- Bait and Switch:
Shifting objectives: First the goal is to quit drinking, and then
the goal is to "acquire faith" and "come to believe"
in Bill Wilson's religion --
Buchmanism.
Likewise, first the goal of the A.A. program is supposed to be
to save the alcoholics from death by alcoholism,
and then the goal is to induce "spiritual experiences" and
"gut- or heart-felt experiences".
And again, first the goal of the A.A. program is supposed to be
to quit drinking, and then it is to "make spiritual progress"
by practicing the Twelve Steps and confessing all of your "moral
shortcomings" and "defects of character".
Watch how the goal changes through this paragraph of instructions
to the wives of alcoholics:
There is another paralyzing fear. You may be afraid your husband
will lose his position; you are thinking of the disgrace and hard
times which will befall you and the children.
This experience may come to you.
Or you may already have had it
several times. Should it happen again, regard it in a different
light.
Maybe it will prove a blessing!
It may convince your husband
he wants to stop drinking forever. And now you know that he can
stop if he will! Time after time, this apparent calamity has been
a boon to us, for it opened up a path which led to the discovery
of God.
The Big Book, 3rd edition, William G. Wilson,
To Wives, page 116.
-
Bill Wilson started off talking about how bad it will be if the husband
loses his job.
-
Then Wilson rationalized that such a calamity
might provide
the impetus for the husband to quit drinking.
(That is the propaganda trick of
Sly Suggestions.)
-
Then Bill suddenly jumped to the completely illogical conclusion that
"And now you know that he can stop if he will!"
There is no logic to that statement.
Nothing that Bill said before supports that conclusion.
(That is the propaganda trick of
Irrelevant
Conclusion.)
-
Then Bill switched to babbling about how wonderful it was for many such
husbands to get forced into a religious group "which led to the
discovery of God."
Is the goal to quit drinking and save the job, home and family, or is
the goal to start believing in Bill Wilson's religion?
Obviously, as far as Bill Wilson was concerned, the real goal was to
get more members for his Buchmanite cult religion.
Bill even said so:
At the moment we are trying to put our lives in order.
But this is not an end in itself.
Our real purpose is to fit
ourselves to be of maximum service to God
and the people about us.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Into Action, page 77.
And when Bill Wilson declared,
"And now you know that he can stop if he will!",
Bill directly contradicted his previous statement in A.A. Step One:
"We admitted we were powerless over alcohol..."
People who can stop drinking if they will
are not powerless over alcohol. They have a choice in the matter.
They can drink, or not drink, as they choose.
Bill Wilson was telling one story to the alcoholic husbands -- that they
were powerless over alcohol and that their lives were unmanageable, so
they couldn't ever quit A.A. or even graduate from the program -- while
Bill told the wives just the opposite -- that their husbands could quit
drinking if they really wanted to.
|
Again, Bill Wilson pretended to be open-minded when he declared in the
Big Book that A.A. was not the only way:
We have no desire to convince anyone that there is only one way
by which faith can be acquired. ...
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, There Is A Solution,
page 28.
But that is just another bait-and-switch stunt:
- First, Alcoholics Anonymous was advertised as a quit-drinking program,
- but then Bill suddenly switched the goal, and declared that it was
an "acquire faith" program,
and the "faith" that you must acquire is belief in Bill Wilson's religion
-- "the discovery of God."
Bill Wilson did it again here, while he also declared that you could use
your Alcoholic Anonymous group as your "god"
(G.O.D. = Group Of Drunks):
I must quickly assure you that A.A.'s tread innumerable paths in their quest for faith.
You can, if you wish, make A.A. itself your 'higher power.' Here's a very large group of
people who have solved their alcohol problem. In this respect they are certainly a power
greater than you, who have not even come close to a solution. Surely you can have faith in
them. Even this minimum of faith will be enough. You will find many members who have crossed
the threshold just this way. All of them will tell you that, once across, their faith
broadened and deepened.
Relieved of the alcohol obsession, their lives unaccountably
transformed, they came to believe in a Higher Power, and most of them began to talk of
God.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, pages 27-28.
Who says that A.A. members are on a "quest for faith"?
It was supposed to be a quest for sobriety.
(By the way, there is nothing "unaccountable" about how a cult changes people's lives,
and messes with their minds, and changes their religious beliefs. It's
a well-understood process.)
Bill Wilson did it again here, in the recruiting manual for Alcoholics Anonymous.
Bill taught the recruiters to handle the prospective new alcoholic members this way:
If he is sincerely interested and wants to see you again, ask him to read this
book in the interval. After doing that, he must decide for himself whether he wants
to go on. He should not be pushed or prodded by you, his wife, or his friends.
If he is to find God, the desire must come from within.
The Big Book, 3rd & 4th Editions, William G. Wilson, Working With Others,
page 95.
Find God? The advertised goal, what the alcoholic's wife was
told to get the A.A. recruiter in the door of the alcoholic's house, was that
A.A. was a sobriety fellowship that would make the alcoholic quit drinking.
The wife of the alcoholic was supposed to introduce the recruiter to the
alcoholic husband this way:
You should be described to him as one of a fellowship who, as part of their own
recovery, try to help others and who will be glad to talk to him if he cares to
see you.
The Big Book, 3rd & 4th Editions, William G. Wilson, Working With Others,
page 90.
But then the goal changed to "finding God" and "a quest for faith".
Likewise, the goal of Al-Anon is supposed to be to help family members of alcoholics cope with
life with an alcoholic (and to learn how to nudge him towards quitting drinking, and
to learn to stop enabling him to continue drinking).
Al-Anon advertises on the radio,
"We are the family and friends of alcoholics, and we
want our lives back."
But an Al-Anon book of daily meditations tells us this story:
When I first came to Al-Anon, I didn't care one way or the other about a Higher Power.
When I read the Steps with all those references to God, I was a little skeptical. I
wasn't even sure I wanted a relationship with a Higher Power or what to do with one if I
had it. ...
Gradually, by keeping an open mind and heart, attending meetings, and using the program tools,
I became willing to have, and then actually yearned for, a relationship with a Higher Power.
Hope for Today, published by Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., page 262.
Proving once again that religious conversion is a big part of the 12-Step program.
The goal of Al-Anon is to convert the rest of the family into believers in Buchmanism.
- Bait and Switch: First, A.A. is just a nice
neighborhood quit-drinking self-help group, and then it's a
hard-core religion:
As a come-on, to get people to consider joining Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson wrote:
Alcoholics Anonymous does not demand that you believe anything.
All of its Twelve Steps are but suggestions.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions,
William G. Wilson, page 26.
If our testimony helps sweep away prejudice,
enables you to think honestly, encourages you to search
diligently within yourself, then, if you wish, you can
join us on the Broad Highway.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson,
We Agnostics, Page 55.
(If you dislike Bill's strange religion, then you are "prejudiced"
and "thinking dishonestly".)
But then Bill Wilson starts to lecture the newcomers about religion, using the
Either/Or propaganda technique:
When we became alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not
postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God
is everything or else He is nothing. God either is, or He isn't. What was
our choice to be?
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson,
We Agnostics, Page 53.
But [the newcomer's] face falls when we speak of spiritual matters,
especially when we mention God, for we have re-opened a subject
which our man thought he had neatly evaded or entirely ignored.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson,
We Agnostics, Page 45.
One of the reasons that "the newcomer's face falls when we speak
of spiritual matters" is that the newcomer realizes that Bill
and his gang are pulling a bait-and-switch stunt on him.
The beginner came to what they said was a quit-drinking
self-help group where they talk about alcoholism and quitting drinking,
just a bunch of nice people who get together
each week to help each other to stay sober.
Now this fundamentalist preacher named Bill W.
is lecturing everybody about God and true faith, and saying that you are
"prejudiced"
and "not thinking honestly" if you disagree with him.
("Oops, I must be in the wrong meeting. I thought
they said this get-together was supposed to be about how to quit
drinking.")
And notice how Bill Wilson sneered at the alcoholic who
wanted to talk about alcoholism, rather than get preached at:
"...we have re-opened a subject
which our man thought he had neatly evaded or entirely ignored."
Bill declared that you were being dishonest and trying to
"evade or ignore"
the obvious
truth (at least, obvious to him) if you disagreed with his dogmatic
religious statements and grandiose proclamations.
So what does any of this have to do with quitting drinking?
Well, Bill Wilson insisted that only by believing in his adopted cult religion
would you be able to quit drinking.
Bill believed that
the only cure
for alcoholism was to become
a religiomaniac,
a religious maniac. Literally.
Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychiatrist,
had allegedly suggested to a rich American
alcoholic patient, Rowland Hazard, that
"the only radical remedy ... for dipsomania is religiomania",
and Bill Wilson believed it.
That's the real Alcoholics Anonymous program -- get religion, and pray that God will
make you quit drinking.
Remember that we deal 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, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Into Action, pages 58-59.
Once more: The alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental
defense against the first drink. Except in a few rare cases, neither
he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense
must come from a Higher Power.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Chapter 3, More About Alcoholism,
page 43.
As the preachers said way back in the 1800s, "Only God has the power to defeat Demon Rum."
- Bait and Switch:
First, it's only a "spiritual" alcoholism recovery program,
and then it's a fundamentalist religion whose 'real purpose' is to make you 'serve God'.
To get you to join, they will tell you that
- "It's spiritual, not religious."
- "It isn't a religion, it's just
a fellowship of alcoholics who want to quit drinking."
-
Alcoholics Anonymous is not a religious organization.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition,
William G. Wilson, Foreword, page xx.
- "It isn't a religion, it's a self-help
group -- just a wonderful spiritual quit-drinking program."
- "Alcoholics Anonymous requires no beliefs."
Alcoholics Anonymous does not demand that you believe anything.
All of its Twelve Steps are but suggestions.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions,
William G. Wilson, page 26.
- "You can use anything you wish for your Higher Power -- a bedpan, or doorknob, or
a Group Of Drunks."
But, later, they will talk endlessly about "moral shortcomings",
confessions, surrender to God, and religion. You will only gradually
find out that it is an intensely religious cult based on the
strange teachings of a
Hitler-admiring renegade
fascist
Lutheran minister named
Dr. Frank Nathan
Daniel Buchman, and the grandiose proclamations of
one of his
mentally-ill converts, William Griffith Wilson.
Then, in the Appendix to the second edition of the Big Book,
Bill Wilson declared that the purpose of the A.A. program
was to induce religious experiences so intense that they would permanently
change the personality of an A.A. member:
The terms "spiritual experience" and
"spiritual awakening" are used many times in this book
which, upon careful reading, shows that
the personality change sufficient to bring about
recovery from alcoholism has manifested itself among us in many
different forms.
Yet it is true that our first printing gave many readers the
impression that
these personality changes, or
religious experiences,
must be in the nature of sudden and spectacular upheavals.
Happily for everyone, this conclusion is erroneous.
... Most of our experiences are what the psychologist William James
[in his book The Varieties of Religious Experience]
calls
the "educational variety"
because they develop slowly over a period of time.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, page 569.
So you can get a sudden, dramatic religious experience,
or a slow gradual religious experience,
but you must get one.
Bill Wilson declared that only by doing what God dictates, as he saw an
authoritarian patriarchal God dictating, will you be able to avoid death
by alcoholism:
"Follow the dictates of a Higher Power and you will presently
live in a new and wonderful world..."
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Working With Others, page 100.
We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really 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 activities.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition,
William G. Wilson, Into Action, page 85.
And then, finally, Bill Wilson declared that the real purpose of his program
was to get people to "seek and do God's will" every day:
At the moment we are trying to put our lives in order.
But this is not an end in itself.
Our real purpose is to fit
ourselves to be of maximum service to God
and the people about us.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Into Action, page 77.
|
But the only way that Bill wanted to "be of service" to other people
was to convert them to his A.A. religion.
He performed no other "services" for people, because:
The minute we put our work on a service plane, the alcoholic
commences to rely upon our assistance rather than upon God.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Working With Others, page 98.
So don't help the alcoholics, and don't perform any services for them.
Bill says that they must learn to rely on God.
|
Some Alcoholics Anonymous members are such extreme religious fundamentalists
that they want you on your knees, praying to God, at least once --
preferably twice -- every day.
The slogan is:
If you don't bend your knees, you'll bend your elbow.
And the poem is:
The camel each day goes twice to his knees;
He picks up his load with the greatest of ease;
He goes through the day with his head held high;
And he stays for that day completely dry.
The apologists for Alcoholics Anonymous constantly yammer the slogan that A.A. is not a
religion ("it's spiritual, not religious"), but...
- They have a clearly-defined "God" or "Higher Power".
- They have a holy book that says what that "God" will or will not do,
and what that God wants you to do.
- Their holy book declares that
you must convert to Bill Wilson's religion, or else.
- They have a clearly-defined "way of life" for you, and a book
that gives the commandments that you MUST follow, or else, like
- You must confess ("admit") that you are "powerless over alcohol".
- You must "come to believe".
- You must attend lots and lots of their religious ceremonies. (Meetings.)
- You must label yourself an "alcoholic". (Then they will teach you
what a bad person "an alcoholic" really is.)
- You must list and confess all of your sins.
- You must surrender control of your life and your will to "God"
or your sponsor or the A.A. group.
- You must go recruiting and get the religion more converts.
It's called "12th-Step work".
- You must repeatedly, endlessly, perform all of the other commandments
("Steps"), or else "God" will become very angry with you and
will torture you to death with alcohol poisoning.
- On the bright side, their holy book also declares that if you please "God" by
being a proper member of Bill's religion, that "God" will
give you a "miracle" and
your alcohol problem will
suddenly cease to exist.
|
- Bait and Switch: First, 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.
You will get the standard cult routine of
No Exit
- "You can't leave, because if you do, you will relapse and die drunk."
- "If you leave, you'll come back on your knees."
- You only get the benefits if you "mine the 'limitless lode'
for the rest of your life and insist on giving away the entire product."
(Big Book, pages 128-129)
And then it's the standard cult routine of
No Graduates:
"Nobody ever graduates from this program."
- Bait and Switch: First, they will tell you that
you can "Take what you want, and leave the rest."
Then they will tell you that you must follow the formula exactly, or else
it won't work.
Again, first you get a come-on that promises freedom. But later you will
hear exhortations to work a strong program exactly as your sponsor tells you
to do it, or exactly as described in the Big Book.
Some sponsors tell a story about how they tried to make some strawberry
shortcake by only taking the parts of the recipe that they liked, and
leaving the rest out. The result was terrible shortcake. So the moral
of the story is that you must follow the 12-Step recipe exactly as it
is given to you.
Likewise, the more dogmatic old-timers will declare that just taking what you want
produces "watered-down A.A.", and they emphasize that you must
thoroughly follow "our path".
And the slogan is,
"Step One only works when you do the other eleven."
- Bait and Switch: First, they will tell you that you can do it your way.
Then they tell you that you must do it their way.
Likewise, first they will tell you that you have a free choice in how to work the program,
and then they tell you that you have no choice, and must do it their way, or
else your fate will be "Jails, Institutions, or Death".
Same as above, first, they will tell you that
you can "Take what you want, and leave the rest", but soon
that will morph into:
"You aren't qualified to
judge what you should take -- your brain is messed up from alcohol,
"Your Best Thinking Got You Here",
and it's too early in your recovery for you to start being creative --
so you should just do what your sponsor says, and
Keep Coming Back!"
Then another old-timer will grumble,
"Take what you want, and leave the rest?
When did this place become a cafeteria?"
And in the Big Book, one Alcoholics Anonymous recruiter taught a new
prospect that he had to change his way of living:
"You've been trying man's ways and they always fail,"
he told me. "You can't win unless you try God's way."
The Big Book, 3rd Edition. anonymous,
Chapter B5, The European Drinker, page 236.
(Notice how the A.A. way and God's way just happen to conveniently be the
same thing. That's the propaganda trick of
False Equality -- imply that two different things are just the same.)
"I distrust those people who know so well what God
wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides
with their own desires."
== Susan B. Anthony, 1896
|
Likewise, a rehash of the Big Book that is aimed at youths says,
She admitted that her way wasn't working and became willing to try someone
else's way.
Big Book Unplugged; A Young Person's Guide to Alcoholics Anonymous,
John R., Hazelden, 2003, page 107.
Then, in the Big Book, Bill Wilson instructs the A.A. recruiters
to pressure prospective new members to write a blank check to A.A. --
to get them to agree in advance to do absolutely anything:
... let his family or a friend ask him if he wants to quit for good and
if he would go to
any extreme to do so.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, page 90.
And then Bill Wilson declared that you do not even have
"the right to
decide all by yourself just what you shall think and just how you
shall act."
(Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions,
William G. Wilson, pages 36-37.)
So you don't even have
the right
to design your own recovery program. Just shut up and do what your sponsor says --
"Take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth."
"It's too early in your recovery for you to start being creative."
"Just do it the tried, proven way. Don't try to change the program."
And here is where some oldtimer will sagely tell a story about trying to make a chocolate
cake from his aunt's recipe, except that he decided to do it his way and only use
some of the ingredients -- and the result was a terrible cake.
So you must work all of the Steps, all of the time,
and do the entire A.A. program, just like how the oldtimers supposedly did. (They didn't, really. Half of them
totally rejected Bill Wilson's cult religion practices.)
Bill Wilson even wrote that the Twelve Steps were written down in the
Big Book so that A.A. members couldn't "wiggle out of the
deal" and not do his Steps:
Well, we finally got to the point where we really had to say what this
book was all about and how this deal works. As I told you this had been a
six-step program then.
...
The idea came to me, well, we need a definite statement of
concrete principles
that these drunks can't wiggle out of. There can't be any wiggling out
of this deal at all and this six-step program had two big gaps
which people wiggled out of.
-- Bill Wilson, Transcribed from tape, Fort
Worth, 1954, was on
http://www.a1aa.com/more%2012steps.htm
[Dead Link]
Finally, the real kicker was Bill Wilson declaring that
A.A. members who didn't "work the Steps to the best of their ability" were
"signing their own death warrant".
There wasn't a hint of freedom left there.
- Bait and Switch:
First, they will tell you to see a doctor, and say that "we know
only a little", but then it's
"We know more than doctors",
"We are the experts on addictions",
and "Don't take medications."
First, the story is:
Our book is meant to be suggestive only. We realize we know only a little.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition,
William G. Wilson, A Vision For You, page 164.
And:
We are convinced that a spiritual mode of living is a most powerful
health restorative. We, who have recovered from serious drinking, are miracles
of mental health. But we have seen remarkable transformations in our bodies.
Hardly one of our crowd now shows any mark of dissipation.
But this does not mean that we disregard human health measures.
God has abundantly supplied this world with fine doctors, psychologists, and
practitioners of various kinds. Do not hesitate to take your health
problems to such persons.
Most of them give freely of themselves, that their fellows may enjoy sound
minds and bodies. Try to remember that though God has wrought miracles among us,
we should never belittle a good doctor or psychiatrist.
Their services are often indispensable in treating a newcomer and in following
his case afterward.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition,
William G. Wilson, The Family Afterward, page 133.
["We are miracles of mental health"?
You've got to be kidding.
Talk about denial.
Bill Wilson was a raving lunatic who obviously suffered from
delusions of grandeur
and a
narcissistic
personality disorder, and
his psychiatrist, Dr. Harry Tiebout,
told him so.
Denial isn't just a river in Egypt.]
Then Bill Wilson delivered back-handed compliments to doctors, and said that
you can learn from a doctor, if you wish to,
BUT you are actually more
"uniquely useful" than a trained and licensed medical doctor:
Ministers and doctors are competent and you can learn much from them
if you wish, but it happens that because of your own drinking experience
you can be uniquely useful to other alcoholics.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition,
William G. Wilson, Working With Others, page 89.
And you can't trust the word of a doctor because they won't tell you the truth:
Doctors are rightly loath to tell alcoholic patients the whole story
unless it will serve some good purpose.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition,
William G. Wilson, Working With Others, page 92.
(Isn't warning the patient that he is going to die if he keeps on drinking alcohol
"serving some good purpose"? That's what my doctor did for me.)
And then the Big Book prints a story where a newcomer read the Big Book
and concluded:
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.
And Bill Wilson,
while pretending to be
the wife of an A.A. alcoholic,
told the other wives of alcoholics that A.A.
could cure cases that doctors found hopeless:
You may have a husband of whom you completely despair. He has been placed
in one institution after another. He is violent, or appears definitely
insane when drunk. Sometimes he drinks on the way home from the hospital.
Perhaps he has had delirium tremens.
Doctors may shake their heads and advise you to have him committed.
Maybe you have already been obliged to put him away. This picture may
not be as dark as it looks. Many of our husbands were just as far gone.
Yet they got well.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 110.
And a doctor who went to his first A.A. meeting and found the local butcher,
baker, and carpenter there, wrote in the Big Book:
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 Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 348.
A common A.A. slogan is,
"We are the experts on addictions".
Likewise
an A.A. true believer told me in
a letter that A.A. is better than doctors because:
doctors on the other hand have no clue or very
little training about "obsessive compulsive" disorders and prescribe to the
symptoms.
See the discussion of the no medications issue
in the Cult Test
and in
the file "The Hazelden Coffee War".
- Bait and Switch:
First, they will tell you that the Twelve Steps are
only suggested as a program of recovery, but then you hear
the slogan "Work The Steps Or Die".
Page 59 of the Big Book says:
Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program
of recovery...
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson,
chapter 5, How It Works, page 59.
But then they will tell you that you must do all of Bill Wilson's
Twelve Steps all of the time, or else you will die -- that you are
"signing your own death warrant"
if you don't work Bill's 12 steps.
"Work The Steps Or Die!"
"It works if you work it; You die if you don't; So work it, you're worth it!"
A.A. promoters repeat this deception. Notice how, in the following quote, the first
two sentences tell you that you don't have to do the 12 Steps, but then the third
sentence says that you do. Bait and Switch.
The Twelve Steps constitute a suggested program of recovery.
The Steps are prefaced with "Here are the steps we took" not "Here are the
steps you must take."
Newcomers will eventually learn that solid recovery means the practice of all
Twelve Steps -- the entire A.A. program, but members are free to proceed
at their own speed.
The Alcoholics Anonymous Experience: A Close-Up View For Professionals,
Milton A. Maxwell, Ph.D., page 52.
(Milton A. Maxwell went
on to become a member of the Board of Trustees of
Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc..)
It's often said that the steps are "suggested" in
the same way as
when you jump out of an airplane wearing a parachute, it is
"suggested"
that you pull the ripcord.
This story from an A.A. book of daily meditations shows how
the meaning of the word "suggested" has been
twisted into "absolutely required".
In this and other ways, the meaning of
the word "suggested" is perverted:
I remember my sponsor's answer when I told him that
the Steps were "suggested." He replied
that they are "suggested" in the same way that, if you
jump out of an airplane with a parachute, it is
"suggested" that you pull the ripcord to save your
life. He pointed out that it was "suggested" I practice
the Twelve Steps, if I wanted to save my life.
So I try to remember daily that I have a whole program
of recovery based on all Twelve of the "suggested" Steps.
Daily Reflections; A Book of Reflections by A.A. members for A.A.
members, Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1990, page 344,
December 1.
So when A.A. makes a suggestion, consider it an offer that
you can't refuse from Don Corleoné, the Godfather:
"It isn't like we want to put any pressure on you.
I'm only suggesting that you do some things for us.
Vinnie and the boys will just pay you a little visit tonight, and
make you an offer that you can't refuse..."
- Bait and Switch:
First, Bill Wilson declared that Alcoholics Anonymous was only one of
many ways to achieve sobriety, then he declared that it was The Only Way.
First, Bill pretended to be humble as he declared:
Upon therapy for the alcoholic himself, we surely have no monopoly.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition,
William G. Wilson, Foreword, page xxi.
Again, Bill Wilson pretended to be open-minded when he declared in the
Big Book that A.A. was not the only way to recover from alcoholism
(although he switched the goal to "acquire faith"):
We have no desire to convince anyone that there is only one way
by which faith can be acquired. ...
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, There Is A Solution,
page 28.
Bill continued:
We have no monopoly on God; we merely have an approach that worked with us.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition,
William G. Wilson, Working With Others, page 95.
Our book is meant to be suggestive only. We realize we know only a little.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition,
William G. Wilson, A Vision For You, page 164.
Perhaps you are not quite in sympathy with the approach we suggest.
By no means do we offer it as the last word on this subject...
The Big Book, 3rd edition, William G. Wilson,
page 144.
It would be a product of false pride to claim that A.A. is a cure-all,
even for alcoholism.
As Bill Sees It,
quotes from William G. Wilson, published by A.A.W.S., page 285.
But then Bill wrote:
Any willing newcomer feels sure A.A. is the only safe harbor for the
foundering vessel he has become.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson,
page 35.
... you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual
experience will conquer.
...
At first some of us tried to avoid the
issue, hoping against hope we were not true alcoholics. But after
a while we had to face the fact that we must find a spiritual
basis of life -- or else.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson,
page 44.
"Or else", indeed. Finally, Bill Wilson wrote that you
must do all of Bill Wilson's Twelve Steps all of the time,
or else you are
"signing your own death warrant".
And the Big Book also says:
...he was insisting that he had found the only cure.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 257.
...they had found the only remedy...
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 259.
And other pro-A.A. literature from the Hazelden Foundation declares:
"None of us in Alcoholics Anonymous is normal.
Our abnormality compels us to go to AA... We all go because we need to.
Because the alternative is drastic, either A.A. or death."
Delirium Tremens, Stories of Suffering and Transcendence,
Ignacio Solares, Hazelden, 2000, page 27.
These statements come from more A.A. promoters:
One way or another Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) or a similar Twelve-Step
program is an integral part of almost all successful recoveries
from alcohol or drug abuse. In fact, it is widely believed
that not including a Twelve-Step program in a treatment plan can
put a recovering addict on the road to relapse.
The Recovery Book,
Al J. Mooney M.D., Arlene Eisenberg, and Howard Eisenberg, pages 40-41.
So, "it is widely believed"
that A.A. is essential to recovery?
Widely believed by whom?
That is the propaganda trick of
using the passive voice,
where things get done by some invisible unnamed people.
And the authors are also using the propaganda trick of
Everybody's Doing It,
and Everybody Knows.
It's just like
"Everybody knows that the world is flat."
Well,
"Everybody knows that A.A. works great."
The A.A. and N.A. recruiters and promoters are, of course, totally ignoring the simple
fact that the 12-Step program
doesn't really work at all,
and
it just raises the death rate.
The statement that
"One way or another Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) or a similar Twelve-Step
program is an integral part of almost all successful recoveries from
alcohol or drug abuse" is nothing but a blatant lie.
Even a simple examination of the facts reveals that
A.A. has an immense
drop-out rate and that
the A.A. program rarely works.
The Harvard Medical School stated that
80% of the alcoholics
who successfully quit drinking for a year or more do it alone,
without any "treatment" or "support group".
Telling newcomers one thing, and then changing the story later,
is called "deceptive recruiting" and "bait-and-switch" selling.
For more on A.A. deceptive recruiting, see
The Cult Test -- Deceptive Recruiting
For more on "The Only Way", see
The Cult Test -- The Only Way
- Bait and Switch: First, God loves you, and then He doesn't.
Steps Two and Three tell you that God is ready to immediately start working for
you, restoring you to sanity in Step Two and taking care of your will and
your life for you in Step Three.
God is supposedly eager to come to your aid, and perform a miracle and change
reality to suit you, just because you were foolish and drank too much alcohol.
But starting with Step Four, suddenly you are unworthy of God's love.
Now you have to grovel and wallow in guilt and make long lists of your sins and
confess to God
how terrible you have been --
confess everything, withholding nothing --
and you have to spend the rest of your life trying to make amends.
An alcoholic in his cups is an unlovely creature.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition,
William G. Wilson, page 16.
We pocket our pride and go to it, illuminating every twist of
character, every dark cranny of the past.
Once we have taken this step, withholding nothing, we are delighted.
The Big Book, 3rd edition, William G. Wilson,
Chapter 6, page 75.
The head of the house ought to remember that he is mainly to blame for
what befell his home. He can scarcely square the account in his lifetime.
The Big Book, 3rd edition, William G. Wilson,
Chapter 9, page 127.
We alcoholics are undisciplined. So we let God discipline us in the
simple way we have just outlined.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson,
page 88.
See the file "The Us Stupid
Drunks Conspiracy" for much much more of
Bill Wilson's and A.A.'s rants about how terrible alcoholics really are.
- Bait and Switch:
First, God loves you unconditionally,
and then God won't save you unless you 'work a strong program'.
One A.A. missionary tells us that:
I believe that in a hundred years historians will look back and
pinpoint this milestone as the single most important event in the
twentieth century. This milestone was the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous
in Akron, Ohio, in June of 1935.
Besides the invaluable gift of sobriety that AA has given to millions
of Alcoholics, it also started a revolution in Spiritual consciousness.
The dramatic success and expansion of AA facilitated the spread of a
radically revolutionary idea which has traditionally, in Western Civilization,
been considered heresy. This was not a new idea but rather a reintroduction
and clarification of an old idea, coupled with a formula for practical
application of the concept into day-to-day human life experience.
This revolutionary idea was that an unconditionally Loving Higher Power
exists with whom the individual being can personally communicate.
A Higher Power that is so powerful that it has no need to judge the
humans it created because this Universal Force is powerful enough to
ensure that everything unfolds perfectly from a Cosmic Perspective.
Robert Burney, "Codependency",
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/codependency_recovery/113703
(I just have to ask, what happened to the Unconditional Love of Higher Power when
that tsunami hit Indonesia and the rest of Southeast Asia and killed hundreds of
thousands of people? And now they have been
clobbered by an earthquake, and next they are going to get wiped out by a volcano.
Unconditional Love? Does Higher Power only unconditionally love white people on this
side of the planet? Does Higher Power only care about alcoholics?)
But that grandiose flowery talk is followed by death threats if you don't conform
to the group and Work The Steps every day:
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, William G. Wilson,
Into Action, page 85.
Work The Steps or Die!
== popular A.A. slogan
And finally Bill Wilson told us that we are
signing our own death warrants
if we don't do his 12 Steps. God's "unconditional love" won't save us:
Unless each A.A. member follows to the best of his ability our
suggested [Bill Wilson's required]
Twelve Steps to recovery, he almost certainly signs his
own death warrant.
His drunkenness and dissolution are not penalties
inflicted by people in authority; they result from his personal
disobedience to spiritual principles
[Bill Wilson's cult religion practices].
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions,
William G. Wilson, page 174.
- Bait and Switch: First, God is your servant,
and then you are a slave of God.
- In Step Two, God will allegedly restore you to sanity for free.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could
restore us to sanity.
- Step Three says that God will take care of your will and your life for you,
again apparently for free, just because you gave up and shoved your life at Him for repair.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the
care of God as we understood Him.
The slogans are,
- "Let Go And Let God"
- "Turn It Over" [to God]
- In Step Seven, God will allegedly remove your many defects of character and moral
shortcomings, and make you into a superior spiritual being, just because you humbly beg Him to do so.
- But in Step Eleven it becomes obvious that you are to be a slave of God,
having to conduct a séance and
get your work orders from God every day,
and spend your whole life carrying out those orders:
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our
conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only
for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
And here Bill reveals that you cannot have a life of your own; you are
first and foremost a slave of God:
The notion that we would still live our own lives, God helping
a little now and then, began to evaporate.
Many of us who had thought ourselves religious awoke to the limitations
of this attitude.
Refusing to place God first, we had deprived ourselves of His help.
But now the words "Of myself
I am nothing, the Father doeth the works", began to carry
bright promise and meaning.
We saw that we needn't always be bludgeoned and beaten into humility.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson,
© 1952,1953, 27th printing 1984, page 75.
Finally, Bill Wilson actually wrote that
we do not even have the right to think for ourselves,
and that we are fortunate if alcohol destroys our brains and our ability to think
independently.
- Bait and Switch:
First, you don't have to be perfect, and then you do.
First, you can be just another degenerate alcoholic, full of failings
and "defects of character" and "moral shortcomings".
It's okay, because "you're just one of us. Welcome to the club."
The slogans are,
"We are not saints,"
and
"Let us love you until you can love yourself."
But then, you must flawlessly "work a strong program" or else you will die.
You have to go to lots of meetings and do the 12 Steps really well, or else you will die.
Bill says that you must do the 12 Steps to the very best of your ability, or else
you are
signing your own death warrant...
And you better not fail to confess every dirty little secret in your Fifth Step, or else you are doomed:
If we skip this vital step, we may not overcome drinking.
Time after time newcomers have tried to keep to
themselves certain facts about their lives.
Trying to avoid this humbling experience, they have turned to
easier methods.
Almost invariably they got drunk.
A.A. Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson,
Chapter 6, Into Action, pages 72-73.
Likewise, you must be completely selfless and totally dedicated to doing the Will of God, or
else God won't like you, and He will let you die drunk in a gutter, and it will all be
your own fault.
And if you do relapse, it's all your own fault because you didn't "really try", and you
didn't "thoroughly follow our path".
- Bait and Switch: First, they tell you that Alcoholics
Anonymous is a program of "rigorous honesty", and then it's
a program of gross dishonesty.
At the start of every Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, they incant:
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.
The Big Book, William G. Wilson,
Chapter 5, How It Works, page 58.
But later, you will be taught to:
- Fake It Until
You Make It.
- Act As If.
- Slowly feed the truth about the A.A. "spirituality" to the newcomers by
Teaspoons, Not Buckets".
- Don't reveal the religious nature
of the program to the new recruits, you might arouse their prejudices.
(The Big Book, page 93.)
- In fact, deny the religious nature of the program entirely, by
chanting the slogan
"It's spiritual, not religious".
- Don't tell the truth about
the real history of A.A. to anyone.
- Don't tell the truth about
what the A.A. headquarters is doing now.
- Don't tell
the real truth about
the A.A. founders.
- Avoid discussing anything that is embarrassing to A.A. by saying,
"We have no opinion on outside issues."
(Just label everything that you don't want to hear an
"outside issue".)
- Don't tell the truth about the real nature of alcoholism.
Don't admit that the "spiritual disease" doctrine is a bunch of superstitious nonsense.
Don't admit that 50% of the alcoholics who recover do it by tapering off into moderate drinking,
rather than by total abstinence.
-
Don't admit that A.A. is not the only way. Never admit that 80%
of the alcoholics who successfully quit drinking for a year or more actually
do it on
their own, alone, without A.A. or any other "treatment program".
- Above all, never tell the truth about the horrendous dropout
rate and failure rate that A.A. has. Don't admit that
95% of all
newcomers are gone in a year, and that
only one or two in a thousand
of the newcomers makes it to 20 years of sobriety in the program.
- Bait and Switch:
First, it's just a quiet, confidential program of attraction, then it's
a tough-love program of steel-fisted coercion and promotion.
-
They begin every meeting by reading aloud Tradition Eleven, which says,
"Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather
than promotion...."
-
But later, they tell you to do everything you can to use the health
and criminal justice systems to force people to join the 12-Step religion.
The Little Red Book of Hazelden
-- a clone of The Little Red Book of Chairman Mao --
specifically teaches recruiters
to indoctrinate judges, 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 personnel 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 excuses that A.A. can't help it if the judges,
parole officers, and counselors force people to go to A.A. meetings.
And Hazelden is merely echoing Bill Wilson's instructions.
In a 1939 letter from Bill to Earl T., a founding member of the
Chicago A.A. group, Bill wrote:
By educating doctors, hospitals, ministers along this line,
you will surely pick up some strong prospects after a bit.
PASS IT ON,
The story of Bill Wilson and how the A.A. message reached the world,
Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., pages 225-226.
As one wit said,
"A.A. is in the position of a snake who is being force-fed
mice. Not that the snake was all that unwilling..."
- Bait and Switch:
First, you get declarations of easy-going tolerance, and then, death threats.
First, A.A. presents newcomers with a friendly, tolerant, smiley-face.
They start off by telling you
that A.A. is just a loose, easy-going fellowship, where
you don't have to believe anything, and
the Twelve Steps are only a "suggested" program for recovery.
But later, after you have joined, they will
show you the other face. They will threaten you with death, and tell you
that you are "signing your own death warrant," if you
don't conform and do all of Bill Wilson's
Twelve Steps exactly as they dictate.
Alcoholics Anonymous does not demand that you believe anything.
All of its Twelve Steps are but suggestions.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions,
William G. Wilson, page 26.
Here are the steps we took, which are suggested
as a program of recovery...
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, chapter 5, How It Works, page 59.
But after they get you to join and start working the program, the
tone of the instructions changes:
If we skip this vital step, we may not overcome drinking.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson,
chapter 6, Into Action, page 72.
The "suggested" steps have suddenly become "vital steps",
and we might not survive alcoholism if we don't do Bill's Twelve Steps, he says.
On the second page of chapter 5 of the Big Book, the steps were
just "suggested steps", but on the first page of
chapter 6 they have become "vital steps".
And then, in his next book, Bill really cranked up the pressure.
Bill declared that alcoholics would die unless they followed his
instructions and did the 12 steps that he made up:
Unless each A.A. member follows to the best of his ability
our suggested [Bill Wilson's required]
Twelve Steps to recovery, he almost certainly signs his
own death warrant. His drunkenness and dissolution are not penalties
inflicted by people in authority; they result from his personal
disobedience to spiritual principles
[Bill Wilson's cult religion practices].
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions,
William G. Wilson, page 174.
"Work The Steps Or Die!"
-- Popular A.A. slogan
"If you don't work the program, then your fate will invariably be 'Jails,
Institutions, or Death'."
-- Popular A.A. slogan
And other A.A. propagandists, like the Hazelden Foundation, say:
"None of us in Alcoholics Anonymous is normal.
Our abnormality compels us to go to AA... We all go because we need to.
Because the alternative is drastic, either A.A. or death."
Delirium Tremens, Stories of Suffering and Transcendence,
Ignacio Solares, Hazelden, 2000, page 27.
- Bait and Switch: First, A.A. tells you that you are
responsible for your own sobriety -- that you must do all of the work --
but then, if you succeed, A.A. claims that it was responsible for your success.
Alcoholics Anonymous shoves all of the responsibility for quitting drinking
on the individual alcoholic, and then takes all of the credit when someone
succeeds in keeping himself sober.
- To succeed in A.A., you must "keep coming back", and
"really try", and "work a strong program", and
"work the Steps".
- To succeed in A.A.,
you cannot let anything "come before your sobriety".
- To succeed in A.A., you must reveal every personal secret and old sin in your Fifth Step.
"If we skip this vital step, we may not overcome drinking.".
- To succeed in A.A., you must
"work all of
the Steps, all of the time."
- Then, if you do successfully quit drinking and stay sober, A.A. claims that it did it.
- Bait and Switch: First, the story is "The A.A. program works
great", but then, when people relapse, "It isn't our fault".
Likewise, if someone quits drinking, that allegedly proves that the A.A. program works,
but if someone doesn't quit drinking, then it's his own fault for not working the program right.
First, A.A. will tell you that their cure for alcoholism works great --
"RARELY have we seen a person fail,
who has thoroughly followed our path."
A.A. Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson,
page 58.
And, in the second edition of the Big Book, Bill Wilson bragged about the
great A.A. cure rate:
"Of alcoholics who came to A.A.
and really tried,
50% got sober at once and remained that way;
25% sobered up after some relapses, and among the remainder,
those who stayed on with A.A. showed improvement."
The Big Book, in the 1955 Foreword to the Second Edition, page XX.
But then,
when the majority of
the newcomers relapse,
A.A. claims that it isn't responsible for the failures:
-
"He didn't really try."
-
"He must have held something back in his
Fifth Step."
-
"He had a resentment."
-
"He was constitutionally dishonest with himself."
-
"He didn't keep coming back."
-
"He didn't thoroughly follow our path."
They can't have it both ways. They can't be in control of the patient's
life and health when the patient recovers -- and due the credit for the success --
but not in control, and not at all responsible for the failure, when
the patient relapses (or just never quits drinking at all).
Either the cure works, or it doesn't.
Either the program changes peoples' behavior, or it doesn't.
Either the program causes people to quit drinking, or it doesn't.
- Bait and Switch:
First they tell you that you are powerless over alcohol, but if you drink
any alcohol, then it's your fault because you chose to drink.
It can't be your fault if you are really powerless over alcohol.
If you can chose whether to drink alcohol, then you are not powerless over alcohol.
Nevertheless, the A.A. pundits constantly incant:
Step One: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives
had become unmanageable.
But then the story is,
RARELY HAVE we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our
path. Those who do not recover are those who cannot or will not give
themselves completely to this simple program, usually men and women
who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves.
A.A. Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson,
page 58.
So it's all your own fault because you would not
give yourself completely to the A.A. program (because you are so dishonest).
Instead, you chose to drink alcohol.
- Bait and Switch: First, they talk about numbers,
and then they refuse to discuss the numbers.
Likewise, first they claim a great success rate, and then they refuse to discuss the success rate.
-
Alcoholics Anonymous starts every meeting by parrotting Bill Wilson's lie,
"RARELY have we seen a person fail,
who has thoroughly followed our path...", etc.,
which implies that A.A. has a very high success rate.
-
And, again, in the second edition of the Big Book, Bill Wilson bragged about the
great A.A. cure rate:
"Of alcoholics who came to A.A.
and really tried,
50% got sober at once and remained that way;
25% sobered up after some relapses, and among the remainder,
those who stayed on with A.A. showed improvement."
The Big Book, in the 1955 Foreword to the Second Edition, page XX.
-
But when you challenge their grandiose claims, and ask for specific numbers about the
A.A. success rate, they run and hide behind statements like:
- Bait and Switch: First, a cure, and then, no cure.
First, hope of recovery, and then hopelessness.
First, confession of sins works to cure alcoholism, and then it doesn't.
At first, a recruiter will tell you
that A.A. has the answer, the best way to survive and recover from alcoholism.
Later, they will tell you that you never really recover -- your situation
is hopeless; modern medicine and modern science have no cure for alcoholism,
and the only answer is to abandon yourself to God and hope that God will save you.
Likewise, first they will tell you that alcoholism
is a moral problem that can only be repaired by
confessing all of your
"defects of character" and "moral shortcomings"
to man and God, and then surrendering to God.
Bill says that we must "at last abandon ourselves utterly
to Him." (The Big Book, 3rd Edition,
William G. Wilson, How It Works, page 63.)
But then they will tell you that you
can't ever recover, and that you must spend every day of the
rest of your life confessing and surrendering and seeking and doing
the will of God, and you still won't ever get cured:
We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really 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 activities.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition,
William G. Wilson, Into Action, page 85.
And since you are never cured, you can never leave Alcoholics Anonymous.
- Bait and Switch:
First it works, and then it doesn't.
First, the story is that the Twelve Steps will work and make you quit drinking, and then they won't.
- And, likewise,
- First, the story is that you must do the Twelve Steps in order to quit drinking and stay sober,
- and then the story is, you must quit drinking and stay sober in order for the Twelve Steps to work.
- Similarly,
- first "Higher Power" will save you (because you are
"powerless over alcohol") -- you only have to "turn your
will and your life over to the care of God" in Step Three --
- But then old Higher Power won't save you -- you have to do all of the hard work yourself,
and if you don't succeed, it is because you are "constitutionally dishonest with yourself",
and "born that way".
- Also, A.A. advertises on radio and television that "there is an answer",
implying that A.A. can help you with a drinking
problem. But after membership is established, the story changes to "you must work a strong program, or else."
"You must absolutely abstain from drinking alcohol, or else."
You have to do all of the work, and then A.A. gets the credit.
As one member said on the Internet:
"I do believe that
if I am _willing_ to stay sober,
as _honest_ as I can be
and if I keep an _open mind_,
the steps will work _me_,
not the other way around."
A message on the Internet newsgroup alt.recovery.aa
This A.A. member actually declared that:
- The Twelve Steps won't make you quit drinking -- it's
the other way around -- you have to quit drinking in order to make the 12 Steps work.
(So why bother doing the 12 Steps if you have already quit drinking without them?)
- You have to practice the A.A. idea of "rigorous honesty" by doing things like
"Fake It
Until You Make It" and "Act As If".
"Rigorous Honesty" also seems to involve
deceptive recruiting techniques,
hiding the religious nature of the program from the newcomers,
only gradually revealing the truth about the program
"By Teaspoons, Not Buckets".
- You have to "keep an open mind" by staying gullible
and not being skeptical of voodoo medicine and faith healing that obviously
has a very high failure rate.
- Only then will the Steps "work for you".
Work for you to do what?
Work to convert you into
a true believer
in a cult religion, that's what.
Work to convert you to
"our way of life".
Likewise, the first three steps imply that God will take care of you and fix you,
because you are incapable of fixing yourself. You need only turn your problems over
to God:
-
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives
had become unmanageable.
-
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could
restore us to sanity.
-
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the
care of God as we understood Him.
Bill Wilson amplified this idea by declaring in the Big Book that
We will seldom be interested in liquor. ...
We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given to us
without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes!
That is the miracle of it. ...
We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed.
It does not exist for us.
The Big Book, 3rd edition, William G. Wilson,
Chapter 3, More About Alcoholism, pages 84-85.
So we will supposedly get saved from alcoholism without any thought or effort on our part.
But, at the same time, Bill Wilson also declared that it was all our own
fault if "Higher Power" did not take care of us and remove our
alcoholism, because we didn't "thoroughly" follow Bill's path
and "completely give ourselves",
and we were born dishonest. So it's effortless, and then it isn't effortless.
First, it never fails, and then it doesn't work.
Bait and Switch.
RARELY HAVE we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our
path. Those who do not recover are those who cannot or will not give
themselves completely 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.
A.A. Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson,
page 58.
Translation: That means that it really is your fault, because you are defective -- born
that way. It sure isn't A.A's fault, or the fault of the 12-Step program, Bill says.
- Bait and Switch:
Redefine Words: First a word means one thing, and then it means something else.
- First, to the beginners, the word sober merely
means "not intoxicated with alcohol", but later, the word
means something else, like being a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and
practicing the 12 Steps "correctly", and being a "spiritual" person.
A.A. members will ask people who have quit drinking,
"Are you really sober, or just abstaining?"
Which means,
"Are you working the Alcoholics Anonymous program, or are you
just an outsider?"
In A.A. jargon, you can't be sober without "working the
Steps"; you are "only abstaining from drinking alcohol"
or "only dry."
And then A.A. members will also speak of "the quality of someone's
sobriety" as if evaluating levels or degrees of spirituality.
- Likewise, A.A. gradually redefines the word "recovery".
First it means recovering from the damage that alcohol did to your
body, but later it means practicing the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-Step
religion.
In one of the more
obnoxious pieces of A.A. propaganda,
the authors wrote this:
When positive spirituality dominates our lives, we have no need to
alter our moods with addictive substances or behaviors.
...
The opposite is true for active alcoholics and sober but nonrecovering
alcoholics referred to in AA as "dry drunks." Their lives
are dominated by a negative spirituality.
"Spirituality: The key to recovery from alcoholism",
Robert D. Warfield and Marc B. Goldstein,
Counseling & Values, April 1996, Vol. 40, Issue 3, page 196.
How can you possibly be "sober but nonrecovering"
when alcohol was the thing that was killing you, and you aren't
drinking it any more?
Simple:
A.A. redefines the word
"recovery" to mean
"doing the Twelve
Steps, going to A.A. meetings, and abstaining from drinking alcohol".
So if you aren't practicing the A.A. 12-Step religion,
then you aren't "recovering".
Also note how the authors managed to slip in that imaginary A.A.
bogeyman, the
"dry drunk" --
"sober but nonrecovering alcoholics
referred to in AA as 'dry drunks.' Their lives
are dominated by a negative spirituality."
The A.A. true believers say that you will turn into a
bitterly unhappy dry drunk if you quit drinking alcohol without
practicing Bill Wilson's Twelve magical Steps.
And your life will supposedly be dominated by "negative spirituality".
Just what is negative spirituality?
Witchcraft? Voodoo?
Satan worship? Joining the Republican Party?
Acting like Bill Wilson?
Really now.
There is absolutely no scientific or medical evidence to support that statement.
There is no such thing as a
dry drunk, the
way that A.A. describes it.
The "dry drunk" story is just more example of
cultish phobia induction:
"If you don't work Bill Wilson's Twelve Steps correctly, you will
turn into a bitterly unhappy dry drunk, and the Big Bad Booze Bogeyman
will get you."
|
-
We already covered the twisting and redefinition
of the meaning of the word "suggested" above.
-
The Big Book says of one man who didn't join A.A.:
He stayed "dry" for thirteen years! Dr. Bob often
said that it was a record for what he felt was a typical alcoholic.
The Big Book, 3rd edition, Chapter B8, "From Farm to City",
by Ethel M., page 263.
Note how the word "dry" is in quotes. This
man who abstained from both alcohol and Alcoholics Anonymous for thirteen years didn't quite
qualify as really dry, in the cultish authoress' mind.
Apparently, she felt that he was only just "sort of dry",
without doing all of those meetings and those Twelve Steps.
Obviously, even the word "dry" meant something more to her
than just not drinking alcohol.
Note that redefining words is a
common cult practice.
Words often have one meaning to outsiders
or prospective new recruits, and quite another meaning to the old-timer
insiders who are "in the know".
A.A. has lots of that kind of
cult-speak.
- Bait and Switch:
First, the insanity referred to in Step Two means that you have been
insanely drinking enough alcohol to kill you, but then "insanity"
means that you have not been living according to God's will.
Step Two says:
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could
restore us to sanity.
Naturally, the beginners assume that the step says that people have been drinking
too much alcohol and making themselves sick, and that such behavior is insane.
But later the religious content of the step is revealed --
To the old-timers, the "insanity" was living a life not
spent "Seeking and Doing the Will of God", and
"Sanity is living according to God's Will, rather
than one's own."
(It's the same thing as the cult leader
Frank Buchman taught
-- that ordinary people were "insane" because they were not under
"God-control" and doing the will of God -- that only Frank
and his boys were "sane".)
So Step Two also means:
"We came to believe that God could make us obey God's wishes."
- Bait and Switch: First, Alcoholics Anonymous
is a community of equals, just a nice neighborhood self-help group,
and then it's a hierarchical dictatorship with Bill Wilson at the top.
First, they say,
"Nobody in A.A. has any power over anyone else."
"There are no musts in Alcoholics Anonymous, only
suggestions."
"We offer complete acceptance and unconditional love."
But Mr. Wilson claimed that the Twelve Steps had to be written
because alcoholics were so dishonest.
While writing the Big Book, he had this problem:
Well, we finally got to the point where we really had to say what this
book was all about and how this deal works. As I told you this had been a
six-step program then.
...
The idea came to me, well, we need a definite statement of concrete principles
that these drunks can't wiggle out of. There can't be any wiggling out
of this deal at all and this six-step program had two big gaps which people
wiggled out of.
-- Bill Wilson, Transcribed from tape, Fort Worth, 1954
Note, once again, Bill Wilson's actual contempt for his fellow
alcoholics.
A.A. isn't a "fellowship of equals" or a self-help group, it's
a dictatorship where Bill Wilson gives the orders:
Later, Bill Wilson wrote to his psychiatrist, Dr. Harry Tiebout, that
A.A. members are "impersonally and severely disciplined
from without."
William G. Wilson, in a personal letter from Wilson to Dr. Harry Tiebout,
9 Nov 1950, quoted in
Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous, Ernest Kurtz, page 129.)
- Bait and Switch:
First, you are an adult, and then you are a child.
Bill Wilson's complaints about alcoholics wiggling out of
his "deal" reveals yet another bait-and-switch stunt:
First, you are an adult, and then you are a child.
- First, you are a responsible adult who drinks too much,
and you are causing your own problems, and it's all your own fault.
"After all, our problems were of our own making."
(The Big Book, William G. Wilson, page 103.)
But it is clear that we made our own misery. God didn't do it.
(The Big Book, William G. Wilson, page 133.)
- Then, you are a responsible adult who makes the decision
to quit drinking, and join A.A..
- Then, you are just a foolish child, and you aren't qualified
to make your own choices any more, or to manage your own life, or even to
think for yourself.
You must be supervised by your sponsor and the other A.A. group elders
because "your thinking is alcoholic."
- "Stop your stinkin' thinkin'."
- "Your best thinking got you here."
- "You have a thinking problem, not a drinking problem."
- "Take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth."
- "Quit trying to play God."
- "I don't need to understand the Power greater than myself, only to trust it."
As We Understood..., page 159.
- "I was beginning to see that I would require implicit faith, like
a small child, if I was going to get anywhere."
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, Page 259.
In the background, you can hear someone wailing,
"But if you give them the freedom to make their own choices, they
will make the wrong choices..."
And that is why Alcoholics Anonymous is a proto-fascist organization.
Some Fearless Leader or other will do your thinking for you and tell you
what to do.
And note the reversal of the logic:
-
They say to you,
"Your best thinking got you here", which
is supposed to mean that you have been very stupid and
your thinking is defective -- you foolishly drank yourself right into
an A.A. membership.
-
That snide guilt-inducing put-down ignores the obvious fact that
if you voluntarily chose to go to an alcoholism rehab program --
any kind of a quit-drinking program --
then it really was your best thinking that got you there,
and that's a good thing.
-
But A.A. says that you aren't qualified to think for
yourself or make your own choices after you decide to quit drinking.
You must be bossed around by someone else, like your sponsor.
- Bait and Switch:
First, the alcoholics who are still drinking are our brothers, our
"fellow travelers" --
people who should be granted sympathy, understanding, unconditional love,
and complete acceptance -- and then the alcoholics who won't conform
to the A.A. program are just worthless bums.
The recruiting manual in Chapter Seven of the Big Book,
"Working With Others," treats alcoholics as just so much
trash to be filtered for new cult members to do God's bidding:
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.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Working With Others, page 95.
Do not be discouraged if your prospect does not respond at once.
Search out another alcoholic and try again. You are sure to find someone
desperate enough to accept with eagerness what you offer. We find
it a waste of time to keep chasing a man who cannot or will not
work with you.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Working With Others, page 96.
It's simple: go find desperate people, and exploit them.
Go find sick people with clouded thinking, and take advantage of
their weaknesses.
Bill Wilson later declared that finding suitable victims was a real chore:
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, speaking at the memorial service for
Dr. Bob, Nov. 15, 1952;
file available here.
And what about the hundreds who wouldn't "take the bait"?
To Hell with them. Let them die.
We "took the message" to them, and they wouldn't receive it.
So screw 'em. This organization does not exist to help alcoholics, it exists
to exploit them. We aren't about to waste our time or energy on those who will
not do what we say.
That really isn't an exaggeration at all. Read
Bill Wilson's second book, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions,
pages 143 to 145, where you will find the story of Ed,
who refused to believe in God, and said so, loudly.
Bill's solution to the problem of having a disobedient unbeliever
in A.A. was to cold-shoulder him,
to ostracize him and squeeze him out, and then to let him die alone
when he relapsed. (See the full story
here.)
On the Internet, one A.A. defender blamed the A.A. failure rate on the alcoholics themselves
with this sneer:
No, the claim that AA only helps 3 or 5% of all alcoholics
can't be taken seriously. It helps virtually 100% of those
who are willing to follow the suggested program. The dumbshits
who choose negativity and continue to run the show themselves
fall by the wayside (unless they're not alcoholics).
From: David James Polewka
Date: Mon, May 7 2001 11:50 pm
Groups: alt.recovery.aa, alt.recovery.from-12-Steps
So much for the unconditional love. And notice the demand that alcoholics must surrender
control of their lives to the A.A. cult -- you cannot
"continue to run the show yourself" -- and the euphemistic language, "the suggested program".
Also notice the logical contradiction -- the condemnation of those
"who choose negativity and continue..."
But A.A. Step One says that alcoholics are powerless over alcohol. They don't and can't have any power to choose
either negativity or salvation if they are powerless.
But this A.A. cheerleader says that alcoholics choose their fate.
So they aren't powerless over alcohol.
- Bait and Switch: The medical-to-moral morph: First, alcoholism is a disease to be cured,
and then it is a sin that must be removed by God.
A.A. will start off
by telling you that alcoholism is an incurable,
progressive disease over which you are powerless, and it isn't your fault
because you are powerless over your disease,
but they end up telling you that you are guilty of moral shortcomings and defects of character --
that you have a moral problem, rather than a medical problem.
Likewise, first they say that you are just somebody who needs to quit drinking,
but later, they will say that you are a terrible sinner, and drinking alcohol is just
one "symptom" of your many underlying moral shortcomings.
- First, the "disease" of alcoholism is declared to be incurable
because it is inborn and probably genetic.
-
But as the newcomer is further indoctrinated with A.A. theology,
"alcoholism" is said to be
caused by selfishness and sins and instincts run wild, and immorality
and character defects and moral shortcomings...
- And then alcoholism is "a spiritual disease",
"which only a spiritual experience will conquer".
- But then again,
there is no cure for alcoholism, not even a spiritual experience
-- not even if you have many years of sobriety and have completely recovered, because
you are still permanently "diseased" and sick --
because the "disease" of alcoholism is allegedly really a condition of immorality,
an indication of how far we have
departed from the
degree of perfection which God wishes for us....
To start with, at Step One they say that you are powerless over alcohol because you have a disease:
-
"I was a sick person. I was suffering from an actual disease that
had a name and symptoms like diabetes or cancer or TB -- and a disease
was respectable, not a moral stigma!"
is what Marty Mann wrote in the Big Book
(3rd edition page 227, and 4th Edition page 205.).
-
And page 92 of the Big Book instructs recruiters to:
"Continue to speak of alcoholism as an illness, a fatal malady."
-
And another A.A. proselytizer teaches us that:
The greatest gift an alcoholic can receive on his road to recovery
is the realization that he is sick and not evil.
This is the real beginning of the rebuilding of oneself. The Big Book
of Alcoholics Anonymous gives the most accurate description of this
illness: soul-sickness.
Getting right with God (Recovery Life), Father Joseph C. Martin,
Alcoholism & Addiction Magazine, April 1988 v8 n4 p35(1)
But by Step Four, they have you busy doing a "searching and fearless
moral inventory", listing all of your sins and moral
shortcomings,
not getting a searching and fearless medical examination.
And they tell you that you suffer from immoral behavior, not a disease
at all:
-
"Our liquor was but a symptom."
(The Big Book, William G. Wilson, page 64.)
-
"After all, our problems were of our own making. Bottles were only a symbol."
(The Big Book, William G. Wilson, page 103.)
-
"But it is clear that we made our own misery. God didn't do it."
(The Big Book, William G. Wilson, page 133.)
-
"We AAs have never called alcoholism a disease because, technically
speaking, it is not a disease entity. For example, there is no such
thing as heart disease. Instead there are many separate heart ailments
or combinations of them. It is something like that with alcoholism.
Therefore, we did not wish to get in wrong with the medical profession
by pronouncing alcoholism a disease entity. Hence, we have always called
it an illness or a malady — a far safer term for us to use."
William G. Wilson, speaking at the NCCA Symposium in New York in 1960.
(transcript here.)
-
"Since most of us are born with an abundance of natural desires,
it isn't strange that we often let these far exceed their intended
purpose.
When they drive us blindly, or we willfully demand that they supply
us with more satisfactions or pleasures than are possible or due us,
that is the point at which we depart from the degree of perfection
that God wishes for us here on earth.
That is the measure of our
character defects, or, if you wish, of our sins."
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions,
William G. Wilson, page 65.
Incidentally, Bill Wilson indirectly declared that we do have control
over our desires -- we have
"let these far exceed their intended purpose."
If we are able to let our desires increase, or throttle them down,
then we have control over our desires.
And the desire to feel good by drinking alcohol is definitely one of
those desires. So we are not powerless over the desire to drink alcohol,
and Step One is wrong -- we are not powerless over alcohol.
Then Bill Wilson and A.A. tell us that alcoholism is a moral failing that is caused by:
- resentments,
- moral shortcomings,
- wrongs,
- defects of character,
- sins,
- defects of character and serious character flaws,
- The Seven Deadly Sins,
- natural desires warping us,
- instincts running wild,
- instincts gone astray,
- self-will run riot,
- selfishness,
- self-seeking,
- self-centeredness,
- desires
that far exceed their intended purpose,
- a willful and irresponsible ego,
- how far we
depart from the degree of perfection that God wishes for us,
- failure to practice religious precepts properly,
- failure to practice Step Five properly, an
