Oh my... a Love letter!

I only have 2 words... THANK YOU

Gee willikers, another Love letter!

I love this place! Yes, I too was thrown down the 12 steps. It messed me up but I did get sober. One of the things that keeps me sober is a mean-spirited desire to be able to offer a hearty "Fuck You" to all the AA evangelicals. Much better than drinking...
Anyway, you are doing good work and I wish I had been here two years ago before I went into rehab...

Love letters galore!

Bravo-Bravo-Bravo!

Over the past 10 years, I lost my two best friends to AA - me still being the "sinner" drinker. I suppose, in retrospect it was also by my choice though - I couldn't then, and can't now believe any of the canned BS that they immediately began to spew out.

As far as having "faith" in a Program or Religion - well, I prefer having "proof". Then there is no need for faith.

You writing gave me a wealth of materials and insights into AA. Me, the outsider, could only suspect and comment to AA ex-friends... "Sounds like a religion to me", or "That's brainwashing" then duck as the shit started to fly. Their overly passionate, practically hateful responses reassured me that I was really close to being on target, but was never sure. Now I have some ammunition.

Once again, thanks for the insight, keep the course and question everything - for truth only shows itself when questioned and proven.

A letter of reprimand...

I do not believe that there is "a method" or "a way" to achieve or maintain sobriety, however for the life of me, I cannot believe that such an adolescent display as your website can be of help to anyone.

Hooray.. another love letter...

I am so thrilled that at last there is a place that I found that provides a brilliant balance to this awful menace in people's lives. Is there any way that I can help? I would love to be involved in the cause. I intend to write to you further in regards to how AA consumed my fiance and tore our lives apart. Let me know and maybe we will all be "normies" one day.

A letter of grave concern...

As a recovering alcoholic of 13 years I must take issue with your attempts to discredit an organization that has helped so many.

I attend AA meetings on a very infrequent basis now, maybe 4 a year but in the early stages of my sobriety I attended many, and needed them. I don't believe I would have made it without the meetings and the people there.

It's obvious to me your disaffection with AA stems from your disbelief in a higher power. You have obviously done no real checking of the facts or you would have found that AA has helped many thousands, being the most effective treatment available for addiction to drugs or alcohol. I sincerely pray that your foolishness won't hurt others.

It is exactly because of people getting hurt that the AA deprogramming site was put up. Many people get worse in the AA program, some of them die. How and why this happens is explained clearly on the site. Sorry to burst your bubble...

As for me, I pray that the foolishness of AA won't hurt others. No, I retract that. I don't pray for it, I try to do something about it. The positive e-mail that I get thanking me for exposing the sham aspect of 12 step recovery is enough to motivate this long-overdue project.

There are wonderful people in the rooms I agree, and I hope that they leave soon. In fact, if all of the nice people left the rooms and formed their own group which had nothing to do with the AA program and literature, but had everything to do with people helping people, I'd be with them right now.

I'm tired of a "live and let live" attitude taken toward spiritual charlatans who preach their damaging ideas to the weak and vulnerable. They seem to get some kind of ego boost by making generation after generation of newcomers internatlize these defeatist beliefs in the name of tradition, as if that has anything to do with being truly happy, joyous and free.

I'm tired of "practicing acceptance" of the 12-step predators who wreack their own kind of havoc. Their tool of manipulation is the Big Book, which is dangerous material as far as being any kind of guide to life. Sure there may be a few good things in the Big Book (mostly the personal stories), but with so much spiritually damaging stuff in it, I find it foolish to present it to newcomers as being any kind of model for living. How very sad that many who stay in the program live their first few years as human experiments, only to find out the hard way that the AA program presents many ideas for living which damage the human spirit further rather than nurture it toward health. I prefer to let the public know right up front what these problems are!

Apple of AAdeprogramming

A pro-AA writes a love letter!

Allright... I've been sober for 11 years. I go to one meeting a week. I don't do too much in the program but I think it's taught me a lot over the years and I've met good people.

I like the fact that you're challenging AA's most sacred things. I have always thought that AA is a better place to get sober than to stay sober.

In any case, from a long-time sober member of AA, I say "thank you". You are doing AA a service by criticizing it's holy grail. Your kind of criticism will be seen as blasphemy and mean-spiritedness, but it's hard to criticize AA from within. That's why I say "thanks". You are doing for AA what we have a hard time doing for ourselves. I'll keep going to meetings and you keep saying the "emperor is naked".

A reader writes....

If I wanted education, I would attend school or just live with my eyes open. I returned to college again after 25 years since my initial education. The most important opportunity in AA is one of access to a fellowship within which I can grow through watching others and helping others. Sometimes it is just a good "time out" in an environment I am familiar with. Many times I learned from bad examples as much as from good ones. A pamphlet "A Members Eye View" speaks to the letting go of old ideas as opposed to acquiring new ones.

There is a sad thing occurring in AA, in that a lot of people do not attend enough meetings or communicate enough with other members to understand what is available. Frequently intelligent alcoholics are distracted by the rantings of the very vocal folks that have confused their mental illness with alcoholism. The healthier members are not as vocal in the typical meetings. Strongly opinionated people, not all that knowledgeable as well as many drug/alcohol affected individuals are frequently quick to judgment & comment on something they are outside of rather than actually inside of.

Good luck. Write anytime. I would enjoy reading anything sent to me.
P.S., I enjoyed the flames adjacent to Bill W.

Oh gee, a Love letter!

Dear Deprogrammers:
I attended meetings for years. It's true that I had a problem with drinking, and in a lot of ways AA helped. The predators, manipulators, sick asses, well I could go on ad-infinitum. AA is a cult, not real organized, that is. I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but let me explain.

Alcoholics and drug addicts within the Los Angeles AA system seem to be a lot of people introduced to the program through the court system. They are criminals, they may be sober criminals, but criminals none the less. Nothing like a bunch of con artists talking about spiritual things. For the most part their god seems to be based on lust and greed. Honesty seems to fall under relative ethics - what's in it for me.

I like your website, to me it was like a breath of fresh air. I'm more of a doormat, a victim, and your right about working the steps from this perspective. I always looked for where the problems were of my own making. Some were, many were not. As for the program after leaving LA due to having been in the program, I'm doing quite well. Let me explain... I, like you, didn't agree with a lot of the program or at least the way it was presented, deeming me a trouble maker. Soon sober people showed up at my apartment complex, character assassinating me, and making friends with my apartment manager. They then gained access to my unit. I contacted the LAPD to complain about my situation. They informed me that I was under a doctors care. I informed them that I was not. They said that they could not discuss the situation with me, that I needed to hire an lawyer, and an investigator. I left town. So as for the god of sobriety and its followers, they suck! AA is a cult with bad scriptures. What was my part in it? I wanted help to stop drinking!

I actually worked the steps and within five years good AA members top the list of resentment problems. That is AA offered me an arena to acquire more resentments in five years that my previous thirty! They wonder why people relapse? These days I certainly keep it simple by not introducing any AA into my life. Life is short and I don't have any time to have manipulative sober bastards or their spirituality in my life.

Happy to be here and AA free!
Rick

The first official review of the deprogramming site, by a - (gulp).... licensed shrink who... (double gulp)... is supportive of the current use of 12-step treatment

www.AAdeprogramming.com is a slick 'anti-' site which like a Post Office bulletin board, contains the usual 'Most Wanted'' suspects, gripes, ideas and misunderstandings of 12 step recovery. And like the trenchlines and forts in WWI, there is an impenetrable maze of connections to other and of course confirmatory and supporting sites - just as there is on every such web page. I haven't read all the articles on the page yet, but a quick scan suggests nothing new - and much that is already familiar. The author seems bitter, cyclical, snide, holier-than-thou, disillusioned, hyper-cognitive, and as usual, secretive regarding her own direct personal experiences with 'AA'. Everything is couched - again as usual, in generalities, abstractions, witticisms and what might be termed 'philosophisms', i.e. intellectual and psychotherapeutic debunking and deconstructing torpedoes launched in barrage against the hated 'AA'.

What is it with these people? Inquiring and professional minds want to know. What's the beef? Why the bee in the bonnet, the burr under the saddle, the implacable and irremediable hatred? They are clearly willing to go to any length to expel and attack the offending foreign object, tainted food or allergen, 'AA'. And their expulsion seems to be ongoing and provisional, one day at a time, a daily reprieve from the 12 Steps perhaps based upon the maintenance of their anti-spiritual condition.

Anyone who has ever watched a cat upchucking knows it is not a pretty sight. But cats are particular creatures and must cleanse their systems as best they can lest they sicken and die. Could it be that the perpetual emesis of the militant 'AA' averse is a similar purifying and detoxification operation? Surely something more is involved here than simple narcissistic outrage and the desire for revenge. There must be an underlying survival and adaptive value to a behavior that is so sustained, stereotyped, inflexible and well, cult-like.

Is 'AA' aversion a cult? How come they all sound exactly the same? Is it possible there is only one of them, with hundreds of pseudonyms and e-mail addresses? One person and one person behind it all? Who could it be?

Since I have plenty of personal web space left over after my recent venture into web publishing, perhaps I could start a separate page devoted to this phenomenon, its causes and cures (if any). The underlying cause of the condition seems to be a pathological resentment against being pathologized. Perhaps gradually increasing doses of pathologization, a sort of systematic desensitization might alleviate it.

The simplest explanation would be that the 'antis' are still drinking. Somehow I don't think that quite covers it - though it is amazingly difficult to extract such basic personal information from them, as thought they are afraid it would somehow spoil their 'case' if they were.

Anyone who doubts that 'AA' is not for everyone or that there are good reasons some people ought not go or be required to go to 'AA' meetings needs only look at the web site above and others similar to it. Regardless of what True Believers think, something *bad* is happening to these people. They appear indeed to have been permanently injured by their brush with 'AA'.

But they never, ever, at least in my experience, disclose enough truly personal and experiential information to permit us to make sense of what happened to them, preferring instead to remain almost wholly concealed in philosophical, legal, political and psychological theories and abstractions which hide their individual histories from view.

Too bad there is no Freedom of Information act for such cases. It would be instructive and helpful to others to be able to look at the raw data rather than merely the conclusions and editorial comment.

Sorry to hear Doc, that you've missed the point of the site. It causes me great concern that you haven't found anything of value here. Perhaps you don't agree with exposing shams that harm vulnerable people... Who knows, maybe you also don't agree with the activities of newspaper reporters who write about corruption in our government. Hey, life would be so much rosier if we just turned the other cheek and believed that the boys in Washington are taking good care of us, eh?

Also, what gives with a need to know the personal experiences of the antis? First of all, my personal experience, as well as that of like-minded others will be published in Rebecca Fransway's book "12-Step Horror Stories - Tales of Misery, Betrayal and Abuse in AA and NA" coming out in early 2000. Second of all, I do in fact, touch on my personal experience in the section "Q & A with the Author". Thirdly, who cares? The information presented on the site is valid and as you can see from the many "love letters" in this section, presenting it to the public was long overdue.
Apple from AAdeprogramming

And a word from fellow deprogrammer: REAL

Dear Doctor:
No other religion actively seeks out people with an alcohol problem (the more severe the better) to recruit them into their ways, beliefs, practices, social structures etc. based on their weakened state due to alcohol dependence.

Remember the only requirement for membership is a desire not to drink (the bait) yet on the other hand if you want to stick around and maintain that precarious state of sobriety you had better damn well get with the program (the switch). Take for example the suggested steps (the bait) where in the Big Book's writings about the fourth step it clearly states to avoid this step means to drink again and to drink again is to die (the switch). If you used that brain of yours that you obviously used to get your MD you would see in a flash the difference between seeking and finding a solution for alcohol dependence and using alcohol dependence and the desire to stop drinking as an entrance requirement to join a cult. A cult that promises to answer desperate people's search for an answer to an alcohol dependency problem, predicated upon submission to it's dogma and religious practices; period.

Open your eyes Doctor or you will just further my contention that highly educated does not follow intelligence.

In a way maybe you are right. Maybe no one who has ever been in AA could organize a piss-up in a brewery; then again maybe not. Negating a recognition of an organized central body managing the human mess AA has left in it's wake does negate on the other hand the need to educate the public and disarm it's harmful influence. Promising abstinence based on religious conversion goes contrary to a lot of peoples values. As a doctor you have taken an oath to first do no harm and to ignore the valid statements of harm AA has done to many peoples lives is, simply put, a betrayal of your oath. Does a doctor advise chemotherapy without first advising the patient of the risks. Does it not follow that if a doctor advises a patient to go to AA they should advise the patient of the risks? So it works for some, but the plain truth is for others it makes matters much worse. Ignore that fact and you are practicing a betrayal of your oath as a sell out to AA. If that is your choice, then just get in line with all the others doing the same dance with the emperor who had no clothes.

REAL of AADeprogramming