1. Heavy Drinking: Its Historical Context
2. Alcoholism: Definitions & Opinions
3. Polarization: Us vs. Them
4. The Objective: Personal Autonomy
5. Alcoholics Anonymous: Essence & Functions
6. Alcoholics Anonymous: Effectiveness
7. The Forces & Directions of Change
8. The Independent Self-Help Programs
9. Rational Recovery Systems Network
10. Traditional Recovery Management
11. Nontraditional Recovery Management
12. Noninstitutional Recovery
13. ...and more...

Her list of the characteristics of unhealthy groups is:

1. The group discourages or blocks outside involvement.
2. The group limits or discourages access to reading material or other forms of personal growth.
3. Expression of dissension is punished, squelched, or strongly discouraged.
4. The group becomes grandiose in its self-definition — "Ours is the one way, the road to salvation."
5. People get locked into stereotyped roles.
6. The group becomes paranoid about outsiders or those who question the norm.
7. People talk like robots.
8. In-group jargon predominates in conversations.
9. The group exerts pressure on people to stay.
10. People use the group for sexual needs.
11. The group is unable to reflect on itself, its history, and its values from a broad perspective.

• "But therapy doesn't work!"
• Denial.
• How to stop self-defeating BS (stinking thinking).
• How to change your stinking thinking.
• Integrating rational ideas into your self-help work.
• Other cognitive or thinking techniques of RET.
• How to get in touch with your feelings.
• Relapse prevention.
• and more...

More on REBT: www.rebt.org
info@rebt.org == Albert Ellis
The SMART web site: www.smartrecovery.org

...the Love that binds the Universe together gently encourages me to go even where there is intolerance, hatred, and anger. For Love wisely knows that to go there in peace and acceptance will literally transform these negative traits into Love itself.
      There can only be duality of good and evil, right and wrong, love and fear at the lower levels of awareness. For at the highest levels, there is only Love. Love sends itself out and returns to itself. All the world is a journey in which love seeks to go where it is not and heal itself. We can each do this individually with our own lives and our own physical bodies. To go where love is not, fully supported by the Universe, we heal.

Note: The Orange Papers has ended up with its own long list of A.A. horror stories, too, here: A.A. Horror Stories.

1. Why It Doesn't Make Sense to Call Addiction a "Disease".
2. Are People Born Alcoholics?
3. Which Is the Most Addictive Drug of All?
4. Smoking: The Toughest Habit to Lick?
5. Obesity: Are People Biologically Programmed to Be Fat?
6. Addictions to Gambling, Shopping, and Exercise: How We Evade Moral Responsibility
7. Love, Sex, and Codependence: Overcoming Trauma
8. The Life Process Program
9. Quitting as Life Process
10. Are You an Addict? Assessing Addiction in the Life Process Program
11. Assessing Your Values: Knowing What Is Important to You
12. Accessing Your Resources: What Do You have That You Can Count On?
13. I'm Not the Person I Want To Be: How People Carry Out Plans to Change
14. Changing the Behavior: That Obscure Object of Desire
15. Life Skills: If You Don't Have Them, Get Them
16. Integrating Change Into Your Life: Groups and Your Social World
17. Kids Have To Be Made Into Addicts: You Can Prevent Addiction
18. Where the Solutions Lie: Re-establishing Communal Ties
19. A Road Map: Where We've Been and Where You Need to Go

1. Keeping track
2. Taking charge
3. Slowing down
4. Discovering your triggers
5. Relaxing
6. Visual techniques for relaxing
7. Managing anxiety and fear
8. Coping with negative moods and depression
9. Managing a positive self-concept
10. When abstinence seems like the best choice for you

The irony of a Twelve Step program customized for Christians is that many who use it believe it is not only effective but Biblical. ... If the original Twelve Step program needs to be "adapted" for Christians, it seems odd to say that it is "Biblically based." What kind of double talk is going on here? Unfortunately, this kind of confusion is characteristic of the literature of "Christianized" recovery programs.
      After all is said and done, Christians do not seem to be making the recovery industry approach more compatible with Biblical Christianity. On the contrary, the recovery industry seems to be influencing the Christian approach.
The Useful Lie, William L. Playfair, M.D. with George Bryson, pages 84-85, and 185-186 (footnote).

See: The Heresy Of The Twelve Steps, here and here for more.

• Part 1. Relapse Prevention: General Overview
  • Chapter 1. Relapse Prevention: Theoretical and Overview of the Model
  • Chapter 2. Situational Determinants of Relapse and Skill-Training Interviews
  • Chapter 3. Cognitive Factors in the Relapse Process
  • Chapter 4. Cognitive Assessment and Intervention Procedures for Relapse Prevention.
  • Chapter 5. Lifestyle Modification
• Part 2. Applications with Specific Addictive Behaviors
  • Chapter 6. Alcoholic Relapse Prevention and Intervention: Models and Methods
  • Chapter 7. The Problem Drinker's Project: A Programmatic Application of Social-Learning-Based Treatment
  • Chapter 8. Preventing Relapse in Ex-Smokers: A Self-Management Approach

• The Rand Report and the Alcohol War
• Alcoholics Anonymous: Pros and Cons
• Treatment Centers: The Old and the New
• On Psychological Dependence
• Is There An Alcoholic Personality?
• On Physiological Craving
• Alcohol and Drugs: Special Dangers
• The Nutritional Approach
• Women and Alcohol: Special Problems
• Teens and Alcohol: New Trends
• Behavior Modification
• Techniques for Solitary Self-Help
• Self-Help Groups and Inter-Group Dynamics
• On Mastering a Drinking Problem

My experiences led me to agree with many professional observers that this classic AA model operates as a cult — a term I use descriptively, not judgementally — and therein lies the secret of its success. It thrives on exclusivity and social isolation, on rote repetitions of scriptural doctrine, and on a blind faith in an omnipotent "leader" and God. It enforces rigid rules of behavior that virtually program one's every move every day, week, and month. Members who do best tend to break ties with former friends and family and relate only to fellow drunks, often attending meetings every day, sometimes even twice a day. By repetition the Steps and Traditions become so ingrained that all casual conversation comes to include key phrases — "I let go and let God" is a common saying, for example — and the idea that one's Higher Power had a role in virtually every positive moment in one's life is taken for granted here. The members who told the most inspiring tales, moreover, were generally the ones whose every moment was coordinated according to the Steps and Traditions and meeting schedules. Many members speak often of giving up old haunts and friends to stick "close to home" as one put it, and the conversation of members tends to revolve so thoroughly around ideas and activities of recovery that it is probably a relief to old friends when they drift away. There are alcohol-free social clubs where members meet in many cities, and many members carry around AA literature and turn to it whenever they find themselves with nothing to do, for fear that they will return to old habits if they relax. "I read the Big Book (the basic text, written by Bill W.) every day, every time I start to feel nervous," one man told me. "It saved me the other day, when I ran into an old drinking buddy on the subway. He took one look at it and split." I had no doubt.
— page 98.

Since one may never "cross talk" or raise issues not related to one's addiction, or even talk about the addiction itself in terms other than the Steps prescribe, one is forced, in the interest of one's progress out of addiction, to internalize and adopt the "mainstream attitudes" fostered by the program.  ...
        The political ramifications of this tendency to subtly impose a totalizing ideology on members are easy to see.   ...   As in any kind of hegemonic discourse or ritual, the absence of apparent ideology is itself the most powerful kind of ideology, since it can never be acknowledged or questioned. The political implications of this kind of thinking, this kind of process, are apparent and depressing.   ...
        This reactionary tendency of AA is further bolstered by its tendency to exclude contact with all "outsiders" who may indeed have other ideas about what has caused a member's suffering and what might be done to assuage it. One of the characteristics of cults described by Arthur Deikman (1990) is a tendency to "devalue outsiders" and assume "an attitude of righteousness" about one's own customs and beliefs. In AA and (to a lesser degree) other recovery groups, this takes the form of labeling as "in denial" those who question basic tenets.
— pages 99-100.

ACOA is the only group I visited in which no response was ever expected of anyone. At times, the silence was so nerve-wracking that I felt all eyes upon me, the ever silent presence, to finally speak.   ...
        The members of my home group were a bizarre lot behaviorally, although, by appearance, they were conventional and respectable.   ...
        Other members of this group — there were about ten women and four men — were apparently even more out of control, unable to handle the emotionally charged, unresolved feelings from childhood, for reasons that were sometimes explained — incest and physical torture — and sometimes hard to figure out at all.
— page 108.

And there is much more. Check it out.

• Alcoholics Anonymous, Third Edition, 1976.
  (written by William G. Wilson, Henry Parkhurst, and 31 or so others; published as 'anonymous.')
  Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. New York, NY.
  ISBN 0-916856-00-3
  Dewey call number 362.29 A347 1976
  
• Alcoholics Anonymous, Fourth Edition, 2001,     published as "anonymous", but really written by William G. Wilson, Henry Parkhurst, Joe Worth, and many other people.
  Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. New York, NY, 2001.
  ISBN: 1-893007-16-2
  Dewey: 362.29 A347 2001
  
• Note that the earlier editions of the A.A. book are available for free on the Internet. It seems that somebody was too 'sober' to remember to renew the copyright (if the original copyright was even ever valid, which is highly unlikely, because Bill Wilson stole the copyright for himself when the book was really written by more than 30 people).
  http://www.recovery.org/aa/download/BB-plus.html
  
• The Big Book is included in this list only for those who want to really see the insanity of Bill Wilson and his Alcoholics Anonymous.

• hatred as a unifying force
• effective cult doctrines

• Compliance with the group,
• Dependence on a leader,
• Devaluing the outsider, and
• Avoiding dissent.

Quotes: here, here, here, and here.

Steve Hassan's web site: http://www.FreedomOfMind.com

I just have one bone to pick with her. She says on page 97 that Alcoholics Anonymous is not a cult, because

• A.A. does not recruit deceptively.
• A.A. does not hide what membership eventually will entail.
• Members can leave at any point.
• A.A. focuses on helping people grow, while cults use their members to promote the growth of the cult and increase the cult leader's power and wealth.

In addition, in her earlier book, "Crazy Therapies", which criticized various fad therapies of the nineteen-sixties and -seventies, she warned of some common characteristics of fraudulent medical treatments:

• the "Procrustean Bed" — an all-purpose diagnosis that can be stretched to fit any problem. That's A.A. and its Twelve Steps, which are the snake-oil that will supposedly cure anything.
• "Unrealistic Expectations" — that's A.A. again, which teaches that a 12-Step panacea — listing and confessing your sins, and feeling powerless and guilty about everything — will fix alcoholism, keep you from drinking, remove all of your sins, and give you Sobriety, Recovery, Serenity, Gratitude, and even "Spirituality".
• "Unexplained Workings" — the promoter cannot explain the theoretical basis of the treatment or its purported successes. That's A.A. yet again. There is no medical or scientific explanation for how the 12 steps are supposed to cure or treat alcoholism, or make alcoholics stop drinking. It's all vague hand-waving and claims that God will really like you and you will become "spiritual" if you do Bill Wilson's 12 steps, so then God will do a bunch of favors for you, like make you quit drinking and solve all of your problems for you.

Frequently, at gatherings of former cult members, a lively exchange takes place when participants compare their respective groups and leaders. As people begin to describe their special, enlightened, and unique leader — whether a pastor, therapist, political leader, teacher, lover, or swami — those present are often surprised to learn that their once-revered leaders are actually quite similar in temperament and personality. It seems as if those leaders come from a common mold, sometimes light-heartedly called the "Cookie-Cutter Messiah School."
Take Back Your Life; Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships, Janja Lalich and Madeline Tobias.