General Interest > Open Free for All
Fornits attitudes on AA border on the absurd....
Anonymous:
Re: DAYTOP Did Me Great Harm in the Long Run
Postby psy » 01 Dec 2008, 23:32
Interesting you include "some other group". If you're referring to what I think you are, i'd tend to agree. Institutionalized 12 steppery performs a forced conversion function as a front group for the 12 step religion as a whole. You might find this chapter of this book (link) by Charles Bufe interesting. It's a controversial viewpoint that some are very opposed to but personally I think it makes a lot of sense.
:shamrock:
Posted by Danny Bennison >> 03 March 2010, 23:27
Interesting thoughts here from folks that I don't believe have ever been a member or they were and probably left because they chose to drink or get high. Which if you read the literature of the twelve traditions Tradition 3 states, "The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking." So what am I saying here. Well I have a big ole group think here (fornits) to contend with. Which i've noticed that the "Orange Papers" and this article below is your reference to AA being a cult or "group think". I also noticed that when you folks think your overwhelming right you will not engage.
I have talked with a few of you off line about A.A. and found a huge ocean of ignorance when it comes to what is A.A., how A.A. operates and how A.A. members conduct themselves.
:shamrock:
Posted by psy.. 01 Dec 2008, 23:32
AA: Cult or Cure?
* Home
* The Library
AA Cult or Cure?
* Preface II
* Chapter 1
* Chapter 2
* Chapter 3
* Chapter 4
* Chapter 5
* Chapter 6
* Chapter 7
* Chapter 8
* Chapter 9
* Chapter 10
* Chapter 11
* Alternatives
* Bibliography
* Index
Is A.A. a Cult?
(conclusions)
Is Alcoholics Anonymous a cult? That's almost as difficult to answer as the question, "What is a cult?" The difficulty is compounded by the fact that AA has very close ties—indeed, incestuous relationships—with a large number of "related facilit[ies]" and "outside enterprise." These include the NCADD, ASAM, and the 93% of all inpatient alcoholism treatment facilities that utilize AA indoctrination as part—usually the centerpiece—of their programs, and that are for the most part staffed and controlled by 12-stepping "professionals." I believe that these front groups should be considered part of, or at least extensions of, AA, just as I believe that groups that are staffed and controlled by Communist Party members, and that advance Communist Party ideology, should be considered part of, or at least ex-tensions of, the Communist Party.
Both AA and the Communists learned long ago that the setting up of front groups is a convenient means of attracting or influencing the unwary, advancing their own agendas, and avoiding both criticism and responsibility (for the actions of their front groups). Here, I intend to hold AA responsible for the actions of its front groups. I will, however, at times maintain a distinction between what Vince Fox refers to as "communal AA" (free meetings and fellowship of the type described in Chapter 1) and what he refers to as "institutional AA" (the 12-step treatment industry). Where I make no distinction between the two, my remarks apply equally to both.
Rather than attempt to determine whether AA (communal or institutional) fits the very broad definitions of a "cult" offered at the beginning of the previous chapter—definitions which fit many mainstream religions and political organizations, as well as groups generally conceded to be cults—it seems more appropriate to determine how many of the characteristics of the destructive cults can be found in AA.
Considering in order the 21 criteria listed in the previous chapter:
1) Is AA religiously oriented? Unequivocally yes .
While many AA members would assert that AA is a "spiritual" organization rather than a religious one, there is little doubt that they are simply parroting a rote assertion common in AA. In fact, AA's religiosity is so obvious that even the courts have taken note of it and appeals courts have consistently ruled (in cases challenging mandated attendance) that AA is a religious organization. One lower-court case is illustrative; as the court stated in a 1984 Wisconsin ruling (Grandberg V. Ashland County):
Alcoholics Anonymous materials . . . and the testimony of the witness established beyond a doubt that religious activities, as defined in constitutional law, were a part of the treatment program. The distinction between religion and spirituality is meaningless, and serves merely to confuse the issue.
It's also important to remember that AA was founded by Bill Wilson, an enthusiastic member of the evangelical Christian Oxford Group Movement, and by Dr. Bob Smith (also a member of the Oxford Groups) who insisted that new members get down on their knees and pray Christian prayers with him. In addition, and significantly, AA (before it adopted its name) operated as part of the Oxford Groups in both New York and Akron; and in Akron, birthplace of AA, members of what was to become AA identified themselves as the "alcoholic squadron of the Akron Oxford Group" during AA's formative years.
As well, AA literature is filled with references to "God" and a "Higher Power," and the so-called Big Book's chapter, "We Agnostics," concludes with the words, "God restored us to our right minds . . . When we drew near to Him He disclosed Himself to us!" Further, the 12 steps, the core of AA's program, are simply a codification of Oxford Group principles; and fully half of the steps mention "God," "Him," or a "Power greater than ourselves."
In the early days of AA, the religious nature of the AA "program," as outlined in the "Big Book," was openly acknowledged. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick's review of the "Big Book," which AA submitted unsuccessfully to the New York Herald Tribune, and later managed to have printed in several religious
periodicals, states, "the core of their whole procedure is religious." Even today, a large majority of AA meetings end with the Lord's Prayer.
In every respect, AA's orientation passes the "duck" test: If it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck. In this case, the "duck" is AA's religious nature.
2) Is AA irrational, does it discourage skepticism and rational thinking? Again, yes.
AA's emphasis is primarily on emotional experience ("spiritual awakening") and "overcoming" doubts en route to spiritual "knowledge." In the "We Agnostics" chapter of the "Big Book," Bill Wilson approvingly cites a former agnostic who "humbly offered himself to his Maker—then he knew."
AA aphorisms are even more revealing. Two common ones are "Your best thinking got you here" and "Utilize, don't analyze." It would be hard to think of more virulently anti-intellectual epigrams. They're all too similar to the Moonie slogan, "You Think Too Much." The distance between these slogans and their more famous counterpart, "Ignorance Is Strength," from Orwell's 1984, is frighteningly short.
Another popular AA saying is "Fake it until you make it." In other words, members should sit on their doubts and mouth accepted AA wisdom until they feel comfortable doing it. This sounds more like a recipe for brainwashing than a recipe for "spiritual awakening."
Any doubts about this matter can be quickly resolved by a visit to almost any AA meeting. Newcomers who express doubts are normally assailed with bits of wisdom such as those just cited, and are almost always assured that doubting leads to drinking.
3) Is AA dogmatic? Unfortunately, yes.
It's difficult to label as dogmatic an organization in which the most important guiding principles (the 12 steps) are only "suggestions." But despite this disclaimer, a great many AA members are extremely dogmatic. They regard the 12 steps with the reverence that a fundamentalist has for the Ten Commandments, and they regard the "Big Book" as a funda-mentalist would the Bible.
Anyone doubting this should attend a few AA meetings. At most meetings, even mild criticism of the steps or the "Big Book" will be met with sarcasm, anger, and put-downs. For AA true believers, the steps and the "Big Book" are received wisdom (which, indeed, Bill Wilson believed them to be); and they are to be blindly followed, not questioned.
Further confirmation of AA's dogmatism is provided by its attitude toward the very many alcohol abusers who investigate AA but can't stomach its program. Rather than attempt to see why so many alcohol abusers reject AA (remember, these are oftentimes desperate individuals urgently seeking help), and whether anything—changes in the AA program, referral to the many existing alternative programs—can be done to help them, AA does nothing to help these vulnerable people, and instead blames them for rejecting AA, maintaining that the reason they can't stand AA is their "character defects," their lack of "ho
nesty," or their lack of a genuine desire to stop drinking. This happens In every single case. And there have been millions. To its dogmatic members, the AA program is perfect; the problem lies solely with those who reject it.
This is the attitude of a callous, dogmatic religious sect, not that of a rational, humanistic organization concerned with helping those afflicted by what it insists is a deadly "illness."
4) Do AA members have a "chosen people" mentality? Yes.
Given that AA members believe that they alone have The Truth as regards overcoming alcoholism, it would be surprising if they didn't have such a mentality. The callous put-downs of those who come to AA for help and reject it provide confirmation of this, as do the common put-downs of sober former alcohol abusers who reject AA as "dry drunks." Further, one often hears comments at meetings about being "better than well" or the like —testimony to the miraculous effects of working the steps in producing human beings happier and more spiritually developed than "normies."
Granted, the "chosen people" mentality of AA members is relatively mild in comparison with that of members of cults such as the Moonies and Hare Krishnas, but it's still undeniably there.
5) Does AA elevate its own ideology over experience, observation and logic? Again, unquestionably yes.
AA has The Truth, and it assiduously ignores the mountain of evidence that AA is quite probably entirely ineffective as a means of alcoholism treatment, and that AA may actually do more harm than good. This evidence comes from the controlled studies of AA's effectiveness, as well as from AA's own analysis of its triennial membership surveys. (See Chapter 9 for a detailed discussion of these matters.)
The alarm bells would have gone off inside any rational organization when the first controlled study was published in 1961. But AA ignored it, and has continued to ignore it, just as it ignored the more sophisticated, more convincing controlled study published in 1980. AA has also ignored its own analysis of its triennial membership surveys, which shows that the rate of recovery via AA is almost certainly no better than the rate of spontaneous remission, and may in fact be worse. Instead of taking a serious look at all of this data, AA and its supporters ignore it while hypocritically presenting AA as the only road to recovery.i This, quite obviously, is the posture of an ideology-driven cult.
6) Is AA separatist? Yes, but only somewhat more so than other special interest groups.
AA members are self-selected "alcoholics," as opposed to the supposedly 90% of the population who are non-alcoholics. The more extreme outward signs of separatism—the taking of new names and the adoption of distinctive dress or other alterations in personal appearance—are, however, absent.
The one area in which AA members definitely show signs of separatism is in their use of jargon. As Ken Ragge points out, in AA terms often take on meanings different from their standard English meanings—for instance, "sobriety," rather than merely meaning "unintoxicated," means "a special state of Grace gained by working the Steps and maintaining absolute abstinence. It is characterized by feelings of Serenity and Gratitude. It is a state of living according to God's will, not one's own. It is sanity."ii
7) Does AA see itself as the exclusive holder of the truth? Unfortunately, yes—at least in regard to the treatment of alcohol abuse.
If AA didn't believe this, it wouldn't ignore the evidence pointing to its ineffectiveness (see Chapter 9). As well, while there are a few scattered and unimportant acknowledgements in AA literature that at least the occasional alcohol abuser can recover without AA, at the vast majority of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings newcomers are routinely told that participation in AA and acceptance of the AA "program" (basically the 12 steps) is the only way to overcome an alcohol problem. Compounding this, the same message is frequently delivered by alcoholism "professionals" and "para-professionals" (who are often zealous AA members, some with little if any medical or psychological training) and by the mass media, which uncritically relies upon these "experts" for much of its information on alcoholism.
8) Does AA claim to have special knowledge that will only be revealed to the initiated? A qualified no.
AA makes no claims that it has special knowledge that will be revealed only to those who are "ready for it." But AA does claim that "working a good program" or "working the steps" leads to "serenity" and (at least often) "a spiritual awakening." Thus, these promises are used to induce members to stay in AA and to immerse themselves in its indoctrination program. This seems at least somewhat manipulative, but it's a far cry from the practice of one well-known cult which charges its members tens, sometimes hundreds, of thousands of dollars for ever more "advanced" courses, the eventual payoff of which is that they will be "cleared" of "body thetans"—the evil spirits of beings blown up by hydrogen bombs in volcanos 85 million years ago.
9) Does AA employ mind control techniques? For the most part, in communal AA, no. In institutional AA, yes.
While communal AA does employ threats (of jails, institutions, and death), prayer, and innocuous rituals, such as the chanting of "Keep coming back, it works!" at the end of meetings, these things should not be confused with severe mind control techniques such as exhaustion, mal-nourishment, and hypnotic chanting. Communal AA does nothing to alter its members' consciousness beyond the serving of a mild drug (caffeine) at its meetings, and, beyond admonitions, the use of low-key rituals, sacred texts, and group pressure, it does nothing to control their thoughts—with the significant exception of the use of thought-stopping jargon.
In institutional AA, however, coerced participants are kept very busy, given little time alone, deprived of outside contacts, allowed to read only approved (that is, indoctrination) literature, forced into making false confessions, subjected to attacks, threats, and ridicule for raising questions or making critical comments, and subjected to extreme pressure by a unanimous majority to change their belief systems. Clearly, mind-control is the essence of institutional AA's indoctrination program.
10) Does AA employ thought-stopping language? Yes, but its employment is less stringent than in many religious cults.
As Ken Ragge points out, the function of many AA slogans, cliches and aphorisms is to short-circuit critical thinking.iii The purpose of such slogans as "Keep It Simple, Stupid," "Utilize, don't analyze," "Your best thinking got you here," and "Let go and let God," is to get AA members to stop thinking for themselves and, instead, to accept divine guidance (that is, guidance from AA). And the function of the in-reality-meaningless term "dry drunk" is to discredit critics and apostates. By labeling such troublesome persons "dry drunks," AA members devalue them as persons and can thus conveniently ignore what they say as merely the ravings of "insanity."
But as insidious as this is, it's not to be compared with the hypnotic chanting employed by the Moonies and Hare Krishnas, which in combination with other mind control techniques render their members so debilitated that it requires months if not years for them to fully recover their critical faculties after leaving these cults.
11) Does AA manipulate its members through guilt? Yes.
Guilt is inherent in AA dogma. It's enshrined in the 12 steps with their references to "our wrongs," "our shortcomings," "defects of character" and a "moral inventory." As well, AA members almost invariably suffer intense guilt when they drink or go on benders (as a great many do at one time or another), and are quite penitent when they return, and thus very likely to embrace accepted AA wisdom as their one and only hope of "sobriety." (Such "slips" lead to a considerable loss of prestige—whether the "slip" involves a single beer or two fifths of whiskey—which amplifies the unpleasant effects of the guilt incurred by not "working a good program" and drinking.)
But there is no guru-figure or authoritarian hierarchy to manipulate AA's members, no matter how guilty they might feel. So, the AA "program" fosters guilt in abundance, but there is no one to manipulate it for personal advantage. It should be added, though, that AA-induced (or reinforced) guilt does make members feel sinful and fearful, and thus tends to tie them to AA, because temporary relief from their unpleasant feelings is available at meetings.
12) Does AA employ "the cult of confession"? Does it use confession for purification and to tie its members to it? Yes.
Confession in AA comes in four forms: 1) private confession from "pigeon" to sponsor (as "suggest[ed]" in the fifth step); 2) public confession by speakers at AA meetings; 3) public confession ("sharing") by participants at AA meetings; and 4) in institutional AA, false confession.
The purpose of the first type of confession is almost certainly to tie the new member to AA, as it deepens the pigeon's involvement in "working the steps," that is, it deepens his or her participation in AA's sequential indoctrination program. It leads to the next step, and it also (at least often) deepens the relationship with his or her sponsor, the person responsible for over-seeing the indoctrination process.
The second type of confession is an odd one in that speaker's confession is normally boastful and carries not a trace of remorse. The purpose of such a confession is to establish credibility with listeners, thus making them more receptive to the speaker's message. So, this type of confession also serves the purpose of tying both listeners and the speaker (who receives enjoyable positive attention from the audience) to AA.
The third type serves both the "purification" and "tying" functions. It allows the confessing member to bare his soul and relieve his guilt feelings; and the acceptance that those making such confessions find binds them more closely to AA.
The fourth type is common in institutional AA. Many unwilling individuals are coerced into attending 12-step treatment centers (usually by the courts, their employers, or professional organizations to which they belong). When such unwilling persons are in treatment, tremendous pressure is often brought to bear to force them to confess that they are "alcoholics," even though they often do not believe themselves to be. Many of the persons so pressured have little choice but to knuckle under and make false confessions.
They are also often forced to exaggerate the bad incidents in their drinking histories, or to make up incidents out of whole cloth. The purpose of these confessions is exactly the same as the false confessions obtained by Red Chinese "thought reformers": the confessions signify the submission of the clients/prisoners to their coercers, and they confirm the coercers' ideology.
13) Does AA have a charismatic leader? No, although it does have dead saints.
To his credit, Bill Wilson never sought dictatorial control of AA, and in fact—through devising AA's anarchist form of organization—did much to ensure that no individual could ever take control of AA. Wilson was content to be a first among equals while alive, though especially toward the end of his life he was the object of unsought veneration.
At present, Bill Wilson and, to a lesser extent, "Dr. Bob" are revered by most AA members, and Wilson's writings have attained the status of scripture in the minds of many. But, thanks largely to Bill Wilson, there is no charismatic leader of Alcoholics Anonymous, and it is exceedingly unlikely that there ever will be.
14) Does AA have an authoritarian, hierarchical structure? As for communal AA, definitely no. As for institutional AA, yes.
Thanks largely to the 12 traditions, communal AA is a model of anarchist organization. All AA groups are autonomous. There is no hierarchy giving orders to members, and it is very clear that the relatively few paid staffers are there to "serve," not to rule. Significantly, the structure of AA is often pictured as an inverted pyramid, with the members on top and the paid staff on the bottom.
The situation is different in institutional AA. There, almost all entities are corporations or government agencies, which, of course, are hierarchically organized and authoritarian in nature, with some giving orders and others taking them. In institutional AA, the staffers are there to rule (i.e., to force clients to accept AA and its premises), not to serve; they hold a great deal of power over their coerced clients.
15) Does AA insist on submission of the individual to the "will of God"? As for communal AA, yes and no. As for institutional AA, yes.
A quick reading of the 12 steps leaves little doubt about AA's position. Step 3 states, "[We] made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God," although it does add the qualifying phrase, "as we understood Him." Another important qualification is that making this decision is officially only a "suggestion," as are the other steps. In practice, however, at a very large majority of AA meetings a great deal of pressure is placed on members to embrace this and the other "suggestions." (And in institutional AA, the steps—with their submission of the individual to the will of God—are simply crammed down clients' throats.) Those who do not accept the 12 steps are frequently made to feel unwelcome at meetings. There is even a common put-down term for such members: "one steppers." This is a bad situation, though it would be far worse but for the official AA positions that the steps are only suggestions and that the only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking.
Another very important limiting factor is the fact that there is no charismatic leader, authoritarian hierarchy, or priest caste in AA to act as interpreter(s) of "God's will." There are many members who attempt to take on the priest's role, but, fortunately, thanks to AA's structure and official positions, their influence is somewhat limited. (Of course, in institutional AA, the paid staff often take on this role—at least to the extent of demanding acceptance of the 12 steps and other AA doctrines, and using coercion to force that acceptance—given that a great many of them are true believers and are in positions of authority over their institutions' clients.)
16) Is AA self-absorbed? Absolutely.
In his discussion of the failure of the Washingtonian Society (a 19thcentury self-help organization similar in some ways to AA) in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Bill Wilson states, "Had they been left to themselves, and had they stuck to their one goal, they might have found the rest of the answer."iv The implication, of course, is that AA has the answer.
Because AA believes that it has the answer to alcoholism, AA has shown a marked disinterest in experimental and clinical studies of alcoholism and alcoholism treatment, and in the many non-12-step approaches to alcohol abuse, some of which show considerable promise. Significantly, none of the dozens of books and pamphlets published by AA deal with these important topics. They all deal with AA itself, or, in a few cases, with day-by-day ways to remain sober.
Because of its organizational principles, AA has never contributed a dime toward medical research on the causes and the treatment of alcoholism. Further, because Alcoholics has the answer, AA as a whole has not only shown no interest in alternative alcohol-abuse treatments, but many AA members and front groups have shown marked hostility to both professional, non-12-step treatment and to nonreligious self-help programs such as Moderation Management, Rational Recovery, S.M.A.R.T. Recovery, and Secular Organizations for Sobriety.
While I was living in San Francisco in the late 1980s, S.O.S. members who put up flyers at AA hangouts told me that the flyers were ripped down very quickly. (None of the flyers attacked AA; they all simply advertised S.O.S. meetings.) One S.O.S. member told me that before finding S.O.S., he had phoned the local AA intergroup office to see if they could refer him to S.O.S., and the AA volunteer who answered told him, "I don't know how to contact them, and I wouldn't tell you if I did." The S.O.S. newsletter is filled with reports of similar and even more offensive incidents. This type of petty harassment evidently continues to the present, as a few days before sending this book to press I read on S.M.A.R.T. Recovery's web site of similar recent incidents involving SMART flyers.
As for institutional AA, for many years its "medical" experts have conducted a jihad against controlled drinking programs for alcohol abusers (and against researchers who advocate such programs—see Chapter 8 for details), despite a great deal of evidence that such programs work well—almost certainly better than AA.v One still frequently hears 12-stepping "experts" piously proclaiming, without a shred of evidence, that mere advocacy of controlled drinking causes alcoholics to drink themselves to death.vi
What makes all of this especially harmful is that (as was shown in Chapter 7) AA is, at best, an effective treatment program for only a tiny fraction of alcohol abusers. Through its self-absorption (and the ofttrumpeted claim that AA is not only effective, but the only effective treatment program for alcoholism), AA is contributing nothing toward the understanding of alcohol abuse, and, under its own terms, is engaging in a vicious game of blame-the-victim (of what it insists is a deadly "illness") with the approximately 95% of "alcoholics" who are not members of AA. (According to AA, the reasons that they are not members of AA are their "shortcomings," "defects of character," and lack of "honesty.")
The attitudes and behaviors exhibited by AA toward clinical and experimental research and toward alternative treatment programs are not those of a rational organization dedicated to the effective treatment of alcoholism. Rather, AA's attitudes and behaviors are those of a dogmatic, self-absorbed religious cult.
Another facet of AA's self-absorption is seen in its members' attitudes toward the high aspirations some of their number held before they joined AA. Within AA, members generally view such aspirations as contributing to alcoholism, because they believe that lofty goals lead to frustration and feelings of failure, which in turn lead to drinking. Because of this, AA members normally offer very little encouragement of each others' interests and pursuits outside of AA, and sometimes actively discourage non-AA-related aspirations, as Dr. Margaret Bean comments, "This can set up a regressive spiral in which no one suggests that a member can or should strive for anything more challenging or interesting than sobriety."vii And the proper way to strive for sobriety is within, and only within, AA itself.
17) Does AA have dual purposes? As for both communal and institutional AA, yes.
Communal AA presents itself as the answer to alcoholism, and thus a great many persons come to it for help in overcoming alcohol problems. But AA's purpose is not to help individuals overcome alcohol problems; rather, it's to indoctrinate them into AA's 12-step religious program. If the true purpose of AA was to help problem drinkers to overcome alcohol problems, AA would be greatly concerned about the research evidence indicating that AA is ineffective. One would further expect that AA would initiate studies of its own effectiveness versus that of other self-help groups and versus that of various forms of professional treatment. As well, one would expect that AA would recognize that one size does not fit all and would gladly refer individuals who come to it, but who don't like it, to other self-help groups. AA does none of these things. AA's sole purpose is to "carry this [religious] message to alcoholics."
Institutional AA goes even further. Many of its members make a great deal of money from utilizing AA's religious indoctrination program in a medical setting. The costliness and very questionable effectiveness of this kind of "treatment" seems not to bother them a whit. The evidence that 12-step inpatient treatment does no good and may in fact be harmful (see Chapters 7 and 8) is of no matter to them. They have The Truth, and they're quite content to go on making money from it.
18) Does Alcoholics Anonymous economically exploit its members? As for communal AA, no. As for institutional AA, yes.
All donations to communal AA are purely voluntary; there are no membership dues; and AA even places a cap of $1000 per year on individual donations to the organization by its members; and it will not accept any donations by non-members. Another example of communal AA's nonexploitive economic practices is provided by its literature: its books are very cheaply priced, with most selling for less than half of what comparable commercially published books would sell for, and its pamphlets are freely given away at meetings.
Institutional AA, on the other hand, charges many thousands of dollars to its clients for what was once so freely given (the AA program). That program is the centerpiece of most inpatient alcoholism treatment programs, and though they do provide some additional services, the high prices that they charge hardly seem justified.viii The insurance industry apparently agrees with this assessment, and it has become increasingly reluctant to pay for 12-step inpatient treatment in recent years, with the result that occupancy rates and length of stay have both declined considerably over the last decade. This is hardly surprising given that the costs for a 28-day stay at a cheap facility run to about $10,000, and most institutions charge considerably more than that. For example, two swank Tucson-area 12-step treatment centers both charge approximately $20,000 for a 28-day stayix; and others charge far more.
19) Does AA employ deceptive recruiting techniques? Yes, arguably.
AA does no recruiting whatsoever in the normal sense of the word, that of actively seeking new members. But it could be argued that AA (or at least many of its members) does engage in deceptive recruiting by falsely representing AA as the only effective treatment for alcoholism. At newcomers' meetings, AA members almost invariably repeat the lies that alcoholism is a progressive, fatal disease, that alcohol abusers have no control after they take the first drink, and that AA is the only alternative to jails, institutions, or death. It should be emphasized, though, that most if not all of those who present this misinformation believe what they say, and are not engaging in deliberate deception as a recruiting tool.
As for 12-step treatment facilities, their ads commonly downplay or don't even mention that their primary focus is introduction to and participation in AA. This is understandable given that most people would be reluctant to pay $15,000 or $20,000 for something that is readily available for free. Newcomers lured through such advertising now form a large part of AA's membership. According to AA's 1996 membership survey brochure, 40% of AA members now list introduction at a treatment facility as one of the three "factors most responsible for [their] coming to A.A."
20) Is AA possessive? Does it go to lengths to retain members? No, absolutely not.
AA makes no organizational attempts whatsoever to retain members, and individual members normally do nothing beyond making a few friendly phone calls to other members who haven't shown up at meetings for a few days. In fact, AA's tendency in this area is so contrary to that of most cults that it creates serious problems for researchers attempting to gauge the effectiveness of AA, because of the difficulty of determining membership status. In AA, membership is purely a matter of self-definition; those who say they're members are members. Similarly, due to the extreme and unnecessary emphasis on anonymity within AA, it is next to impossible for anyone (including researchers and service workers within AA) to accurately track AA members.
21) Does AA provide a closed, all-encompassing environment? As for communal AA, no. As for institutional AA, yes.
Communal AA has no live-in facilities, though it does provide a social milieu into which many members plunge when first introduced to AA. This is entirely understandable. Many new members are quite lonely (having driven off friends, lovers, and family while drinking heavily), so the friendliness and acceptance provided by AA is quite attractive to them; in addition, AA provides a "safe" environment (at least at meetings and AA hangouts) in which they won't be tempted to drink.
The closest that communal AA comes to providing a closed, allencompassing environment is the traditional "90 meetings in 90 days" recommendation. Newcomers who follow this recommendation spend many of their waking hours at AA meetings. Additionally, in the larger cities, there is usually at least one AA hangout, and there are often several clubs and other meeting places. Finally, there is an endless amount of AA volunteer work available to those who want to do it—answering the office phone, making 12th-step calls (to "carry the message" to other alcohol abusers), serving as meeting officers or as group service representatives, etc. So, those who want to can easily spend their entire social lives in the world of AA. In fact, members receive much encouragement to immerse themselves in this manner in "the A.A. way of life."
One anonymous member, in a Mensa special interest group publication, describes his plunge into the world of Alcoholics Anonymous:
After sixty days in the hospital, I was permitted to go back to my job . . . There I became an A.A. addict. I went to a meeting almost every night. I volunteered for the intergroup desk so my Saturdays were spent talking to drunks on the phone.
During this time, I progressed from closet atheist, to passive acceptance, to starry-eyed faith and entered that strange world where the creator of the universe was looking after minor problems like my sex life and auto battery.
It occurred to me one day with a jolt that I had begun a life of superstitious ritual. It was a sort of magic formula of prayers, meetings, and shallow talk that was "keeping me sober."
As bad as this is, institutional AA is worse. In its guise as 12-step inpatient treatment facilities, institutional AA provides a textbook example of a closed, all-encompassing environment. As in all such environments, its purpose is ideological indoctrination—in this case, getting clients to embrace the AA "program" and its attendant baggage (the disease model, loss of control, etc.); patients' activities are to a very large extent dictated by the staff; many patients are coerced into being there (as an alternative to job loss, imprisonment, or professional decertification) and must at least feign acceptance of the prescribed ideology; institutions routinely restrict what patients may read to AA materials and related 12-step books and pamphlets; TV-viewing and radio-listening are routinely prohibited or greatly restricted; and clients' contact with those outside the institution is normally prohibited or greatly restricted. The only redeeming feature of the closed, allencompassing environment of institutional AA is that the individuals subjected to it must endure it for a relatively short time—though for some that "short time" can seem like an eternity.
22) Is AA Millenarian? In short, no.
There is not a trace of millenarianism in AA.
23) Does AA employ violence, coercion, and harassment? As for communal AA, no. As for institutional AA, yes—at least as regards coercion.
The use of violence by communal AA is so contrary to AA traditions as to be unthinkable. Communal AA employs no coercion. And to the best of my knowledge, the relatively few incidents of harassment directed against groups such as SMART, which are often perceived as rivals to AA, have been mild—verbal rudeness and the ripping down of flyers—and all of them have been committed by over-zealous individual AA members. As far as I know, not a single incident of harassment of "rival" groups or outside critics has been committed by a paid AA service worker.
The case of dissidents within AA is somewhat different. Within the organization, dissident members (especially atheists) are very much secondclass citizens; they're often scorned and belittled; and they find it virtually impossible to have their views presented in AA's literature. But these things are as nothing compared with the violence, coercion, and harassment em-ployed by many cults.
In institutional AA, matters are very different. Institutional AA does not employ violence, but, within its own precincts, it does employ coercion and harassment. In this regard, it's important to remember that most patients are coerced into attendance. In many cases, their alternative to submitting to institutional AA is job loss, imprisonment, suspension or expulsion (from teams/leagues, in the case of sports figures), or decertification (in the case of medical personnel). In a very real sense, such persons are prisoners of the 12-step treatment ind
ustry. This gives their warders (the paid staff) tremendous leverage over them, and the warders usually take full advantage of that leverage; they customarily exert a great deal of pressure on such unwilling patients, the purpose of which is to break their resistance to AA. If this sounds like a scenario from The Manchurian Candidate, it's hardly surprising.
Conclusions
So, is AA a cult? As seems obvious from the foregoing, the answer will differ if you consider communal AA separately from institutional AA, or if you consider them as a single entity. As regards communal AA, the number of definite "yes" matches to the 23 characteristics listed above was 11, while the number of definite "nos" was 7; as for institutional AA, the number of definite "yeses" was 16, and the number of definite "nos" was only 3.
To put these results in context, I compared the scores achieved by communal and institutional AA with the scores based on my evaluation of five groups often labeled as cults: the Church of Scientology; the People's Temple; Unification Church (the Moonies); Synanon; and Kerista Village. None of these groups scored a "perfect" 23, but some came close. The Moonies came in at 22 "yeses"; the Church of Scientology and the People's Temple came in at 21 "yeses"; and Synanon came in with 20 "yeses." In contrast, the low scorer was Kerista Village, which had a score of 14.
To put these results further in perspective, I chose the ten cult attributes that I consider most important, and for those ten attributes I compared the scores of communal and institutional AA with those of the Church of Scientology, the Moonies, and Kerista Village. The attributes I consider most important are religious orientation; irrationality; dogmatism; mind control techniques; a charismatic leader; a hierarchical, authoritarian structure; submission of the individual to the will of God; economic exploitation; a closed, all-encompassing environment; and the use of violence, coercion, and/or harassment. I assigned the Moonies a score of a "perfect" 10 for these attributes and the Scientologists a score of 9 (their charismatic leader is dead), while Kerista Village came in with a score of 6, institutional AA with a score of 9, and communal AA with a score of 4.
Thus, if you consider communal AA separately from institutional AA, you're left with little choice but to conclude that AA isn't a cult—though it comes close, and does have many dangerous, cult-like tendencies. But if you regard institutional AA as an extension of communal AA and consider them as one, you're inexorably drawn to the conclusion that AA is a cult. Communal/institutional AA definitely isn't in the same league with vicious, destructive cults such as the Moonies and the People's Temple, but it does display an alarmingly high number of similarities to such groups. All in all, communal/institutional AA merits the description given to it by Stanton Peele: "Cult Lite."x
Finally,it's worth noting that while brazenly destructive cults such as the People's Temple and Heaven's Gate have considerably worse effects upon their individual members than AA has upon its individual members, the commonly cited religious cults have very limited numbers of followers (despite self-serving gross over estimates) and have very little influence in society at large, while AA is a mass organization with a very extensive hidden structure that has tremendous influence in society. Thus, it could well be that AA does more harm to society—and to far greater numbers of people—than all other religious cults combined.
1. A good example of this is provided by George Vaillant, in his influential The Natural History of Alcoholism (London: Harvard University Press, 1983). In his book, Vaillant strongly recommends that alcohol abusers be referred to AA, despite his own research evidence which indicates that AA participation at best does no good, and that relapse rates are higher for AA participants than for those who quit on their own.
2. More Revealed, by Ken Ragge. Henderson, Nevada: Alert Publishing, 1992, p. 137.
i
3. Ibid., pp. 127-138.
ii4. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, by Bill Wilson. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, 1982, p. 178.
iii5. For an enlightening discussion of this holy war against controlled drinking and its advocates, see "Denial—of Reality and Freedom—in Addiction Research and Treatment," by Stanton Peele. Bulletin of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors, 5(4): 149-166, 1986. Also available at http://www.frw.uva.nl/cedro/peele/lib/denial.html with a 1996 ad-dendum.
6. See, for instance, "The American Psychiatric Association's attacks on Moderation Management—does the APA oppose moderate drinking treatment goals?," by Stanton Peele, at http://www..frw.uva.cedro/peele/debate/woody.html
iv7. "Alcoholics Anonymous," by Dr. Margaret Bean. Psychiatric Annals/5:3 March 1975, p. 10/86.
8. One expensive service commonly assumed necessary, detoxification, is actually necessary only to a small percentage of long-term, heavy drinkers. According to researcher Vince Fox, only 15% of heavy drinkers experience significant physical withdrawal symptoms when they stop drinking; and withdrawal symptoms are life threatening in only about 25% of those cases. In other words, only about 4% of long-term heavy drinkers experience life-threatening physical withdrawal symptoms. See Addiction, Change & Choice: The New View of Alcoholism, by Vince Fox. Tucson, Arizona: See Sharp Press, 1993, p. 191.
v9. Telephone quotations to the author, July 7, 1997.
vi10. The term is used in Stanton Peele's "Online Library" web site's "Controversy" page:
http://www.frw.uva.nl/cedro/peele/debate
:shamrock: :shamrock:
Danny.............
Joel:
Edited: Wednesday, October 06, 2010
Anonymous:
--- Quote from: "Joel" ---What would be a good treatment model for alcoholics, provided it does not involve mind control techniques by past/present members of the communist party?
--- End quote ---
You just proved my point....A ocean of ignorance based upon no first hand knowledge. Keep reading and drinking my man...lol :shamrock: :shamrock:
Danny,....
Anonymous:
--- Quote from: "Joel" ---What would be a good treatment model for alcoholics, provided it does not involve mind control techniques by past/present members of the communist party?
12 steps programs 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tPNgHrI ... re=related
12 steps programs 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uwx2P5L ... re=related
12 steps programs 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PjpOsE3 ... re=related
Why AA doesn't work for over 97% of people who join
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ_6flmL ... re=related
Bill W Cult leader speaks of "The only way" AA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNmFjszz ... re=related
--- End quote ---
:shamrock: :shamrock:
Yeah, that's what I want to do discuss A.A. with you Joel with the premise of your argument is the relevance of"you tube" skits.
Just shows your motives towards discussing A.A. Like I said keep reading and drinking, you'll find it.
Danny........
Joel:
Edited: Wednesday, October 06, 2010
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