I attended my fist N.A. meeting when I was in a group home at the age of 17. The group home required that you were working, going to school or attending an addiction program. I talked it over with a staff member and decided that I would go to a government funded adolescent treatment centre. While attending the treatment centre, I went to group therapy, individual therapy and was forced to attend N.A. meetings. I despised N.A. because of the religious factor and wasn't getting much out of therapy. By the end of the treatment centre program, I was smoking pot again and later went back to using cocaine and booze.

I continued to use drugs and alcohol up until I was age 21 then I decided that I wanted to quit. Since the only thing I knew was A.A./N.A. and a friend was going there, with some success, I went to an A.A. meeting. I got drunk that night. I went back again the next day determined to stay "sober". My want to stay "sober" and lack of other options kept me in the program. In A.A. I did not learn how to recover, just how to stay in recovery for the rest of my life while attending meetings. I was brought to an acceptance of a higher power using a simple bait and switch technique, boy was I stupid. A.A.ers told me that God simply meant good orderly direction, or your higher power can be the A.A. groups, or this program is spiritual not religious (I'm sick of hearing that idiotic lie). Later I learnt that God can not be those things they just use that to suck you in. It isn't a "God as you understand him" it is a God as A.A. understands him laid out in the various A.A. literature (translation dogma and doctrine). I was told to pray to my higher power and show heaps of gratitude for keeping me "sober". I told the other A.A.ers that I don't pray, they told me to "fake it till you make it" just pray in the mornings and at night and eventually you will have a spiritual experience and prayer will become second nature. You will even be praying the serenity prayer all day long. Fortunately I was so opposed to this that I didn't fake it until I made it. I did lie to the A.A. members out of fear of not being accepted and told them I was doing this.

In A.A. I found that al lot of it was Christian based. I tried to get that stuff removed from the meetings. The God that I had finally come to accept was sort of pantheistic universal force one that does not need praying to and does not personally intervene in my life. A compromise. The Lord's prayer had completely no relevance to the God that I had found. After all A.A. is supposed to worship God as you understand him not the New Testament God. I eventually did get the Lord's prayer removed from my home meeting. I couldn't believe the opposition I received by trying to remove it. I was told it was a tradition of the meeting, you don't have to pray it if you don't want to. Take what you want and leave the rest. Accept the things you cannot change. The non-Christians at the meeting recited the Lord's prayer at the end of the meeting. Why? I don't know. Peer pressure, I guess. I also didn't like god as you understand "Him". My God was not a him or her, my God was an it. The A.A.ers did not like the most holy Big Book and sacred steps being criticized. Once again I was told that it is tradition, you don't have to believe it if you don't want to. Take what you want and leave the rest. Accept the things you cannot change. A.A. has the rigidity of any contemporary religion, even more so in some cases. A.A. is religion.

I attended gay/lesbian meetings in A.A. I found a lot of sexual predators. Being a young man, I was a target for the predators. I came to believe that A.A. meetings, for many guys that are over 40, are just places to find sex without having to pay any money for it. At one meeting I shared that I used to do prostitution to make money for my drugs. After I shared this you could literally see the blood flowing to well, you know where. Preying on newcomers or the 13th step as A.A.ers call it is not wrong in A.A. as they say it is. 13th stepping IS compliance with program. Just in case any of you think that this stuff only happens at gay meetings it also happens the 13th step is their how it works and make a chapter about how to 13th step successfully in the Big Book. At least then they would be practicing rigorously honest.

They could start the chapter like this: We realized that non-A.A.ers thought that we were complete and utter losers, we could not find a date. Even with the program others with long time sobriety would not have sex with us. We also realized that those with long term sobriety are usually over the age of 25 so we wanted nothing to do with them sexually. We found that the program could supply us with sex and supply it abundantly, this is the Great Fact for all of us. We know that newcomers who are screwed up sexually, emotionally and mentally and had just accepted the idea of powerlessness were easy targets for our sexual advances. We were determined to go to any lengths to get sex. We found that by using our position of authority and spiritual guru status to find "easy" newcomers, we could get sex. If we could find no newcomers or someone else got the newcomers we were vying for, we found our sex from prostitutes at the peep shows or hookers on skid row. Anyway, I should quit here before I actually write the whole chapter.

I also accepted the most destructive lie of A.A., that I am powerless. A.A. does not teach that you are just powerless over alcohol, but that you are powerless over your entire life. "Let go and let God" (sidenote: My dad who is a minister has a poster of this on his wall that I like, even though I am an atheist -- "the Christian motto shouldn't be let go and let God, but get God and get going"). This caused much mental trauma for me since I was an insane, powerless, diseased, alcoholic and drug addict according to A.A., and could not accept an A.A. mandated God to turn my life over to (translation -- become an A.A. cult zombie). I was quite in for a bind. This finally accumulated into a mental breakdown with the help of the fourth and fifth step. I finished my fourth and fifth step and was unable to handle the idiocy of writing a "moral inventory" and airing it out to a complete stranger. To make a long story short, I ended up drinking, smoking pot, trying to commit suicide and eventually in a mental ward.

I have many more grievances against the A.A. program. I will list a few without elaborating since this e-mail is already getting too long--inherent sexism against women. The most reprehensible A.A. book, "Came to Believe", the lies written about atheists/agnostics in the Big Book, etc., etc., I will move on now to my deprogramming.

I went back to A.A. after my stay in the hospital and a three month outpatient program. Most of the things I learned in the hospital and the outpatient program were directly opposite of what A.A. teaches. This was the start of my deprogramming. I went back to A.A. and this time I was determined not to work the steps. I also chose not to bother with the A.A. God and I explained to other A.A.ers that my higher power is a non-supernatural/spiritual/religious inner strength that I use when needed. Not really a power greater than myself since the inner strength is myself. Many of them did not like this. I continued to go to meetings because I had no other friends besides A.A.ers and still thought that I would end up dead or in the gutter if I stopped going.

I then began reading the alt.atheism newsgroup on Usenet. This drew me back to my original atheistic roots. I embraced the philosophy I had before I came to A.A. In the alt.atheism FAQ, there is a list of webpages for alternative non-religious methods of recovery. I seriously had no idea that anything besides twelve step programs existed. I checked out the smorgasbord of recovery. S.M.A.R.T. Recovery:, Rational Recovery, Women for Sobriety and SOS. All of them excellent alternatives to A.A. I then found your webpage www.Aadeprogramming.com, Cliff Walker's Recovery Watch and my deprogramming was complete.

Thanks for reading this and I hope you got something out of it. I would prefer to remain anonymous.