Letters, We Get Mail, LXXXVIII



Date: Mon, June 18, 2007 3:19 am     (answered 25 June 2007)
From: "Andrew A."
Subject: Papers

This is quite something.

You seem to really have it out for A.A.

There is much distortion and misinformation here.

Were you mistreated by a sponsor or something?

Hello Andrew,

It's both interesting and sad that you imagine that someone must have been hurt in order to desire to tell the truth about a harmful hoax.

For the history of the reasons for writing these pages, see:

  1. the introduction, my introduction to A.A., and also
  2. the "treatment" bait-and-switch trick, and
  3. another friend goes missing.

You claim that "There is much distortion and misinformation here."
I challenge you to show where I am wrong. I research very carefully, and make sincere efforts to get every fact correct. What misinformation? Please be specific. Please quote what I wrote, and then give us your version of the truth, and tell where you got the information, and where it is documented, what is the supporting evidence, and so on.

If you want to look at real facts (not misinformation), we can start with the complete failure of Alcoholics Anonymous to actually cause alcoholics to quit drinking.

What is the real A.A. success rate?
Out of each 1000 newcomers to A.A., how many of them will pick up a ten-year coin for sobriety?
How about the 11-year coin? What percentage of the newcomers go on to get an 11-year coin?
How many success stories are there really, out of each 1000 newcomers to A.A.?
How many 20-year success stories do you get out of each 1000 newcomers?
How many 30-year success stories do you get out of each 1000 newcomers?

Not very many, right?

And the answers are:
11 or 12 ten-year winners per 1000 newcomers.
7 1/2 (seven and a half) eleven-year winners per 1000 newcomers.
1 1/2 (one and a half) twenty-year winners per 1000 newcomers.
1/6 (yes, one-sixth) of a 30-year winner per 1000 newcomers.

That is what you call a complete failure. Alcoholics who quit drinking alone, on their own, do better than that.

All of the other issues about Alcoholics Anonymous are dwarfed by those simple facts. A.A. does not work to sober up alcoholics. And that is not a distortion of the facts, or misinformation.

Who cares if A.A. induces nice feelings of "spirituality" or "fellowship" when the alcoholics are going to die of alcoholism anyway, in spite of Alcoholics Anonymous?

Oh well, have a good day anyway.

== Orange 

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
**  AA's followers inevitably ask "But why do all the top doctors support
**  the disease concept if it isn't true?"  Well... back in the 50s, the
**  American Medical Association endorsed cigarettes.  Whenever something
**  is endorsed by doctors on the surface but lacks hard evidence, be very
**  very suspicious.
**     == sdp026   http://youtube.com/watch?v=MW799LJHhZU





Date: Jun 21, 2007 1:27 PM     (answered 25 June 2007)
From: M.D.
Subject: Research

hey AO,

I did some AA research recently. In the 12+12 [the book "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions"] they insinuate that a "one time Vice-President of The American Atheist Society" was shown the light by AA. Well, I could not find a record of The American Atheist Society. I contacted "American Atheists" the most well known group, founded in 1962, and they have no knowledge of "The American Atheist Society". The 12+12 was published in '52, and it seems there was no American Atheist Society at that time. And the faithful just keep nodding their heads. Just more deceitful writings by Bill.

mike

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the note. I must confess that that one slipped right by me. I seem to vaguely remember having seen it (it's on page 26, now that I look it up), but I dismissed it as just another "proof by anecdote" stunt. As if Alcoholics Anonymous should be acceptable to all of the independent thinkers of the world, just because one former vice president of an atheists' society changed his mind and joined a cult.

Here is what Bill Wilson (and co-authors) wrote:

      Let's look first at the case of the one who says he won't believe — the belligerant one. He is in a state of mind which can be only described as savage. His whole philosophy of life, in which he so gloried, is threatened. It's bad enough, he thinks, to admit alcohol has him down for keeps. But now, still smarting from that admission, he is faced with something really impossible. How he does cherish the thought that man, risen so majestically from a single cell in the primordial ooze, is the spearhead of evolution and therefore the only god that his universe knows! Must he renounce all this to save himself?
      At this juncture, his A.A. sponsor usually laughs. This, the newcomer thinks, is just about the last straw. This is the beginning of the end. And so it is: the beginning of the end of his old life, and the beginning of his emergence into a new one. His sponsor probably says, "Take it easy. The hoop you have to jump through is a lot wider than you think. At least I've found it so. So did a friend of mine who was a one-time vice-president of the American Atheist Society, but he got through with room to spare."
      "Well," says the newcomer, "I know you're telling me the truth. It's no doubt a fact that A.A. is full of people who once believed as I do. ..."
 William G. Wilson, Tom Powers, and other hidden co-authors, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pages 25-26.

It didn't occur to me that the whole thing was a complete fabrication (as well as an attempt to prove by anecdote).

It just goes on and on and on and on.... The magnitude and audacity and sheer gall of Bill Wilson's hoax is truly breath-taking.

Notice the distortion of reality: If you believe in evolution, then you think that man is god. Darwin never said any such thing, and I've never heard any biologist say such nonsense, either. Such a statement is absurd on the face of it. What the biologists really say is that we are just another species, possibly here very temporarily, and at the rate that we are destroying the biosphere, we are not even likely to last as long as the dinosaurs did.

(It would be nice if we had used our big brains to build a heaven on earth for all people, but some people just had to drive their SUVs to suburbia, instead. It's a little too late now. Peak oil is here and gone, and we are going to have a very difficult time building anything in the future.)

Oh, and notice how Bill Wilson declared that you have to give up any scientific belief in evolution and embrace his medieval version of religion in order to avoid death by alcoholism. And they still insist that Alcoholics Anonymous is not a religion...

Oh well, have a good day anyway.

== Orange 

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
**  "Although easily mistaken for candy, holly is quite poisonous."
**  "Although easily mistaken for real moral religions, cults are quite poisonous."





Date: Mon, May 28, 2007 8:55 pm     (answered 25 June 2007)
From: "Tommy M."
Subject: wow

You are totally irresponsible.......... and obviously don't have your facts straight at all

Tommy M.
505-808-XXXX

Hello Tommy,

It's "irresponsible" to tell the truth about alcoholism and Alcoholics Anonymous, is it?

I don't have my facts straight?

Another letter from another unhappy A.A. member said the same thing recently. Please see my response to that letter for my invitation for you to send in the "true facts".

So please enlighten me. Here is your chance to set the record straight by telling the whole truth about Bill Wilson and Alcoholics Anonymous. I'll print what you send in, if you come up with something more than just propaganda and lies that Bill Wilson wrote.

Have a good day.

== Orange 

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
**  "To win the sympathy of the masses, you must tell them the
**   crudest and most stupid lies."
**    ==  Adolf Hitler





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