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[ Link here = https://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters181.html#Green ]
Date: Fri, July 2, 2010 7:27 am (answered 17 July 2010) Green Papers commented on your wall post: "The graph is very simple. The researchers went into different AA meetings and asked the people there how long they had been attending, the results for those within their first year were plotted on this graph by monthy averages for all the data. So it shows, 19% of people were in their first month, 13% their second, 10% in their third and so on up to 5% in their twelfth month. Orange claims the 5% of people in their twelfth month indicates that 95% had left after a year (oblivious to the fact that the other 95% in the survey was comprised of those with less than a 11 months time attending meetings). Agent Orange is in need of a math lesson. This survey is the other source for Orange's purported 5% success rate. The graph actually shows that 26% of people who try an AA meeting for the first time are still attending AA after the first year, the attrition is from 19% (those in their first month) to 5% (those in their twelfth), and therefore around 74%.
Check it out yourself (pages 11 and 12):
Hello again, Green,
The graph may be very simple, but it is also very wrong. A huge chunk of the numbers is
missing. You say that
"26% of people who try an AA meeting for the first time are still
attending AA after the first year..."
No, that is wrong, dead wrong. The truth is,
"26% of those who happened to still be attending A.A. meetings on the day that the triennial
survey was conducted
were still around at the end of the year."
The vast majority of the newcomers had already dropped out before the triennial survey was
conducted.
Trying to use that survey as proof of A.A. retention is futile and
grossly inaccurate because the survey did not count the dropouts — it only
counted the people who were still there at the meetings when the survey was done.
When people come to only one A.A. meeting, and are disgusted by the
cult religion atmosphere and the mindless slogan-slinging and the illogical program,
and don't come back, they don't get counted in a triennial survey.
There are 1095 days in three years, so the odds
of a one-timer getting counted on the one day of a triennial survey are
less than one in a thousand.
(Incidentally, I went to A.A. meetings for 3 months, three or more times a week,
and I was never counted in any triennial survey.)
So the real first number in the graph is missing. The people who were counted as "in their first
month of sobriety" were only a small remnant of the newcomers who came and went during the
three years before the survey was conducted.
There should be another point in the graph, a very high number over on the left side that shows all
of the people who came and then walked away in disgust in the year before the survey was conducted.
Then you would see that the people who remained at the one-year point were only a tiny
percentage of the newcomers.
The only thing that graph proves is that A.A. has a high dropout rate. It is impossible to
accurately determine the retention rate without the missing information.
Also, this statement is incorrect:
"This survey is the other source for Orange's purported 5% success rate."
No, I have several sources for the 5% number. And that 5% number is not the A.A. success rate.
It is the A.A. retention rate for the first year.
Dr. Vaillant proved that
the A.A. success rate
was zero, remember?
There is no evidence that those people who were still going to A.A. meetings after several
months were really sober. They may have been sneaking drinks between meetings.
The survey results just said that some people were still attending meetings, not that they were sober.
And then they may relapse.
People in A.A. constantly relapse and drop out and return to a lifestyle of heavy drinking.
They may go out after several days, or several weeks, or
several months, or several years.
Or
they may put a gun in their mouth and pull the trigger after doing the 12 Steps for 20 years.
Nell Wing, Bill Wilson's secretary, wrote:
It would appear that, for treating alcoholics, LSD worked three times
better than A.A. cult religion.
Bill Wilson described the A.A. recruiting and retention rate as:
Francis Hartigan was Lois Wilson's (Bill's wife's) private secretary.
He wrote a biography of Bill Wilson where he described the difficulties
that Bill Wilson and Doctor Bob experienced in the very early days of A.A., in 1935
in Akron, Ohio:
So 50 percent of the first-edition Big Book authors relapsed and returned to drinking?
That has to be another reason why Bill Wilson
almost completely
replaced the original set of autobiographical stories
when he published the second edition.
Bill Wilson went on to say:
Oh well, have a good day anyway.
== Orange
Date: Fri, July 16, 2010 1:33 am (answered 18 July 2010) Green Papers commented on your wall post: "I put forward Vaillant's statement: "Half of the stable remissions, but only two of the chronic alcoholics, had made 300 or more visits to AA.", one of many where he indicates how his research shows better outcomes for the alcoholics in the study who attended AA. You refuse to respond to my arguments where I've shown the pages in Vaillant's book which show that AA helps, but instead you claim propaganda on my part, that's ad hominem. Ironically, your strawman argument that AA has only a 5% success rate (based upon distorting Vaillant's research and trying weakly to pass off the Triennial Surveys as something they aren't), is viciously biased propaganda. I note you haven't responded to my request for you to remove your erroneous 95% attrition claim from http://www.facebook.com/l/8cd30;orange-papers.info. Here's a bit of reading to help you understand:
http://www.facebook.com/l/8cd30;en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effectiveness_of_Alcoholics_ http://www.facebook.com/l/8cd30;hindsfoot.org/lorarch.html Green."
Green,
The statement that A.A. has only a 5% success rate is not a
"straw man" argument.
(Please learn what the words mean before you try to use them in accusations.)
Saying that A.A. has a 5% success rate is giving
A.A. far too much credit. Five percent was the indicated retention rate from the survey,
not the success rate.
Dr. Vaillant proved
that the real A.A. success rate was zero.
A.A. does not increase the sobriety of alcoholics at all. It just takes the credit for
those people who were going to quit drinking anyway.
Even Bill Wilson said that, in explaining how successful A.A. recruiters were merely
lucky enough to find people who were already on the verge of quitting drinking:
As I explained in my previous message,
the way that A.A. did the triennial survey
was fatally flawed, and failed to count the vast majority of the newcomers who soon
quit A.A., so the triennial survey does not and can not prove any retention rate.
The only thing that triennial survey shows is that A.A. has a bad dropout rate.
It is not possible to determine the A.A. success rate or the retention rate from
that survey.
I have commented on the broken logic in Loran Archer's post earlier,
here.
A.A. is not a pill for cancer, and you don't (and can't)
test A.A. the way that the FDA tests medications.
Lastly, the argument about the people who go to 300 A.A. meetings is also brain-damaged.
Dr. Vaillant knows better than that. After admitting that A.A. was a total failure,
with an appalling death rate, Vaillant just had to sugar-coat that bitter pill,
so he started jabbering
about how people who went to a bunch of A.A. meetings drank less than the other people
who went to bars for their meetings. That is
confusion of causation with correlation
(another logical fallacy).
Dr. Vaillant knows what constitutes valid proof of the efficacy of medical treatment,
and he knows that such bad logic isn't it.
We can use the same brain-damaged logic to "prove" that Scientology or the Moonies work
as a cure for alcoholism:
NOT!
Have a good day.
== Orange
[The next letter from Green is here.] 
Thank you so much for these insightful papers, it is really helping me. Do these come as a book (paper/hardback) thanks
Hello Leanne,
Thanks for the compliments, and I'm glad to hear that you are benefitting from the
web site. There is no dead-tree edition of the Orange Papers.
I suggest that people download all of the archive files so that they
will have the entire website, and then burn a CD copy of the web site.
The archive files are listed on the main menu page,
here.
Instuctions on how to burn the CD are
here.
Have a good day.
== Orange
Anne I. commented on your wall post: "I spent years in AA & very few people stayed. There was a group of about 50 old-timers who preyed on all the newcomers at the area's meetings. I also saw plenty of criminal activity. My experience w/ AA speaks the truth: a God fraud cult. "
Hi Anne,
Thanks for the post. I trust that you are doing well. So have a good day now.
== Orange
In this quote, Diener seems to say AA has some positive aspects to it. I emailed him for clarification. Does Diener think AA is good or evil?
Just as you misportray and misunderstand AA, so you misportray and misunderstand the Oxford Groups. NEITHER of these movements is just an oppressive regime, 'brainwashing' and bilking the innocent. Both movements point to very real problems in society, and both offer solutions plausible to many. In both movements, long-term affiliation is voluntary, though exposure and early indoctrination is often coerced. Most important, neither of these movements is unique. The Oxford Groups was only one of MANY protofascist movements in the U.S. in the 1930s, and AA is only one of many such movements today. Daniel S.
Hello Dan,
Thanks for the question. And I have one too. You emailed Paul Diener? I thought he was dead.
So does everybody else who has contacted me about him.
Do you have an email address for him? Please send it.
My impression from that quote is that Paul recognized that fascist movements were often
helped along by legitimate grievances. Like the Nazi Party was helped by the massive inflation
of German currency during the Weimar Republic, and the crushing terms of reparations
that Britain and France forced on Germany in the Armistice treaty.
The angry German citizens had real grievances, and good
reason to be angry. But Paul didn't say that fascist movements were
a good thing. In fact he often railed against fascism, like in Central America, where
he worked for a while, and
saw his friends killed by death squads.
Diener said that protofascist movements "offer solutions plausible to many."
He didn't say that they were right, just that the solutions sounded plausible to many.
Likewise, the current Tea Party also offers solutions that sound plausible to many angry people,
while other people think they are nuts.
Here,
Diener explained his attitude about A.A.:
Such protofascist movements are not great
dangers, by and in themselves. AA is NOT a great danger in the U.S. today.
But AA IS a protofascist, spiritual movement, and its expansion serves as a warning signal to us. AA is
important for what it tells us about where our culture is heading.
To focus ONLY on AA — and, worse, to distort and lie about AA, to wildly exaggerate its 'dangers', only to
promote some other variety of right-wing thinking — is pernicious.
What is required is that we step back, and put the mythical concepts of 'addiction' and 'spirituality' in
historical, cross-cultural perspective. We need to see 'addiction' as a core concept of the Spiritual
Tradition, which emerged in the West when the Industrial Revolution first began to falter, around 1870.
Will 'addiction' professionals ever do this? Probably not.
Semmelweis won no prize for medical research.
Date: Thu, July 8, 2010 2:27 pm (answered 17 July 2010) it seems to me diner is opposed to what AA symbolizes in our culture and what the addiction treatment industry is lacking. i dont see anything yet that strikes me as him saying that AA is somehow bad in itself. im curious. im not defending AA. trying to form my own opinion. thanks. Dan S.
Diener saved his biggest bullets for the treatment industry, which he saw as total quackery,
and slightly veiled fascist philosophy.
For instance:
And, indeed, the most brilliant success of this anti-'addiction'
campaign was the media announcement that the campaign had failed!
For this supposed 'failure' demonstrates to the middle-class that the
government tried to go about things nicely. It advertised and advised, it
informed and cajoled.
But the little Untermensch bastards living in Black and Hispanic ghettos
didn't listen, did they?
The obvious conclusion is that 'playing Mr. Nice Guy' does not work with
genetically-flawed scum.
Hence, the government is now justified in turning to means a bit more
'drastic', no?
The billion dollar advertising campaign has been a success. It has
increased bourgeois drug hysteria. And it has paved the way a bit more
towards a Final Solution to the 'addiction' problem.
But Diener still held A.A. in contempt.
You can't hand out the 'spiritual' literature to the suckers who are
ordered by the judge to attend your occultic get-togethers, urging them to
read the miracle-words in order to be transformed,
'Conference approved' means really, really, really 'spiritually powerful
stuff', no?
In fact, as Antze points out, the formal ideologies of all these
cultic groups are taken quite seriously by acolytes and gurus both:
"Self-help groups are more than encounter clubs or confessional
societies. Each claims a certain wisdom concerning the problem it treats.
Each has a specialized system of teachings that members venerate as the
secret of recovery. These are often codified in a book or recited in
capsule form at the start of each meeting.
Antze, Paul 1976 "The Role of
Ideologies in Peer Pyschotherapy
Organizations: Some Theoretical Considereations and Three Case Studies",
The Journal of Applied Behavior Science, 12 (3), p. 324.
AA is one of the case studies included in this article.
No, Paul Diener did not have a positive view of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Have a good day now.
== Orange
Sounds like a drunk that couldn't commit to the AA program and is therefore.. Still drunk.
Ah, yes. Thank you, Lisa, for reminding me of where the minds of A.A. members still dwell.
So, people who disagree with your religion and your religious cure for alcohol abuse
are "drunk", huh? What a neat way to dismiss
99.97% of the human race as less "spiritual" than you are.
Oh well, have a good day anyway.
== Orange
Date: Sat, July 24, 2010 3:26 pm I have no idea what you are talking about.
Date: Sat, July 24, 2010 3:29 pm (answered 31 July 2010) I have nothing against any one. I apologize if I have offended you
Hello Lisa,
I am not offended. More like amused. First, you have to attack the speaker personally,
rather than discuss the facts, because that is how cults refute bothersome information.
Then, you have to apologize for doing so, because that is Step Nine.
Oh well, have a good day anyway.
== Orange
Thanks Orange. I'm in Nashville TN at this time and am on a VFW computer. PBR and country music. YEEHAAW! Thank you for you continuing effort in finding truth. Sometimes it can be a real son of a bitch.
Hi Gene,
Thanks for the thanks, and you have a good day too.
== Orange
[The story of Carmen continues here.]
Hi, This blog is hilarious.
Hi Howard,
Thanks for the tip. That is a lot of stuff to go through. I see that I am mentioned
a bunch of times, and called a liar often. His debating style seems to be to ignore
most of my points and then nitpick and misquote me, and then supply flawed
and false information as "proof" that I am wrong.
Oh well, have a good day anyway.
== Orange
P.S.:
About 1/4 of the way down the page, there is an entry for Thursday, February 11, 2010.
McGowdog is very unhappy about this quote:
Which actually isn't my quote. What I printed was:
That is a tiny difference — except for the credibility of the source.
CORRECTION: 2 July 2011: I discovered that I did print that first quote, once, in the file on
The 12 Biggest Secrets of A.A..
Most other times, I used the second form.
Then McGowdog went on to complain that he couldn't find anything about Dr. Ron Whitington.
He said that he used the link that I provided, but I didn't provide any link.
I just said that Dr. Whitington's statement was printed in "AA Around Australia".
I don't know where he got the link, or what link he was using.
So anyway, he found a bunch of irrelevant stuff, and complained that he didn't find
anything about Dr. Ron Whitington.
Then McGowdog tried Google, and found various repetitions of the quote.
And complained about that.
Then he finally tried the obvious, and wrote to the Australian A.A. organization and
asked them about the quote. First, they reported that,
Why did they look in the 1992 and 1993 archives when the quote is from 1994?
And then, finally,
Indeed, we have located in the archives a copy of the quarterly newsletter "AA Around Australia" — the source that you cite.
It includes a copy Dr Whitington's opening address at the '94 Australian
General Service Conference of AA, in which the statement appears:
"Our 1992 Survey showed that only some five per cent of newcomers
to AA are still attending meetings after twelve months."
So the attribution of the quotation is accurate.
And then, in the next sentence, they started the
minimization and denial tap-dance:
Let me suggest that, almost a generation later, that there is no current
evidence to either confirm or refute that this is currently the case.
What is important is that today, the Fellowship of AA continues to offer
alcoholics a solution that works for thousands of people in Australia.
Never mind the fact that the leader of A.A. said that a well-conducted professional
study produced those results. Now there is supposedly "no evidence".
And only "thousands" of people are helped by A.A. in Australia? That is a very tiny number.
What happened to the McDonald's-style commercials like "Millions served"?
Should I even ask the question of how they determine whether someone
was "helped" or hurt by A.A.?
Oh well, have a good day anyway.
== Orange
I would really like to know on what you base your opinion that the 12 Steps of AA don't work to cure alcoholism? I and millions of others have used them and are free from a disease that had us hopelessly in its grip for many years. I have 22 years free. I was at a conference last weekend where there were 65,000 recovered alcoholics from around the world. Almost 600 of them had more than 40 years of sobriety from working the 12 steps.
Sincerely,
Hello Cynthia,
Who am I? The answer to that is here.
There is a lot of evidence that A.A. does not work. First off, read the file
on
The Effectiveness of the Twelve-Step Treatment.
All of the medical evidence is in there. So is the historical evidence where Bill Wilson
said that A.A. didn't work.
Also see this:
Professors Reid K. Hester and William R. Miller (UNM, Albuquerque —
Center for Alcohol, Substance Abuse and Addictions, Dept. of Psychology,
University of New Mexico), rated treatment modalities by success rate.
Here are the results:
The most successful treatment is "Brief Intervention".
Notice how "Twelve-step facilitation" is so far down the list
that you have to look for it. It's number 37 out of 48.
Also notice how 12-Step treatment has a negative success rating
— the "Cumulative Evidence Score" is a minus 82, while
the best treatments are rated positive 390 and 189.
"Brief Intervention" consists of a real doctor talking to the
patient for usually less than one hour, questioning him about all of the
ugly details of his drinking and telling him that he will die if he doesn't
quit drinking. One time.
That's it. No long counseling sessions, no great guidance, no on-going
advice, no shoulder to cry on. And no 28-day treatment program. No years of A.A. meetings.
Just one "Dutch Uncle" session and it's over.
And that's the most effective thing going.
That kind of puts the whole expensive "drug-and-alcohol treatment
industry" to shame, doesn't it?
The fact that 65,000 people attended a convention in Houston
simply proves that A.A. is a popular cult,
possibly the most popular cult religion in the USA (if you don't count Mormonism as a
cult religion).
I don't think Scientology or the Moonies can get quite that many members to a convention.
If Scientology managed to get 65,000 Scientologists to attend a convention in Houston,
would that prove that Scientology really works and Tom Cruise is right about everything,
and Scientology is the only valid cure for drug and alcohol problems?
Note that a bunch of people going to a convention does not prove that a cure for a
"disease" actually works. And alcoholism is not a "disease", either.
If alcoholism is really a disease, then A.A. is guilty of practicing medicine without a license.
The fact that some people have 20, 30, or 40 years of membership in the cult does not mean
that the cult practices (the 12 Steps) are keeping them sober. It just means that they
spend their spare time doing cult busy-work while they keep themselves sober.
The vast majority of the people who do the 12 Steps do not stay sober, so it can't be
the 12 Steps that keep people sober.
Have a good day.
== Orange
Date: Sun, July 25, 2010 8:48 am (answered 2 August 2010) Orange, I am sorry you had such a bad experience with AA. Shoving AA down anyone's throat is not what the founders had in mind. I had 9 years sober when I stopped going to meetings. I returned to meetings after 14 years sober because the quality of my life is vastly improved when I go to meetings. You're obviously a highly intelligent person. I wish you the best in your recovery. Cynthia
Hello again, Cynthia,
If you are enjoying the meetings, then all that I can do is wish you well.
You should know, however, that shoving A.A. down the throats of victims is exactly
what "The Founders" had in mind.
The A.A. council-approved book Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers describes how Dr. Bob
and Bill Wilson shoved their
Oxford Group cult religion
"treatment" on A.A. Number Three, Bill Dotson, when he was in
the hospital in Akron, Ohio:
Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob actually felt entitled to shove their own
cult religion on other alcoholics regardless of the patient's wishes or
beliefs — "for his own good" — the patient didn't get any
say in the matter.
Oh well, have a good day.
== Orange
Hi Mr. Orange, Great job on the website. Just wondering if you could email me a text of the full letter from wilson to father dowling on july 17, 1952 (the one where he talks about receiving help from the netherworld writing the disturbingly neurotic 12+12). Any other interesting tidbits you may have found since your last website update would be appreciated also. Thanks
Hi Vincent,
Thanks for the compliment. I think I have a xerox of
that page,
somewhere in my files,
which are still in a storage locker. I still have to hire a truck and crew to get the
rest of my stuff moved to my new home. I'll see if I can find it then.
In the mean time, the letter is in
The Soul of Sponsorship: The Friendship of Fr. Ed Dowling, S.J. and Bill Wilson
in Letters, edited by Robert Fitzgerald, S.J., pages 59 and 116 (footnote).
Hazelden Pittman Archives Press, Center City, MN, 1995.
Perhaps your library has it, or you can get it through an inter-library loan. That's how
I got it.
As far as other tidbits go, I don't have any new ones since I updated the web site
yesterday afternoon.
Have a good day now.
== Orange
Man, I just came across your rant against AA. I take it you have been pretty
badly mangled by alcoholism one way or another. At least you have clearly
read the book, though I don't believe you understood much of it. Your tone
of rage seems to suggest that you are exactly where many of us have been on
the first day we came wandering into AA — pissed off, looking for gaps in
the logical systems, holding forth like a man among men. Excellent! Right
where you ought to be — a "mental defective" if there ever was one. Now read
on...note that by step 10 it is acknowleged that by {then] you will have
been restored to sanity. Stick around the fellowship, and you can shed that
mantle of anger, hopelessness and contrarianism. You may not believe it
yourself, but even you can get well in AA. My advice to you: shut the hell
up now and get yourself a sponsor.
Good courage to you, friend. Anytime you need us, you can count on us
reaching out a hand to you.
Chris
Hello Chris,
You have not offered one speck of evidence that A.A. actually works or does anything good.
That is typical. You ignore the A.A. failure, and just attack critics
and declare that they are defective because they
are angry at fraud. ("You have a resentment.")
You are doing a good job of proving that A.A. really is a cult.
I consider it a despicable crime to foist quack medicine on sick people and lie to
them about how well it works. Why aren't you angry about that? What is the matter with you?
Don't you have any moral standards?
Oh well, have a good day.
== Orange
Date: Mon, July 26, 2010 7:23 am (answered 2 August 2010)
Hello Orange.
I can only offer what aa has done for me. I drank recklessly and without regard for
25 years and struggled to quit through many so-called solutions to absolutely no
avail. Close to death, it was aa that saved my life and has worked for me without
relapse or a desire to drink for over two years.
I empathize with your perspective — I came in with my own pessimistic ideas about
how aa was not going to work. I am a PhD in cultural and evolutionary anthropology.
I came in a militant atheist eager to kill everyone's God as a personal favor. But I
found myself so devastated by the disease that I was willing to listen. Four months
in, I was doing the work asked of me, just completed a 5th step, and sat in Haiti on
fieldwork wanting a drink for two days. Then the third day in, the obsession to get
drunk was lifted and has not been back for two years.
Before aa, I couldn't rub two sober days together. I know it saved my life, and I
can't say if it would do the same for you. I know that the bitterness and anger you
seem to harbor are a choice you are making, and a choice I once thought I had to
make as well. But, and I only speak for myself here, aa gave me a way out of that
life.
Good luck and good courage to you, Orange.
Chris
Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone
Hello Christopher,
Your argument for A.A. is a good example of
Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc —
"It happened after 'X', so it was caused by 'X'",
as in:
Or, my favorite,
Such anecdotal evidence is worthless for establishing whether a treatment or cure
really works. Only proper testing will reveal if a medicine or treatment actually works.
And
when A.A. was put to the test, it failed miserably.
You are overlooking the fact that you were sick until you quit drinking alcohol,
and then you were okay. You finally quit drinking alcohol when you really wanted to,
not when you just half-assed just-sort-of wanted to.
You finally quit drinking when the suffering from it got to be too great.
The same thing happened with me, too.
Then some cult recruiters came along and got you when you were vulnerable. Fortunately,
I wasn't that vulnerable. I had some previous experience with cults, and saw what they
were doing.
Have a good day and a good life.
== Orange
Hi Orange,
I don't think you would let those e-mails from Tom H. get you down, but just
in case-don't let them. You provide a very important and admirable service
for those of us who end up in the clutches of AA. The one thing that upset
me most was when he said that the taxpayers are supporting you. Well, I
believe you served your country and you earned your disability payment
through your service. Anyway, keep up the good fight.
John
Hi John,
Thanks for the note. I don't let Tom get me down, not too much. I notice the funny
political bias where it's a national tragedy to have the government giving money to
the little people. Benefits for veterans? Government support for low-income housing?
Terrible, terrible. But for some odd reason, those unhappy critics are silent when
it comes to Wall Street bailouts and corporate welfare and tax holidays for the rich.
Hundreds of billions of dollars gone, wasted, to benefit the rich. I cannot even
calculate how many hospitals and schools and universities and bridges and highways
that could have paid for. Or foreclosed houses for the little people.
Oh well, have a good day anyway.
== Orange
I guess I'm supposed to call you orange lol. I ran across your site tonight and
have been reading for about an hour now. I appreciate the obvious hard work and
critical thinking that you have put into it.
I was clean and sober for 7 years
and decided to relapse. Yes, I made a conscious decision to go "back out."
Although I can see some issues that could come from drinking again I'm actually
doing okay compared to my old habits. I am seeing a therapist and we have spent
a lot of time talking about the ways that AA/NA has damaged me mentally,
emotionally, and of course spiritually. Obviously it's difficult to go to your
sponsor with questions and concerns about the fellowship and expect objective
answers. When I had a problem with the fellowship I was always told it was ME
who wasn't understanding and wasn't working hard enough.
My inspiration for
finally splitting from 12 step groups is my last sponsor. After preaching
honesty and taking me through all 12 steps he got arrested in a stolen vehicle
which I'm almost positive he stole. I should have known better because he was a
sketchy character, but he always said the best things in meetings and I felt
like I needed a hard core guy like him for my recovery to really take off.
My
first sponsor tried to get me involved in a pyramid scheme 6 months after he
started sponsoring me. Every time I called him about a problem he would try to
sell me on the scheme. He even called NA his "warm market".
Anyway, I'll stop
trying to make this e-mail a clone of your site. I just wanted to thank you for
speaking out about how AA and NA are hurting people more than helping them and I
also wanted you to know that I support you not only because I beleive in what
you're saying but because I've lived it. I will share the link whenever
possible.
Chris
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the letter and the compliments.
Isn't it incredible what kind of behavior gets condoned under the slogan that
"we are not saints"? All that I can say is, "No, they aren't." And it is crazy to
think that shoving a bunch of alcoholics and drug addicts into a meeting room and
making them do some goofy practices from an old pro-Nazi cult religion will make them
into better people.
I wish you luck with your moderate drinking. Some people do just fine with it, you know.
We discussed that many times before, like
here.
Have a good day.
== Orange
Why do you not mention Amma Cult of the Hugging Saint. It certainly fulfills all the
criteria.
Hello Wendy,
Thanks for the letter. I didn't mention Amma because I had never heard of her before.
She seems to be a new one (relative to the cult leaders of the 'sixties and 'seventies).
Yes, that sure looks like a cult to me. Especially that part about having a goon
squad that goes around beating up the people who criticize Amma.
I found some interesting links:
A Google search for "Amma Cult of the Hugging Saint" will give you many pages of links.
This quote is revealing (from the third link):
Yes, different levels of truth, with the real truth only revealed to
the inner circle, is a standard hallmark of a cult.
It's in the Cult Test.
As a beginner, you can't find out what the real truth is, or what you are getting yourself into,
because they won't tell you. As L. Ron Hubbard said,
And this is ominous:
"the rejection of anything from her previous life that she now associates with 'negativity'."
That is in the cult test too:
Oh well, have a good day anyway.
== Orange
Thank you for your research and commentary on the AA tenets! I am wondering, what
is your background? Two other women and myself are attending AA meetings but are
agnostic and your writings hit the spot!
Thank you again.
Hello Rebecca,
Thanks for the thanks. I'm glad to hear that you are getting something out of my
web site.
My background is highly varied. I went from being a straight-A student
in high school to dropping out at Berkeley in the psychedelic sixties.
And went from the Air Force to years in a hippie commune in the mountains
of northern New Mexico to learning computer programming at Los Alamos,
the birthplace of the A-Bomb.
And also did a long stint with drinking and smoking too much.
Background. What a funny word.
I have answered that "who are you" question in a variety of ways before.
Here is the list.
Have a good day now.
== Orange
I'm not sure but I think you've missed a logic I use often: "since I'm gonna
quit next day, I'm gonna get really loaded this time", find the bottom
perhaps.
Best regards, Thor
Hello Thor,
Thank you for the letter. That is a good one.
I seem to vaguely remember having thought that myself a few times.
I'll add that to
the list of excuses
for not quitting today.
Have a good day now.
== Orange
Dr. Peele:
First off, you are a personal hero of mine and a much-needed voice in the
addiction world. After two decades of systematically disassembling my life
because i was taught beginning at age 19 that I was a "diseased" and
"powerless" person and any thoughts I had of taking control of MY OWN life
were foolish and arrogant, I've been reading *The Diseasing of America* and
your website. Absolutely brilliant stuff. I have now made the decision that
I am a 37 year old grown man and boogey man known as "the disease" can't
dictate my moves on this planet. I also take solace that confidence in my
own ability is not a liability but, rather, a gift that *celebrates* who I
am.
Anyhow, I think the biggest proof we have that AA's don't really believe
that they have a disease is evidenced in no coordinated effort to *cure* the
disease. I'm not talking about "treating" or "arresting" the "disease;" I'm
talking about an actual eradication of it, whatever "it" is — which of course
they still can't answer either.
Alcoholics Anonymous boasts a world-wide membership of around 2M (though I'm
guessing that is ~85% USA and Canada). But there's no coordinated efforts of
inebriates in church basements and smoke-filled club houses who are
attempting to pool resources to physically *cure* what ails them? Hogwash!
If only half of AA's members contributed $5 to the "cure" then that would be
$5M toward research on curing this "thing." Could you imagine a room full of
cancer-survivors or diabetics getting together every night of the week yet
nobody in the group looking for ways to network, pool resources, and
*physically cure* their malady. Of course they would be spearheading the effort for a
cure because they are the ones most in peril. But alcoholics, because they
don't really believe they have a disease but it is PC to pay lip service to
it, have no such fundraising effort.
Or could it be, just possibly, that they are afraid that if we truly began
researching how to cure "the disease" we might just find that we can't cure
what doesn't actually exist?
Again, thank you for your great work and feel free to post this on your
website or forward as needed.
Jeff C.
"A horse doesn't care how much you know until he knows how much you care."
Hello Jeff,
Thanks for the letter. You make a darned good point. If it's a disease, why no big
campaign to cure it? We have yellow-ribbon campaigns for every nasty disease
from cancer to diabetes to Parkinson's Disease.
I remember when I was a kid, the March of Dimes worked on curing tuberculosis.
And then there was the big campaign against polio.
And by and large, the doctors are winning, too.
They keep on conquering one disease after another.
But with alcoholism, the A.A. people just sit on
their duffs and declare that alcoholism cannot be cured, and
"medications are only a band-aid on the problem."
That is very strange behavior. I don't think that they really want there to be any cure
for alcoholism except
"join A.A., go to meetings, get a sponsor, read the Big Book, and do the
12 Steps."
They are afraid of being left behind.
That is not a cure; that is a cult.
If we came up with a real working pill for alcoholism, that would destroy A.A., and I
don't think they want that. I am reminded of
what Aldous Huxley wrote
about how Freudian psychoanalysis would be rendered obsolete by medicines
that treat mental illness, and how the Freudians were not happy about that.
Have a good day.
== Orange
Last updated 27 September 2013. |
