What comes to your mind when you hear the word cult? Jim Jones Kool Aid? David Koresh? Charles Manson? The Texas Polygamist Compound? Maybe even Scientology. Do the words Alcoholic’s Anonymous come to mind? I certainly have never thought of Alcoholics Anonymous as a cult and I am a member. As many people know from my recent blog post, I have been in AA for over a year.
I received many emails and comments in response to that post. Many of those commenting believed that Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is a cult. I frankly take those comments with a grain of salt. All of them were from former AA members. When you are at a low point in your life and counting on something to help you turn that life around but that something does not work, what do you do? You don’t look to yourself because you know you cannot change by yourself. You blame everyone else. You blame the program. You dismiss, you denigrate, you destroy. You do anything except take personal responsibility for your failure. I know this because I have been at that low point. Turning to AA for assistance in moving past that point does not make AA a cult; it makes you human.
Let us start with the premise that AA as an overall organization cannot possibly qualify as a cult because it has no central authority structure. No one is handing down edicts from the top saying you must do this or that to stay in the group. This is because there is no top. To be a cult, an organization, as a whole, must have a “top” in terms of its authority structure.
This leaves us with the question of whether the AA philosophy encourages “cult- like behavior” in its thousands of chapters. Perhaps the personality makeup of the specific chapter can cause the group to function like a cult. I believe, however, that it is the very rare exception rather than the rule.
The other day someone who read my blog, sent me an article about an AA chapter in Washington D.C that was accused of being a cult. The members of this chapter of AA basically encouraged younger female members to have sex with older male members and encouraged members in general to discontinue all ties with anyone who was not a member of this AA chapter. Does that ring the “cult bell” in your head? It certainly does in mine. You can read that article here.
Yes, I agree that this particular chapter probably qualified as a cult, but to say that the actions of an isolated group within a larger organization classifies that larger group as a cult is ludicrous. When these allegations were made public, this group was, in fact, disbanded as an AA sanctioned group.
What else would classify AA as a cult? The biggest book on this subject is AA: Cult or Cure by Charles Bufe who delineates a litany of conditions that qualify AA as a cult. I am not going to debate his criteria. Why? Words are like statistics—you form your opinion, then you make them fit the point you want to make… I frankly could take Bufe’s points and make a good argument that the Boy Scouts of America is a cult .
Any time you have people coming together in a group of any kind, you are going to have formal and informal criteria for membership even at the lowest level. You are going to have a common purpose. You are going to have strong personalities and weak personalities. You are going to have strong personalties that overwhelm and dominate weaker personalities. You are going to have weaker personalities who have to adopt the essence of the stronger ones to excel in the group. Does that happen in AA? Of course it does. Does that happen in the Boy Scouts? Of course it does. Did that happen in my law school study group? You bet. That happened in my weekly poker game. Those attributes do not transform each of the aforementioned organizations into a cult. They are simply the attributes of group dynamics.
These personality issues can be much more pronounced in self-help groups like AA. No one is walking into an AA meeting because they are at a high point in their life. They are defeated, they are weak, they have lost their sense of self, their self-respect, their family, their independent life, etc. They are open to almost every and any suggestion that will put them on a new track of self-respect and sobriety. This certainly lends itself to the danger of domination by strong personalities with amoral motives in the group without checks and balances. AA groups have checks and balances. These checks and balances are the members themselves who are different, diverse, and compassionate, looking out for each other and not trying to reform each other.
So, is AA a cult? I don’t think so, but since each person has to make it work for them as an individual, I can see how some people who fail at it would take solace in viewing it that way. Of course, those who think it is a cult would argue that I am a “cult member” and cult members never think they are in a cult. I have not read Catch-22 in many years, but it sounds as if I am certainly not going out to fly that next mission so I can get out of the army.
I can also see how people with personalities that are just not compatible with a core philosophy would not succeed in AA and view it as a cult. Is there any group out there that does not have a core philosophy? These people, however, probably have issues in any group setting in which conformity to certain standards is an element of reaching a common goal. Is there any group out there where some level of conformity is not needed to reach a common goal?
AA does offer a program of conformity, but AA is not about conformity. AA is not about submission to others in the group. I will not dispute that AA is about submitting to the fact that you have a problem and want help. Seeking help from people who have experienced similar circumstances, but remaining free to choose and make your own decisions indicates the individual is exercising free will. Cults do not allow the existence of free will because some manner of mind-control is practiced to create the cult I sought help from an organized group when I studied for the Texas Bar Exam. Is the legal profession a cult? I know some who would say yes, but the truth is we seek comfort and strength in groups of people who have similar experiences, problems, or goals.
AA is not about shunning those who do not conform or submit. AA is about people with a desire to stop drinking and helping other people with a desire to stop drinking.
If that is a cult, pass me the Kool Aid…….
Below are two diametrically opposed videos on AA One is by Bill W., one of the founders of AA and the other is an interview with author James Stanton Peele who argues that AA is a cult. A fascinating comparison in viewpoints.
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Bill W.
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- Dr. Stanton Peele
May 21st, 2008 at 4:15 pm
When I saw this on digg I thought to myself, “Here we go. Who does this guy think he is?”. But then I read the post. It’s good to raise questions like these & examine them honestly if we’re going to get past them. You hit it on the head with the absense of central authority & the primary purpose being just to help others stop drinking. Nice post.
Abhilashs last blog post..Building Social Networking Sitemaps
May 21st, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Excellent article. I think that AA can be misconstrued as a cult because so many former alcoholics turn to religion with the same fervor that they had with drinking.
Religion becomes the new addiction.
I went to AA for a year while I was learning about my relationship with alcohol. I was not an alcoholic but was struggling with bipolar disorder and the compulsion to self-medicate. Some of the groups I attended were very Judaeo-Christian centric and that was a little off-putting. Other groups were completely open and just talked about acknowledging that you needed the help of a power outside yourself, however you wanted to define it.
It’s a great organization and I learned so much when I attended. Anyone who wants to understand more about their relationship to alcohol would be wise to attend an AA meeting.
May 21st, 2008 at 5:42 pm
I am a member of AA and it saved my life and then gave me a life. A cult, by its very nature, is designed to strip people of their individuality; to separate them from the ones they love. AA gives us back our true selves and helps make us member of our family.
Nice post Brian. I applaud your efforts to support AA and hope this day finds you happy and sober. However. let’s not forget Tradition 12 and the importance of anonymity…especially at the level of press, radio and film!
May 21st, 2008 at 5:46 pm
What comes into my mind when I think of a cult? Mormons, that’s what. Mormons are the biggest, weirdest, craziest cult there is.
May 21st, 2008 at 5:48 pm
I associate AA with any type of situation where a group of individuals are put together and have goals and missions for success.
People are the ones that make AA a success. But AA, like life, is no guarantee of success on it’s own. Some people enter the program and fail. Some succeed. That’s the template for any group or groups of people. But it always ultimately comes down the individual person themselves. If someone fails at AA, it wasn’t AA’s fault. As Brian alluded to when people fail, usually people try to find something other than them selves to blame as to why success wasn’t handed to them.
Just as an example, our office is without air-conditioning today. Some people complain and bitch and moan. Others just work and try not to think about the unpleasant conditions. Different people treat the same envoirnment differently.
Frankly, I couldn’t be more proud of Brian becasue of his success in the AA program. It wasn’t guaranteed and I’m certain it takes work every day. He was accountable for his actions and he knew AA wasn’t a slam dunk. I’ve read where some people were somewhat surprised that he came out in the open to admit his association with AA. To this I say garbage. I believe that was/is part of the process for Brian is to admit it…and then do something about it.
I believe people are motivated by different things. If admitting publically to yourself and to the general public that you have an issue, that might be just the thing for someone to do something about their situation to better themselves.
I wished more people would be accountable for themselves. I work in state government and I have seen some of the same people for two years say they still need the state’s help at this or that. It’s refreshing to see someone like Brian accept responsibility and win.
May 21st, 2008 at 5:50 pm
@Matt: thanks for the note Matt. I don’t view a blog as qualifying as press radio or film. A great number of people in AA use personal blogs to talk about their sobriety and as a self help tool.
May 21st, 2008 at 5:56 pm
No central authority? the big Book? Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions?
May 21st, 2008 at 6:24 pm
@FNA: I think most people would agree that central authority refers to people exerting influence over a group
May 21st, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Cults also have current members who will go to great lengths to defend the cult they are part of. You are a current member who wrote a huge entry online about how AA is not a cult and you chose to ignore things people wrote about AA that showed it could be like a cult. Why should anyone listen to you? I’d rather listen to someone outside of the entire group who knows a lot about cults. It sure sounds like a cult when I think about how the 12 steps and God are used to brainwash the members.
May 21st, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Hello, Brian……
I’ve been sober 18 years and haven’t been to a meeting in about 8.
Do I have problems with AA? Sure.
Is it a cult? Absolutely not. The entire premise is laughable.
I was never asked to break ties with my family or friends. On the contrary, I was encouraged to make amends to the people I had harmed and encouraged to strengthen my relationship with my family.
Was I ever told what to do or what to believe? Not that I recall. A lot of people gave me their opinions, some more forcefully than others. But I don’t recall being told that I HAD to do anything. Besides, it wouldn’t have worked anyway….I mean, have you ever tried to tell an alcoholic ANYTHING?
Was I ever asked to give up my money or my freedom? Not that I recall. I was asked to put in a buck for coffee and was told that volunteer work would make me a better person, but that’s just commonsense advice.
good topic, though.
May 21st, 2008 at 6:51 pm
The majority of the medical community does not even use the term “alcoholic” or classify it as a disease (that is not to say that the effects can be any less deadly). You can abuse alcohol (or whatever your substance of choice is) or be physically addicted to alcohol, and your liver (or teeth, or kidneys) can become diseased as a result, but that doesn’t make it a disease (like, for example, cancer). I’ve never been convinced that a book written decades ago by an self-professed alcoholic -who, BTW, on his deathbed begged for a drink- is the best solution.
I’ve attended AA meetings, and, for the most part they’re depressing, self-indulgent, and boring. A cult? Probably not. But I can see the possibility in certain isolated cases, but that’s just the nature of the beast. Unfortunately AA doesn’t publish any real data as to their success/failure rates, and there isn’t really any data available to show the number of people who were able to curb their addictions without attending any meetings.
At the end of the day, whatever gets you to improve your life, and the lives of those that love you, is a net-positive. If AA helps you…great. If you want an alternative, check out Rational Recovery (http://www.rational.org). The only person who can really tell you if you have a problem is you…and if you *think* you *might* have one, stop kidding yourself and start fixing it. You’ll be glad you did.
May 21st, 2008 at 7:01 pm
AAA, is not as bad as NA, an REHAB is the worst, it is a cult with indoctrination, guidelines and generally breaking of ones will to be submissive and convert one into a christian. Publicly funded rehab is a cult period.
May 21st, 2008 at 7:01 pm
AAA, is not as bad as NA, an REHAB is the worst, it is a cult with indoctrination, guidelines and generally breaking of ones will to be submissive and convert one into a christian. Publicly funded rehab is a cult period.
May 21st, 2008 at 7:06 pm
I’m very close to a recovering alcoholic. He attends meetings once in a while, but he has told me some things that disturb him about the meetings. First of all, let me state that he’s been to meetings everywhere in our county, so it’s not just one group he talks about.
According to him, the meetings stress that there is no way to overcome alcoholism without the AA program – in other words, if you don’t make regular meetings fatihfully, then you WILL lapse back into alcohol. He’s been going only sporadically for over a year now, and is doing quite well. He also says that for the majority of the AA members he’s met, most of them have no social life beyond AA meetings, which seems to be encouraged by the group. It’s as if they’ve switched from one dependency (alcohol) to another (AA meetings).
He also says that members are encouraged to distance themselves from situations where alcohol is involved, and that many members will do so even if it means avoiding former friends and family members. The guy I keep referring to does not do that. He is fine with sitting down at a bar with friends, and drinking a glass of gingerale. He’s even been the designated driver for his friends.
I’m not completely bashing the meetings, since he still goes once in a while for the support, but the “our way or no way” attitude he’s told me about seems off to me.
May 21st, 2008 at 7:09 pm
I personally think AA is great! I had a flat tire one time and they helped me out, no charge.
May 21st, 2008 at 7:19 pm
I asked my wife to go to AA to help with her drinking problem, because I didn’t know any better. I now know that having sex with your fellow AA members is so common it’s called the “13th step.”
We divorced a few years ago (because of adultery, not drinking), and today she’s cut off all contact with non-AA friends. She thinks “no one else will understand” her. I think it’s because non-AA people might challenge her AA-world ideas, and it’d all come crumbling down.
AA is clearly a cult. It’s also a family-destroyer, because they *know* what’s going on, and do nothing to prevent it. (There is no way you can convince me that people in a small support group are sleeping together, and no one can tell.)
I recommend to anyone with a spouse they’d like to keep, except for the drinking: Take them to somewhere that does not do anonymous, co-ed counseling. Take them somewhere with medical supervision, in a controlled environment.
Now that I can see it with a clear mind, I realize that “alcy’s helping alcy’s” is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. That’s like cancer patients treating cancer patients.
See a medical pro for a chemical addiction. Don’t think you can do it on your own, even with other addicts. That, in a nutshell, is the alcoholic dilemma — they *still* think they’re so clever… when really, it’s just more f’d up thinking.
May 21st, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Any irrational idea can be the authority behind an immoral organization. But the people who would be attracted to such a group are those who already believe in and are looking for an expression of their deeply held philosophy that “might makes right”. A philosophy indoctrinated into them by their critical and controlling parents who held their love conditional on blind obedience. As long as you ignore this immoral philosophy, assume it’s harmless, assume it isn’t a terrible handicap parents force on their children, assume it’s normal to feel an “emptiness” in the face of independence, freedom and your right to pursue happiness, an emptiness that can only be filled with alcohol or religion, then this world will continue to be a terrible, violent place for everyone. Only in rejecting authority, bowing to now man, nor allowing any man to bow to you, can there be peace for all.
May 21st, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Brian,
This is wrong on so many levels.
1. No individual member can be a spokesperson for A.A.
2. A.A. has no opinions on out side issues.
3. The Preamble explains what A.A. is and isn’t about.
4. A.A. does not get involved in any controversy.
These are not my opinions, they can be found in A.A. literature.
I understand your enthusiasm in trying to defend A.A. from some of the stupid comments (my opinion) that people make, but it is better to let them pass. (my experience).
Congrats, on your year (odaat) “KEEP COMING BACK” to the CULT (my humor)
Mike C
May 21st, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Dude, it’s a cult. You’re programmed.
May 21st, 2008 at 7:54 pm
The question is irrelevant. Does Attending AA have any effect on one’s recovery from alcoholism? My own conclusion after 12 years of abstinence in and out of AA is AA has no effect. There is scientific evidence to support that conclusion. If you are curious, the answers are a google search away.
May 21st, 2008 at 7:57 pm
This is one of the best written and most thoughtful blog posts I have come across in a long time. I really appreciate that you put two opposing viewpoints up on your blog and shared your own experience. I think one of the best things you said in it is that some people do not do well with a core philosophy. I know from my personal experience that the more strong a group philosophy is the more I tend to rebel against it. That doesnt make people who embrace them wrong and it doesnt make me a bad person. It is all about what works for the individual. Thank you.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Don’t drink and go to meetings. (And change your whole effin life.) Uh.. it saved my life. I go VOLUNTARILY. Alcoholism is a disease that tells you you don’t have a disease. Cunning. Baffling. Powerful.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:04 pm
The Program of A.A. is the steps, all the steps are essentially is a ego deflation
process,that gets the addict out of self, by being honest and cleaning up ones life.
the meetings now are full of, non- addicts, untreated addicts, ect..
certain groups can be very clickish and off the beaten track. and actually have adopted a system of sayings and attitudes, which can be i guess construed as being cult like. but this is not what the founding members at all hoped for.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:05 pm
I’ve recently lost a friend to AA. He had been arrested for his second time for DUI, also had several other arrests for the mary jane, spread throughout his college years.
I don’t know what happened when his girlfriend convinced him to start going to meetings, but I noticed a stark shift in his personality, and especially to the people, including myself, who were his closest confidants. We knew what his problems originated, and it was his coke-addict abusive girlfriend, yet he could not break himself from the relationship despite tough-love advice. His problems stemmed from a lack of ambition and desire for success, a very concerning complacency.
Now that he’s started going to AA, he has started blaming his closest confidants, his best friends and his cousin, for enabling his problems. He’s developed a ‘blame the drugs’ mentality for everything, when his usage in this case is a symptom of the problems, not the origin. He holds us in lower regard now, and lashes out at us.
It was so bad that when his own cousin got into a motorcycle crash, he came to the pre-emptive conclusion that his cousin must have been under the influence because they were involved in usage all of the time — and refused to call him or even visit him in the hospital — despite the fact that it happened on the way to work one morning.
Maybe some people in AA realize their problems; but in this case, my friend — someone who I considered my closest at a time — found different outlets to shift the blame to. I no longer talk to him, but ever so often he sends me text messages lashing out at me.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Interesting article, but as someone who’s familiar with AA, I would suggest that you talk to your sponsor about what he thinks of the articles you’re posting online. Remember Traditions 11 & 12, they are there for a reason, generating webpage hits, and tying your AA membership to photos of yourself, are both contrary to the purpose and philosophy of your own program.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:08 pm
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for A.A. membership; we are self-supporting through our own contributions. A.A. is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization or institution; does not wish to engage in any controversy; neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.-AA Preamble.
This explains the purpose of AA. If you read this then you know what it is supposed to be. If someone doesn’t want to stop drinking and wants to control their drinking then they should probably find some other resource than AA. When I read these posts I see that people are describing behavior of people in AA and not what AA requires. I have been free of alcohol for 20 years now and I was able to find help in AA. I do not attend AA now like I did in the beginning. No one ever forced me to do something I was not willing to do. I don’t prescribe to everything people say in AA because there are several people that misquote AA or distort the principles. There is quit a bit of group think in AA as well as indoctrination to the AA program. In my 20 years I have witnessed some very troubling things in AA. I have also witnessed some extraordinary things as well. AA is made up of people like every other organization. There are always people and groups of people that believe their way is the best way. If your experience with AA was a poor one then that is unfortunate. Mine was not that way. I would never force someone to seek help for their drinking the way I did. If they wanted help then I would provide them with the option that worked for me and let them decide.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:08 pm
I fully agree with Brian’s assessment that AA is not a cult. However there are many cultists within AA. I have been a sober member since 1992. As I made the transition from newcomer to old timer, I noticed a distinction in the way that many old timers live. My observation is that some of the individual members decide to live as though they were a part of the “Cult of AA.”
I’m not in the least bit knocking AA, I’m knocking those that have lost sight of the true purpose of AA, living without drinking. I fully understand that AA is not THE way to sobriety but only a way. Other programs are every bit as successful. AA, as I do it, has simply worked for me. I don’t mess with things that work.
Keep Coming Back.
Scott H. Miller
May 21st, 2008 at 8:16 pm
“What else would classify AA as a cult? The biggest book on this subject is AA Cult or Cure By Charles Bufe.
Bufe goes through a litany of things that qualify AA as a cult. I am not going to debate his criteria. Why? Words are like statistics. You form your opinion than you make them fit to make your point. I frankly could take Bufe’s points and make a good argument that the Boy Scouts are a cult using his criteria.”
That’s some fine reasoning there. W-O-W.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:18 pm
In my opinion, a cult is any organization, movement, church etc., that tells its meembers something bad will happen to them if they leave. So AA does fit here among many other groups. Now the unsaid inference to your column is that “cult” = bad. I don’t know neccesarily hold to that. For folks who are adrift in life, a cult provides an anchor, which is frequently an improvement over being adrift in destructive behavior.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:19 pm
“I will not dispute that AA is about submitting to the fact that you have a problem and want help.” [And the help of a 'higher power']
“AA is not about shunning those who do not conform or submit. AA is about people with a desire to stop drinking helping other people with a desire to stop drinking.” [With the help of a 'higher power']
Atheists need not apply.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:25 pm
I have been sober for 12 and a half years, the first 4 of which I was a VERY active member of AA. I appreciate the openness of your post as well as the legitimate intellectual curiosity and while what you have stated are certainly the GOALS of AA, to deny it’s position as a religious organization is to miss the point of the program completely.
I’m not sure where you got your definition of cult but this is what dictionary.com has to say:
1. a particular system of religious worship, esp. with reference to its rites and ceremonies.
2. an instance of great veneration of a person, ideal, or thing, esp. as manifested by a body of admirers: the physical fitness cult.
3. the object of such devotion.
4. a group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc.
5. Sociology. a group having a sacred ideology and a set of rites centering around their sacred symbols.
6. a religion or sect considered to be false, unorthodox, or extremist, with members often living outside of conventional society under the direction of a charismatic leader.
7. the members of such a religion or sect.
8. any system for treating human sickness that originated by a person usually claiming to have sole insight into the nature of disease, and that employs methods regarded as unorthodox or unscientific.
no where in that definition is there any mention of a central authority and frankly, if you can’t see that all 7 accurately describe the AA culture, I’m afraid your looking at it through rose-colored glasses.
let me be clear that AA does a LOT of good for people and I am in no way saying they should go away. There are many people (and friends of mine) who would be dead without it. But it _IS_ a cult.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:26 pm
To Richard:
Sorry Richard – you sound like a classic control freak. Your email is FULL of “I”s and “me”s and yet you still don’t see your part in all of this.
YOU asked your wife to go to AA. What did you think? That she’d just stop drinking and be a “good little wifey”?
Your post is SO one sided. Perhaps she sobered up and found out you’re an idiot, a moron or an abuser – who knows?
You provide nothing in your post but conjecture. Did you go to any meetings with her? Did you go to ALANON? Did you continue to drink in front of her? Was she always a drinker? Did you get tight together?
You make a recomendation but really without further information from you regarding what YOU did in this whole situation, I’d have to say your recomendation is worthless.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:27 pm
What I think is interesting and what made my friends and I think of AA as a kind of cult is that one of our friends joined and was 5 months sober. AA, however, took away that label once they’d found out she’d been drinking non-alcoholic beer. They denounced her as no longer “clean” and made her start from the beginning…not such a great group in my mind.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:27 pm
No way is AA a cult–addicts tend to be obsessive people to brgin with and many AA’s have pretty quirky personalities….but a cult? nahhhh. As Brian pointed out, there is no central charismatic leader( like Manson or Jim Jones) Meetings are held in church basements and nobody gets any money for participating. Everything is volunteer. The only thing members have to gain by participation is sobriety–which is no small thing. Congrats,Brian on your year of not drinking and thanks for an interesting discussion.
Robies last blog post..Living Green in America:Five Things You Can Do Right Now to Save Energy
May 21st, 2008 at 8:37 pm
I found your article through Digg. As a former member of AA (in the Washington DC area) I found your article intriguing. I did not leave on bad terms, nor do I think the program is cult-like. I left because I needed to find out if I REALLY was an alcoholic before I felt I could get anymore out of the program. I spent 5 years in and just felt like I hit a plateau. 1 year away and I still barely drink and even more rarely in excess…am I cured? Nope. Am I careful to not over step my bounds again…yup.
I will definitely be back to AA if my life turns to shit again. I wish you best on your journey.
– TriZz
PS: The Midtown Group (the young people group mentioned above) is rather cultish. They’ve never adhered to the principles of AA. They had a central leader “Mike Q.” and yes, he had a mid-twenties hottie of a girlfriend. The Midtown group’s funds helped pay for his rent and his car…it was getting pretty ridiculous before he died recently.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:38 pm
The best argument against AA being a cult is that it doesn’t claim a monopoly on dealing with alcoholism. In other words, it makes no claim to be “the one true way” that is the hallmark of every cult.
As to Tradition 11, the purpose of anonymity in public – especially (but not exclusively) at the level of press, radio and film – is so that one individual doesn’t represent the whole to people unfamiliar with AA.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:40 pm
I believe it is a religion that is borderline cult. The Big Book is the Bible, the Deity is some dude in the sky you can call whatever you want, and the church is full of dysfunctional, chain-smoking, coffee-guzzling, sailor swearing, co-dependent people now addicted to each other. Yes, I’ve been there.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Millner;
The meeting for the I-know-the-one-thing-what’s-wrong-with-the-world-and-how-to-fix-it-delusionals is two blogs down to the left. Oh yeah, Welcome
Five Nineteens last blog post..Day 35
May 21st, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Like Abhilash, I saw this on Digg and came here with a lot of skepticism. But like him, I agree this is a thoughtful post. It raised these questions in my mind, which I’m not sure I’m capable of answering here:
Are we wary of cults because of what they are by definition, or because of the sometimes damaging effect they have on people?
If an organization met every single definition of a cult but had an overwhelming net positive impact on the world, could it be considered to be bad?
If you heard only an portion of Bill W.’s video, an excerpt where he describes his spiritual experience, and you were first told “this man is a member of a cult”, would you react differently than if you were first told “this man founded a group that helped millions get their lives back on track”?
More food for thought.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Congrats on the year of sobriety!
I wanted to reiterate something I heard in a meeting: “What cult doesn’t want your money and suggests you bring your own God and spiritual beliefs?”
May 21st, 2008 at 8:54 pm
I have no problem with AA being a cult or not being a cult people can go belong to whatever groups they want, personally I belong to many cults … Christian Buddhist etc …
I do have a problem when a Judge though orders a person to go to AA meetings especially since last time I check AA preaches that you can not succeed unless you give yourself over to a higher authority, that is a religious view (if not a pathetic view that you can’t make decisions for yourself and have to depend on some unknown cosmic force that’s only goal in existence is to listen to you whines but I digress), what makes them seem very cult like is the fact that they push the 12 steps and the giving yourself over to this “higher power” so hard. Granted as far as cults go they are lacking in the demanding you give tribute (tithing) and most don’t demand you break all contact with those who don’t follow your way (disfellowship).
Still I would be leery of a group but then again I have never became addicted to a substance to the point that I destroyed my well being my self image or any other id/ego I have.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:55 pm
As the OP stated, this all comes down to individual chapters. I have been to numerous different AA meetings all over the country (including the one in DC referenced) and some are a little cult-ish. But, the principals of AA are about as good as you can get when it comes to preventing something from being a cult. So I believe very few chapters end up being cult-like.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. 99% of AA meetings are wonderful. None that I have been to encourage separation from non-AA members whatsoever. They suggest it might not be a good idea to hang around with your old drinking buddies, while they are drinking, of course, but that is about the extent of it.
Otherwise, the rules are pretty simple (and not cult-like in the least).
Don’t Drink
May 21st, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Any groupthink that pivots about a “higher power” runs the risk of becoming cultish, simply because of the religious and thus irrational underpinnings of the groupthink.
Thus, if you can get the group to believe your unprovable assertion (e.g., “there exists a higher power that can influence my life and actions, and the life and actions of the entire universe”) then they will be more likely to swallow the arguments that sometimes follow to justify cultish behavior.
May 21st, 2008 at 9:00 pm
You mentioned that everyone wants to find a way to externalize their problems, so that they don’t have to face the truth about themselves.
Pretty sure alcohol is still external.
AA encourages people to think for themselves within a framework that was put up sixty years ago. Challenging people to align their perceptions with the ignorance of the past is folly. Cult or not.
Still, for people who lack the strength to forge their own path, it can be a positive experience. But it is without a doubt heavily biased against those with above-average intelligence.
“Oh, therapy doesn’t work on people who think they’re smart.”
Yeah, I guess it is sort of a cult after all.
May 21st, 2008 at 9:02 pm
“When you are at a low point in your life and counting on something to turn that life around and it does not work, what do you do? You don’t look to yourself. You blame everyone else. You blame the program. You dismiss , you denigrate, you destroy. Anything so you can relieve yourself of personal responsibility for your failure. I know this because I have been there. That does not make AA a cult. That makes you human.”
Isn’t the core philosophy of AA the absolution of personal responsibility?
#1, Admitting you are powerless over alcohol? That’s the very definition of denying personal responsibility.
#2, You need jesus to help you overcome your addiction? Can your spurious little self-help group be any more asinine?
Your entire “faith” is based on the denial of personal responsibility. Nothing’s ever your fault because you were helpless in the face of alcohol’s overwhelming mind-control powers.
May 21st, 2008 at 9:05 pm
We, people, are human. We all have issues. Some more than others. Many need to seek help from groups to find relief because they can find people that understand and can relate to the problem by experience. That, my friend, is all AA is. One alcoholic helping another. Many have found that high priced doctors and psychiatrists could not help so where do they turn? To some one that has gone through it themselves. It’s a simple idea.
If the general public wanted to know more about AA, it is freely open to look a little deeper into. Simply go to http://www.alcoholicsanonymous.net the whole program is written in the book titled Alcoholics Anonymous which can be downloaded from the website. IT IS OPEN TO ANYONE. AA has nothing to hide. No secrets to keep. The only thing AA asks for is personal anonymity so the members can recover with their identity kept safe.
Look, you can’t blame AA for adultery or any other actions that individuals make. That judgment must be made on those people involved in the action. Is the whole Catholic religion at fault for a priest’s abusive actions? NO. So then why does it make sense to blame a program of recovery? And on the other hand, AA “the program” is a book that the groups and meetings are based on. Can you really blame a book for adultery?
May 21st, 2008 at 9:06 pm
@richard. hum, sorry for your situation. Are you blaming strangers for not ‘knowing’ what YOUR wife is up to, when you didn’t?
A A gets personal, yes. But that 13th step you’ve heard about is shunned in meets, not celebrated. An even larger unwritten rule is that there should be NO new relationships for the first year of sobrity. Once again, you cannot blame the acts of a few, on the entire group.
With out even knowing your ex, I would say her troubles ran pretty deep, you knew her so you might agree. I say this, because she was obivously willing to commit adultery too. As well as breaking primary rules to her newly found support group.
Cutting off ties to non-AA friends may have simply come from changed attitudes (like not thinking it’s cool to sit in a dark bar all day long, or going on a picinic and not leaving the cooler or keg.) It’s a pretty big life change.
If anything, it sounds like you need to learn how to get on with your own life… peace
May 21st, 2008 at 9:07 pm
FNA:
The Big Book and the traditions are guidelines. There are no rules. You can’t be kicked out. The only requirement to become a member is the desire to quit drinking. A fella can use all or some of program to help themselves.
Richard:
I throw the kitchen sink at my addiction. I use a doctors, therapists, medication, the 12 steps, meetings, exercise, and an open mind to fight my disease.
There is something about spending time with other addicts that cannot compare to my relationships with other people. I have been in a great marriage for 13 years and my wife is my most trusted friend, but there are some things she cannot understand or give me.
It’s kind of like trying to explain what it is like to have kids. You can’t explain it with words but there is an unspoken understanding with other parents.
I’m sorry for the loss of your marriage. I couldn’t imagine losing my wife. Peace.
May 21st, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Oh, nice article by the way. Thanks for the video posts.
May 21st, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Alex L., actually, AA does claim to have a monopoly on sobriety. All other programs are disdained. A person who decides one day that he will stop drinking and goes 20 years without touching another drop is still a drunk by AA definition. A person who goes to meetings every other day, but gets drunk every other week is a recovering alcoholic. One of the indications of a cult is “salvation can only be obtained through the cult”. AA has that covered.
I lost my wife to the cult of AA. She went to meetings and did nothing else. At first I was fine with this, believing it would help her. After a year of never seeing her I requested she set aside one day and evening a week for us to spend some time together. She wouldn’t do it and accused me of interfering with her sobriety (the standard AA excuse). Her cult friends also convinced her to do nothing about her teenage daughter (15 years old) getting drunk, doing drugs, and having sex with complete strangers for drugs and alcohol. I found that do-nothing stance to be morally corrupt.
Perhaps not all AA chapters are cults, but the ones I dealt with through my ex-wife were certainly cults.
May 21st, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Damn, Brennan! Did AA run over your dog or something?
May 21st, 2008 at 9:24 pm
Well, Ogre, I am sorry to hear about your wife. It’s pretty nice to have something to blame on your family issues and to call names when the shit hits the fan isn’t it? Are you more mad at AA, your wife’s friends or your wife? Who are you really angry at? Maybe yourself for not being more involved? Could be a million things, but slander doesn’t look good on anyone.
May 21st, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Ogre, how many meetings have you been to and how much of the literature have you read?
They don’t call it “Well People Anonymous” for a reason. It’s not a familiy fixing program, it’s a not drinking program. First things first then hopefully the rest will follow.
This topic makes people angry.
Thanks for letting me run my mouth.
May 21st, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Nice article. I know AA intimately. It is obvious that those who wrote negative commentaries do not. “Contempt prior to investigation,” is one tenant that will keep me in the dark drunk or not.
Let me say that alcohol held a gun to my head that no AA member ever has. I am free to walk out anytime. That was not always so while at the bar, some non-members may not understand that.
Richard, I am sorry that you lost your wife. Sex between members is not a prerequisite however. The old saying is if you sober up a horse thief all you have is a sober horse thief. AA mentions alcohol only in the first step of the 12. The rest is about changing your life. Alcoholism is a disease of perception. If one does not change one’s thinking, why would I bother with a program? Richard, I know the jargon and the sort of group-think that goes on in AA is sort of clickish. Did you ever try Al-Anon? That is the sister program for family members on the other side of the coin.
Milliner, I’m not sure what “irrational idea” you are referring to. Your broad brush, “people who would be attracted to such a group,” is pretty vague at best, and simple-minded at worst. I reiterate, no one locks the door from the outside. AA will gladly refund your misery if that is your choice.
What I find there is a mix of people and personality types. The gems are those who know where you’ve been in a general way, and push you to look at yourself honestly. The worst, after all we were all active drunks at one time, will try to influence you, steal from you, and demean you the same way people on the “outside” do. What the hell is so hard to understand about that? It’s not incontestable magic… It’s about the human condition and how to live a better life. The choices are individual. I fired a sponsor because he tried to “influence” me to read the Bible. I still talk to him, no biggie…
It works for me and I still know, better than ever, what makes me tick… no lemmings allowed…
May 21st, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Alex, AA does not label people outside the program. People might, but A A is about taking care of yourself.
Orge, tough situation. The A A I have seen is all about family, unless that is where the trouble lies. I have no idea of you or your ex’s situation, so I do not mean to infer anything. Regarding your daughter, your ex may have been trying to lead with being a sober example going forward. Like any relationship, telling someone else to ‘do something’ often drives them the other way. Especially parents. Sometimes an example a time is all that can be offered. You didn’t mention what you were able to do about the situation?
May 21st, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Brennan, if you actually read the steps of AA you’ll find that steps 8 & 9 tell alcoholics they must face responsibility for their actions by making amends for what they did. Before you get all jumpy, IT SAYS, “AMENDS”. not saying you’re sorry. AA says that in order to recover, members must “make direct amends” which is making the wrongs right. How is that not accepting responsibility.
If I broke your window wouldn’t it be accepting responsibility if I fixed or replaced it? That what members must do.
May 21st, 2008 at 9:33 pm
It’s a Cult. Trust me. I was sent there after getting a couple Minor in Posessions at a young age, before I could even afford to be an alcoholic.
AA thinking states, if you drink to get drunk (even once), you’re an alcoholic; which makes about as much sense as saying, if you eat until you’re full (say, if you go to a buffet), you’re a glutton forever and need help. There exist such a thing as eating until you’re full, or drinking until you’re drunk, or running until you can’t run anymore, etc., without acquiring a new, permanent, unremovable label (glutton, alcoholic, marathon runner, and so on). AA members are trained to not comprehend the existence of such a possibility; arguing such a point to them would be like arguing semantics with a 5 year old. Even if you win…..who cares? They sure as heck don’t.
In the same vein, AA–by necessity–is fueled by the belief that even one more drink is one drink too many….ever. Not per month, not in a year. In their mind, 1 drink, 100% of the time, will lead to a second, and third, and 50th. AA, by extension, leverages other beliefs and philosophies off of this (leverages was probably not the right word), and their 12 Steps embody this, especially the one about believing in a “higher power”, which is invariably recognized as God; and in other cases, when someone cites multiple Gods (Hinduism), Taoism, etc., they’re scoffed at, or viewed as soft, or viewed as someone who isn’t going to make it.
AA all but requires its members to self-identify as alcoholics before ever speaking to the group. If you do not do so, it is believed that you are either too arrogant or too ignorant to recognize your own alcoholism; and as such, you will never get “better”, even if you were never truly sick in the first place.
The list of their methods (schemes) goes on and on. In every group, there will exist a group of smarmy intellectuals who will claim that none of the above that I mentioned is “completely true”, but if you look them in the face and say: “Drop the adverbs. True or False?”, they will be lying if they say it isn’t True. AA members don’t like new ideas. The only transformation they believe in, is one made by using their pre-established, written-in-stone 12 Steps. No other plan of action is to be tolerated in their minds. Never-mind alcoholics helping alcoholics, or occasional-drinkers-who-got-popped helping alcoholics; it’s 12 steps all the way, or get out of here.
AA is not a violent cult. AA is not an overwhelmingly negative, dangerous cult. But the place is still a cult. It strengthens the mind, but does not strengthen thought processes or logic. It teaches people the art of fooling others; in essence, it is what politicians do by the practice of “protecting us from ourselves”, by promising us the sun and the moon, and delivering a loaf of bread and a half-eaten banana. While the premise behind AA works great as a logical device when announced ahead of time, I personally do not believe in the practice of acquiring knowledge and strength through ignorance and blind obedience.
Cult. Cult Cult Cult Cult Cult. Anyone who argues otherwise is a stupid head.
May 21st, 2008 at 9:37 pm
“Rarely have we seen a person fail” …
10,000+ days of sobriety here – (and most of those in a reasonably sane frame of mind) …
12 steps that are “Suggestions as a program of recovery”
12 traditions are just that “Traditions”
No compulsory rules, regulations or fees in a traditional group …
The recognition of a “Higher Power” is optional …
A guarantee that you can take your ‘practicing’ alcoholism back at any time should you so chose …
“Keep coming back – It works”
TOUGH LOVE — i.e. If it is a ‘Cult’ to your way of thinking then get your carcass out there [don't go to meetings] and keep on doing things just as you were before!
The above post is for Bill & Bob and the thousands of other alcoholics who helped show this happy man a way to live better …. Nuff said!
May 21st, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Harold, are you kidding? It’s called ALCOHOLICS Anonymous. It’s for alcoholics. Not THE OCCASIONAL DRINKER ANONYMOUS or THE MINOR IN POSESSION AT A YOUNG AGE ANONYMOUS. You may have the ability to stop drinking but you obviously can not relate to what it is like to be an alcoholic. Therefore, it’s not for you. But what about alcoholics? The ones who can’t stop? Are you actually saying you know a better way to stop drinking and stay stopped than a program that has a proven track record for keeping people sober? Write it up, implement it and write a blog about it in 70 years to let us all know how well it works. Thanks for telling AA off so well BUDDY.
May 21st, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Ogre, this excerpt is from the Second Forward of Alcoholics Anonymous:
“So far, upon the total problem of actual potential alcoholics in the world, we have made only a scratch. In all probability, we shall never be able to touch more than a fair fraction of the alcohol problem in all its ramifications. Upon therapy for the alcoholic himself, we surely have no monopoly.”
No single experience can ever speak for the whole of any person or organization – yours included. By the way, how did you get your nickname?
As to Brennan, an admission of powerlessness over alcohol is not an denial of personal responsibility. In fact, admission of wrongs and an honest effort at amends and restitution are pillars of AA’s philosophy. Out of curiosity, what about all this makes you so angry?
May 21st, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Perhaps by immediately comparing AA to other infamous cults you’re confusing the definition of the word ‘cult.’ Basically anything religious can be considered a cult and AA certainly entails accepting a ‘higher power.’ It does go further by encouraging members to push away ‘enablers’ which is diluted to mean virtually everyone that’s been around when the member drank. AA also paints a black/white reality for members; that some things are clearly bad (drinking) and others clearly good (god or some other sky daddy). Studies have shown repeatedly that the cold turkey method almost always results in failure. However, I suppose that failure means the person will come back repeatedly. It has been found that binge drinking is reduced more quickly and with fewer relapses if a person doesn’t quit at all but simply reduces their consumption.
May 21st, 2008 at 9:58 pm
It is easy to see why AA would be considered a cult by some, even if it doesn’t strickly qualify by standard definition. It is rather rigid and inflexible. You must follow the rules. More, you must accept that you are powerless and must accept a higher power is needed help to overcome alcoholism. That in itself is a very cult-like requirement. AA also demands that you accept that you are a victim, that cannot hope to be cured without it’s help. That is a very cult-like philosophy. And yet, it demands that you take responisbility for your actions and attempt to rectify the wrongs your drinking has caused. That’s a very positive thing. The only problem is, they require this even if you’ve never wronged anyone. AA has helped a lot of pepole. But it has also harmed quite a few, as well. AA is not for everyone and it is not the only or even the best way to deal with a drinking problem. There is not nor will there ever be one single way to approach the treatment of an addiction. I would recommend anyone with a drinking problem first consult a good mental health professional, who deals in addictive behaviors. AA is a form of group therapy and, for some people, entering group therapy before one has done some intense individual work can be a waste of time at best and very dangerous at worse. This is probably why AA’s drop-out and recitivism rates are so high.
May 21st, 2008 at 9:59 pm
12th step: Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, take the message to an alcoholic and practice these principles in all your affairs.
These principles revolve around humbleness, unselfishness, helping others. If you are practicing you are not in a cult.
Unfortunately, with millions trying AA, there will be some problems and inconsistency. We pray those folks will keep to the original goals which are completely anti-cult.
But if people feel that way and have obviously experienced it, they were sadly affected by those not sticking to the program. In this instance, keep your opinion, every AA member would tell you you have a right to it and you should think how you want to think. The principal downfall of Alcoholics is their self-centeredness, so to escape the obsession of alcoholic you have to ditch that my way or the highway (sounds like I was a cult in my past) attitude.
May 21st, 2008 at 10:04 pm
How about this~~Most people dont ended up in AA until they have tried various other means of controling thier drinking.
How about this if you dont like AA ~~~STAY OUT!!
May 21st, 2008 at 10:04 pm
I dunno, am I allowed to hang out with my friends who still drink and party? Don’t they need a designated driver anyway? As long as we don’t have to disconnect from anybody or all move to Guyana, AA should be OK. I quit smoking cigarettes cold turkey and all my friends still smoke. I love the smell of cigarette smoke but I haven’t had any desire to light up a cigarette. I don’t want to smoke. DIG IT?
May 21st, 2008 at 10:06 pm
John, I’m not sure what you mean in relation to what I wrote:
“Alex, AA does not label people outside the program. People might, but A A is about taking care of yourself.”
My comment neither labeled people inside or outside AA. Brian Cuban feels that his blog is outside the scope of ‘press, radio and film’ as is referenced in Tradition 11’s suggestions on anonymity. Of course, he’s free to do as he pleases. My point was that the intent of the tradition was not solely to outline improper media outlets for publicly breaking anonymity, but to safeguard AA as a whole from the actions and opinions of individual members.
May 21st, 2008 at 10:11 pm
@julie: Juie-I am the author of this article and as you can see fairly vocal of the things I like and don’t like about AA. Even as an oft critical member, I consider that statement harsh. If someone dislikes AA, I wold hope they would take an introspective look at what is driving those feelings and whether the dislike arises out of fear. I would hope that person wold come back to give it another chance and we would welcome that person back with non-judging open arms. I frankly could not care less about many of the AA philosophies but it is that non-judgmental door always open atmosphere that keeps me coming back…
May 21st, 2008 at 10:14 pm
I was sober for nearly two years in AA just after turning 21.
As someone else said above – do I have problems with AA? Yes. Do I think it’s a cult – NO.
The only small snag in the AA program for me was that after getting sober, as many tend to find out, I was still left with a slew of problems and issues that were NOT caused by drinking. At one point, I made – what I thought at the time to be – a logical decision that numbing with alcohol was better than being left to find some sort of religious basis to live my life on while dealing with these problems sober.
Currently, after deciding (again) that the drinking does nothing for me, I’m sobering up. Hey, I may attend a few AA meetings here and there if I feel really antsy, but in general, 20 months of SERIOUS meeting attendance, going through the steps, being sponsored and sponsoring others merely taught me that if you don’t drink, you don’t get drunk, and if you want to stay stopped, you’d better find a power greater than you.
I think I’ll just not drink and attempt to find this power greater than me on my own, rather than dealing with the often pushy and holier-than-thou personalities in AA.
May 21st, 2008 at 10:16 pm
@Alex L: Alex, I understand your point but I have to say that I get nervous when I hear language about “safeguarding from opinions”. AA as an organization is not a glass house with a secret handshake entrance. Being open to opinions and the freedom to voice them is one things that separates healthy groups from cults…
May 21st, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Your blog is definately a violation of the 11 tradition. I know you believe you are doing a good thing, everyone who violates this tradition does. But if, God forbid, you relapse you’re going to make AA look like a failure and the rest of us look like fools. It’s not fair to jepordize 63+ years of peoples hard work so you can have something to talk about. Please think twice (and talk with your sponsor).
P.S. Blogging is covered under this tradition.
May 21st, 2008 at 10:31 pm
I’m a “recovered teen alcoholic”, in his mid 20s. About a year or two, I was ordered to attend AA meetings after I was arrested for possession of marijuana. No, not NA or MA, but AA. I attended 8 meetings around town at different locations. I too felt a very “cult-ish” vibe from the meetings. I am a Christian by choice, however I don’t believe you need admit that you are powerless and you need to turn your life over to a higher power. That’s complete bullshit. I would drink until I passed out or vomited. I experience alcoholic blackout, etc. But was I powerless to stop myself? No, and neither were any of the other people I met. It was disappointing to see a group of people coming together to shed personal responsibility for their actions and blame something else. After watching people chain smoking and drinking 5 pots of coffee, it was not hard to realize that AA does nothing to aid an individual in self reformation. If I was allergic to peanuts, but I kept eating them, knowing full well that I might died one of these days if I keep it up then who’s to blame? The peanuts or me? If alcoholism is truly a disease, then people need to take care of themselves and stop coming together to comiserate.
People simply need to come to terms with themselves and decide when they want to change. No group, no book, no higher power trumps free will.
May 21st, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Harold,
You are so full of bologna or yourself or something…
May 21st, 2008 at 10:32 pm
My mother got sober some 20 years ago thanks in part to AA. I see some commentary here about individual AA members who purposely isolate themselves from society, friends, etc. My thought is that they are desparate to save what they can of their lives, and haven’t freely given up. But I am not an alcoholic. I have lived through alcoholism though. It’s a disease in all respects. It causes severe toxicity to the body, it’s classified in the DSM IV as a psychological disease, its probably even reimbursable through medicare. If you deny the disease, then you deny that it’s a drug. It is a powerful powerful drug, and my guess is that it has enabled more misery in American than anything else combined. Those of you who are recovering and know they will never fully recover, keep it up!
The reason why alcholics will always be alcoholics albeit sober, is that they can relapse at any time if they decide to go back to drinking. It’s an addictive tendancy. I imagine a huge portion of the population have addictive tendancies. I’m addicted to video games for example.
May 21st, 2008 at 10:34 pm
@bilyc I only needed to think once….. my blog is still here….. thats my answer. Forgot one thing, talk to your sponsor about trying to tell other people what their program should be…. I view that as “cult like” behavior. You are holding on pretty tight…… Take a deep breath, say the serenity prayer and relax. I suspect my blog has not put your sobriety in any jepordy.
May 21st, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Allthough I commend you and your sobriety, I do not know if I commend your use of AA as foder for blog posts.
The 10th Tradidion of AA states “Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the A.A. name ought never be drawn into public controversy.”
You are breaking the tradidions for your own gain. You are intellagent, articulate, and thought provoking – and I encourage you to be so, but not on the back of AA.
Furthermore, as a member of AA who only has 1 year sobrity, do you feel that you should be the represented voice of AA? I think your sponsor would disaggree.
May 21st, 2008 at 10:41 pm
I am the represented voice of Brian Cuban… never claim or tried to be anything else. I am sorry if that threatens you.
May 21st, 2008 at 10:44 pm
AHHH. Now THIS is the AA debate phenomenon that I definitely don’t miss.
“But my sponsor says….”
“Well, my great-great-great-grand-sponsor is Ebby T….”
Look. Getting in arguments over these details is so silly, and is part of what keeps me out of AA. Partially because I have a tendency to participate, and being part of something that causes me to get argumentative and aggressive is not something that I view as conducive to sobriety.
I once heard in an AA meeting that if someone said they worked the steps but hadn’t sponsored anyone, they effectively don’t know what they’re talking about. Try telling them that. Before you know it, you’ve got all sorts of “right” things to say and “wrong” ways to say them that it becomes cult-ish in it’s vocabulary and lingo.
Brian, Billyc – you’re both sick drunks. And you’ll both probably relapse. At least, that’s what AA says…
May 21st, 2008 at 10:52 pm
This is my personal experience & I want to stress we all need to take responsibility for the decisions we make. I’m glad I made my decision but you can always change your mind.
I sobered-up over seven years ago with the help of AA.
For the first 2 or 3 years I attended on average about 3 AA meetings a week.
From going to AA I met new friends and started to reconnect with the outside world, things were much better than the previous 7 or so years when I was on an alcoholic downward spiral.
Then something shifted in me, it all started when a good friend of mine whom I met in AA who then left AA.
I was shocked…after all at nearly every meeting I went to I heard people say stuff like ‘If you stop going to AA you’ll drink again’ or ‘this person left and has never been seen again’. So the tacit message was don’t ever leave AA or you’ll drink again and here was my good friend leaving.
I tried to talk her out of it but she got angry.
She actually went to one last meeting with me and was asked to share, rather than being compliant she spoke out in the meeting about why she was leaving.
You could hear a pin drop after she finished.
Now 7 years down the track I thank her for her courage. I too have become disatisfied with AA and chose to leave. I felt horribly conflicted about leaving but it had reached a point after considering contrary views that I neither enjoyed AA meetings, the presence of the charismatics who felt entitled to share at every meeting (always shared like broken-down records and didn’t speak for themselves) nor did I want what they had.
I was sick of 60 minutes of thought-terminating cliches & meetings that ran like infomercials.
So I left.
To do this I had to remember a couple of things as I wish to remain sober.
My friend who had left AA has remained sober since and she was inspiration to keep me going.
1. I have no control over alcohol after it enters my body and that will never change. Therefore wether or not to drink was a personal choice, not linked to AA.
2. Having faith in God, asking for help from God or others and leading a spiritual life does not require me to belong to AA or any other religious organisation.
It’s been 6 months since I left, it hasn’t been easy, but no more than when I still attended meetings. I beleive AA to be a benign cult, but still a cult nevertheless. That tacit message ‘You will drink if you leave’ will take a while to fade as time goes by. I consciously replace it with something like…’Sailors had the corage to sail over the horizon when people said the world was flat’.
The point is that in all probability many people don’t return to AA AND stay sober, my friend being one of them.
Besides, google ‘Orange Report’ and look at the statistics for AA.
If it’s not working for me why would I want to stay?
May 21st, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Brian, Congratulations on your full year of sobriety; it gets easier and easier — I know because I’ll have 4 years on September 25th. Getting a dialog going about AA can’t hurt – if even one person goes to a meeting to check out what we’re all talking about on this blog, that will be a good thing. I haven’t worked the steps, and I have no desire to drink — and I love AA. The Big Book says the steps are recommended – it doesn’t say that you can’t get sober unless you follow them to the letter. I couldn’t tell if you’re stuck on the third step because of the need to turn your life over to God (as you understand Him), but just in case that’s an issue, I will pray for you. Perhaps you could simply pray: I’m listening, God. All prayer isn’t talking to God; sometimes what works best is a willingness to listen with your heart and your mind. I have a feeling it will work for you.
May 21st, 2008 at 11:06 pm
Harold (and everyone else is not an Alcoholic),
There is a huge difference between an Alcoholic and a non-Alcoholic. As an alcoholic i cannot tell you that you are one, you have to figure that out on your own. If you are not one, that is great. I can only tell you why I am an alcoholic, if you can relate ok, if not oh well.
I could never have just one drink, never. I always had to have more. I also couldn’t stop drinking until i puked or passed out. I started drinking at the age of 12. My obsession with alcohol is one where i would be angry at my wife if she didn’t finish her drink.
I was a black out drinker from day one, unfortunately, i do not remember much of the 80’s, 90’s up to 2006. I would hide my drinking, i would think about it pretty much all day. But the one thing that I think that all alcoholics can relate to is the dispare. I wanted to die, but i was too much of a coward to do it myself. I would drive down the road, think about running off the road into tree. There were times i even took off the seatbelt to do it.
I hope you never have to experience that and today i do not. today i enjoy life and i don;t let the little things bother me anymore. i don;t want to kill myself or anyone else. I have a desire to live and be a better person. if you are already like that consider yourself lucky. there are those of us that without the fellowship, having someone else that understands the dispare, would not be here today.
don;t be so judgemental of people, for you know nothing about me and i know nothing about you. live life to the fullest
peace
May 21st, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Not threatened, just concerned. I am reminded when Tom Arnold started stumping for AA a few years ago; it’s almost oxymoronic (for the lack of a better word), he does not exactly exude “AA spokesperson.” And like you, he would argue that he is not acting like a spokesperson; but with the use of elecronic mediums, I hate to say it, you are percieved as a spokesperson.
People – the everyday people that have not been exposed to recovery, who may, or may not be alcoholic, or drug addict, or whatever, need to know one thing: That AA, when worked properly, works. that’s it; they do not need to know that people think its a cult, or that there is a concern for it being a cult. And as you pointed out, by the simple definition of “cult,” AA could not be one. But more importantly, a question should be asked when writing about AA…
Can this, in any way, affect how a newcomer alcoholic percieves AA? I think maybe that is why we keep our AA opinions and discussions inside the rooms of AA.
Cheers
May 21st, 2008 at 11:14 pm
One of my greatest pet peeves in the misuse of the word “cult” in our modern society. Here is a small clue, ladies and gentlemen, look up the word in a dictionary…no, don’t bother. I have done it for you. The real definitions of “cult” are as follows;
1. a particular system of religious worship, esp. with reference to its rites and ceremonies.
2. an instance of great veneration of a person, ideal, or thing, esp. as manifested by a body of admirers: the physical fitness cult.
3. the object of such devotion.
4. a group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc.
5. Sociology. a group having a sacred ideology and a set of rites centering around their sacred symbols.
Any other definitions are modern misuse, in fact some of these are as well. Basically, a cult is any group that is definined by ritualism, which is to say that every group, social, religious, political, or likewise, are ALL cults. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as ceremonies are part of any bonding process. The problem is that people have sensationalized the word and use it as a weapon against any group they have a particular issue with, even if it is just a difference of opinion. Things are not defined by what some people THINK they mean.
So the question is; is AA a cult? By the above definitions, yes. Is that necessarily as bad as people think it is? NO! Does that make every other gathering of people a cult? Damn right it does! Who the hell cares?
May 21st, 2008 at 11:36 pm
@Matt: appreciate your opinion. I frankly should have never responded to the first comment on this issue. It is off topic to the post. The server will no longer let any post with 11th tradition in it through. Lets all keep on the topic please.
May 21st, 2008 at 11:49 pm
@Justin B.: Justin, great post, I almost got caught up in “sponsormania” .. I am back to earth now… As far as relapsing, who knows, I just know that at the very moment I am typing this response I am sober. I will take that for now.
May 22nd, 2008 at 12:02 am
Matt, Thanks for the comments. They brought the topic to a head that seemed very realistic.
May 22nd, 2008 at 12:04 am
I’m a recovered alcoholic sober over 8 years, and the notion of AA as a cult never fails to utterly crack me up. I can’t imagine a worse group of people to try to get to conform to anything than a group of defiant drunks. Try to “make” anyone in AA do anything they don’t want to, and you’ll see what I mean!
Stanton Peele clearly has an axe to grind against AA, and that’s fine – he’s entitled to grind away. But for him to suggest that AA is somehow inflexible because it won’t entertain the notion of a member deciding that they are not an alcoholic and ought to be able to moderate their drinking, and presumably remain a member of AA is just laughable. AA is an abstinence-based program and that is pretty clear from everything in the literature and history. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. If you aren’t an alcoholic and want to moderate your drinking, why in the world would you want to hang around with a bunch of people who ARE alcoholics and who DON’T practice moderation? That’s nuts.
Let’s say I get crap for saying I’m “recovered” and not “recovering” – even though “recovered” is used repeatedly in the original text. If others in AA have a problem with the terms I use, the problem is theirs, not mine, and I can’t be “censured” or “penalized” in any fashion for saying that. I still qualify as a member because I say I am and because I fit the only requirement – a desire to stop drinking….. and I can also leave any time I want to!
May 22nd, 2008 at 12:04 am
WOW, so many different view points here. AA is a cult. I’ve been a member for over 2 years. AA brain washes you for sure. But minds like mine who can’t stop drinking, drugging, even if their life depended on it need that sort of brain washing, to be able to let go of drugs and other mind altering substances. Cults have got that negative connotation attached to them, that’s why it sounds so negative to call AA a cult, but I have no problem admiting that it is. There was a point for about 2 years near the end of my using that I had no choice, or controll over my actions because all I could think about was getting loaded. This is the only way I know how to live a more positive life. Sorry to the guy who “lost” his friend to AA, but I lost all of mine before I even got to AA. Also, I feel like Brian did break his own anonymity, so much for that.
May 22nd, 2008 at 12:06 am
Hrm, sounds like a bunch of brainwashed gobbledygook from a cult member.
May 22nd, 2008 at 12:34 am
I have been sober for 8 1/2 years. 6 yrs in AA. I left because the sickest people I have ever seen are in AA all under the guise of so-called recovery. AA is a haven for every sociopath-unemployable-religious-fanatic-con-artist you have ever seen. You don’t need god to get sober. You don’t need the 12 steps to get sober. You don’t need a higher power to get sober. All you need to do to get sober is NOT DRINK ALCOHOL. AA teaches a victim mentality where nothing is anyones fault. Where everything is conveniently solved by a Santa Claus god on demand. AA is most assuredly a cult religion that has a 5% success rate, which is no better than the spontaneous remission rate of people that quit on their own. I used to say in meetings: Why do we tell newcomers to work the steps if they have arrived with a couple of days of sobriety? All they need to do is do what they did the day before. Which is NOT DRINK. That way, you don’t need steps, god, program, helping others or a cult religion! I would be shunned by the other members for having the audacity to suggest that personal responsibility is the key to addiction. Addiction is a choice, pure and simple. It is not a disease. Try to tell someone with CANCER that they have a disease that only a spiritual experience will conquer. They would probably knock the crap out of you! I saw the results of members trying to “help” the young women who were trying to get sober. I never seen any spirituality in these young ladies panties, yet that is always where the con-artists seemed to be searching for it! I saw power tripping sponsors, old timers giving marital advice. after their 5th “successful” marriage. Religious fanatics who always insisted that you “let go and let god” yet never seemed to have anything worth having. One lady, whom I confronted with AA’s abysmal success rate actually told me: I don’t come here for a drinking problem, I come here for the spirituality! Unbelievable. And here I thought AA was a program to help people stop drinking, not to get spirituality! I have seen newcomers encouraged NOT to think. Just do what the group says. Sounds like cult talk to me. And yet, I went for 6 yrs. I had never bought the whole higher power thing to begin with and thought that I was helping people on the fence about the whole religious angle, that you didnt have to believe ANYTHING to get sober, but it turned out the only person I really helped….was me. I never got anyone drunk and never got anyone sober…….except myself. So, do it yourself like I did. AA is a cult that does the old bait and switch. First, it seems that the purpose is to get sober, then later in the Big Book it says: “Our REAL purpose is to be of maximum service to God and our fellows”. Sounds like religion to me.
May 22nd, 2008 at 12:55 am
This comment is coming from someone who has never had to go to AA; so take it for what it is worth. I have also had the impression that AA was not exactly a cult per se but that it was merely an exchange of one crutch for another. I have known a number of people that have gone to AA and it is really impossible to talk to them without them mentioning an AA meeting very 5 minutes or so. They have to tell you about the meeting they went to or the one that they are going to go to. And forget trying to help them get back a normal life by inviting them to go out for coffee or lunch or just sitting around enjoying each others company; it seems that every free moment they have they are either attending a meeting or going to meet someone from AA outside of a meeting. In short, they appear as hooked on meetings as they were on the drugs or alcohol. While I agree that it is a far better addiction for them physically, I am at a loss to see how they have not simply traded the dependency on drugs to the dependence on meetings. I have been able to re-establish friendships with some people after they have attended AA; but only after they have broken the addition to AA.
May 22nd, 2008 at 1:50 am
I would have to respectfully agree with those that said it goes against AA tradition to discuss being a member of AA in this medium (blogging on the internet). I would say that blogging definitely qualifies for press. I think if I were blogging anonymously, it wouldn’t be an issue. I did some stuff in my first couple of years sobriety that broke my anonymity publicly and it wasn’t until later that I realized that I felt so low about myself that I hoped that being associated with something like AA would bring me up in other peoples’ eyes. I think what I did though wasn’t helpful to either AA or myself because some people then associated AA with me and my behavior and also I wasn’t doing the inside work.
I feel for those whose relationships ended when one partner began attending AA. Getting sober can be very confusing, I know from experience. I went through all sorts of feelings in the first few years (and still do) and went through lots of relationships but couldn’t make them work. I had to grow up starting in my twenties and twenty years later, I’m still not “there”. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be dating or married to someone when they get clean and sober. One suggestion I have would be to go to Alanon, Narcanon, CODA or some other program for friends and family of addicts/alcoholics. Have your own program, have your own friends in the program and you can share a common language with your partner while you both grow and you can have lots of support too.
I’m something between an atheist and an agnostic. Yet I still pray (not in meetings though). I still say “Thank you, God.” It helps me find gratitude somehow. When I’m in meetings, I hold everyone else’s hands while they pray and I enjoy that. I love my connection to these other people. My higher power is the group conscience. I don’t really care about arguing about this or that, I take what I like and leave the rest. I may have some contradictory beliefs in some ways, but I don’t care, I’ve pieced together a life that works pretty well for me.
I don’t think that 12 step groups (AA etc…) are the only way to get clean and sober. I’ve known people who gave up addictions in such “places” as co-counseling (Re-evaluation Counseling). It took just as much work and dedication though, from what I saw.
May 22nd, 2008 at 2:14 am
From what I’ve read, heard, etc-
A cult can be anything from music, fashion, and well- even crocheting. ( I checked wikipedia in case I was missing anything )
The popular definition of the word “cult” is mainly used now to describe a religious or political group that is harmful to it’s members unbeknownst to them, due to brainwashing, fear, etc.
As far as AA goes, by those meanings stated above, AA COULD be considered a cult, and also could NOT. Confusing….* pinky to lip* lol
I would consider it a cult in both definitions. AA is a group of people who meet in common interest, common need, etc. It it for the purpose of HELPING people. HOWEVER, AA ALSO uses “religion” as a method of “curing” it’s members. ( Or so I have seen by those I am acquainted with ). They( those I am acquianted with) went in at such a desperate time in their lives, ATHIESTS, and come out with the “Lord’s” name spilling from their lips and giving “God” credit for their recovery and new found strength. I wonder, isn’t AA there for the purpose of giving alcoholics the necessary emotional tools for taking control of their lives, and finding their inner strength, to overcome this addiction that rules their everyday life? Think on this: Does it not seem, oh I don’t know, lazy? to tell these people that God will get them out of this? To look to “God” for strength and hope? And in the end, is it really the PERSON who overcomes this terrible addiction? Or is it just giving them another easy way to fix it? Give them an outside factor. Give them something ( in my opinion- non existent ) to look to in their time of need?
Wouldn’t it make more sense to leave OUT “God” ( ANOTHER thing they can blame their issues on )and give power to THEMSELVES instead of something that may or may not exist?
This is not empowering PEOPLE, this is empowering the church, and giving them the silly idea that there is a man is in the sky watching over them and helping them make good choices, thus taking power OUT of the victim’s hands and putting in…”God’s” hands. Gosh it even sounds silly to type it.
What if “God” is busy with genocide that day? Or maybe an earthquake? What if a member of AA takes a drink? Does She/He blame the absence of “God” that day? “Damn it! God left me to my own devices again
DOH! see what happens?! *gulp gulp* not my fault! Damned tsunamis! Ever so inconvenient!”
Now that I have gone off on this wild tangent, I give you the conclusion to my ranting haha.
If you’ll refer to this site : http://www.serenityfound.org/steps.html
It shows that SIX of the TWELVE steps refer to, offer help through, advertise redemption through, etc- GOD. In a way it is telling these members of AA that ONLY through “God” can their disease be cured. If you choose to accept the terms of these 12 steps, EXCEPTING the ones referring to “God” that leaves you HALF cured, as you have only completed half of these steps. Telling people that redemption, and the only way to solve their problems and be cured of this disease is through “God” -is criminal. It is helping NO ONE. And THIS I believe, makes AA a cult. What is the difference between AA and any other “cult” ( as it is popularly defined )? None that I can see. So it’s “councilors” don’t make the female members have sex with them, and they don’t make you drink funky koolaid, but they STILL require that you drink their “Jesus Juice” and accept the “lord” to be able to overcome your illness. Saying only “God” and accepting “God” can help you, is EXACTLY the kind of thing you’ll hear at the next “cult of this or that” meeting as you stand next to that freaky ass koolaid and “pray” that “god” will help you and solve all your problems and make your life worth living again.
This question is for the author of this article, and for those of you readers who are currently a part of AA.
Would you rather put the power to make your life a better life, the power to be a better person, the POWER to be a GOOD PERSON, in your OWN hands? Or to a man who may or may not exist? or ANYone else? Wouldn’t YOU rather be the one who cured you? Who corrected your mistakes? Who taught you to be a better human being?!
Why choose “God”? What is it about “God” that makes it easier to get through this life crisis? scapegoat? Is that what you’re looking for? Is that what you need to take control of your lives? A “just in case you mess up, oops!”?
Please.
If you have a problem DEAL WITH IT. As yourself! GIVE YOURSELF the power over your own life. STOP finding more excuses to fall back on! It’s cowardly. And you know who becomes a part of these “cults”? People like YOU. People who join cults” like AA who give them an outside source of strength and reason for living, and excuse to behave like a douche. My advice to YOU, would be to take control of your life WITHOUT the religious BS, and the reason to fall back on when you mess up. BLAME YOURSELF. YOU are the only one who can CHANGE YOU. NOT “God”, or “Xenu” or “allah” or whatever it is you “pray” to. ONLY YOU can change your future and ONLY YOU can make yourself into something GREATER than what you were.
FUCK “GOD”. YOU are “God”. YOU dictate what happens in yourlife and what morals you live by. YOU.
Good Luck.
Glenin.
May 22nd, 2008 at 2:16 am
Actually, AA doesn’t work for most people. By AA’s on admission, just five percent of those who begin with AA are still going a year later. That doesn’t mean they’re sober, it just means they’re still going to meetings.
It can be very destructive for anyone who thinks it’s the only game in town for getting sober, and it’s set up so if you drink again, you’re shamed and lose status within the group. Time “in” is the coin of the realm.
With those stats, why is it the model for most treatment programs? Surely not so they have a continual revolving door of suffering drinkers who don’t get well, therfore needing more treatment?
It’s great if it works for you, but it can be awful if it doesn’t. More people need to know the actual stats.
May 22nd, 2008 at 2:56 am
The thought that AA is a cult is so utterly ridulous that I am almost at a loss for words….you notice I said ALMOST. The AA I go to tells people to make their owm mind up as to whether or not they have a problem. We love the newcomers and only wants the best for them. We are there to teach them how to enjoy life-they come to us…we do not recruit. Sure there are a few men that try to 13th step some of the newcomers, but they are few and far between in the fellowship as I know it. I have been sober almost 22 years and I still attend meetings. I attend to 1) keep sober, and 2) help others. The reason there are so many copycats to the 12-step format is that it works-pure and simple. This is a spiritual program because the early members found this was the way to stay sober. Helping others helps us-doing this brings US happiness and peace of mind.
Peace to all.
Sues last blog post..Is Alcoholics Anonymous A Cult
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:28 am
(From another whose life is saved, literally, by AA”)Interesting post. The missing ingredient is a clear definition of “cult.” The current Merriam-Webster has this as one of its five variations – “a system for the cure of disease based on dogma set forth by its promulgator” So, yes, definitely, AA ia a cult if this is your definition. But by the other four definitions, plus, no doubt, those in the hundreds of other current dictionaries, the answer is “no” or “sorta maybe.” Another of the five definitions in M-W is “great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work,” and by that definition those of us who went to bars regularly, or drank during every sports events or on every birthday or holiday, or had a couple every night were a cult.
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:32 am
I think the thing for which you (the author) deserve the most kudos is posting the video at the end by James Peele in which he talks, in a sane and balanced way, about the ways in which AA is cultlike.
I am also a former member of AA, and here is something I think people tend to leave out when they consider this issue: whether a group is a cult is not a black-and-white question. There is a whole spectrum of cult behavior. AA clearly _is_ a cult, it’s just that on the whole, it’s a fairly benign one.
This is primarily, as you rightly point out, because of the lack of a central authority. But the cultish aspects of AA are explicit in the excerpt from Chapter 5 read at the beginning of each meeting, in which Bill W. tells us that people for whom AA doesn’t work are people who are “constitutionally unable to be honest with themselves…” these “poor unfortunates” lack the ability to “completely abandon themselves to this simple program.”
This condescending spiel captures perfectly the attitude of AA members to the outside world, and contains, right up front, the unsubtle message drilled from the start into every AA member; that if you fail to “completely abandon” yourself to Bill & Dr. Bob’s religion, you are doomed.
This is cultish. However, AA clearly does some good for people, even if all the good it does is help addicts feel less alone. This is something we haven’t come to terms with as a society: cults are not all bad. We don’t like complexity, and we don’t like subtlety. We like black and white answers. But the world is not like that, and we shouldn’t expect AA to be like that.
We should, however, stop forcing drug offenders to go to 12-step meetings, and we should end all government sanctioning of 12-step programs. AA is a religious organization with no scientific evidence of efficacy in treating addiction.
May 22nd, 2008 at 4:13 am
AA is not a cult. That doesn’t mean that it’s an effective treatment program though.
Many people, including myself, have a problem with the organization, not because we think it’s a cult, but because they insist that AA and other 12 Step Programs are not religious. Clearly 6 of the 12 steps use the terms “God” or “Higher Power”. People pray at meetings. AA’s founder himself admitted that he was heavily influenced by the Oxford group which was an extremist Christian organization. Yet many still insist that the organization isn’t religious.
That’s just one of the problems that I have with AA. It doesn’t work for everyone and that’s the bottom line. But it’s still not a cult.
May 22nd, 2008 at 5:14 am
The number one public relations issue for Alcoholics Anonymous in the 21st Century is educating the general population that AA is not a cult…nice post and important issue. Thank you.
m
May 22nd, 2008 at 5:39 am
See “Some Questions and Answers about Anonymity”
http://www.aa.org/en_services_for_members.cfm?PageID=135&SubPage=136
A personal blog that isn’t private is very public. The way it works, for A.A. members who uphold the traditions, we may talk about alcoholism, recovery, the cult question — whatever — but if we disclose our personal identities in public media then we don’t disclose that we are A.A. members. When we identify ourselves as A.A. members in public media, then we keep personal identity out of it. This is simply voluntary. Anyone can, and many do break the traditions.
May 22nd, 2008 at 6:28 am
As a member for 12 years, my A.A. friends and I have had discussions many times wether or not we were in a cult. We’ve decided that if we are, who cares, it saved our lives.
May 22nd, 2008 at 10:51 am
I read the blog post, and found something at the very least contradictory:
“When you are at a low point in your life and counting on something to turn that life around and it does not work, what do you do? You don’t look to yourself. You blame everyone else.”
So, if you are not accepting your own personal responsibility for the weak-minded moral dilemma known as “alcoholism” or problem drinking, why are AA members told not to associate with their former friends who drink? It seems all too similar to a scientology “disconnect”.
Consider this experience of my own… I had a girlfriend who drank to excess. She turned to AA for help. I supported her want to change, even attending some meetings with her. This all went well for a few keychains/tokens… One day I came home and found a glittery “one day at a time sticker” on the back of my car. I don’t put ANY stickers on my car, period. I removed it.
She had gone to her meeting and told others about it, which prompted a few concerned and angry calls from people from SEVERAL AA groups. When my wife went to her mother’s birthday, and two other occasions when my girlfriend was unable to do it, others decided to sneak up and sticker my car.
I may not consider a “cult” per se, and looking at it and it’s rules and structure it is not a cult de jure, but it cetainly seems like one de facto.
I thoroughly enjoyed the Bill W video where he described his LSD experience which helped him to stop drinking. AA should follow Bill W and make LSD available to people who really want to quit.
May 22nd, 2008 at 12:52 pm
@Glenin: you ocund’t have gotten it more wrong. AA saved my life.
aa is not religious, it is spiritual, there is a huge difference. They don’t push any particular god on anyone. it’s up for you to decide what you believe.
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:15 pm
jaykaydee: “Actually, AA doesn’t work for most people. By AA’s on admission, just five percent of those who begin with AA are still going a year later. That doesn’t mean they’re sober, it just means they’re still going to meetings.”
Dude, what part of your anatomy did you pull that stat from? Anyone who works the program knows meetings don’t keep you sober. You have to work a program, not just show up at meetings. AA works tremendously well for those who want to stay sober and work a program. They relapse and hopefully come back, but don’t try to spread lame stats that have no factual basis.
On topic – who gives a shit if it’s a ‘cult’ or not? All I know is for the better part of 13 years, AA has kept me sober and my family and myself have benefitted tremendously. I’d be dead, or alone and miserably sick, without it. That’s a fact. There are many sayings in AA and the best for me is “take what you need and leave the rest.” Cuban’s got a big pair to be spouting off about AA, eloquent as he is, with a freaking YEAR under his belt (nice job, keep coming back) but it’s an interesting topic. Now, back to life. I spread the message to those who WANT it, not those who I think NEED it. Several here seem to be in the latter category, but fuck those people. Waste of time.
Peace.
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Been sober a day at a time since June 12, 1972 in the Fellowship of AA, with its 1 requirement, and 1 primary purpose, as reprented by The General Service Board, the General Service Conference, and The General Service Office of AA. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of an illusion called “The 12 Step Program of AA”, as promoted by the publishing businesses called AA World Services, Inc., and The AA Grapevine Inc. These publishing corporations were created upon the dissolution of Bill Wilson’s Alcoholic Foundation, with its board of non-alcoholic directors in the early ’50s, for the purpose of continuing lucrative royalty contracts paying Bill W., and now his unnamed heirs, royalties on all writings for which he claimed to be the author. (See his words in the Forward to “As Bill Sees It”, formerly entitled “The AA Way of Life”). These corporations are the corrupt “head” you first spoke of, which is not missing at all. They are the corrupting thread, promoters and defenders of intellectual property, and a personality cult built around Bill Wilson, spewing out a “religious” hegemony affecting the media; the authorities; the treatment programs like Hazelden, with its Minnesota Protocol; and most importantly alcoholics, both within, and without The Fellowship of AA. Having largely abandoned 1 on ! sharing as equals, which in the 7th Chapter of what is called The Big Book, is emphasized as being “what practical experience has taught us, That nothing assures continuous sobriety, like intensive work with others. It works when all else fails” This is further confirmed by Bill Wilson speaking to a group in Akron, Ohio about the founding of AA with Dr. Bob Smith, available on YouTube entitled “The Meeting”. The upshot is that AA membership has been declining sice 1992, because of the unattractiveness of “The Program” people, their personality cult, and the religion called “THe 12 Step Program of AA”, driving off newcomers and old-timers alike. Indeed, many who attempt this intellectual path to spirituality, end up drinking again, sooner or later. The author Bill Wilson himself, died in 1971, screaming for a drink, after years of playing with LSD, niacin, and other substances. More facts and details are documented in Simon & Shuster’s book, “My Name Is Bill W.”
May 22nd, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Take care of yourself. Take care of those in your life. Love your family and friends.
Please don’t bash on a program that works for some but doesn’t work for all. Those few that it does work for are who the program is geared for. AA is not trying to save the world or convert legions of followers. If someone believes they have a drinking problem and feels they need help, they have a place to go to get help from people with real life experience of the disease of alcoholism.
I suggest you look at yourself and your motives behind your negative opinions of AA. It has helps more people stay sober than you would ever believe but it is still looked at as a joke or a mind melting cult.
If people would stop attacking everyone else just because they do things different maybe the world would be a better place. I pray that one day at least a humble 10% more of society would just treat their own problems before trying to diagnose how others should live theirs.
May 22nd, 2008 at 5:30 pm
@Dean: This is my last comment on this blog. Time to write something new.
Free speech ,free thinking and the freedom to express our opinions are wonderful things are they not…. You know who does not get to do that or are too afraid to to that….. cult members…..
As I said in my blog, I do not believe AA is a cult but I do believe that certain people need to take on the cult mentality to stay sober, that’s ok, whatever works for you and improves the quality of a person’s life is a good thing
I believe however that it that same cult mentality that causes people freak out when people speak out . They are threatened by those of us who prefer to live as individuals who think and question when we feel the need to. It shakes them to the very core of their sobriety that people can do it differently and have wonderful sober lives.
If a person needs to do it that way, not thinking about or questioning anything. Thats ok too… Hopefully we all are able to really enjoy life along with our sobriety.. thats what it is all about isn’t it?
As much as many of the old timer “Big Book Thumpers “would disagree I refuse to place AA as bigger than the the individual trying to get sober and make sense out of his life. I believe individuality is a great thing in sobriety. It is about one person at a time…..
You don’t have to agree with that. You have that right. After all this is not a cult is it…..
May 22nd, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Brian, just to clear the air, my last comment was not geared towards you in any way but more at the general commenters on this topic. The topic itself is very thought provoking for all of us whether in AA or not.
May 22nd, 2008 at 8:18 pm
I have read all of the responses to Brians blog, and frankly it perplexes me when people say something to the effect that; “The people I know center their lives around AA…” or “they have no life outside AA…”
It’s only natural that those few whose life does center around their program would talk about that and only that. It’s only natural that those would be the ones you see at every meeting, every function. But these squeaky wheels are actually in the minority.
AA is an anonymous fellowship – the people you know are only a small fraction of that fellowship. How would you know if the anyone in line at the store with you is in AA? How about the people around you at a ball game? Colleagues in your office? I could mention any number of social situations where people gather, and you would have no idea who might be a member of AA, but I promise you, you rub shoulders with them every day. Most of them do have a ‘life’ and interests outside their program, and that is the great irony of anonyminity.
Jokingly, I often yearn for the days of scarlet AAs, so we all know who ‘these people’ are.
May 22nd, 2008 at 8:45 pm
I have been an active member of AA for 18 years. I really need to say this- AA is not any one thing. I am compelled to speak up by the fact that I have seen the program of AA help a lot of people and I really do not want this “cult” notion or branding to turn away anyone who would benefit from the experience, strength and hope that is available because of AA. “The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking”…in other words you do not have to be sober and you do not have to believe anything in particular. Any of the slogans and sayings are simply suggestions meant to help newcomers. There really are no rules. The Twelve Step program is a tremendously helpful tool for finding spirituality. I don’t think that the “cult” label matters but if it is a problem for you be assured that you can “take what you need and leave the rest.” So, if you think that AA could be helpful to you try it out.
May 22nd, 2008 at 8:58 pm
@jsmurfy
I am glad AA saved you life. I never said it DIDN’T save lives. What I SAID was, in short, the methods are wrong. They don’t give power to people they give power to “God”, and OUTSIDE source of strenght. What I mean to say is, any change made for reasons other than for yourself, won’t last. Changing for God,believing God will fix it, believing God gave you this strength, is foolish. It’s not a lasting solution. If they decide one day that they don’t believe in god anymore, they don’t have a reason left to keep the changes they’ve made, and they don;t have that sense of strength and hope they used to have. What then?
You’re trying to tell me that AA is NOT religious. Mkay. Take a look at this.
Step 2-Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
(brain washing begins here.)
Step 3-Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God
( where you think “OHHH THAT’S the greater power they meant, Ya that makes sense. go on…” -it gets better)
Step 5-Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
(Kay? kay.)
Step 6-Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character
( I believe THIS was a big point I was trying to make. Where is the part about taking responsibility for your actions and solving problems on your own? Instead this is giving that responsibility to GOD, not YOURSELF.How is this a good method for teaching people to become better, emotionally stronger human beings?)
Step 7-Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings
(see above….)
Step 8- Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out
(doesn’t get more religious than that my friend.)
Step 9-Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs
( ok I’ll give you this one as it does not make mention of “God”. I am sure many of you have experienced some kind of spiritual connection with other members, or are so grateful for your new lives that you’d be willing to credit that newfound strength and health a mircale of “God”. You would be wrong, but alright, I’ll leave this one alone.)
Someone up there made a very good point. Unfortunately I haven’t got the time to go back and read them all to credit this brilliant and observant person with this point:
” Disconnection.” She/He mentioned above that one of the methods in AA is something very similar to “disconnection” which is Scientology’s way of disassociating it’s members from loved ones in the “former life” of “sin”, and “bad habits” and whatnot. FULL OF THETANS ALL OF THEM! haha. We all know what Scientology is yes? If not, youfoundthecard.com has ALL the information you could ever want. ANY similarity with scientology looks bad haha. Scientology is the most dangerous cult of these times. I am not saying AA is JUST LIKE them, only that there seem to be some similarities, which, is creepy.
And to address your last comment to me: “They don’t push any particular god on anyone. it’s up for you to decide what you believe.”-
I didn’t say that they FORCED anyone. People don’t work like that. They would have to be slowly manipulated. I also did not say they FORCED anyone to believe in any SPECIFIC God. I chose the Christian “God” in my reply because 1) who has time to list them all? and 2) Where I come from, the most followed religion is Christianity.
If AA FORCED it’s members to believe in anything specific, it wouldn’t have any members. People are too protective of their freedoms as human beings to be stupid enough to give that up for AA. ( most people I think…hope)
Lastly, just because AA isn’t physically harmful, or replacing alcohol with funky koolaid, or promising that the only way into heaven is to sleep with every male in the program, DOES NOT make it any LESS a cult. Just a harmless one in most ways. ( However as I have said several times,I believe that AA gives people false hope and false strength and in the end, COULD be harmful should they ever realize that and pick up a bottle of wine.)
Anyway- this is just MY humble opinion. have a lovely day.
May 22nd, 2008 at 10:34 pm
@Glenin
Where your carefully crafted logic falls apart is when you finally understand these are suggested* steps that members may take as they see fit to aid in their recovery – not hard and fast rules that must be abided by.
*with strong emphasis on the word suggested
” However as I have said several times,I believe that AA gives people false hope and false strength and in the end, COULD be harmful should they ever realize that and pick up a bottle of wine.”
That is the most nonsensical thing I’ve read of all the responses posted. Quite a feat.
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:59 am
Hi there Marcia.
While I feel there was no need for your rude reply at the end there, I do also apologize for the end of my comment. At that point I had started to rush my post as I had somewhere else to be. After having read it again, I realized it did NOT make any sense! Thank you for so “politely” pointing it out for me 
I appreciate your reply and the fact that you read my post all the way through. Most people are skimmers
I will try to clarify what I meant.
I will start with an example. It is meant to be silly sounding, so perhaps you could lighten up a second and just try to see the basic point behind this example.
Let’s say someone tells you there is a program that can help you stop picking your nose. ( come on, you know you do SOMETIMES
)Let’s say they give you steps to stop this nasty little habit. In these steps, over half of them tell you that in order to overcome this childish compulsion to examine the contents of your nose, you must first give yourself into the “flying spaghetti monster’s” hands.
(What? He could be real. Just like Jesus. gosh. )
Anyway, my point is, let’s say you give power and hope to the “flying spaghetti monster” and wish and wish that she will take away that desire to pick your nose as people ahve been complaining about this socially unacceptable habit, and your boss is becoming increasingly irritated that you won’t stop showing up to meeting with your index shoved up your nostril. So you take these steps to heart because at that point you’re desperate to quit, and you’ll try ANYTHING. And BEHOLD! After a few months in NPA ( nose pickers anonymous) You no longer pick your nose! WEEE! Everyone claps for you, someone gifts you with a box of tissues and you go on your merry way.
BUT OH NO! One day you come to realize THERE IS NO Spaghetti monster! eeks! That means all that trust you put in something false and all that strength you gained through the teachings and examples of the flying spaghetti monster are a bunch of crap! Wouldn’t your hope, your sense of trust in a power NOT from your inner strength disappear and….maybe…maybe you should just start picking your nose again? I mean, all the reasons you QUIT weren’t for YOU, they were for “spaghetti monster”, and to live the way SHE thought you should live. And if there IS no spaghetti monster, where do you place your hope and trust? Certainly not in you, I mean if all you had to do in the first place was do this FOR YOU, you’d still be happy as a non-nose picker.
Okay, this is getting long again and the longer I sit here the more bored I become. When I said teaching AA members that “God” can save them is dangerous, I obviously didn’t mean anything ridiculous like you’d suddenly start knocking old people over in the street like bowling pins from behind the wheel of your chevy Blazer. I meant, if one day, their faith in “god” fades for some reason ( like they wake up and go” OH……”*light bulb*), and “He” was the reason for their change, then their REASON for change no longer exists and that change will disappear, and old habit will return. People need motivation to overcome addiction and giving them a lie for a reason to quit is stupid and criminal, and DOES put them in “danger” of relapse should those lies become clear to them later in life.
Again!- Put power in the VICTIM’S hands. Not the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s.
Ok that was just fun. Maybe it still didn’t make sense but I laughed, and my own entertainment is all that really matters haha.
For all of the recovered alcoholics here, PROPS TO YOU. I’m sure it takes an amazing amount of willpower to beat so difficult a habit. Much more difficult than Marcia’s little nose picking problem I’m sure! Seriously though, while I may not agree with the method of the AA program and the ridiculous “steps”, I am happy for every one of you who were able to kick this addiction’s ass. Grats, and much happiness to you all.
Have a lovely day Marcia, and good luck with that whole stick up your rectum thing. Truly, I hope it works out, and my PROFOUND apologies for my somewhat “nonsensical” reply up there.
tootles!
May 23rd, 2008 at 2:23 am
Contrary to popular belief, Alcoholics Anonymous is not a program to “cure” alcoholism, therefore the discussion of poor success rates is somewhat moot. AA is a “fellowship” and no more a cult than the Knights of Columbus or Kinsmen or your local curling club.
The true aim of AA and other 12 step programs is to bring desperate people to God. This is in the sense that the alcoholic or other addict largely must overcome the self-centered existence in favor of a God centered one.
This is all verifiable for those who know the origins of AA in the Oxford Group, then Moral Re-Armament (MRA) and their founder, Frank Buchman. The 12 steps has its origin in Lutheranism (Buchman was a Lutheran minister), which in turn was heavily influenced by Ignatian (Jesuit) spirituality.
In this sense, anything that professes a spiritual or religious metaphysics can be considered a cult. If the definition is a group held together by common beliefs or purpose, then so be it. If a cult is abusive or reinforces a collective neurosis, then that is another issue. We do tend to associate cults with the latter definition, and I do not see any resemblance at all to any 12 step program.
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:36 am
What’s the differnce between a cult and a social institution? Social acceptance, popularity? “Being open to opinions and the freedom to voice them is one things that separates healthy groups from cults”–when was the last time AA ever embraced or changed anything because of someone’s opinion? I’m genuinely asking, because I don’t know.
May 23rd, 2008 at 7:36 am
AA fucks up your drinking. If you don’t want to stop, don’t go. It’s that simple. I don’t think courts should send first time offenders over to AA, they should send to treatment which doesn’t involve as much AA. AA is just one way to get sober. It also can and can’t be considered a cult… any group of people with the same goals and ideals can be considered a cult. Does it matter? Even if it helps just one person stop killing themselves? When I see a room full of bunch of addicts and alcoholics I’m pleased to see those people in that room and not in the streets fucking up their lives and potentially others.
May 24th, 2008 at 4:38 am
Cult typically refers to a cohesive social group devoted to beliefs or practices that the surrounding culture considers outside the mainstream, with a notably positive or negative popular perception.
-wikipedia. (yes I went there..lol)
Sounds like
May 24th, 2008 at 4:43 am
bah- I hit the wrong button before I could finish that and edit hahaha.\
/fail.
anyway- sounds like AA to me.
I have GOT to stop posting here it goes nowhere lol.
BUT @Ray
You said “The true aim of AA and other 12 step programs is to bring desperate people to God. This is in the sense that the alcoholic or other addict largely must overcome the self-centered existence in favor of a God centered one”
You kind of proved my point, but didn’t mean to. And I am tired of saying the same thing over and over in 15 different ways. If you can’t see my point, there is no hope for you
( not YOU as in Ray specifically- anyone )
good eve all.
May 24th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Right from the beginning I ask my sponsee’s “what is the difference between Religion, a Cult and 12 step?” Never has one been able to answer that question. I then ask them to write down this “opinion” if they think it is true for them. ” Religion is when man tells you about God, a Cult is when man tells you he is God and 12 step is when God tells you about yourself.” Some people think the 12 step literature are the tools used to brain wash such as cult leaders manipulate the Bible. Not true at all, because all 12 step literature is quoted as saying they are suggestions for you to do as you will with them. No one is told they have to believe in God or any one thing just something they know will help them love themselves. For the record I have never heard of an A.A. metting or any other 12 step meeting feeding people Kool aid or setting the building on fire, have never heard of the government trying to “free” the “captured” people inside. Comparing 12 step with a Cult is a feeble attempt to not hold oneself responsible for their actions.
May 26th, 2008 at 3:28 am
as for the group in DC,
each group is autonomouse except in matters affecting other groups or AA as a whole, hence one twisted bunch has cast the AA’s into some sort of controversy studying and learning the traditions and keeping them dear to your soul will ensure that the program is around for those that need it. study those traditions Matt it’s your own decision on how you reflect our program and internet is a form of media at least I think it is
May 27th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
I am not sensationalizing. Here is the bottom line. Bill Wilson is AA’s central authority figure. Yes, cults can and do have dead people, like Scientologists rule their groups from the grave.
Anyhoo, Wilson is the recovery guru. This is indisputible. Wilson didn’t have a regular job, outside of AA. Like Koresh and the others, he lived off of AA. He was a pathological 13 stepper and preached rigorous honesty.
Wilson did LSD 22 years after writing the 12 Steps. This is documented in AA literature. Also, do a google search. He did LSD approx 60 times!!! This is probably more frequently than Charles Manson had done. Wilson is probably the greatest celebrity next to Keesy, Leary and Syd Barret to have done LSD so frequently.
Yet he is the GURU of recovery?????????? Someone please explain this very clearly to me because I have a difficult time accepting this major major dichotomy.
Add to the fact that the success rate in AA (which it doesn’t discuss/promote for obvious reasons) is equivalent to spontaneous remission, in other words people that quit drinking on their own with/without help.
So AA is snake oil. And Wilson sold it par excellence! Wilson lived off of AA, shagged newcomers and enthusiastically did LSD. Where is the accountability for this madness!!
People find recovery in AA. They also find it with Mormons, Scientologists and Hare Krishnas.
May 28th, 2008 at 5:02 am
Thanks Mr. Cuban;
I just joined AA in LA and it isn’t a cult. The door is always open to enter or exit.
Thanks.
May 28th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
I beg to differ about AA being a CULT. You are told at meetings (probably from the CULT $6.2 billion dollar generating health care industry) that you have ONLY 3 options. Jails, Institutions or Death.
That does not leave an option to leave. AND YOU KNOW THIS IS TRUE! What about freedom and happiness? Isn’t that an option. It’s not. Becuase you must become part of Bill Wilson’s religion, that originated from the OxFord’s group Frank Buchman, a man on the cover of TIME on Hitler’s B-day 1936 labeled CULTIST BUCHMAN. Dr. Bob and Lois were both staunch OxFord members, which promoted pathological rigorous honesty. Bill Wilson coulnd’t keep his pants up (that is why OxFord wasn’t his cup of tea), and was assigned the Founders Watch, men that shunned Wilson from sequestering female newcomers. This is all documented.
I had 12+ consecutive years in the rooms, to include speaker circuit, Step/Tradition meetings, Group Rep, the works. I did 5-7 meetings per week. I only had one genuine sponsee, though. He cleberated his one year anniversary and everyone in the rooms knew about his heroin habit, but me… Anyhoo, I’m still friendly with my 2 original AA “sponsors”. We don’t discuss meetings, just politics, sports, women, etc..
May 28th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
I have done over 17 year’s continuous sobriety in AA and have mixed feelings about whether or not it is a cult. I do think that it attracts and retains semi-sociopaths, who because of their various issues (anxiety, inability to stay employed and/or maintain an intimate relationship) have little recourse to alternative social networks. I’m talking mainly here about the ‘old-timers’… the vast majority who leave the program early on just have better things to do, and find ways to either stay sober themselves or drink more moderately. Those who stay behind use the label of “years-of-sobriety” as a means of maintaining social status/pecking order in the group.
Does this make AA a cult? No, but in the long term it attracts those who wish to maintain an informal social hierarchy from which they can fulfill their needs. Unfortunately, these needs many times end up getting expressed in warped ways. I have seen old-timers who have used sponsees for money, prestige and sex. The context under which this occurs is pseudo-spirituality as defined in either the big book or other literature. The people being preyed upon are typically at a very vulnerable point in their lives and they attract those who purport to offer them mental and spiritual succor. So even if AA as defined by its traditions and steps is not a cult, those who stick around long term and profit from it in some way utilize it as just that.
May 28th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
This analogy is fair and balanced. But, because you are enmeshed in the CULT, you are unwilling to talk about AA’s leader’s shenanigans. You choose to ignore it, which is CULT behavior, IMO. The fact that Bill Wilson did LSD, shagged newcomers and didn’t work for a living; demonstrates that the CULT leader was incapable of leading by his own example. After 22 years of “sobriety” you would imagine Wilson could obtain Buddha-Nirvana by practicing the 12 Steps as he wrote/sold them. But for some reason Wilson gets a pass and is credited as simply doing constructive “psychoanalysis”.
People say, “so what?” That was him, this is me. That’s your prerogative. But be aware you are practicing the snake oil CULT religion of Bill Wilson, not spirituality. The 12 Steps mentions GOD more frequently than the 10 Commandments. (people question if it is a religion or CULT?)
May 28th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
I’m not enmeshed in AA at all. I stopped going to meetings a few months back after finally realizing that there exist cult-like tendencies on account of old-timers who spew nonsense and try to manipulate others in order to assuage their own fragile egos.
As for the leadership (Bill W., etc) you are probably right. But keep in mind that the cult-like practices in the program are geared more towards the big book for their inspiration than Bill per se. In fact, it’s popular among many of the hard-core big book fanatics to actually denigrate Bill’s contributions to AA. The thinking among these people is that Bill became a heretic after he wrote the steps in the early 50’s. In their mind he sullied the purity of the big book by introducing a lot of “psycho-babble” in subsequent literature. Believe me, it is a weird mind-set amongst these people. I can see how internecine religious conflicts arise over time.
May 29th, 2008 at 1:36 am
The Cult Called A.A.
by Paul Roasberry
Reprinted from Matrix, Denver, Janet Roder, Editor
When we think of cults, we usually think of bizarre religious sects, armed compounds, mind control and eccentric leaders. Most of us do not think of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) as a cult, but I do.
Three years ago, I was in the grips of a serious drinking problem. Like most alcoholics, I rationalized my drinking, citing the many terrible circumstances in my life. Then, almost three years ago, I stopped drinking. Period. By myself.
Oh, I attended a half dozen or so A.A. meetings at the time, upon the advice of someone recommended by a friend. The woman who suggested A.A. to me was a licensed psychologist. She was a “recovered alcoholic” and was very active in A.A.
What I found at the meetings was a weird mixture of the deplorable and the laughable. It didn’t take long to notice that something was not quite level with this organization.
I was tipped off to A.A.’s strong cult qualities when the lady psychologist made a somewhat curious remark during the first week or two of my sobriety.
I had an uncle then (he died this past January) who had been an alcoholic prior to 1960. Uncle Ralph consumed, by his own subsequent admission, about a quart of whiskey a day. He stopped drinking without the assistance of A.A. when he met my aunt. It was a condition of their marriage that he stop drinking, and he did.
I remember my Uncle Ralph as a sweet, generous man during the thirty-odd years he was married to my aunt. He was not abusive or cruel, he worked hard, and made an excellent stepfather to my three girl cousins. When I mentioned Uncle Ralph to the lady psychologist, stating that he’d quit drinking on his own, she immediately dismissed my observation with, “Oh, well, he’s just a dry drunk.” She of course had never met my uncle Ralph, knew positively nothing about his character and yet claimed to be able to diagnose him as a “dry drunk” strictly on the information that he hadn’t progressed through the A.A.’s widely touted “twelve step program.” Bear in mind, this was a licensed psychologist making an incredibly spurious, rash judgment.
Of course, all cults have this in common: they reject and label as untouchables any who do not embrace their particular version of “Truth.” To died-in-the-wool communists, non-believers are “bootlickers of the capitalists,” or “counter-revolutionary hooligans.” To the born again fundamentalist Christian, non-believers are “agents of Satan.” To Moslems, Christians are “devils,” and to Nazis, Jews are “swine.” To the Alcoholics Anonymous membership, anyone who stops drinking without chanting the mantras of cult founder Bill W. are “dry drunks,” pure and simple. You don’t even need to know anything more about the self-quitters — the fact that they quit drinking without A.A. makes them dry drunks, a priori.
Don’t get me wrong. I do not advocate suppressing A.A. or any other cult. I simply want you to know, in case you are a problem drinker and are toying around with the idea of quitting, that it’s O.K. to develop your own solution to your own problem. The last thing you need when you undertake a major, radical transformation in your life is to be accused by a bunch of self-righteous fanatics of being “a dry drunk,” whatever the hell that is.
The whole A.A. program hinges upon the alcoholic’s acceptance of what A.A. calls a “higher power.” Conversely, adherents to the twelve-step program are expected to renounce any personal responsibility for, or control over, their problem. This blatant renunciation of the concept of free will is also a characteristic of every single other cult I can think of — the individual counts for nothing, while the non-existent, the illusory, the hypothetical, is all. Self-respecting, proud, analytical achievers do not make good cult members. A cult follower must be stripped of his sense of individual worth — in many sects, he is humiliated sexually, deprived of sensory stimuli, sequestered from the larger community, or otherwise manipulated to look upon himself as degraded and worthless. In A.A., you are plopped in a ring of cultists every evening and pressured to place your entire destiny in the hands of some “higher power.”
When I began to ask hard questions about the nature of this “higher power,” half expecting to hear some gibberish about “god,” I learned (no kidding!) that one member even had his motorcycle represent his “higher power.” What form of silliness is this that empowers motorcycles to cure us of alcoholism, I wondered.
At A.A. meetings, everyone sits around in a big circle. There are readings from “the Big Book,” a not-very-well-written compendium of home-spun philosophy and anecdote authored by Bill W. and his colleagues some decades ago. Every cult needs its sacred writings, its revealed word. Members start talking about themselves and their alcoholism, and oddly, this sounds more like “self-criticism” under Mao’s cultural revolution than anything therapeutic. In fact, it’s all directed toward precisely the same end as “confession” in the Catholic church and Maoist “self-criticism” — de-emphasis of the individual and a concomitant glorification of the ethereal, the other-worldly, the imaginary.
At some point, if you begin to question this “program” of A.A.’s, the talk gets tough and they start to lean on you. You are told that you can never recover on your own, that you are doomed to lapse over and over again into drinking binges, or at best, become a “dry drunk.” (This is supposedly someone who has stopped drinking but still manifests all the unconscionable traits of a drunk: all the sociopathy, all the abusiveness, all the manipulative behaviors.)
The more you try to trot out examples of persons who have transformed their own lives under their own steam, the more the party line is thrown back at you: you are powerless against drink. Powerless. Any so-called examples of alcoholics who quit drinking without the twelve steps are in reality only examples of “dry drunks.”
When I left A.A., I made the comment to someone that if I were indeed “powerless,” I might as well commit suicide, because a life without any control over my destiny would be pointless and absurd. I stated again my conviction that I did not regard myself as powerless, and I went about my recovery in the most sensible way I could imagine. I removed alcohol from my home, I found some healthy pastimes to pursue (mountain climbing, writing, and painting) and, in the whirlwind breakup of my marriage, I devoted myself to staying afloat financially, making my new company prosper, and seeking out some like-minded companionship — that was when I re-joined Mensa.
So, if you are determined to quit drinking, you can save yourself about three hundred sixty-five hours a year, plus travel time.
Try the “one-step” program, instead: just stop drinking. Believe me: you can do it.
I did.
May 29th, 2008 at 1:44 am
http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-Galanter.html
Cults: Faith, Healing, and Coercion, by Marc Galanter
Oxford University Press, New York, Oxford, Toronto, Melbourne, and more.
First edition, 1989. ISBN: 0-19-505631-0
Second edition, 1999. ISBN: 0-19-512369-7 hardcover, and ISBN: 0-19-512370-0 pbk.
LC: BP603.G35 1999 or BP603.G35 1989
LCCN: 88-25277
Dewey: 291.6 G146c or 291.019–dc19
May 29th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
mtm,
Just out of interest…what has been your *personal* experience with AA?
May 29th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
@Mike: My experience Mike? I absorb what works for me as an individual and disregard the rest. Many disagree with that approach but I have been happy healthy and wise since I started and thats what counts in my big book.
May 29th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Brian,
I actually meant mtm105.
May 29th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
Thank you Mr. Cuban for allowing me to vent.
My experience started with ACOA intenive therapy, which included group sessions and meetings averaging 3-5 meetings per week. My grades at Rutgers were going down, and I saw a solicitation, “Do you have trouble having fun? Do you have difficulty with intimate realationship?” 2 years later I segued into AA. I loved/respected alcohol.
2 years prior, I drank very little. A six pack every other weekend. But I knew that everytime I was involved in trouble, alcohol was always part of the equation. I went in 2 years sober. I heard, “Don’t drink, go to meetings, change everything.” That was my key. I was “celibate” not by choice, but out of shyness for over 6 years. I bought into AA CULT mindset that meeting makers make it. So attended religously (no pun intended) for 12 years.
I found women in AA will drop their panties like fire, for “good looking” (subjective) guys with over 5 years. I was rather comfortable shagging women from 19 year old bisexual single Moms; to 50 year old mother of adult children. I have no resentments. Not even an STD!
After 8 years, out of curiousity I came across Jack Trimpey’s Small Book. I disregarded him as some “heretic”. But, he planted a seed. I promised I could not give up the “spirituality” of the 12 Steps, unless I came across evn HARDER evidence against AA. I pondered for the life of me that there could not be ANYTHING. Until 2 years ago I came across Orange Papers Org. That led me to believe that AA is in fact a CULT. During my duration of sobriety, I fell into different kinds of religious cults, to include Mormons, Fundamental Xtians, and almost reluctantly, I say Bhagwan Rashneesh, an exclusive prophet IMO, who became valium/nitrous drug addicted; and his Ashram turned into a rather pervasive cult. (I have over 70 books of his). If you recall, the Regean administration flew sonic boom fly bys over the Ashram.
I love studying American religous history…..there is no other like it in the world!
I’ve voted with my feet! AA is a CULT! Read Orange subjectively and you will not view AA as a benign spiritual program. It even originates with Nazi fascism; and a controversial history that is in largely fabricated/denied and/or hidden from newcomers. The stories in the Big Book is fiction. Almost all of the contibutors disappeared from AA, or died drunk. The Injun story is a joke, it is Hollywood Indian English fabrication. And Wilson did not write the first 164. He even said that he operated as an “umpire!” It was written by others, and he lived-off the proceeds because he copywrited it in his name. He wasn’t too stupid. He saw an opportunity a RAN with it.
I am a member of the Armed Forces 15 years active duty and a Rutgers Grad, a practicing guitarist into tube amplification, and married (ups & downs) with a toddler. I now spend the time I used to at meetings, slamming the CULT and contributing to my marriage. I’ve returned to my Episocopalean faith, after swearing off its rituals for 30 years. That’s where my resentment probably originated. The love of Jesus Christ heals my soul, with weekly communion.
There aren’t many of me out there slamming AA. I have been a virtual prodigal son. A prophet is unwelcome in his own home.
Much like a good meeting member, I have not addessed suggestions to anyone in particular. THANKS FOR SHARING, EVERYONE! not.
GOD BLESS!
May 29th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Thanks for sharing, mtm105….
Wow, don’t know what to say. Good luck going forward. I agree, the Orange Papers helped me to get out of AA. Still detoxing, so to speak. Funny how any day things are going badly I have an urge to go to a meeting, and then am so glad I did not go afterwards. It’s almost an inverted view of recovery. What I am slowly regaining now is my sense of personal responsibility. Couldn’t get that with group-think.
If I could make one teeny suggestion it would be to look into professional counseling. I don’t know if your rants are of the ‘anonymous coward’ type or really reflect how you communicate with people. If it is the former, cool, we all do it from time to time on-line. If it is the latter, get help for your family’s sake.
May 29th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
If you want to leave AA, no one will try to hold you back. We’re ready to help if and when you are interested in receiving our help. I don’t think that sounds like a cult at all.
May 29th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
sounds like the DC meeting “learned by example” and were practicing bill w.’s well documented “13th step”
i find maintenance drinking to be much more of an honest program for me, but i still call AA folks when i need to talk to another human being about an issue i feel needs confession and confidentiality.
my final observation is that, for a cult, the fees / tithes / offerings are pretty reasonable (i.e. free as in beer)
my two cents, and worth every penny
May 30th, 2008 at 1:02 am
Counseling? Why? Because I’m candid about SEX? AA meetings are like bars. Men are pumped with testosterone prior to meetings, with solid free-weight workouts. Women dress advertising their cleavage; and make deer eyes with the guy with rippling biceps across from them in a muscle T-shirt. I’m a monogomous guy by origin. No doubt about it. My wife, though, is BiPolar and I probably have PTSD from her verbal abuse.
I’ve found giving $ to church, (which can be rather difficult) opens up freedom to GOD. Trust me, I’d rather buy books and guitar equip with that $. Also, the more refined sugars/carbs I cut down on, the happier I feel. That combo is very beneficial for me. A book I’m reading now is Potatoes Not Prozac. I know that when I cut down on these, I literally feel like Buddha.
What is the difference between an alcoholic and a normal guy?
With a dead car battery, the normal guy calls AAA. The alcoholic calls the suicide hotline!
I have zero urge to go to a meeting. The only urge I have is to go, and get on a soapbox and discredit AA.
My affiliation with Bhagwan will be tough to get rid of. Read his older literature from the late 70’s. He, along with Ghandi, are the only two sages with libraries dedicated to them by name in the Indian Pariliament.
May 30th, 2008 at 1:21 am
Mr. Heslin,
Allow me to re-iterate. Jails, institutions or Death! I’m not coming back! Going to AA for help is like asking Brittney Spears about spiritual and maritial advise.
I don’t need AA’s help. AA members freely practice maritial, legal, spiritual and medical advice without ANY qualifications. It’s like playing with a loaded weapon.
There is NO leaving the CULT. 3rd Tradition dictates the only requirement. I’ve fullfilled that requirement. But by default, I still am unable to leave AA membership because I have a desire to stop drinking. Technically, IT NEVER ENDS! Because that is how CULTS operate.
May 30th, 2008 at 2:09 am
Oh Yeah, Charlie Manson hit that nail RIGHT on the head. What about Jim Jones with his Jonestown mass suicide, that was totally crazy. Major cult there.
JJ
http://www.Ultimate-Anonymity.com
May 30th, 2008 at 4:04 am
The truth is that a newly-sober alcoholic named William Griffith Wilson — a down-on-his-luck former Wall Street hustler who put on airs of having once been a prosperous stock broker — just sat down, in December of 1938, and wrote up twelve commandments for the new religious group that he and fellow alcoholic Doctor Robert Smith had started. Those commandments were simply a repackaged version of the practices of a cult religion that was popular at that time, something called “The Oxford Group”, or “The Oxford Group Movement”, and later, “Moral Re-Armament” — a religious cult that was created by a deceitful fascist renegade Lutheran minister named Dr. Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman — a nut-case who actually praised Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler.
Bill Wilson described the writing of the Twelve Steps this way:
Well, we finally got to the point where we really had to say what this book was all about and how this deal works. As I told you this had been a six-step program then.
The idea came to me, well, we need a definite statement of concrete principles that these drunks can’t wiggle out of. There can’t be any wiggling out of this deal at all and this six-step program had two big gaps which people wiggled out of.
Notice how Bill Wilson considered his fellow alcoholics to be a bunch of cheaters who will “wiggle out of this deal” if they can get away with it — which Bill won’t allow.
And note how Bill Wilson made himself the leader who was entitled to dictate the concrete terms of other people’s recovery programs.
Also notice how Bill Wilson considered ’spiritual development’ to be a business deal, with a contract that you can’t wiggle out of, something like selling your soul in trade for sobriety.
Nowhere in the Twelve Steps does it say that you should quit drinking, or help anyone else to quit drinking, either. Nowhere do the words “sobriety”, “recovery”, “abstinence”, “health”, “happiness”, “joy”, “love”, or “love”, appear in the Twelve Steps. The word “alcohol” was only mentioned once, where it was patched into the first step as a substitute for the word “sin” — Bill Wilson wrote,
“we are powerless over alcohol and our lives have become unmanageable”,
instead of the Oxford Group slogan,
“we are powerless over sin and have been defeated by it”.
And then the phrase “especially alcoholics” was patched into the 12th step as a suggested target for further recruiting efforts:
“…we tried to carry this message to others, especially alcoholics”…
(But regular non-alcoholic people were still fair game for recruiting into Bill’s “spiritual fellowship”…)
The Twelve Steps are not a formula for curing or treating alcoholism, and they never were.
The Twelve Steps are not “spiritual principles” and they never were.
The Twelve Steps are cult practices that work to convert people into confirmed true believers in a proselytizing cult religion, just like Frank Buchman’s so-called “spiritual principles” did.
1. The Twelve Steps do not work as a program of recovery from drug or alcohol problems.
The A.A. failure rate ranges from 95% to 100%. Sometimes, the A.A. success rate is actually less than zero, which means that A.A. indoctrination is positively harmful to people, and prevents recovery. Some tests have shown that even receiving no treatment at all for alcoholism is much better than receiving A.A. treatment:
One of the most enthusiastic boosters of Alcoholics Anonymous, Professor George Vaillant of Harvard University, who is also a member of the Board of Trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. (AAWS), showed by his own 8 years of testing of A.A. that A.A. was worse than useless — that it didn’t help the alcoholics any more than no treatment at all, and it had the highest death rate of any treatment program tested — a death rate that Professor Vaillant himself described as “appalling”. While trying to prove that A.A. treatment works, Professor Vaillant actually proved that A.A. kills. After 8 years of A.A. treatment, the score with Dr. Vaillant’s first 100 alcoholic patients was: 5 sober, 29 dead, and 66 still drinking.
(Nevertheless, Vaillant is still a Trustee of Alcoholics Anonymous, and he still wants to send all alcoholics to A.A. anyway, to “get an attitude change by confessing their sins to a high-status healer.” That is cult religion, not a treatment program for alcoholism.)
The A.A. dropout rate is terrible. Most people who come to A.A. looking for help in quitting drinking are appalled by the narrow-minded atmosphere of fundamentalist religion and faith-healing. The A.A. meeting room has a revolving door. The therapists, judges, and parole officers (many of whom are themselves hidden members of A.A. or N.A.) continually send new people to A.A., but those newcomers vote with their feet once they see what A.A. really is. Even A.A.’s own triennial surveys, conducted by the A.A. headquarters (the GSO), say that:
81% of the newcomers are gone within 30 days,
90% are gone in 3 months, and
95% are gone at the end of a year.
That automatically gives A.A. a failure rate of at least 95%. But the GSO does not count all of those people who only attend a few meetings before quitting — they don’t qualify as “members”. (That amounts to “cherry-picking”.) If we included them, then the numbers would be much worse.
First there is the propaganda technique of “everybody’s doing it”: “AA or a similar Twelve-Step program is an integral part of almost all successful recoveries”.
That is a complete falsehood. The vast majority of the successful people recover without A.A. or any “support group”. It’s what “everybody” is doing.
Then they use the propaganda techniques of use of the passive voice and vague suggestions: “It is widely believed that not including a Twelve-Step program in a treatment plan can put a recovering addict on the road to relapse.”
It is widely believed by whom? And what do those unnamed people know? What are their qualifications? Are they doctors? Medical school professors? Or salesmen for a 12-Step treatment center? Why should we care what some unnamed invisible fools allegedly believe, anyway?
The authors also use the propaganda technique of fear-mongering: you will be “on the road to relapse” — you will probably die — unless you practice Bill Wilson’s Twelve Step cult religion.
And then the fluff-headed Pollyanna attitude is outrageous: Just going to the wonderful A.A. meetings is supposedly all that is needed to fix some alcoholics.
But since A.A. has a zero-percent success rate above and beyond the normal rate of spontaneous remission, that cannot possibly be true .
Orange Papers cut n’ paste
May 30th, 2008 at 4:28 am
Wilson was serially unfaithful to his wife Lois. Wilson ’s affairs with women caused controversy and concern within AA and it was common knowledge in New York AA circles. His interest in younger women increased with his age, and caused Barry Leach and other friends of Wilson to form a “Founders Watch”. People were assigned to keep an eye on Wilson during the socializing that followed AA functions and to separate and steer away those young women who caught Wilson’s interest. Wilson, like many in his generation, could be sexist, but he was also “capable of treating the women who worked with him with dignity and respect”. In the mid 1950s he began an affair with Helen Wyn, a woman 22 years his junior, “in duration, intensity and scope” this was different from his other affairs. Wilson at one point discussed divorcing Lois to marry Helen. Wilson with determined perseverance was able to overcome the AA trustees objections, and renegotiated his royalty agreements with them in 1963, which allowed him to include Helen Wynn in his estate. He left 10% of his book royalties to Helen and the other 90% to his wife Lois. In 1968 with Wilson’s illness making it harder for them to spend time together, Helen bought a house in Ireland.
In the 1950s Wilson experimented with LSD in medically supervised experiments with Gerard Heard and Aldous Huxley. With Wilson’s invitation his wife Lois, Father Dowling, and Nell Wing also participated in experimentation of this drug. Later Wilson wrote to Carl Jung, praising the results and recommending it as validation of Jung’s spiritual experience. (The letter was not in fact sent as Jung had died.)
At a parapsychology meeting in the 1960s, Wilson met Abram Hoffer and learned about the potential mood-stabilizing effects of niacin. Wilson was impressed with experiments indicating that alcoholics who were given niacin had a better sobriety rate, and he began to see niacin “as completing the third leg in the stool, the physical to complement the spiritual and emotional.” Wilson also believed that niacin had given him relief from depression, and he promoted the vitamin within the AA community and with the National Institute of Mental Health as a treatment for schizophrenia. However, Wilson created a major furor in AA because he used the AA office and letterhead in his promotion.
For Wilson, spiritualism (communicating with the spirits of the dead) was a life-long interest. One of his letters to his spiritual adviser Father Ed Dowling suggests that while Wilson was working on his book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions he felt that spirits were helping him, in particular a 15th century monk named Boniface.[18] Wilson believed that the living could communicate with the dead and kept a “Spook Room” in his basement, where he along and others would conduct seances with a Ouijiboard, as well as experiment with automatic writing. Despite his conviction that he had evidence for the reality of the spiritual world, Wilson chose not to share this with AA.
What, Lois? Me go get a job? Oh dear, I can feel an anxiety attack coming on. I think I’m about to relapse…
Bill would not let even Lois, who was dying to do so, write the chapter titled “To Wives.” After all, she was the wife who had endured Bill’s drunken years and the houseful of alcoholics he was trying to wrestle into sobriety. “I have never known why he didn’t want me to write about the wives, and it hurt me at first,” she said.
Getting Better Inside Alcoholics Anonymous, Nan Robertson, pages 70-71.
Bill had a grandiose sense of self-importance, and exaggerated his achievements and talents, and expected to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements, like his belief that he was essential to other alcoholics’ recovery, and his wildly exaggerated claims of success in drying out alcoholics, and his years-long nationwide tours, grandstanding and promoting his own legend.
Bill was preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love, like the Oxford Groups’ “Absolute Purity, Absolute Honesty, Absolute Love, and Absolute Unselfishness”. Bill also liked to imagine that he was launching a movement that would sweep the entire world and save all of the alcoholics. Bill even claimed that A.A. was “the miracle of the century”, and “probably one of the greatest medical and spiritual developments of all time.”
Bill believed that he was “special” and unique — the only man in the world with the answer to alcoholism (or, before that, the first American to make a working boomerang, or the only man on campus to truly understand calculus). Bill thought that he understood God, alcoholics, and alcoholism better than anybody else in the whole world.
Bill required excessive admiration.
Bill certainly had a sense of entitlement, and felt that he deserved the best of everything, like all of fame, credit, and prestige, all of the money, and all of the women, and even a house in the country and a Cadillac car supplied by the A.A. organization. Bill also felt entitled to dictate the terms of other people’s recovery from alcoholism, and even to dictate their religious beliefs.
Bill Wilson was outrageously, heartlessly exploitative. He used everybody, and he discarded and drove away people when they refused to kowtow to him.
Bill Wilson lacked empathy — he didn’t even think about the welfare or recovery of the women alcoholics whom he was thirteenth-stepping, and he disregarded the recovery of the unbelievers whom he drove away from A.A.. And Bill even disregarded the feelings of his own wife Lois while she supported him for years.
Envy of other people seems to be the only characteristic of narcissism that Bill Wilson did not overtly display, but I think that he was envious. Bill spent his whole life trying to prove that he was just as good as other people. He must have felt envious of those other people who were born with a higher status than him, and who were never cursed with alcoholism, whose honor and morality was never questioned.
Bill certainly showed arrogant, haughty behaviors and attitudes.
Bill strongly displayed “Vulnerability in self-esteem”. He couldn’t stand criticism. He lashed out in defiant counter-attack whenever he was criticized, as shown in the cases of his wife, his calculus professor, his business partner Henry Parkhurst, and Ed the atheist who dared to challenge Bill’s bombastic religiosity. When Bill was criticized, he often nursed a bitter resentment over it for years, until he could get his revenge, or he went into a fit of deep depression that often lasted years.
Bill’s interpersonal relations were very impaired due to “problems derived from entitlement, the need for admiration, and the relative disregard for the sensitivities of others”. Bill fought with everybody from his wife to his best friend and partner Henry “Hank” Parkhurst to the A.A. members who wouldn’t believe in God as Bill dictated. Loud screaming matches were routine behavior for Bill Wilson.
And Bill certainly suffered from “Major Depressive Disorders”:
A one-year-long depression in his childhood when his parents divorced and his mother left Bill and his sister with his grandparents.
A three-year-long depression when his high-school girlfriend died.
Various sporadic depressions throughout his drinking career.
Then, while sober, an eleven-year-long deep, crippling, clinical depression from 1944 to 1955, from indeterminate causes.
And Dr. Alexander Lowen added one more characteristic of narcissism:
The tendency to lie, without compunction, is typical of narcissists.
Narcissism, Denial of the True Self, Alexander Lowen, M.D., page 54.
That fits Bill Wilson too.
May 30th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
mtm105,
Ok, we get the point. I question at this point your mental stability though. Hatred can be an addiction too, no?
May 30th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Not necessarialy hatred. But probably anger. I’m angry that I drank the snake oil and labeled myself an alcoholic for so many years. And so many vulnerable people fall for the CULT. I’ve made career desicions based upon my influence with the 12 Steps. Some good, some bad. But my personal history, within confines of family, I will always be labeled as the one who has/had “issues” with New Age Recovery movment.
Anger, if channeled corretly, can have a benefit. For me, it can come out through physical excersise and/or playing guitar. Rage, on the other hand, is different story. Jesus turned over the table at the Temple.
AA believes that anger and resentments are BAD! Don’t FEEL this way! YOU WILL RELAPSE. GET HELP! I guess Jesus was a BAD person. Like Nazi Socialism, everyone in AA must put on proverbial blinders, and get led around by the nose.
I do not see very many people on the internet calling AA a CULT, calling a spade a spade! Someday, I will have a cahtarsis and manage to let it go. But for now, it’s too soon. I live in Nashville. I could write a song…. YEE HAW! (acually I’m addicted to classic rock)
May 30th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
ok, my last post here. Brian, thanks for the platform to air my opinions. Bottom line is that I don’t think AA is good in the long run for people who wish to reenter and function normally in society. But I also think rage against AA as I’ve seen expressed in the last couple of posts is also unwarranted.
May 30th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
“Who does it hurt if you become overly obsessed with your involvement in staying sober?”
It can hurt you by stifling your own personal growth. It can hurt your friends, family, and loved ones if you place your “recovery” and commitments to A.A. ahead of your role as spouse, parent, etc.
May 31st, 2008 at 2:45 am
The hidden irony of this blog is that Wilson shagged babes, no less than David Koresh or Charles Manson did! And got away doing it as a married man, and over a much longer time period. But he gets a pass from the Kool Aid drinkers!!
And Bill Wilson did LSD more frequently (60 times) than Charles Manson. DO THE MATH! That’s once every other week for 2 1/2 years!!! And he gets a pass from the Kool Aid drinkers! (like Manson, instead of Beatle White Album epiphanies, Wilson actively did sceances under the guise of “spirituality”)
Wilson invented himself as a religious untouchable, much like Koresh and Manson. He set up the Big Book and copywrited it exclusively under his name. Legally, no one could argue! Wilson was a raving ego-maniac. He couldn’t tolerate ANY critisism. And he gets a pass from the Kool Aid drinkers~
Wilson’s infamous “white light” experience was induced by Bella Donna, a hallucinogen used for drying out drunks. There was NOTHING “spiritual” about his experience, trust me!
June 3rd, 2008 at 2:36 am
If you insist on defending AA and insist it isn’t a CULT for various reasons, be my guest. Your $1 a meeting in the basket is practically insignificant. So is the Norman Rockwell era-type of propoganda generated literature. This is only the backdoor of a major industry.
The center of the industry is the $6.2 billion dollar US annual health-care CULT that is propogated with medical Drs., therapists, pysychologists, book publishers and courts. It is a CASH COW! And it’s SNAKE OIL! And it’s proposed to be “spiritual”, not religious. It is the heretic “doorknob” religion devised by Bill Wilson. Wilson’s concept of “spiritulity” is a SHAM!
This pidgeon has flown the coop!
June 3rd, 2008 at 2:43 am
The A.A. God is the generic brand that comes in a plain white box at the supermarket.
The A.A. God has a lot of will. He has a Will for everything and everybody, and everybody is supposed to do something to please God. Apparently, the A.A. God did not succeed in making the world the way that He wanted it to be, so both He and his followers have to be constantly changing things, trying to get it right.
The A.A. God is an authoritarian male figure Who closely resembles an Old-Testament patriarch, like Charlton Heston playing Moses.
The A.A. God is a dictator.
The A.A. God wants you to be a slave forever.
The A.A. God loves you the most when you are grovelling on your knees, confessing what a worthless sinner you are. Only then will the A.A. God do favors for you.
The A.A. God is highly illogical, if not outright insane. First, the A.A. God will stick you with the genes for alcoholism and make you a born alcoholic, then He will wish you weren’t an alcoholic and an excessive drinker. Go figure.
The A.A. God has a grand plan for you: First, incurable alcoholism, and then, more incurable alcoholism.
The A.A. God is so harsh that He will condemn you to a horrible painful death by alcohol unless you properly perform your sycophant duties every day. The A.A. God routinely kills alcoholics who don’t Work the Steps thoroughly.
When the A.A. God heals alcoholics, He only fixes them for one day at a time. For some unknown reason, God’s magic wears off after 24 hours.
The A.A. God micromanages the world. He is constantly tweaking everything, pulling millions and billions of puppet strings to make things happen differently, to make things turn out exactly the way He wants, and to convenience some of his followers.
The A.A. God cheats at solitaire.
June 6th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
I have fullfilled AA’s requirement for membership by 15 plus years. My opinion is EVERY bit equal as any other member who has spent similar amount of time as another pidgeon in the “program”. If anyone has issues with my opinions, then I suggest you examine AA’s requirement for membership. AA, IMO, is equally harmful as it is good, studies prove it to be worse. I saw a miricle through my Dad who after 30+ years of very heavy drinking, was given the choice of rehab or die. He chose rehab (2nd time around). He got the “message”. He sobered up for good. But after 2+ years decided to leave AA. He said it was because so many people shared stories about drugs inside the rooms (ironically Wilson was an advocate of LSD and sobered up through Bella Donna hallucinogen). My Dad passed from throat cancer, but none of his 9 grandchildren ever saw him drunk. That is his testimony. He considered Wilson to have been, “the greatest salesman that ever lived.” It took me about 10 years to understand this. Wilson sold snake oil. I joined AA about the same time my Dad was sequing out. I was greateful for his sobriety. AA is a cult. It sobered him up. Because cults sober people up, like Jehova Witnesses, Mormons and Scientologists, doesn’t mean that I have to play a part in it.
The pidgeon analogy is rather unfortunate, because AA desires that once one no longer chooses an association with AA, they are like pidgeons and choose to fly away…. They are no longer considered an entity. Well, this pidgeon has morphed into a HAWK!
June 6th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
@mtm105: When a group’s activities revolve round strong beliefs, they are going to tend to hang with people who share those beliefs. The fact that your in AA does not mean everyone in the group is your pal. You maintain constant connection because everyone wants see each other do well. If you are no longer participating in the group that connection is weakened so you no longer hear from those people. That does not mean you have been shunned. It just means that you are replaced by others in that group who have the shared interest That is normal group dynamics and not unique to AA
June 6th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Group dynamics = pidgeon coop (as demonstrated by animalistic behavior).
Humans are not animalistic. We have a creator influenced by Christ Jesus. Rather than accept the norm, I choose to demonstrate my spirituality by helping others to realize that they are in fact NOT pidgeons. They are competent human beings who have the potential to get back to GOD as demonstrated through scriptures, not CULT Big Book propoganda (similar to Hubbard’s Dyanetics and Smith’s Book of Mormon). The Big Book finds errors and corrects Biblical principles. Bill Wilson is Christ personified. Much like Joseph Smith and L Ron Hubbard.
I circle the Pidgeon coop as a helpful Hawk saying “BEWARE!” What AA considers spirituality is in fact SNAKE OIL! Go, get your needs met (as my Dad did). But realize that anyone CAN make a decision and fly away at any moment; and live a life of fullfillment for the BETTER! Not threats of jails, institutions and death….(which is what CULTS do!)
Get back to GOD! Find your church. It isn’t difficult making that decision. The only difficulty, IMO, is finding the right church that is the right fit. If you have a resentment and grew up Catholic or Protestant/Baptist, I suggest experimenting and attend services where your faith originated for several weeks and to try heal issues. Then, perhaps, decide if it is right for you. And/or GOD will help with the decision.
If you don’t mind me asking, Brian, “what Church did you grow up with, and are you still a participant?” No disrespect, but don’t lawyers and churches mix like oil and vinegar? It’s my impression that AA is now your church. When you look at AA’s track record (which is hidden for obvious reasons) you may reconsider your commitment. I don’t know.
June 6th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
@mtm105: I am Jewish. I go to a few meetings a week on the average. I like to listen everyone. I frankly have not opened the big book or worked a step since my first month. I just don’t view those things as helpful in terms of my sobriety. I dont argue with people about it or worry about people who try to impose their view of the program. I let it all bounce off me. It is my life not theirs. When I first started in the program I had a couple of the “thumpers” come up to me and tell me that if I wanted to succeed in the program I had to always say that god was my higher power. I didn’t go off on them or criticize them. If that is what keeps them sober more power to them. Many in AA need that aspect as part of a successful program. I simply chose a different meeting that was a better fit with who I was.
I do find the common group experience helpful in terms of what we have all gone through, just like someone would in any self help group. That is really the limit of my participation. I don’t worry about their track record. I worry about whether the quality of my life has improved and I am at peace and the answer is yes to both. I frankly would not care if I was going in and doing chants every day, the questions I ask myself as to the quality of my life would still be the same.
June 6th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Mr. Cuban, I grossly underestimated you, my apologies. I myself bought the program hook-line-and sinker. That is why I am so disillusioned and angry. I personified the 12 Steps and quoted SNAKE OIL literature verbatim, to include ACOA. I was a walking-talking programmed robot monster. A carbon copy of Wilson’s visualization. I am still able recite How It Works word for word. BRAINWASHED~!
I am at a loss as far as any other inflamatory opinions. I have ZERO credibility. You have CRUSHED me with kindness….
June 9th, 2008 at 1:21 am
Keep in mind the word “cult” is the root word for “culture” so of COURSE it is a cult, just like any other culture that shares a certain philosophical belief, and no matter what religious or personal differences there are in AA, that belief is, that no matter what happens to you, drinking or taking drugs will only make it worse.
Ok, that is VERY good for the alcoholic or drug addict and probably has saved countless lives. I applaud it for that.
It almost killed me, however.
I walked in a meeting with a friend, who wanted me see him pick up his anniversary chip. Everyone welcomed me with open arms and instructed me “there are no coincidences” “you are here because you belong here” yada yada.
I had been a drinker but certainly not a heavy one. I was (and am) attracted to the way of life, the honesty, the getting in touch with feelings, etc etc.
But the part that is dangerous, is alcoholics diagnosing newcomers as alcoholics simply because they showed up and liked what they heard. Who of us who are moderate drinkers (I have maybe one to two glasses of red wine per week as instructed by a cardiologist, and certainly do not crave it.
I was lonely, just out of a relationship, and suffering from TRD (treatment resistant depression), and, through peer pressure in AA stayed 14 years. I cannot say it made my life worse, but certainly not better. It will make your life better if you ARE indeed an alcoholic or drug addict.
I would many years later, after leaving AA disocver my problem of TRD and had a vagus nerve implant implanted and all depression dissapeared as did insominia, anxiety, etc etc.
So AA may be a very good concept, even for a cult, but it is individual members who enthustically recruit others, with absolutely no life-education-training in addictionology except for their own “personal experiences”, that is dangerous.
In fact, a decade ago, the courts in almost all 50 states ruled AA dangerous enough to quit mandatory meetings for those arrested for drunken offenses (due to the fact it WAS INDEED found to be a religious organization). Religion is part of our culture, thus “a cult” technically speaking.
AA claimed all these years to be non-sectarian. That turned out to be a thin-veneer, and was a lie. Proven in court, and even admitted and remedied by
AA itself.
I applaud them for admitting that error. AA was founded 3/4 of a century ago; when, not much was known about addictions and such. Much more has been found.
Though now there are 8 other major recovery programs similar (one even allows and teaches moderate drinking); percentage-wise, they all have almost exactly the same success/failure rate. And its not very good. According to statistics, almost 95% of members of any of them have a relapse at one time or another, whether they heavily attend meetings or not. The success rate is identical to those who never have attended a meeting but simply quit and modified their lifestyles; of course the real “cult aa members…the ones who are heavy recruiters” tell us they are on a “dry drunk”. Ok fine. I am on one, but since
leaving AA have finished college in my 40’s, never did before, opened my own successful business, became engaged to a wonderful woman, bought a home, mended fences with my family, and became productive in society again…..(while drinking) something I never did in abstinance in AA.
So AA MAY help those who need it. It is a killer and growth-stunter for those who don’t (I was told over and over if I would only work the steps and get closer to God my depression, anxiety, and insomnia would disappear. I love stories about magic as much as the next guy, and tried their suggestions many years only to get worse. Finally modern day medicine did the trick.
Live and learn.
June 9th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
cut n paste Orange papers:
1. The Twelve Steps do not work as a program of recovery from drug or alcohol problems.
o The A.A. failure rate ranges from 95% to 100%. Sometimes, the A.A. success rate is actually less than zero, which means that A.A. indoctrination is positively harmful to people, and prevents recovery. Some tests have shown that even receiving no treatment at all for alcoholism is much better than receiving A.A. treatment:
o One of the most enthusiastic boosters of Alcoholics Anonymous, Professor George Vaillant of Harvard University, who is also a member of the Board of Trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. (AAWS), showed by his own 8 years of testing of A.A. that A.A. was worse than useless — that it didn’t help the alcoholics any more than no treatment at all, and it had the highest death rate of any treatment program tested — a death rate that Professor Vaillant himself described as “appalling”. While trying to prove that A.A. treatment works, Professor Vaillant actually proved that A.A. kills. After 8 years of A.A. treatment, the score with Dr. Vaillant’s first 100 alcoholic patients was: 5 sober, 29 dead, and 66 still drinking.
(Nevertheless, Vaillant is still a Trustee of Alcoholics Anonymous, and he still wants to send all alcoholics to A.A. anyway, to “get an attitude change by confessing their sins to a high-status healer.” That is cult religion, not a treatment program for alcoholism.)
o The A.A. dropout rate is terrible. Most people who come to A.A. looking for help in quitting drinking are appalled by the narrow-minded atmosphere of fundamentalist religion and faith-healing. The A.A. meeting room has a revolving door. The therapists, judges, and parole officers (many of whom are themselves hidden members of A.A. or N.A.) continually send new people to A.A., but those newcomers vote with their feet once they see what A.A. really is. Even A.A.’s own triennial surveys, conducted by the A.A. headquarters (the GSO), say that:
X 81% of the newcomers are gone within 30 days,
X 90% are gone in 3 months, and
X 95% are gone at the end of a year.
That automatically gives A.A. a failure rate of at least 95%. But the GSO does not count all of those people who only attend a few meetings before quitting — they don’t qualify as “members”. (That amounts to “cherry-picking”.) If we included them, then the numbers would be much worse.
And also note that the claimed five percent of A.A. newcomers who are still left after one year is exactly the same number as the usual rate of spontaneous remission among alcoholics — five percent per year. That is, in any randomly-selected population of alcoholics, approximately five percent per year will finally get sick and tired of being sick and tired, and they will just quit drinking. And the Harvard Medical School says that 80% of those successful quitters do it by themselves, alone, without any “treatment program” or any “support group”.
If we subtract the normal spontaneous remission rate for alcoholism of five percent per year from A.A.’s claimed success rate of five percent, we get zero for A.A.’s real effective cure rate.
A.A. does not actually make anybody quit drinking; it just takes the credit for the people who were going to quit anyway. A.A. is just taking the credit for peoples’ efforts to save their own lives.
o The Twelve Steps are actually a hopelessly bad program for recovery:
X Cult religion is not a good cure for alcoholism, and A.A. most assuredly is a cult religion.
X One of the biggest problems with the Twelve-Step program is the learned helplessness caused by the First Step, where people are taught to confess that they are “powerless over alcohol.” This leads many people to believe that once they have a drink, that a full-blown relapse and total loss of self-control is inevitable and unavoidable. So some people go on suicidally-intense binges, thinking that it is pointless to try to resist temptation.2 —
X Step Two is just as bad: it teaches people that they are insane, and that only a Supernatural Being can restore them to sanity — which means that they are helpless, and cannot heal themselves.
X Then Step Three teaches a lifestyle of infantile narcissism and passive dependency, where A.A. members turn control of their wills and their lives over to “the care of God as we understood Him”, and then they expect God to take care of them and run their lives for them, and solve all their problems, and wait on them hand and foot, and do all of the hard work for them from then on…
“Let Go And Let God”
is their official motto, their lifestyle, and their approach to problem-solving.
X Then Steps Four through Ten induce guilt in the members by forcing members to make lists of all of their sins and flaws, and “defects of character” and “moral shortcomings”, and confess every intimate dirty little secret to another A.A. member who isn’t even ordained clergy, or even sworn to secrecy.
X In Step Eleven you are supposed to “channel” God and receive psychic work orders and power.
X Then Step Twelve tells you to go recruiting, to draft more alcoholics into this madness.
o There is also experimental evidence that the A.A. teachings about powerlessness lead to binge drinking. In a controlled study of A.A.’s effectiveness, court-mandated offenders who had been sent to A.A. for several months were engaging in five times as much binge drinking as the no-treatment control group which got no A.A. “help”.
o A.A. boosters and propagandists constantly repeat the Big Lie that A.A. works great, and A.A. with its Twelve Steps is the way that everybody recovers.
One problem that any Christian will have with Alcoholics Anonymous is the organization’s abandoning of the Bible. The Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, is their new Bible. Some members claim to still use the Bible; I sometimes hear a bit of lip service to the Bible like, “Keep the Big Book next to the Good Book,” but you won’t see a Bible at a meeting, and you won’t hear it quoted. Everybody is carrying the Big Book, and all readings come from it, or from a similar book of daily meditations, also written by Bill Wilson and other members of A.A..
June 9th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
more Orange:
” I was a sick person. I was suffering from an actual disease that had a name and symptoms like diabetes or cancer or TB — and a disease was respectable, not a moral stigma!”
The Big Book, Marty Mann, Women Suffer Too, 3rd Edition page 227 and 4th Edition page 205.
But after you have joined Alcoholics Anonymous and become a committed member, then they will tell you that you are guilty and personally responsible for everything.
The First Step showed me that I was powerless over alcohol and anything else that threatened my sobriety or muddled my thinking. Alcohol was only a symptom of much deeper problems of dishonesty and denial.
Listening to the Wind, A.A. Grapevine, December 2001, page 34.
It’s all just a mind game designed to get you to surrender to the cult.
June 9th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
That\’s the only reason why people don\’t talk about it.
June 10th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Hi Brian,
I’d like to wade into the discussion again after reading what Rick wrote about treating his insomina, anxiety in a sound medical fashion. I too heard year after year in the program that if one only exerts enough effort in working the steps they will somehow overcome behavioral issues stemming from anxiety. Well, here is my personal experience…I tried that for years in the program and it DID NOT work. Finally, I was diagnosed with a hormonal deficit. I was put on a hormone supplement and that helped a lot with the mood swings. I also was clued into the herbs St. John’s Wort and Valerian and since taking those daily my depression, anxiety and insomnia have almost disappeared. Wow. I stopped going to meetings a few months back and can’t believe how much better I feel in spite of this. That’s my personal experience for what it’s worth. Thanks
June 16th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
I was rather focused on this site for a while.
But now I am at craigslist and there is a forum there for recovery.
The problem is that the Ops there do not welcome ANY criticism of Bill Wilson’s misadventures. Even when I attempt to open up a formal discussion about his use of LSD, which is documented in AA literature. He may have had syphyillus. Someone suggested wet brain. If that is the case I could forgive him, except for the fact that he passed out LSD out to his wife, friends and clergy. The fact that he slept with sooo many women makes him a major CREEP. A Cult Guru. Not someone you would want to trust your spiritual decsions with.
He was a SICK dude. I don’t think in today’s world anyone is ever able to conceive how much of a sicko he was. Lois probably hung around because of his estate that he developed rather handsomely from the pockets of AA members.
June 19th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
I’m a professional therapist. Early in my career, I worked at several rehab centers that used the 12-Step model. A.A. and N.A. have many cult-like characteristics. Not only that, but no effective, well-designed study has ever shown that A.A. is effective. In fact, some studies would seem to indicate that doing nothing at all in terms of treatment is more effective than A.A.
July 15th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
put me in charge, i’ll do it! i’ll run A.A.~ right into the ground. yeah, that is why we don’t have leaders or rules. if we knew how to run something without destroying it, don’t you think A.A.’ers would still drink? i know i would. if i were successful at it, hell yeah, i’d be drunk tonight! dr. peele is so way off mark with his comments, i don’t understand where he even came up with them.
all that said, i say to newcomers, do whatever you want. drink, don’t drink, say you’re alcoholic or don’t say it. it really doesn’t matter to me. it doesn’t affect my sobriety at all. live and let live…..as they say.
July 16th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
There are so many things wrong with each of their arguments that it’s actually laughable. Arguments based on casual reductionism, statements of conversion and arguments from authority that are being used stick out like a sore thumb. Bet you would like to get opposition witnesses like this on the stand, wouldn’t you?
August 2nd, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Who cares whether it’s a cult or not, the real question is whether or not it works.
Sadly, the answer is no. AA has a 5% success rate, the same as no treatment at all. Other methods, brief intervention, motivational enhancement, cognitive therapy all produce better success rates. The success rate for people who have co-existing mental health issues using traditional 12step methods is almost non-existent. The anti-medication, anti-therapy faction of AA almost guarantees failure.
AA also has the highest mortality rate of any of the usual treatment methods, at least in part due to the high suicide rate.
August 4th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
I believe people can turn anything that has a basic belief structure into a cult. AA does have a basic belief structure, so just like a church people who are usually in a complete state of fear and can be led to believe in anything. There are thousands of churches, they are not all cults. There are thousands of AA halls, some maybe considered cults.
Bob R.s last blog post..Buried by Digg
August 5th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
AA is a cult – and a vicious fascistic one at that. The ones who really seem to love the message of self hate and ‘ego destruction’ and being ‘diseased’ seem to be the more sociopathic members.
The intelligent and those with a conscience soon see what’s going on and leave.
It is a nasty, vicious, medieval little cult and shame on all those who minimilise and ridicule people’s very real complaints with it.
August 5th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I WOULD SERIOUSLY RECOMMEND THAT ANYONE IN AA AT THE MOMENT OF THINKING ABOUT ATTENDING AA TO RESEARCH THE NET ON AS MANY DIFFERENT OPINIONS AS POSSIBLE ABOUT AA…
August 7th, 2008 at 3:31 am
a.a is a cult.
I have witnessed it for years,
and know of men of the cloth,to go and act as alcohlics,to fish people into the bible,
also known sponsors to take over peoples lifes,
and I am a member..,a.a is a cult,I know many who also feel free to admit this,
but like I, it is better than drinking in a cold park.
I see and have witnessed brain-washing before my eyes,but I cannot stop this.
I go to keep an eye on myself,and new comers,and always say to new comers..,its possible to stop,but its also possible to not stop coming here and preaching god every 5th word.
I am in a cult,but i am lucky enough to know of other techniques,open focus,meditations, keeping in touch with more people outside of a.a and only attendind 2 meetings a week,1 commitments, and always chair when I am asked,
purely so anyone new can have hope they need no longer drink, and thats where it stops, i have witnessed people say ” my family and husband are sick and now do i only realise” then they leave,after giving family years of hell, the 4 per cent of people who go to a.a, only talk of a.a,go to a.a and then talk after an a.a meeting about a.a, they are obsessed,and hooked,..and sadly just becuase they havent had a drink ( thank whoever) they take any ride , of anyone who also hasnt.
a.a is a cult,.. I know of higher secret meetings, where people discuss who needs more work,who needs change,who needs love ect,to keep them in the rooms.
I am lucky coz my alcoholism is only that, I stopped,remain to help,and only mix outside with people who are not in a.a, who would want to talk of a.a 24/7 , only a cult member.
August 7th, 2008 at 4:04 am
MTM105 THANKYOU.
of late,mainly after reading orange papers, I am going it alone so to speak,
I wish there was a fellowship for people who want to not drink, but just hook up and maybe watch a film or the sun set,rather than talk about ourselfs and a.a
I have tried to wrote from both sides,.however a.a has really sickened me of late,
I just wish i had a freind like mtm105,who is actually living life,
something I intend on doing,
I feel a little vunerable leaving, but deep down, for a long time I have only gone out of habit, rarely do I go and share,for people only want to hear gratitude and bill w admiration,..both of which bore me,
bill w was a lasd head, like timothy leary,
acid can make you think anything,
also he didnt write any words in the literiture,
he was just the old man who liked women and followers,now I know the whole picture,
I am happy to be leaving,but sad to be leaving people whose lifes are dictated by their sponsors,
2 old pals of mine have real strange sponsors
1 sponsor asked of him not to contact his family for 2 tears ,and he did !
the 2nd used to have bible readings with my pal, and urge him to trust the lord ect,
they both came in after me, and in the rooms,they are looked apon like they have ” quality sobriety ” , i’d rather drink than be on a leash,
My sponsor,infact left 2 years ago and is now a happy man,and felt it was a phase,a moment of his life that he needed then, all my and his so called pals, called him a dry drunk, when infact, he has a job,a wife,volunteers,has hobbies,and i wish i had such a life, the reason i havent,is becasue I am on the phone talking about the latest slogans,or who has picked up ect,..
my father asked me to leave, I didnt.,but i am going to know,
I was lucky to have a sponsor who’s only interest was I didnt pick up a drink,
mtm5 ,would it be possible of we could keep in touch, i need someone who is able to live a life without drink and without the sickness of the room,I know my posts contradict themselfs, but I have wanted out for ages,..I feel like a drink more when I am in a meeting,coz of all the lies, and bullshit.
mtm105 — is there anyway,we could keep in touch?
your ost have helped me so much,
farewell a.a
thank god for space and time outside the rooms.
August 7th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
hurts them selfs, I anyone had a chance to talk to them on a level head,however,they only talk to people who go..so nobody is going to say.
People stay for they are unable to live outside of the rooms, and that is not SOBER! , that is hiding.
August 7th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
to mike 22nd may,
give a.a members lsd? are you timothey leary.,LSD can ruin a life just taking it once,lsd does open up door to trips,one can describe as spiritual,for I have had them,but I know as soon as i come down, its ws just a trip…
mike i hope you was being ironic,
any illegal drug is bad.
a.a is a cult,and sadly has become a fashion of late,
though most people who now seen the trend wear off,leave.
god is mentioned in an a.a meeting more than any other group,religeon,cult ect..
its easy to say its spiritual, lsd is spritual also,bill w was off his head,and was nursing his ego,I think its funny that a book not wrote by a man who like his LSD and women has his photo put up on church walls nightly all over the globe., even bill .w would think that was funny,and he is the man of whom you all follow,knowing or not, so you are actually worshipping a man who was on ACID, timothy leary should comment here !
August 14th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Those who think Alcoholics Anonymous is a cult, then that is their perogative. It is their opinion and they are entitled to it. I do not beleive AA is a cult, bit may be slightly biased as a member of the fellowship with 19 years of sobriety. If it is a cult, and I am being brainwashed, then I would rather this happens to than ‘washing my brain’ with bad whiskey, and lying on the sidewalk somewhere, or living on skid row or locked up in the Sheriffs Drunk Tank to sober up.
The choice I have today is either to be Contented or Demented. I know what I would rather be. I have a resonably contented life today, and I am a productive and law abiding employee and citizen of my community. It has been a long time since I have been arrested by local law-enforcement for public drunkeness – 20 year. It has also been many many years since I last ended up in a Hosptial ER being stitched up after injuring myself after a drunken spree. So, I must be doing something right after all.
It is true that not all AA meetings are run for the benefits of the membership, they are often hijacked by those who set themselves up as ‘Gurus’. These people who are alcoholics themselves are very, very sick, and are NOT following the ‘12 Traditions’ of AA that govern meeting, groups or conduct of that group. There are some very sick people in AA who manipulate other vulnerablle folks for their own ends, and this can bring AA into disrepute at times. But this is the same outside in the wider communities that AA operates in.
“AA is Not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organisation or institution. Does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses or opposes any causes” so says part of the preamble that is read out at the begining of each meeting. This is as it should be for all AA groups. But unfortunately some members do set themselves up as ‘Gurus’.
The AA membership know these types as ‘Bleeding Deacons’ or ‘Big Book Bible Bashers’ who set themselves as ‘experts’. There are No ‘experts’ in AA, or there should not be. But we of AA are only human after all with human fraialties and predjuces. Nobody is perfert, certainly not thsi recovering alcoholic. We are no better and no worse then the run of the mill citizen out in the world.
As for AA members being addicted to smoking and coffee. Well that is true to a certain extent. I, like many of my fellow AAs was addicted to smoking long before I heard of or found AA. I always smoked when I drank, it was just something I did. I gave up smoking many years ago as for me it was inccompatable with my recovery and journey into good health. As for being addicted to coffee. Well how many folks out there drink coffee by the cup full day in day out who are NOT alcoholics, – there are plenty I would suggest. I too like a good strong cup of java. Its probably the caffeine. You see, I have an addictive personality. I also like Strong Cheese and Fries, and the occasional Big Mac at MacDonalds. Does that make me a member of the ‘Big Mac’ cult? (I joke really!).
Well, so much for my speil. Good Luck!
Costa Coffee Bob. England UK on this 14th Day of August 2008 at 5:45 pm BST.
August 17th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
It always makes me laugh when I read AA members saying that AA isn’t a cult–using cult jargon and Big Book quotes to support their argument! Absolutely hilarious! Thanks for the humor, steppers.
To me, though, the important question shouldn’t be whether AA is a cult, but whether the program works so well that it ought to be the only option offered for addiction treatment. The answer to that question is clearly NO. People trot out all sorts of statistics on this issue, and I’ve read everything out there on the subject right down to the ponderous Vaillant tome. It gets confusing, but nothing, absolutely nothing, out there suggests that any more than maybe 10% of people who join AA are helped by the program. And I don’t need to read some peer-reviewed study to confirm what I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears over several years of very active AA membership. My own experience tells me that people rarely achieve abstinence in AA. Most people don’t stick around for more than a few weeks or months. A few will be there after a year, fewer after two…and lots of those who do stay are relapsing constantly.
Amazingly, however, many, MANY people in AA insist that AA is the only way to “get sober”. This puzzled me for a long time, until I realized that AA has its own special definition of “sober”. “Sober” doesn’t mean “abstinent”. “Sober” means “abstinent and in AA”. Thus anyone who becomes abstinent without AA or who leaves AA and remains abstinent is “not really sober” (or, alternatively, a “dry drunk”). For example, although I have not had a drink in ten years, my former AA friends have been kind enough to inform me that I am “not sober” because I am no longer in the program. Amazing indeed.
But most amazing of all is the fact that the treatment community has bought into this obvious sham. The only possible reason for it is the fact that AA members have so permeated the treatment community that it has become an extension of AA–an extension, of course, that gets PAID to treat the constantly relapsing alcoholic. What a nice racket!
For those who love AA and believe it works for them, I say, have at it. But–I’ll use some jargon of my own now, since you folks toss it around so freely–”don’t pee in my face and tell me it’s raining.”
October 19th, 2008 at 2:31 am
THIS IS CRAZY A.A. IS AS ABOUT AS FAR FROM A CULT AS U CAN GET. ITS ABOUT THE ONLY GROUP YOU CAN JOIN AND HAVE A DIFFRENT THOUGHT ON GOD AS ANYBODY ELSE. AND ON TOP OF THAT U DONT EVEN HAVE TO BELIEVE IN GOD IF U DONT WANT TO. THE HOLE PURPOSE OF THE HIGH POWER AND THAT IS THE TERM THEY USE WERE IM FROM IS TO HELP U UNDERSTAND THAT U DONT MAKE THE WORLD GO AROUND. ITS THERE TO HELP U TAKE YOUR SELFISH THINKING AWAY. IT MAKES U LOOK AT U TAKE RESPONSABLITY FOR YOUR ACTIONS. IT WANTS U TO BE A GOOD HUMAN HELP OTHERS AND JUST DO THE RIGHT THING. WOW THAT SOUNDS BAD!!!!!!!!!!!!! AND U DONT HAVE TO PAY FOR THE COFFEE IF U DONT HAVE THE MONEY. BUT TODAY I THANK AND MY FAIMLY THANKS GOD FOR A.A.
October 28th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Cult or not AA worked for me. I was once in a gutter, and now I am in med school. So who gives a crap if its a cult or not, just as long as its doing an overall good for people. All those who are examining if AA is a cult, really need to do something with their lives. Are you just bored? Do you have nothing better to do? Instead of finding flaws, in something that has an overall good influence on society, why don’t you go do some charity work? Get a job? Contribute to society? Get real problems? Create a non-cult network that has the same success as AA? Read a book? Write a book? Do something productive?
January 1st, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Cult. Definitely. I built it that way.
Glad to hear folks are enjoying the show. Please put your dollar in the basket. If you want to take the experience home, buy the books. Relive the magic of surrender when you can’t sleep for the seventieth time because of your damned prostate. If your ungrateful kids had taken better care of you, you wouldn’t be in this fix. Come on, take a book. Pass it on.
First one’s free.
January 19th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
is like oraginzed crime little groups pay there local intergroup which in turn kicks money back to new york which tells them all what to do sell etc they should be taxed
A A 's Recent post…null
January 19th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
it is a haven for perverts child molestors and low lifes go to ameeting and ck it out half the bastards dont work
January 27th, 2009 at 12:05 am
Papa used to drink then he found religion … now I wish he would start drinking again.
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June 4th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
I was in AA for 5 and a half years and then left. Sober still.AA is definitely a cult. There may be no central hegemony as such but there were once leaders whose pictures where centre stage at my home group! The royalties from all the AA approved literature goes to the founders families. I have seen several cases of thirteenth stepping including being thirteenth stepped by a man when I was in the middle of a nervous breakdown ( due to another illness).
June 4th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
There are so many things from the reverence and quoting from the big book to the repetition and the heavy suggested things to do, which if you don't follow you are disenfranshised from the group…so many cult like characteristics that it is scarey. I left because I felt oppressed to behave in a certain way due to the disapproval of other members and here I am talking about being a very emotional person and not calm 24 hours a day. No one is forced overtlty to do anything but the love bombing draws you in when you are vulnerable and the disempowerment takes your strength away then you are encouraged to pick your favourite stranger and spill the beans of your life leaving you wide open. Basically AA doctrine teaches you that you are so defective you can't do a dam thing right without some made up mystical God you make up yourself slorting it all out for you.
It totally is a cult and I feel ten times happier now I have left. I am self empowered again and confident. I have other coping strategies than alcohol and I did that not a self styled HP!!
August 23rd, 2009 at 5:20 am
RE: Michael Garrity
One of the traits of a cult is that its members don’t argue the facts, but make personal attacks. You did a great job of showing that to everyone.
After spending 10 years in AA I’d have to say it’s definitely a cult. If there’s no organization (as they say), why are meetings the same the world over? Sure, if I’m in the Middle East I substitute Allah for God, but otherwise it’s the same thing. I don’t feel like telling my whole story here, but if you’re interested, go to http://www.orange-papers.org and look at the 100 traits of a cult. Make your own decision.
One last point. Alcoholism is not a ‘disease’; it’s a maladaptive habit. You CAN get better if you put some effort into it, and AA has a 5% success rate (for keeping people sober 1 year, it’s even less for longer). Oh, and if you don’t succeed in AA, it’s not because you ‘failed’. AA failed you, not the other way around.
Sarah W.
November 11th, 2009 at 2:27 am
If AA was a cult, I’d be a lifetime member. There are so many different Alcoholics Anonymous meetings around the world that to classify it as a cult just because of the actions of one little tiny group is ridiculous. It may be that those people were running it like a cult but, it doesn’t represent AA as a whole. All I know is that Alcoholics Anonymous helps me stay sober, and that’s it. I know that there are many different meetings in all areas around the world. If you don’t like the attitudes of the people in one meeting, then go to a different meeting. Every meeting has a different feel to it and different vibes. If you don’t jive with one, try another; I’m sure that you’ll find a place where you’ll fit in.
Kurt Evans´s last blog ..Look what I’ve added
December 15th, 2009 at 7:33 am
I think the dichotomy of cult / not-cult is too confining for such encompassing material as AA.
I just wish that people explore their options, because AA in my experience is a painful place to be.
I ended up turning my time spent drinking towards volunteer work and hobbies. I hope that is considered an exceptional alternative.
As a waiter, I serve several different AA Chapters at my work [strange coincidence.] Often times they all have some interconnecting knowledge of each other.
To examine a trend, though, I dare not stereotype. Language used by many affiliated with these chapters has a lot of prejudice and pathologizing of the many other customers in the restaurant drinking. I think everyone is entitled to an opinion but, I fear pathologizing as it is dehumanizing.
Is there an AA conception that practices empowerment rather than dis empowerment? I feel that compassion is a double edged sword [seriously] but, nothing about referring to people as drunks for having a drink is compassionate to me.
Looking for feedback rather than judgment.
Please!