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!

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.

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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.

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.”

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.