What's Not Good About A.A.
by A. Orange

I just can't resist: This is a searching and fearless moral inventory of Alcoholics Anonymous.

1) It doesn't work.
We can do better than this. This is the year 2002, and we can come up with a better answer to alcoholism than "It's hopeless, so abandon yourself to God." Not only does the A.A. 12-step "treatment" not work, but it kills as many people as it saves. That is a very strong damnation, but the numbers back it up. There are always lots of A.A. defenders who will swear that A.A. saved their lives, but all objective, fair tests of A.A. that have been performed show no better success rate than no treatment at all. The only possible mathematical explanation is that A.A. kills one patient for each one that it saves, thus making the numbers balance out to zero. And that is, in fact, actually believable, given just how bad the treatment really is. Read on.

2) It's a Big Lie.
A.A. repeats the same lies over and over, like Hitler with his Big Lies about the inferiority of Jews. A.A. tells everyone who will listen that it has the only treatment program for alcoholism -- that it is the only "time-tested", "proven", method of recovery -- but their Twelve-Step program does not work. Rather than even concede that the program might have some problems, the A.A. true believers just shove the program on every victim they can find, using therapists, counselors, judges, and parole officers as their enforcers, while simultaneously avoiding any and all scientific testing of the effectiveness of the Twelve-Step program. When some testing does occur, like in project MATCH, and gives results that they don't like, they just deny and ignore the results of the test.

A.A. shills and hidden propagandists routinely plant untrue articles and stories in the press and media to sell their Big Lie, articles which push strange ideas like:

• "AA and the sobering strength of myth", which actually sells the idea that if you fool alcoholics into thinking that the cult-religion "spiritual" A.A. program will work for them, then it will work for them. (Which implies that if someone breaks the spell by telling the truth, he will kill a bunch of gullible alcoholics.)
• A "placebo effect" will heal alcoholics: Professor George Vaillant likes to sell the idea of: just play mind games on the patients and fool them into believing that "faith-healing group-ritual conversion experiences" will work, and hey presto! -- the program will work.
• "Spirituality: The key to recovery from alcoholism", which sells a vague, confused "spirituality" as the cure for alcoholism.
• "The Spiritual Dimension of Healing", which is a far better demonstration of deceptive propaganda techniques than it is a tome on recovery.
• "Keep coming back! Narcotics Anonymous narrative and recovering-addict identity", which extolls the virtues of "false working" ("Fake It Until You Make It") and "permission to 'act as if' they truly believe in the NA message" -- in other words, lie and deceive and pretend to get positive results from the program in order to fool the newcomers into thinking that it's a working, effective, program.

A.A. habitually lies about its success rate. They begin every meeting by reading Bill Wilson's lie, "Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path." "Rarely fails" really means "fails at least 95 or 98 percent of the time, maybe even 100 percent of the time." A.A. has a higher attrition rate than the Bataan Death March. Literally. And so does its sister organization, N.A., Narcotics Anonymous.

Bill Wilson actually bragged about that problem at the memorial service for Dr. Bob. Bill described the early days of A.A. this way:

You have no conception these days of how much failure we had. You had to cull over hundreds of these drunks to get a handful to take the bait.
Bill Wilson, at the memorial service for Dr. Bob, Nov. 15, 1952; file available here.

If you have to cull hundreds of drunks to get a few success stories, then that sounds like a one percent success rate. But wait! That is only the gullible victims who "take the bait", the ones who believe Bill Wilson's religious ravings and join Alcoholics Anonymous. How many of those people actually stay sober for any length of time? Even less, for sure.

The old-timers in Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous brag about all of their friends that they have buried. They talk like they are the last survivor of the Lost Patrol -- which many of them really are. They don't seem to be able to recognize the fact that if the treatment program actually worked, then they wouldn't need to be burying all of their friends.

3) It is bad religion.
Any theologian will tell you that this is one very bad religion, a Gnostic heresy. It is surprising that any churches allow A.A. to meet in their buildings. I suspect that they haven't examined the theology very closely, and they just think that getting the drunkards praying is a good thing.

4) It features bad psychology and bad medicine.
A.A. gives newcomers a lot of bad advice and misinformation about alcoholism and recovery. A.A.'s dogma is based on myths and superstitions about how the human mind and body works, not facts. For example, the Big Book says, "Alcohol is cunning, baffling, and powerful." No, it isn't. Ethyl alcohol is a clear liquid, a hydrocarbon solvent, and it has no brain. It cannot think at all, never mind be cunning, baffling, and powerful.

Another example: "He took his will back." The goofy dogma of A.A. has us surrendering our wills to God, and then taking them back, then surrendering them, then taking them back, as if they were coins or tokens that could be grabbed and yanked back and forth, at will, in a tug-of-war. Our will is part of our mind, and we can't just give it away.

Another really bad example: in the bizarre theology of A.A., God is supposed to remove "the drinking problem" and the cravings for alcohol. When God doesn't, the A.A. members will often relapse, and feel like they didn't do anything at all. They will even describe the relapse with a strange detachment, as if it happened to somebody else; the relapse just happened because the unexpected cravings just came along...

Another really bad fallacy is Bill Wilson's declaration that alcoholics cannot recover from alcoholism until they "hit bottom". Bill Wilson found that ordinary, relatively-sane people wouldn't join his cult religion or believe in his brain-damaged superstitious nonsense. Only the really sick, frightened, dying people who were desperately grabbing at anything that might save their lives would swallow Wilson's delusions. So Wilson made up a story about how alcoholics can't really quit drinking and start to recover until they hit bottom and "the lash of alcoholism drives them to A.A." (see: Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 24). A.A. members have been spreading that little piece of misinformation for the last 60 years, and now, everybody who thinks he knows something about alcoholism repeats it. But it is still untrue.

And maybe the worst example is, "Alcoholism is a progressive disease that is caused by defects of character, moral shortcomings, and sin." If it is really caused by immorality and behavioral problems, then it isn't a disease at all.

Giving people misinformation doesn't help them stay sober. Teaching people that they are powerless over alcohol, and cannot resist temptation and cravings, is very damaging, and almost guarantees relapses and binges. Teaching people to expect God to take away their desire to drink is self-defeating and also guarantees plenty of failures.

Any competent doctor will tell you that a one-size-fits-all medical treatment program is a good way to kill a lot of patients. And voodoo medicine administered by amateur witch doctors is even worse.

5) The cult-like atmosphere drives away moderate help seekers.
More than 90% of all of the people who walk in the door looking for help turn right around and walk right back out the door when they discover just how bad the religion is, and what kind of fanatics they are dealing with. This phenomenon is so well known that it is called the "revolving door effect." Some people are so appalled by the bombastic, grandiose religiosity that they decide they would rather risk drinking themselves to death than take the A.A. cure.

6) It is harmful to converts.
No good comes of getting people to believe in a bunch of falsehoods, and do a bunch of ridiculous busywork that just wastes their time and energy.

• Twelve-Step "treatment" is psychologically harmful -- especially the self-criticism, and wallowing in shame and guilt -- to the point of driving some believers to suicide.
• The strange theology dooms people to relapses, because God doesn't fix all of the members' problems.
• Teaching people that they are powerless over alcohol is self-defeating, and guarantees big problems. A sophisticated controlled study revealed that people who were sent to A.A. and taught to believe that they were powerless over alcohol did four times as much uncontrolled binge drinking as people who received no such "education."
• Teaching people to expect a "spiritual experience" makes them feel like failures when it doesn't happen, or it drives them to become delusional, claiming that every little sentimental experience, or every intense emotion, is a spiritual experience.
• People get tired, they get run down, their energy and enthusiasm gets depleted, they can become depressed, after they fail many times because God still hasn't taken away all of their defects of character, moral shortcomings, or "the drinking problem." Some people will just give up, and resign themselves to drinking forever or relapsing forever.
• Telling newcomers to quit taking their doctor-prescribed medications, and just rely on the Twelve Steps for healing, is killing people.

7) It is harmful to drop-outs.
Even those who refuse religious conversion, who leave instead, are often harmed by A.A. dogma. The most obvious example is convincing people that one drink will make them spin out of control, that they will go on a huge drinking binge, because they are "powerless over alcohol." When people decide that they would rather drink than be religious maniacs, they all too often then proceed to fulfill the A.A. prediction. After one or two drinks, they think, "Oh well, I've already blown it. I've lost all of my clean and sober time now. One drink, one drunk. Might as well go ahead and really enjoy it, since I don't have anything left to lose..."

The few studies that have tracked various treatment programs' drop-outs and failures have found that A.A. "treatment" was worse than no treatment at all for those people. The A.A. drop-outs had worse relapses and binges than the people who never got any A.A. indoctrination, "education", or "treatment".

8) It encourages people to be illogical, superstitious, and irrational.
This irrational example is a doctor, explaining in The Big Book how it is some kind of a miracle that wounds heal after he stitches them closed:

For myself, I have an absolute proof of the existence of God.
  ...
What healed those tissues, those tissues that I closed, what healed them? I didn't. This to me is the proof of the existence of a Somethingness greater than I am.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, pages 350-351.

Apparently, this poor doctor (not Doctor Bob, but some other doctor,) drank so much alcohol, and damaged his poor brain so much, that he was no longer able to comprehend how the body could heal itself, how it scabs over and heals up wounds all by itself, quite routinely. This doctor actually thought that God had to get into every single wound on every living creature on the face of the Earth and make it heal? That kind of bizarre delusional thinking is sadly indicative of a major mental disorder. What did Bill Wilson do, go collect all of the mentally-ill, delusional, alcoholics that he could get?
(Hint: the answer is "YES.")

One A.A. newletter said,

Trying to be scientific about to [sic.] alcoholism is like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall. But that's OK. A.A. isn't trying to be scientific.   ...
... those who are able to remain sober are the members who are able to behave as though they believed. [Boldface in original.]
Northern Illinois Area Ltd., Area 20 Service Letter, Volume XXIV, No. 1, Spring, 2000, Page 10.

It never ceases to amaze me how they can so blind themselves to the obvious contradiction between the statement that A.A. requires "grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty" (Big Book, page 58), and the constantly-parroted instructions to "Act As If", and "Fake It Until You Make It", and "Behave as though you believe."

9) It is anti-intellectual, and encourages people to be stupid.
Just the vicious condescending slogans alone tell you all you need to know:

• Quit your stinkin' thinkin'.
• He is suffering from terminal uniqueness.
• Your best thinking got you here.
• Take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth.
• Keep It Simple, Stupid!
• Sit down, shut up, and learn something.
• Nobody is too stupid to get the program, but some people are too intelligent.

And of course the A.A. members love to congratulate themselves and imply that alcoholism and A.A. is better than a college education. Here is a doctor describing going to his first A.A. meeting to fix his alcoholism:

"Here I am, a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, a Fellow of the International College of Surgeons, a diplomate of one of the great specialty boards in these United States, a member of the American Psychiatric Society, and I have to go to the butcher, the baker, and the carpenter to help make a man out of me!"
The A.A. Big Book, page 348.

Yes, Doctor, if you really wanted to get an education, you should have skipped college and medical school, and just hung out in the back alleys with the winos... They are always good at "making a man out of you."

Along the same lines, the Northern Illinois Area Service Newsletter gave us this sneering piece of anti-intellectual propaganda that tells us that an ordinary A.A. sponsor is much better than a professional therapist:

Twelve Ways to Tell the Difference Between Your Sponsor and Your Therapist.

1. Your sponsor isn't all that interested in the "reasons" you drank.

2. Your therapist thinks your root problem is your lack of self-esteem, negative self-image, and your poor self-concept. Your sponsor thinks your problem is a 3-letter word with no hyphens.

3. Your therapist wants you to pamper your "inner child." Your sponsor thinks he ought to be spanked.

4. Your sponsor thinks your inventory should be about you, not your parents.

5. Speaking of your parents, your sponsor tells you not to confront them, but to apologize to them.

6. The only time your sponsor uses the word "closure," is before the word "mouth."

7. Your sponsor thinks "boundaries" are things you need to take down not build up.

8. Your therapist wants you to love yourself first, your sponsor wants you to love others first.

9. Your therapist prescribes caretaking and medication. Your sponsor prescribes prayer-making and meditation.

10. Your sponsor thinks "anger management skills" are numbered 1-2-3... 12.

11. Now that you haven't had a drink in six months, your therapist thinks you should make a list of your goals and objectives for the next five years, starting with finishing up that college degree. Your sponsor thinks you should start today by cleaning the coffee pots and helping him carry a heavy box of literature to the jail.

12. Your sponsor won't lose his license if he talks about God.

NORTHERN ILLINOIS AREA LTD.
AREA 20 SERVICE LETTER
VOLUME XXIV , NO.1
SPRING, 2000
page 7.
http://www.aa-nia.org/

Note the attacks on you: In item 2, your therapist will diagnose you as lacking self-esteem and having a negative self-image, but A.A. says that you are egotistical, and need to be put down even more. Item 3 says that your inner child needs a spanking, and item 5 says that you need to go apologize to your parents, and then the rest of the items try to make you feel even worse about yourself... They really want to burden you with guilt.

And see how they want to keep you down and in the cult. Item 11 says that you should not think about finishing college -- you should just spend your time on A.A. busy-work like cleaning the coffee pots, and proselytizing and recruiting at the local jail. Heaven Forbid you should go off to college; you might not come back.
(But you know that if you don't get that college degree, you will probably be working for minimum wage, or very low wages, for the rest of your life. What kind of a future is A.A. really offering you? Just poverty-stricken slavery in the cult.)

10) It totally ignores all social issues.
A.A. says that the answer to all social problems is the Twelve Steps, and that all of your problems are of your own making. Like the Oxford Group before it, Alcoholics Anonymous believes that all social problems are caused by sin, and only by sin. A.A. will not look at any of the causes of alcoholism, like poverty, racism, child abuse, lack of education, lack of opportunities, or injustice.

A.A., along with all of the other 12-step recovery groups, is not only apolitical, it is downright anti-political. This, combined with the anti-intellectualism listed above, makes the A.A. organization a corrupt politician's dream come true -- those people just will not do anything to rock the boat or threaten the status quo. It is no surprise that fascist dictators like having A.A. in their countries, and Latin America is one of the biggest growth areas for A.A..

Indeed, an organization that tries to ignore all societal causes of social problems "and to concern itself not at all as to the way in which the corporate life of society is organized" ... "enters the social arena inevitably on the side of reaction". In other words, it becomes fascistic in nature.

The only apparent exception to the rule of ignoring the societal causes of alcoholism is that A.A. recognizes that past child abuse, being an Adult Child Of Alcoholics, contributes to alcoholism. And the fix is: Join ACOA, do the Twelve Steps, read the Book, go to lots of meetings, etc... And make amends by apologizing for being angry about getting beaten or molested. And for other family members, the answer is to join Al-Anon or Alateen, and do the Twelve Steps, go to lots of meetings, etc...

11) It is a headstrong organization.
A.A. refuses to allow any research into other treatments for alcoholism, some of which might actually work, just for a change. Again: We can do better than this. This is the year 2002, and we can come up with a better answer to alcoholism than "abandon yourself to God."

12) It illegally and immorally coerces people into joining the A.A. religion.
The organization has a vast network of "counselors", "therapists", and other treatment professionals who routinely send all patients to A.A. as a standard part of the treatment program. A.A. also uses judges and parole officers to coerce people into A.A..

The Little Red Book of Hazelden (yes, a clone of the Communist Little Red Book of Chairman Mao) specifically teaches recruiters to indoctrinate judges, police, doctors, and other officials as part of the proselytizing work. It says that faithful A.A. members can "carry the message" by:

11. By telling the A.A. story to clergy members, doctors, judges, educators, employers, or police officials if we know them well enough to further the A.A. cause, or to help out a fellow member.
The Little Red Book, Hazelden, page 128.

Then that book even goes on to tell recruiters to teach the judges, police, doctors, and other officials just what kind of people A.A. wants coerced into attending its meetings:

By educating doctors, the clergy, judges, police officials, and industrial personel regarding the type of people A.A. can help, we will avoid flooding our ranks with an unwieldy preponderance of nonalcoholics.
The Little Red Book, Hazelden, page 137.

So much for the lie about how A.A. can't help it if the judges and parole officers force people to go to A.A. meetings.

It is blatantly illegal and unconstitutional to force people to go to a religious ceremony, like a church service. More than a dozen state and federal judges have ruled that Alcoholics Anonymous is a religion, or engages in religious activities, but the system still sends treatment patients and criminal offenders to A.A., or to A.A.-based "treatment".

Every American court that has ruled on the issue of compulsory A.A. attendance has ruled that A.A. is a religion, or engages in "religious activities, as defined in constitutional law," including the Federal District Court for Southern New York, the Federal 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, the New York and Tennessee state Supreme Courts, and the Federal 7th Circuit Court in Wisconsin.

Today, because of the judges' rulings, the coercion is often performed by deception: People are told that they must go to a certain number of recovery group meetings per week, or else, and they are handed a list of possible meetings, a list which contains only A.A. and N.A. 12-step groups. What they are not told is that they can also choose to go to Rational Recovery, SMART, SOS, WFS, MFS, or any other secular recovery group meetings that they can find. So, by default, almost everyone ends up at the twelve-step meetings, unaware of the fact that they have a choice in the matter. The counselors are taking full advantage of people's confusion and mental disorientation during the early phases of detoxing and recovery. If asked about it, the counselors will rationalize their actions by saying, "Well, those groups are what works. Twelve-Step treatment is the proven successful program. It's how we all recovered." -- Thus repeating the standard party line and the Big Lie one more time, and revealing that the counselors are sending the patients to the counselors' own religion.

13) It is dishonest.
A.A. is grossly dishonest, and lies like a rug. A.A. lies about its roots, its history, its founders, its religious philosophy, its true nature, what it is now, what it is doing now, how the program works or doesn't work, its success rate, and more. And A.A. will not honestly discuss its problems. It is an organization in denial.

Many A.A. members suffer from bad cases of "Wilsonitis". Wilsonitis is a "spiritual disease" characterized by habitually telling bombastic, grandiose, lies. The victim of Wilsonitis is constitutionally incapable of being honest or realistic with anyone, especially about alcoholism or Alcoholics Anonymous.

A.A. says that it is not a religion, but its literature does nothing but rave about God and religion. And then the Big Book instructs recruiters in how to hide the religiosity from new prospects, so it also practices deceptive recruiting.

Also, A.A. literature -- which is mostly Bill Wilson's mad rantings and ravings -- maintains that the only people who object to the crazy religiosity and dishonesty of Bill Wilson are atheists and agnostics.

A.A. says that it is not a religion, and is not a religious organization:

Alcoholics Anonymous is not a religious organization.
The Big Book, Forward to the 2nd Edition, William G. Wilson, page XX (of the 3rd edition).

But the state and Federal judges say that it is, and that A.A.'s statements don't count. That is simple enough to understand:

• If a parrot says that it is an eagle, insists for years that it is an eagle, screams to everyone who will listen that it is really an eagle, does that make it an eagle? No. It's still just a crazy parrot.
• If A.A. says that it is only a "spiritual fellowship", just a wonderful quit-drinking self-help group, and not a cult religion, and says it for years, for decades, does that make it so? No. It's still just a crazy cult religion.

A.A. says that it is a program of attraction, not promotion -- that's Tradition Eleven. A.A. pretends to be just another self-help group that doesn't want to get involved in "outside issues" or "public controversy" -- that's Tradition Ten.

But A.A. uses counselors, therapists, parole officers, judges and doctors to coerce people into A.A., and A.A. uses hidden members and front groups like ASAM and NCADD to promote A.A., 12-step "treatment", and A.A. beliefs about alcoholism. In addition, A.A. uses organizations like Hazelden as publishing fronts, to print large amounts of stupid and dogmatic pro-A.A. propaganda, and if someone criticizes the ridiculous P.R. that Hazelden cranks out, A.A. can deny any responsibility for what Hazelden is doing or saying. In that way, A.A. can have its cake and eat it too; it can benefit from the propaganda, but it can't be criticized for it, no matter how dishonest, medically inaccurate, blatantly stupid, religiously bigoted, dogmatic, or just plain wrong it is. Likewise, A.A. benefits from the actions of those hidden members and front groups, but cannot be faulted for their actions either, because supposedly, "No one speaks for A.A., and A.A. isn't responsible for the actions of those people."

And then A.A. even advertises itself on television, trolling for more members. They have absolutely no intentions of following their declared "Traditions". Their behavior is completely hypocritical.

And lest you believe that the connection between Hazelden and AAWS is loose or tenuous, consider: Hazelden is one of the single largest buyers of AAWS books that there is. Hazelden buys the books from AAWS and "gives" them to its resident patients after it collects $15,000 from them for a 28-day stay there. Hazelden also redistributes AAWS books all over the country. So the true believers at Hazelden have a lot of "pull" in dictating policy at AAWS. Likewise, AAWS has a representative on the Board of Trustees of the Hazelden Foundation. And above all, they are all fellow members of, and true believers in, Bill Wilson's Twelve-Step version of Frank Buchman's weird cult religion. So they are all very much in bed together. And AAWS does not tell Hazelden to quit printing that fanatical, stupid pro-A.A. propaganda that tells people to just dump their own religions and only believe in Alcoholics Anonymous and the teachings of Bill Wilson to get the A.A. style of "spirituality"...

On another issue, the national leadership of A.A., AAWS, Inc., has been committing perjury and causing grievous harm to other A.A. members for the "crime" of making cheap copies of old, copyright-expired versions of the Big Book available to poor people in foreign countries. In Mexico, their perjury put an innocent man -- another A.A. member! -- in prison for a year. In Germany, they shut down a pro-A.A. web site, and sued for enough of a fortune to destroy the A.A. member who was carrying the message, as well as banning the member from ever giving away another A.A. book to anyone. AAWS did that just to protect its own profits. The A.A. G.S.O. has $10,000,000 of cash reserves in the bank, but AAWS seems to want even more, and they are willing to even put innocent people in prison to get it. So much for their "rigorous honesty" and "unselfish, constructive action."

In the newsgroup alt.recovery.from-12-steps, Anthony of the U.K. said it eloquently:

The issue I have isn't with alcoholics squabbling; I take that as a given. The issue I have is with Alcoholics Anonymous World Services presenting, in two different courts, false evidence. False evidence which in both cases had very severe consequences for the individuals concerned.

To clarify, in Germany, Alcoholics Anonymous claimed that Bill Wilson was the *sole author* of _Alcoholics_Anonymous_, which clearly isn't true. In Mexico, Alcoholics Anonymous claimed that one Wayne Parks was the sole author of _Alcoholics_Anonymous_ [1], an individual who in all likelihood hadn't been born when the book was written.

I realise that your concept of morals and ethics is very different to mine. Suffice to say I believe that lying in court under oath is one of the most serious offences one can commit, since it is an attack on justice itself. There is a reason why, in almost all courts in almost all countries, one is asked to swear an oath on a Holy Book, be it the Bible or similar work of religious significance, to tell "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God".

AA, at its highest organisational level, broke that vow. That, in my view, puts AA as an organised body quite beyond the pale.
...
I believe that more and more recovering alcoholics of good character are walking away from AA in an organised sense, no longer wishing to be part of such an organisation. All people of conscience have to make such decisions, however painful they may seem. The lies, the obfuscation, the flexibility and dishonesty in matters of law, morals and ethics fall way short of the ideals laid down by our founders.

[1] http://www.aapubliccontroversy.com/mex/005.gif

Anthony (posthamster@catfish.nildram.co.uk), 29 July 2001.

Obviously, AAWS is only in it for the money.

Also see:
Mitchell K. 12: The Saddest Day In A.A. History
Mitchell K. 13: German Court Date Delayed
Mitchell K. 15: Open Letter to A.A. Members
Mitchell K. 20: The A.A. German Court Case
Mitchell K. 21: German Court Orders A.A. Books Destroyed
Mitchell K. 22: Threats By Alcoholics Anonymous World Services Attempt Cutting Off a Members Right To Communicate with the Fellowship

Please note that Mitchell K. was present in Germany, witnessing the courtroom proceedings. Also note that Mitchell is an old, faithful, member of A.A., who has written a lot of history of A.A., including a biography of Clarence Snyder.

And see a pamphlet that A.A. members have been circulating.

14) It is a haven for fanatics and religiomaniacs.
It is routine for the true believers to dominate the meetings, bragging about the amount of "quality knee time" that they rack up each day (praying on their knees), or delivering well-practiced sermons that declare that A.A. with the Twelve Steps is the only way to survive alcoholism, and that Bill Wilson was just the greatest genius to have made up twelve such perfect steps that will solve all of the world's problems... And there is no way to get those nuts and fools to shut up. Sure, you can walk out and go to a different meeting, but it will usually be the same thing over there.

15) It is a haven for sexual predators and other manipulative personalities.
Once such people get (or can claim to have) enough sober time to become sponsors, they can collect a harem or circle of sponsees, and run the sponsees lives and get pretty much whatever they want. And some blood-sucking insects really do that. Some sponsors have the reputation of getting every pretty young woman who joins the group, and there is even a slang name for such behavior, "thirteenth stepping" the girl. At the gay and lesbian meetings, the victims are of the same sex, or course.

And again, the A.A. rules provide no simple way to get rid of such predators, because the only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking. The group can ask a victimizer to leave after he has become intolerably harmful to too many people, but he can just go to a different group. The anonymity of A.A. helps to hide the criminals.

In addition, it can be very difficult, or even impossible for the group to know what a sponsor is doing with a sponsee. The sponsor does not have to turn in any progress reports, or report the status of the sponsee's recovery, or answer to anyone for anything. There is no system of accountability. If the sponsee does not report to the group what the sponsor has done, then no one will ever know.

16) It is a program of brutal victimization.
A.A. wants people to hit bottom so that they will be easy to convert to the A.A. religion. A.A. people often say that alcoholics aren't much good for anything until they hit bottom, and can be made to surrender. Hard-ass sponsors will even say to people who refuse religious conversion as a condition of quitting drinking, "Maybe you should go back out and do some more research on the subject."

And in the Big Book, Bill Wilson says:

If he is not interested in your solution, if he expects you to act only as a banker for his financial difficulties or a nurse for his sprees, you may have to drop him until he changes his mind. This he may do after he gets hurt some more.
Big Book, page 95.

Any doctor will tell you that waiting for someone to hit bottom maximizes the damage to the liver, kidneys, and brain, and is the worst possible way to handle alcoholism. Why doesn't Mr. William Wilson recommend a "middle road," where you don't loan him any money, and you don't let him take advantage of you, but you don't just drop him because he isn't interested in your "spiritual solution"? Could it be that Mr. Wilson has no use for anyone who will not surrender to him, and obey his orders?

Again, Wilson wrote that if you won't accept his statements on faith alone, then you need to be beaten into submission:

Besides a seeming inability to accept much on faith, we found ourselves handicapped by obstinacy, sensitiveness, and unreasoning prejudice. Many of us have been so touchy that even casual reference to spiritual things made us bristle with antagonism. This sort of thinking had to be abandoned. Though some of us resisted, we found no great difficulty in casting aside such feelings. Faced with alcoholic destruction, we soon became as open minded on spiritual matters as we tried to be on other questions. In this respect alcohol was a great persuader. It finally beat us into a state of reasonableness. Sometimes this was a tedious process; we hope no one else will be prejudiced for as long as some of us were.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Pages 47 and 48.

Note that you are "prejudiced" if you disagree with Bill Wilson's preaching, and you need to get "beaten into a state of reasonableness". Talk about jackbooted Fascism...

Wilson repeated that idea in his later book, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions:

Why all this insistence that every A.A. member must hit bottom first? The answer is that few people will sincerely try to practice the A.A. program unless they have hit bottom. For practicing A.A.'s remaining eleven Steps means the adoption of attitudes and actions that almost no alcoholic who is still drinking can dream of taking. Who wishes to be rigorously honest and tolerant?   ...
Under the lash of alcoholism, we are driven to A.A. ...
Then, and only then, do we become as open-minded to conviction and as willing to listen as the dying can be.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 24.

Yes, normal people will not usually believe in William Wilson's delusions, or join his cult religion, or follow his orders. Only truly desperate, dying people can be so easily victimized. Only truly desperate, dying people will become so "open-minded to conviction", an essential element of the fascist Buchmanite religion.

17) It isn't really anonymous or confidential.
Anything you say can end up on the streets, or in a court of law. You can be blackmailed with what you say. A.A. meetings are a gossip-monger's dream come true. Some A.A. members have been horrified to find that their innermost dirty little secrets became common knowledge all over town shortly after confessing them to a meeting or to their sponsor... One of the stories in Rebecca Fransway's book AA Horror Stories reports a vindictive sponsor, who, after being fired by her sponsee, got even by blabbing all of the sponsee's Fifth Step confessions... Remember that sponsors are not Catholic Priests, sworn to secrecy by sacred oaths on the Bible. You just hope that sponsors and other A.A. members will keep their mouths shut. Professional people, like politicians, doctors, and lawyers, are noticeably absent from meetings -- it would be professional suicide for them to publicly declare that they have an alcohol or drug problem.

18) A.A. is arrogant, smug, and self-congratulatory.
You don't get more than five minutes into any meeting before someone is reading a canned statement, the beginning paragraphs of Chapter Five of the Big Book, that says that anyone for whom the A.A. program doesn't work is "constitutionally incapable of being honest."

Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average. There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.
...
At some of these [steps] we balked. We thought we could find a softer, easier way. But we could not. With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely."
Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter Five, "How It Works", page 58.

A.A. always plays blame-the-victim when the program fails. A.A. never, not for a minute, honestly considers the possibility that maybe A.A. and the Twelve Steps aren't right for some people -- never mind the idea that A.A. is wrong for most people, or that the A.A. program doesn't really work at all.

Notice the veiled statement in the last paragraph, saying that the steps actually do work. The members couldn't find any easier, softer, way, but the A.A. steps worked. That is false. That is a big lie. The steps didn't work. They have never worked. Even as Bill Wilson was writing those words, his New York A.A. group had a terrible relapse rate. Very few actually maintained sobriety.

Notice that A.A. is also a "heads I win, tails you lose" kind of con game: If you quit drinking and stay quit, A.A. gets all of the credit. But if you relapse and die drunk, then you get all of the blame. A.A. is perfect; you're a loser.

When a doctor prescribes penicillin, and it fails to clear up an infection, the doctor switches to using something else, perhaps streptomycin or dicloxicillin. The doctor does not just claim that the reason the penicillin isn't working is because the patient is immoral, and insist that the patient just take more penicillin and pray more. But that's how A.A. treats alcoholism with the Twelve Steps.

Again, A.A. claims that a magical "spiritual" one-size-fits-all fix, the Twelve-Step Program, is the answer to everything. And even more outrageously, the "fix" is to turn people into religiomaniacs -- religious fanatics. And, again, the real A.A. failure rate is 95 or 98 or 100 percent, and A.A. arrogantly claims that they all fail because they are all "constitutionally incapable of being honest," and they "will not completely give themselves to this simple program."
"The program never fails anyone; people just fail the program."

To use A.A. terminology, A.A. is in denial about its true nature:
A.A. is constitutionally incapable of being honest with itself.
And:
A.A. is "naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty."
And:
A.A. members seek a narcissistic easier, softer way by attempting to return to infancy where they laid helplessly on their back sides and waited for Big Mommy and Big Daddy to take care of them and satisfy all of their demands. Now they want to declare powerlessness and demand that God take care of them and solve all of their problems for them.
And:
A.A. members seek an easier, softer way by demanding a simplistic solution to all of their problems -- a magical 12-step cure-all where God removes the desire to drink alcohol, and God also takes care of their wills and their lives for them.
Where they previously thought that alcohol was the solution to all of their problems, they now think that 12 simple "spiritual" steps are the solution to everything.
"Quite as important was the discovery that spiritual principles would solve all my problems."
(The Big Book, Chapter 3, page 42.)

A.A. is also very arrogant in another sense: It imagines that followers actually talk to God, and get their orders from God, while doing Step Eleven. It is the height of egotism and conceit for someone to maintain that he knows what God's Will really is, because God talks to him, and tells him, every day. (Not to mention then imagining that ordinary people are not so religious, and don't follow God's Will, because they don't do Bill Wilson's Twelve Steps.)

When someone talks to God, that is called prayer.
When someone hears God talking back, that is called schizophrenia, or delusions of grandeur, or a messianic complex...

And A.A. is terribly smug, sanctimonious, and self-congratulatory. The Big Book yields such jewels as:

• It may seem incredible that these men are to become happy, respected, and useful once more. How can they rise out of such misery, bad repute and hopelessness? The practical answer is that since these things have happened among us, they can happen with you. Should you wish them above all else, and be willing to make use of our experience, we are sure they will come. The age of miracles is still with us. Our own recovery proves that! The Big Book, 3rd Edition, A Vision For You, page 153.
• I saw in these people a quality of peace and serenity that I knew I must have for myself. The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 310.
• They had that certain something that seemed to glow, a peace and a serenity combined with happiness. The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 290.
• "You poor guy. I feel so sorry for you. You're not an alcoholic. You can never know the pure joy of recovering within the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous." The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 334.
• This wasn't "religion" -- this was freedom! The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 228.
• What is this power that A.A. possesses? This curative power? I don't know what it is. I suppose the doctor might say, "This is psychosomatic medicine." I suppose the psychiatrist might say, "This is benevolent interpersonal relations." I suppose others would say, "This is group psychotherapy."
        To me it is God. The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 352.
• I know the biggest word for me in A.A. is "honesty." The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 482.
• I owe everything to A.A. The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 344.
• I am grateful to A.A. for my sobriety... The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 383.
• Why am I alive, free, a respected member of my community? Because A.A. really works for me! The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 421.
• In return for a bottle and a hangover, we have been given the Keys to the Kingdom. The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 312.
• I had been brought up to believe in God, but I know that until I found this A.A. program, I had never found or known faith in the reality of God, the reality of His power that is now with me in everything I do. The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 341.
• I have no other explanation for the many good things that have happened to me since I have been in A.A. -- they came to me from a Greater Power. The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 367.
• I feel that there is no situation too difficult, none too desperate, no unhappiness too great to be overcome in this great fellowship -- Alcoholics Anonymous. The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 395.
• Here was a book that said that I could do something that all these doctors and priests and ministers and psychiatrists that I'd been going to for years couldn't do! The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 473.
• [Wilson made the same kind of crazy grandiose claim again in the To Wives chapter of the Big Book, when he predicted how the wives were going be very unhappy after the Big Book and A.A. cured their husbands of alcoholism:]

Another feeling we are very likely to entertain is one of resentment that love and loyalty could not cure our husbands of alcoholism. We do not like the thought that the contents of a book or the work of another alcoholic has accomplished in a few weeks that for which we struggled for years.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William Wilson, page 118.

[Yes, those long-suffering wives really get pissed off when some damn drunkard with a magic book cures their husbands in just a few weeks.]

• They are a joyous crowd. I have never seen people that joyous before. The Big Book, 3rd Edition, pages 504-5.
  [Really now. "Never seen people that joyous before"? Another group that laughs all of the time can be found in your local insane asylum. It's called hysteria or mania.]

You would never guess, from reading all of those self-congratulatory stories in the Big Book, that the A.A. 12-step program actually fails at least 98 or 99 percent of the people who try it...

But it isn't just what is in the Big Book. You get stuff like this at meetings:

"We really are Chosen. Our years of getting beaten down by alcohol have prepared us for leadership roles. Now that we number in the millions, we can become a force for change. Not just us, but all of the Twelve-Step groups."
-- One of the Faithful, "sharing" at an A.A. meeting

Yes, after the Peaceful Revolution, we can have an alcohol-free theocracy, just like Iran, run by Ayatollah Anonymous, who will tell us what to think and what to do, while he enforces the teachings of the Prophet, Bill Wilson.
(Oh, and one part that I still haven't been able to figure out: "Exactly how does alcohol prepare us for leadership roles?"
And which is better for future leadership, whiskey, wine, or beer?
What did Dubya drink?)

19) It aids and abets unrealistic blind faith.
Mulder, on The X-Files, has a poster that says "I Want To Believe." That should be the motto of A.A.. Far too many people are in the position of just wanting to believe that it works, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, including the shrinking circle of friends and the mounting stack of dead bodies. Then they tell all newcomers "Keep coming back, it works!" and viciously attack anyone who points to the stack of dead bodies and questions whether it really works... Thus, A.A. also aids and abets a monomaniacal obsession with a single panacea, a twelve-step program.

Just because you want to believe doesn't mean that you should believe, any more than the fact that you want to take a drink means that you should take a drink.

Wanting to believe is perhaps the most powerful dynamic initiating and sustaining cult-like behavior.
The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society, Arthur J. Deikman, M.D., page 137.

20) It is a genuine irrational religious cult, not a quit-drinking program.

Too many things about A.A. are irrational and crazy, so irrational that the A.A. believers even revere the teachings of a madman, William G. Wilson, who openly demanded that people abandon Reason and human intelligence, and just embrace blind faith in his religious beliefs as the answer to all of their problems.

Wilson's writings clearly demonstrate that he was suffering from a messianic complex and delusions of grandeur, a mental disorder specifically described by psychiatrists as: "Delusional (Paranoid) Disorder, Grandiose Type, 297.10", defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3rd Edition (DSM-III-R) on pages 200 to 203.

So now we have a country full of certified drug and alcohol counselors who swear that the ravings of this lunatic are the answer to this country's drug and alcohol problems. No wonder the "treatment" fails so much.

21) It's a pretend church.
People who never made it through the seminary now get to play priest and lead the congregation in prayers. Unfortunately, they also get to lead the newcomers in everything else in their lives too, and play wise know-it-all spiritual teacher even if they are stupid jerks or cruel fools. And they don't even need much seniority to do it. Six months or a year of sober time is plenty for someone to start lecturing the newcomers as if he were an old pro, a successful abstainer, and a wise guru. And that's part of the fun of A.A. and N.A.: stick around for a while, and pretty soon, you too can start passing yourself off as an old-timer, one of the great ones, a big frog in a small pond, admired and respected by the young.

22) It's also pretend medicine.
People with no medical qualifications or training whatsoever get to play both doctor and psychiatrist, sometimes with disastrous results, like when they decide to tell sponsees not to take their doctor-prescribed medications.

23) It is a culture of sickness.
Members are expected to spend the rest of their lives going to meetings with a bunch of alcoholics, drug addicts, street criminals, convicts, and dogmatic religious believers, all of whom complain that they are powerless over their addictions, and that their lives have become unmanageable. And they even brag, "Quitting isn't an option for addicts like us." Do you really want to have some loser alcoholic or drug addict who has failed to run his own life and who is now addicted to 12-step meetings and cult religion, to be your sponsor, your teacher and guru, giving you orders and determining the rest of your life?

A far better treatment plan is to just quit drinking forever -- not "one day at a time" -- and then get out of the meetings, and go hang out with a bunch of healthy, successful people. Forget the "nobody understands us alcoholics but another alcoholic" nonsense. Do you want to be understood by a drunkard, or do you want to live happily?

I am still noticing what a joy it is to talk to an attractive young woman about drug or alcohol problems, and hear her respond, "Oh, I don't do that kind of stuff. I think it would just mess me up..." Then we are free to talk about other stuff, like art, music, computers, children, or whatever... Anything but more stories of misery. Anything but more stories of drug and alcohol problems.

24) It is unnecessary.
More people recover from alcoholism without A.A. and the Twelve Steps than do it with them, several times over. More people recover without any support group of any kind than with one. A.A. won't tell you that; that's one of the biggest dirty little secrets that A.A. has. The A.A. dogma says, "Nobody can do it alone." The truth is, most people do it that way.

25) Nobody is responsible.
When something goes wrong, and somebody is badly abused, misguided, or harmed in some way, there is no one to answer for anything. Nobody is really in charge. Every group is independent, and has no connection to any other, even if they are all doing the same thing. "No one speaks for A.A.", they say, so nobody can answer criticisms. But because nobody is responsible for anything, and nobody is in charge, nobody can fix anything, either.

Also, when a member relapses and dies, or commits suicide, nobody is responsible. A.A. blames the victim: The victim was just morally inferior, and constitutionally dishonest with himself. It is not the sponsor's fault. No matter what the sponsor did to the guy, like tell him to stop taking his medications, the sponsor isn't responsible for anything. It's all the victim's fault. No way will A.A. accept even the tiniest bit of responsibility for the failures, even though it gleefully claims all of the credit for successes.

This also means that no one does any post-mortems. No one is accumulating any data on failures, in order to improve the "treatment" program, and avoid making the same mistakes again and again. Real doctors study all of their successes and failures, in order to learn from experience. But not A.A. or N.A.. They don't learn. That alone is a giant tragedy -- it means that the program will never get any better.

26) The dogma is frozen.
The current crop of true believers smugly declare that they have all of the answers to alcoholism in the teachings of Bill W. and Doctor Bob, and that there is nothing more to discuss. They won't even look at new alcoholism treatments. That is not how Bill W. and Doctor Bob worked. They were very inquisitive and inclusive, not exclusive. Both of them learned everything they could about alcoholism from Dr. Silkworth, and they consulted with whatever other experts they could find, on a wide variety of subjects. Bill experimented with using megavitamin doses to treat alcoholism, and even tried LSD for the same reason. He never stopped looking for new answers. Alas, that isn't how the current high priests behave at all. They don't know the meanings of the words "investigate" or "experiment." They just arrogantly declare that their Twelve-Step program is the infallible answer to all of the world's ills. -- Not just the answer to alcoholism, but the answer to all of the world's ills.

Also, because of the cultish worship of Bill Wilson and Doctor Bob Smith, nothing new can be added to the A.A. scriptures. No one compares in holiness or wisdom to those two, so no one can dare to update or change the dogma, even when it is blatantly wrong. The first 164 pages of the Big Book are sacred, inviolate, and cannot be changed.
And they weren't either. Now the Fourth Edition of the Big Book is out, and the first 164 pages are untouched. Only other people's autobiographical stories were changed. And Clarence Snyder's story ("Home Brewmeister") was dumped because he criticized Bill Wilson when he was alive.

27) A.A. uses fear, guilt, and lies to manipulate people.
This is not a positive, life-affirming program. It is very negative to keep telling people that they will relapse and die unless they do everything right. And there is a lot to do right: not just the Twelve Steps with all of the self-criticism and guilt induction, but also attending lots of meetings, and complying with all of the accumulated "wisdom" like "you can't have any resentments", "stuff your feelings", and "do what your sponsor says." People become neurotic and depressed, they become mentally ill, if they spend too much of their time in states of fear and guilt. And A.A. tells a lot of lies, myths, untruths, and fairy tales, to keep people trapped in fear and guilt.

• Remember that we are dealing with alcohol -- cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much for us. But there is One who has all power -- that One is God. May you find Him now!
  The Big Book, Chapter 5, How It Works, pages 58-59.
• John Barleycorn promises us jails, institutions, or death.
• Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.
  The Big Book, Chapter 3, More About Alcoholism, page 33.
• We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse, never better.
  The Big Book, Chapter 3, More About Alcoholism, page 30.
• I now remembered what my alcoholic friends had told me, how they had prophesied that if I had an alcoholic mind, the time and place would come -- I would drink again. They had said that though I did raise a defense, it would one day give way before some trivial reason for having a drink. Well, just that did happen and more, for what I had learned of alcoholism did not occur to me at all. I knew from that moment that I had an alcoholic mind. I saw that will power and self-knowledge would not help in those strange mental blank spots. I had never been able to understand people who said that a problem had them hopelessly defeated. I knew then. It was a crushing blow.
  The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Chapter 3, More About Alcoholism, pages 41-42.
• If we skip this vital step, we may not overcome drinking.
  The Big Book, 3rd Edition, chapter 6, Into Action, page 72.
• Unless each A.A. member follows to the best of his ability our suggested Twelve Steps to recovery, he almost certainly signs his own death warrant.
  Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 174.

28) No cross-talk.
The term "cross-talk" means saying something in response to something somebody else said. That is forbidden at meetings. The original idea was to prevent put-downs or criticism of what someone said, to allow people to be as open and honest as possible. But now it just means that nobody gets any responses to anything they say. Hence there is no way to give anyone any feedback in a meeting. You can't tell people that they are going off the deep end, or babbling crazy nonsense, or mindlessly embracing cult dogma. Everybody is just talking to a blank wall, and gets no answers or comments back. Thus there is no brake to keep people from going off on a tangent. They can say lots of crazy things and everybody just sits there and silently accepts it.

In any ordinary group, people cannot talk crazy for very long before somebody else will call them on it, and say, "Oh yeh? That sounds really goofy. Can you explain that? Can you prove that statement? Where did you hear that? Who told you that?" In A.A. meetings, they won't ever get called on anything. They will never get a reality check.

Also, no one can shut up the nuts who rave on and on about how wonderful the organization is, and how it gave them a life, and the organization is their new life, and how the Twelve Steps are the answer to everything -- a brilliant solution to all of the problems of the world...

29) It is throw-away therapy for throw-away people.
All of the city, state, and federal governments want to do "something" about the drug and alcohol problem, but they don't want to do much. So they just give a contract for drug and alcohol treatment to the lowest bidder, and ignore the problem for the rest of the year. And if the lowest bidder's therapy doesn't really work, well, what can you expect for so little money? To get something better would cost more, wouldn't it?

And, of course, the cheapest "treatment programs" are based on free A.A. and N.A. meetings.

30) A.A. claims that it is the only way.
Beginners are told that the Twelve-Step program is the only way to achieve sobriety, and that nothing else works. If the student believes that, then there is no reason to do anything else, or to study anything else, to help oneself, other than just do the Twelve Steps and do whatever the sponsor says. When the Twelve Steps don't work, the student has no other techniques or knowledge to use to prevent a relapse, or to recover from a relapse, so he relapses and sometimes dies drunk out in the streets.

A.A. is quick to accuse all competing groups and recovery methods of killing patients, but maintains its own innocence. A.A. claims that it does not kill and could never kill patients. But I don't know what else to call it when they just give people a lot of misinformation, and then play blame-the-victim when the program fails and those people die.

31) The authoritive literature is vague, imprecise, bombastic, and grandiose.
Too much of the organization's defining literature, like the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous, is written in a euphemistic style where words mean whatever someone wants them to mean:

• "... you can join us on the Broad Highway." (The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Chapter 4, page 55.)
• "Even so has God restored us all to our right minds." (The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Chapter 4, page 57.)
• "We feel we are on the Broad Highway, walking hand in hand with the Spirit of the Universe." (The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Chapter 6, page 75.)
• "Resentment is the 'number one' offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stem all forms of spiritual disease..." (The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Chapter 5, page 64.) [Please tell me what all of the forms of spiritual disease are. For that matter, please define what a spiritual disease is, and how it is different from an emotional disease or mental illness.]
• "Some of us had already walked far over the Bridge of Reason toward the desired shore of faith. The outlines and the promise of the New Land had brought lustre to tired eyes and fresh courage to flagging spirits." (The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Chapter 4, We Agnostics, page 53.)
• "We are not cured of alcoholism. What we have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our daily activities." (The Big Book, 3rd edition, Chapter 6, Into Action, page 85.)
• "We have come to believe He would like us to keep our heads in the clouds with Him, but that our feet ought to be firmly planted on earth. That is where our fellow travelers are, and that is where our work must be done. These are the realities for us. We have found nothing incompatible between a powerful spiritual experience and a life of sane and happy usefulness." (The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Chapter 9, page 130.)
• "This is the Great Fact for us." (The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Chapter 11, A Vision For You, page 164.)
• "Nothing will help the man who is off on a spiritual tangent so much as the wife who adopts a sane spiritual program, making a better practical use of it." (The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Chapter 9, page 130.)
• "The age of miracles is still with us." (The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Chapter 11, A Vision For You, page 153.)
• "We shall be with you in the Fellowship of the Spirit, and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the Road of Happy Destiny." (The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Chapter 11, A Vision For You, page 164.)
• "He stood in the Presence of Infinite Power and Love." (The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Chapter 4, page 56.)
• "Instead of regarding ourselves as intelligent agents, spearheads of God's ever advancing Creation, we agnostics and atheists chose to believe that our human intelligence was the last word, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and end of all. Rather vain of us, wasn't it?" (The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Chapter 4, page 49.)

Uh, Hello? I just came here to get some advice on quitting drinking. Hello? Does anybody here speak English?

32) It is voodoo medicine, religion masquerading as medical treatment.
The "treatment" for the very real, very deadly, sickness of alcoholism is faith healing -- blind faith in a religious cult, and faith in the teachings of a couple of brain-damaged alcoholic wrecks who were at best neurotics, or more likely, were one neurotic and one psychotic.

And when the treatment fails, the answer is to switch from 3 to 7 meetings per week, or even to 3 meetings per day.

It is also voodoo medicine in another sense: It is completely unscientific, and uses superstition instead of facts. A.A. claims that alcoholism is a "spiritual disease," without ever defining what a spiritual disease is, or explaining how spirits can get sick. And then A.A. says that the "spiritual treatment" for this "spiritual disease" is going to A.A. meetings, doing the Twelve Steps, and recruiting more group members. Bill Wilson called that "spiritual growth."

33) It is all a big bait-and-switch con game.
There are so many bait-and-switch stunts pulled in A.A. that it borders on amazing. Here are just a few examples:

• They start off by telling you that A.A. is a loose, easy-going fellowship, where the Twelve Steps are only a suggested program for recovery. Later, they will tell you that you will die if you don't follow the Steps correctly, and perform all of the Steps to the best of your ability.
• They will tell you that you can "Take what you want, and leave the rest." Then they will tell you that you can't ever leave, and that your brain is too damaged for you to be able to choose what is right for you.
  Finally, they will tell you that you do not even have "the right to decide all by yourself just what you shall think." (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William Wilson, pages 36-37.)
• To get you to join, they will tell you that "it isn't religious, it's spiritual" -- just a wonderful spiritual quit-drinking program. Later, they will talk endlessly about moral shortcomings, confessions, surrender to God, and religion. You will only gradually find out that it is a crazy cult religion based on the strange teachings of the fascist Lutheran minister Dr. Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman. Finally, they will tell you that the real purpose of the program is to get you to "seek and do God's will", and to bring you under "God-control", and to get you to believe in God and pray all of the time.

Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God...
Big Book, page 77.
Follow the dictates of a Higher Power and you will presently live in a new and wonderful world...
Big Book, page 100.

• They start off by telling you that alcoholism is a progressive disease over which you are powerless, but they end up telling you that you are guilty of sins, "defects of character", and "moral shortcomings" -- that you have a moral problem more than a medical problem. In Step One, you have a disease, which is "respectable, not a moral stigma." But by Step Four, they have you busy doing a "searching and fearless moral inventory", not a thorough medical examination.
• And even worse, they will tell you that it's a moral problem that can only be repaired by confessing all of your defects and shortcomings to man and God. Then they will tell you that you can't ever recover, and that you must spend the rest of your life going to their church services ("meetings") and confessing.
• Bait and Switch: While we are busy confessing all of our sins, note the funny progressive change in the terminology of the Steps:
• 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
• 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
• 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
• 7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

In Step Four, we start off doing a general-purpose moral inventory, which sounds like we should honestly list both the good and the bad stuff; but in Step Five we only talk about our "wrongs"; and in Step Six those "wrongs" suddenly get changed into defective parts of ourselves, our "defects of character", and in Step Seven, they are again our defects, our moral "shortcomings". There is a big difference between making a stupid mistake and having a defective character. Again, these steps are just inducing more guilt and self-doubt by declaring that we are inherently defective and flawed -- so terribly flawed that only God can remove our shortcomings.

None of those bait-and-switch stunts are accidental. Frank Buchman's cult deliberately practiced deceptive recruiting, telling prospective recruits anything to get them to join, and only telling them the truth much later, and they rationalized all of the lying by saying that it was okay because it was all done in the service of God, "to win more souls for God."

The Buchmanites trained Bill Wilson, and he learned his lessons well. A.A. is just the same. They simply add two more rationalizations to the list of excuses:

1. "And it's also okay because we are doing it to save the alcoholics' lives."

2. "Besides, even if the Twelve Steps don't really work for quitting drinking alcohol, we are still getting people to seek and do the will of God, and that's a good thing."

34) A.A. makes "God" into a dirty word.
Those of us who are not atheists or agnostics, who do believe in a "Higher Power" or God of some kind, and who try to be sane and reasonable in our religious beliefs, get tired of the constantly-parroted bizarre A.A. theology that makes God into a cruel, arbitrary, authoritarian, dictatorial, arbitrary, wish-granting, patriarchal monster Who micro-manages the world, and does a very poor job of it.

And the same goes for the gross misuse and misinterpretation of spiritual concepts like ego loss, surrender to God, or "spiritual experience." The "spiritual experience" term, in particular, has really been beaten to death. To Bill Wilson, it meant seeing God in a belladonna-induced white flash, or confessing all of your defects of character, moral shortcomings, and "the exact nature of your wrongs" to your sponsor, while to another story-teller in the Big Book, it was:

A "spiritual experience" to me meant attending meetings, seeing a group of people, all there for the purpose of helping each other; hearing the Twelve Steps and the Twelve Traditions read at a meeting, and hearing the Lord's Prayer, which in an A.A. meeting has such great meaning -- "Thy will be done, not mine."
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 381.

Yeh, don't you just get all choked up when you hear the Twelve Steps read out loud? That's a real spiritual experience, for sure...

And those of us who try to be sane and reasonable in our religious beliefs get really tired of the moronic, superstitious, childish Santa Claus spirituality of the the A.A. true believers who think that they can get whatever they want just by praying for it -- "Just incant the name of your favorite Higher Power three times, loudly, and then read your Christmas wish list out loud, and Santa Claus will soon bring you all of the goodies."

I have no other explanation for the many good things that have happened to me since I have been in A.A. -- they came to me from a Greater Power.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Rum, Radio, and Rebellion, page 367.

(Those good things couldn't have been caused by quitting drinking? They couldn't have been caused by no longer constantly shooting yourself in the foot by always being drunk at the wrong times? They couldn't possibly have been caused by being clear-headed, healthy, and able to work and get stuff done -- just for a change)?

35) A.A. features questionable advisors and counselors.
The biggest losers are the best advisors, or so the story goes. The people with the worst war stories and drunkalogues have made the biggest recoveries, so they are the best teachers. Or are they? The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. Or does it? What if it leads to the palace of brain damage and insanity?

What if the biggest losers were that way for a reason, like that they had big mental problems even before their alcoholism or drug addictions, problems that they vainly tried to fix by self-medicating with drugs and alcohol? Or, what if the biggest loosers were horrible vicious criminals even before they ever started drinking and drugging?

Do they automatically become sane, wise, kindly advisors, knowledgeable priests and ministers, and competent recovery counselors, just because they quit drinking alcohol and taking drugs, and attended a bunch of A.A. meetings, and started talking about "seeking and doing the will of God"? Not likely.

36) A.A. pushes a one-size-fits-all treatment program.
The program aims to fix the "character defects" of one specific stereotypical alcoholic -- someone who is very egotistical, manipulative, arrogant, selfish, inconsiderate, dishonest, and resentful. In other words, the A.A. founder Bill Wilson.

37) The meetings are a joke.
All too often, the meetings are just a stupid ritual that everybody does because they think they have to do it. The formula is always the same. After everybody is done incanting all of the standard plastic-laminated dogma at the start of the meeting, people go through the motions of "sharing", which follows this formula:

• Hi, my name is fill-in-the-blank, and I am an alcoholic.
• I am stupid.
• A.A. is wonderful.
• I lived a life of crime and misery until wonderful A.A. miraculously saved me.
• Here is a list of my favorite sins and crimes that I like to brag about.
• My life is blessed with Serenity and Gratitude now because I do the Twelve wonderful Steps that the saintly genius Bill Wilson invented.
• My thinking is all screwed up, and I can't manage my own life, but my sponsor is clear-headed and qualified to run my life for me, in spite of the fact that he recites the same speech and says that his thinking is fucked, but his sponsor is really clear-headed, in spite of the fact that his sponsor also gives the same speech, and says that his thinking is also really fucked, etc...

38) A.A. is a substitute addiction, and just another dependency.
Also, A.A. is terribly self-absorbed -- the cult is the most important thing in the lives of the cult members.

A.A. tells the newly-sober people that they must put their "sobriety" (meaning: A.A.) before everything else, and come to depend upon A.A. to run their lives for them. Absolutely nothing must come between themselves and their "sobriety". That includes wife, children, job, career, everything. The Big Book actually teaches that wives and families are expendable in the selfish pursuit of "sobriety" and "spirituality." The new A.A. member must spend all of his spare time going to meetings, preferably 90 Meetings In 90 Days, and must get a sponsor who will supervise his indoctrination and keep him busy with reading the Big Book and making lists of personal defects.

The Big Book specifically states that A.A. is a substitute for an alcohol addiction, as well as a substitute lifestyle:

"I know I must get along without liquor, but how can I? Have you a sufficient substitute?
      Yes, there is a substitute, and it is vastly more than that. It is a fellowship in Alcoholics Anonymous. There you will find release from care, boredom and worry. Your imagination will be fired. Life will mean something at last. The most satisfactory years of your existence lie ahead. Thus we find the fellowship, and so will you.
A.A. Big Book, Chapter 11, A Vision For You, page 152.

Bill Wilson's second book, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, adds this Orwellian double-think:

Therefore dependence, as A.A. practices it, is really a means of gaining true independence of the spirit.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 36.

Big Brother says, "Freedom is Slavery! Slavery is Freedom!"

... By so accepting our dependence on this marvel of science [electricity], we find ourselves more independent personally.   ...
      But the moment our mental or emotional independence is in question, how differently we behave. How persistently we claim the right to decide all by ourselves just what we shall think and just how we shall act.   ...   We are certain that our intelligence, backed by willpower, can rightly control our inner lives and guarantee us success in the world we live in. This brave philosophy, wherein each man plays God, sounds good in the speaking, but it still has to meet this acid test: how well does it actually work? One good look in the mirror ought to be answer enough for any alcoholic.
      ... The philosophy of self-sufficiency is not paying off. Plainly enough, it is a bone-crushing juggernaut whose final achievement is ruin.
      Therefore, we who are alcoholics can consider ourselves fortunate indeed.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 37.

Because I depend on electricity to do things for me, I shouldn't mind depending on Alcoholics Anonymous to tell me what to think. I'm "fortunate" to be dying of alcoholism, because it will force me to become a dependent slave of Bill Wilson's wonderful cult, which will save me from the horrible pain of having to decide for myself what to think and what to do... After all, I don't really have the right to decide all by myself just what I shall think...

William G. Wilson,
not feeling quite so "Serene" and "Grateful" after 16 years of "Working The Steps".

But dependence upon an A.A. group or Higher Power hasn't produced any baleful results.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 38.

A lot of people will disagree with that statement. Many of them are dead. Others are asking how many years it takes to deprogram from A.A.. Bill Wilson came down with a case of deep, crippling, clinical depression that lasted for more than 11 years.

Strangely, Bill was actually in the middle of his years of crippling chronic depression when he wrote that line about "no baleful results." Bill Wilson had a bad habit of writing down his wishful thinking and grandiose delusions, and then claiming that it was all true facts. The Promises are another example of such grandiose wishful thinking.

So how, exactly, can the willing person turn his will and his life over to the Higher Power?   ...   His lone courage and unaided will cannot do it. Surely he must now depend on Somebody or Something else.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 39.

What is this absurd double-talk? "A willing person cannot successfully use his will to turn his will over to the Higher Power?" Nonsense, insane gibberish.

And then the Big Book makes it clear that A.A. comes before the wife and family -- the cult must be the most important thing in the lives of the cult members:

"I decided I must place this program above everything else, even my family, because if I did not maintain my sobriety I would lose my family anyway."
A.A. Big Book, Chapter B10, He Sold Himself Short, page 293.

Will he take every necessary step, submit to anything to get well, to stop drinking forever?
A.A. Big Book, Chapter 10, To Employers, page 142.

Your wife may sometimes say she is neglected.
A.A. Big Book, Chapter 7, Working With Others, page 97.

Bill continued to neglect his wife, too. In his second book, written 12 years later, he said:

After the husband joins A.A., the wife may become discontented, even highly resentful that Alcoholics Anonymous has done the very thing that all her years of devotion had failed to do. Her husband may become so wrapped up in A.A. and his new friends that he is inconsiderately away from home more than when he drank. Seeing her unhappiness, he recommends A.A.'s Twelve Steps and tries to teach her how to live.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William Wilson, page 118.

Why teach her to do the 12 steps when she doesn't drink? How is a purported "quit-drinking program" supposed to help her and make her happy when she isn't an alcoholic? Could it be that the 12 steps aren't really about alcoholism at all? Like maybe the 12 steps are really a formula for a cult religion's "way of living"?

And note the ridiculous statement that she becomes "highly resentful" because "Alcoholics Anonymous has done the very thing that all her years of devotion had failed to do."
She couldn't possibly be angry because he refuses to go get a job, could she? -- He forces her to work in a department store for years and years to support the both of them while he just goes to A.A. meetings with his buddies and works on his "spiritual development" all of the time, and then philanders with the pretty women he finds at the meetings. That's making her unhappy, but he thinks he can fix things by teaching her the Twelve Steps so that she will know "how to live"?

Bill continued to tell us how we had to be dependent upon A.A. and make it the center of our lives:

Job or no job -- wife or no wife -- we simply do not stop drinking so long as we place dependence upon other people ahead of dependence on God.
A.A. Big Book, Chapter 7, Working With Others, page 98.

We all had to place recovery above everything...
A.A. Big Book, Chapter 10, To Employers, page 143.

Assume on the other hand that father has, at the outset, a stirring spiritual experience. Overnight, as it were, he is a different man. He becomes a religious enthusiast. He is unable to focus on anything else.   ...   There is talk about spiritual matters morning, noon and night.   ...
Though the family does not fully agree with dad's spiritual activities, they should let him have his head. Even if he displays a certain amount of neglect and irresponsibility towards the family, it is well to let him go as far as he likes in helping other alcoholics. During those first days of convalescence, this will do more to insure his sobriety than anything else. Though some of his manifestations are alarming and disagreeable, we think dad will be on a firmer foundation than the man who is placing business or professional success ahead of spiritual development.
A.A. Big Book, Chapter 9, The Family Afterwards, pages 129-130.

Yes, some of his manifestations are alarming and disagreeable. Like, he's turning into a crazy obsessed cult member and a raving religious maniac, a real nut case with delusions of grandeur and a messianic complex. And he imagines that recruiting more members for his cult is "helping other alcoholics".

40) It is a secret conspiracy.
I am not a conspiracy theorist, and I don't like to find secret conspiracies everywhere, but this is one. It has taken control of our nation's drug and alcohol treatment facilities and institutions, and is using part of the billions of dollars that our government and the health insurance industry spends on drug and alcohol rehabilitation each year to further its own secret agenda, which includes coercing the patients into becoming members of the A.A. and N.A. 12-step religion.

A.A. members can easily hide their A.A. membership, because it's all confidential and anonymous, by definition. Hidden members -- secret agents -- have worked themselves into positions of power where they control the future of our nation's drug and alcohol treatment programs. A.A. uses its entrenched position to prevent any other treatment modalities from encroaching on what it considers to be its territory, and its money. A secret religion with an ineffective treatment program has no business running our nation's drug and alcohol treatment centers and lying about what it is doing.

Personally, I could hardly care less what a bunch of crazy cultists want to believe. It's their lives, and they can do anything they want to with them. I get leafletted and hit on by the Hari Krishnas and the Scientologists every week -- literally -- and it doesn't matter. I don't care if a bunch of feeble-minded alcoholic burn-outs want to cluster together in church basements and convince each other that they are God's special children, and The Chosen People. It doesn't matter.

But it does matter when a cult uses State and Federal tax money, as well as State, Federal, and private health insurance money, to advance its own religion while pretending to provide medical treatment for a deadly disease. That is unacceptable and unjustifiable.

It does matter when a cult uses parole officers, judges, and therapists to force more people to join the cult. That is unacceptable.

It matters when people who are sick, desperate, confused, and going through a real crisis, are deceived and lied to and fed a crackpot cult religion as the universal cure for all drug and alcohol problems, by people who are supposed to be therapists, but who are really just proselytizing evangelistic alter boys. That is not acceptable.

To force the insane, bizarre, and superstitious practices of a cult religion on people who are supposed to be receiving medical treatment for a deadly disease is a crime so monstrous, so evil, and so sick, that it is basically unbelievable. That is how groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous are getting away with it. People can't believe that it is really happening. The other people, that is -- the people to whom it is not being done.

Footnotes:

1) And that wasn't just Hitler making speeches, trying to sound religious, to impress the local yokels. Fascism always had a religious-mystical side to it. Hitler also said:

"I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so."
Adolf Hitler, from the book Adolf Hitler by John Toland [Pulitzer Prize winner], New York: Anchor Publishing, 1992, p. 507.

"This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief."
Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, 1999, page 152.

"Imbued with the desire to secure for the German people the great religious, moral, and cultural values rooted in the two Christian Confessions, we have abolished the political organizations but strengthened the religious institutions."
Adolf Hitler, in a speech at Reichstag, Berlin, January 30, 1934.

"Thus inwardly armed with confidence in God and the unshakable stupidity of the voting citizenry, the politicians can begin the fight for the 'remaking' of the Reich as they call it."
Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, Ralph Mannheim, ed., New York: Mariner Books, 1999, page 375.

And last but not least, the German Army belt buckets were engraved with "Gott Sei Mit Uns." -- "God Is With Us."

Why it's just exactly like Bob Dylan's song, "With God On Our Side".

Secret Agent Orange working with www.AAdeprogramming.com

Last updated 7 December 2002.
The most recent version of this file can be found at http://www.oocities.org/ageorange/

Copyright © 2002, A. Orange

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