you, wanting to feel good.
Learn to deal with that, and you are home free.

we have a mind of our own to pick and chose what is right for ourselves, so stop act like the people you talk to are powerless victims.  they are not prisoners in aa, tell them to move on, that if it isn't what they want find something else.  if it works for others let it go.  we don't have to bash, ridicule, accuse, blame, etc. someone else's beliefs. 

Well actually, we do, when that "someone else" is conspiring to use the justice system to cram his or her religious beliefs down other people's unwilling throats.

"freedom" is wonderful and we all have it, so move on to what works for you then, more power to yah!  

No, actually, we don't all have freedom. Ever heard of jails and prisons?
And guess where Alcoholics Anonymous loves to proselytize and recruit?

And I guess that "move on" remark is supposed to mean "Shut up and quit talking; quit saying things that I don't want to hear."
(And maybe also "Erase your web site.")
I don't need to "move on" to something that works, because I already have something that works. It's called

— Agent Orange

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