She enjoys the fellowship of AA but not the nonsense...

I am an AA member, with 9 months today since I last drank (which was Christmas 1998). AA has been a lifesaver for me this time. But I have tried AA before and was very dissatisfied with it. I have read Trimpey's The Small Book, I have been to meetings of Rational Recovery and Women for Sobriety, and I have read SOS's book. Also, I've read "Many Roads, One Journey", and I've read a Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure. I like those other organization's teachings much more than I like AA's teachings. The problem is the scarcity of groups and meetings of non-AA recovery programs. I want to be around people who are recovering and living good lives, and I can do that frequently in AA. But I despise much of the teachings of AA - especially the God part of it.

I am glad to have found your website. It is fascinating. I expect to submit some sort of article to you someday. I am a confirmed atheist, and I find the God part of AA virtually useless. The personal inventory and direct amends, however, I have found to be helpful to me. I am sure, though, that those helpful items have little to do with drinking - they are just useful in living a happy life.

I share my views openly at meetings. But I do it creatively, with a lot of ingenuity. The AA literature is so full of contradictions that I can always find some passage that agrees with my view. For example, it was the atheists and agnostics in AA who insisted that Bill W. say "God as we understood Him," which Bill W. later said "is perhaps most important expression to be found in our whole AA vocabulary" (page 3 of the Grapevine publication, The Best of Bill). The book AA Comes of Age tells us (on page 167) - that "this was the great contribution of our atheists and agnostics" (not Buddhists, or Taoists, or other religions). The top of page 47 of the Big Book says we can use our own conception, not only for God, but for any spiritual expression in the Big Book. With such wide latitude, I can make up any "God" I please - which is exactly what I've done. The Jack Alexander pamphlet put out by AA reports that AA members in 1941 used quite a number of concepts of God, including my favorite, "Inner Self" (page 19 of the pamphlet). The Big Book also speaks, on pages 55, and 569-570 (Spiritual Experience appendix) of the fact that "God" can only be found within us - an inner resource. Armed with all this, I freely speak of myself as an atheist, because I don't believe in any supernatural being. I have done step 2, using my own "Inner Self" as my higher power. William James (who Bill W. referred to as a founder of AA, in Pass It On, page 124) allows us this type of higher power in the concluding postscript to The Varieties of Religious Experience.

And so on. For almost every issue, there is dissenting material within AA literature, so I can find something to support whatever view I please. And I am a "good" AA member, looked up to by others in the group. I really do live a happy and sober life, and I am practicing AA principles, very creatively interpreted. No one in AA can criticize me - nor do they try to criticize me. They can see how good things are for me. Anyway, that's my answer. I am planning to try out an AA meeting next week called "Atheists & Agnostics." I mean, I am going to attend that meeting. I wish AA would leave out the God stuff, and that group (by its name) seems like it might leave it out. Thanks for being there. I've been reading most everything on your website over the last few days.

Thanks again.... Keep up the good work!

I left the hive but thought I was alone!

I just stumbled upon this site by accident. Wow ! I'm not alone I guess ! I have read perhaps half of the material on the site, and I couldn't have said any of it any better.

I was "trapped " in AA myself from 1988 until 1996, where in a way only imaginable to those like us, I was half cold shouldered out and half planning my non-stoppable and non-returnable exit from the program. Everything you said is true, I lost all of my so called friends, but I didn't really care. One was 13th stepping my wife anyway, and the others were standing in line to take his place as soon as he moved on. I wound up in jail for over 60 days because of one " friend's" concern. He felt I was in danger of commiting suicide during this period, so he felt it in my best interest to call in my car as stolen so the police would come looking for me.

After 60 days and $5000 later in lawyer fees, (which I'm still paying 4 years later) I narrowly averted a felony conviction for driving my own car sober. I could and will likely go on and on. I was a real social AA member, with all the classic weaknesses that led me in and kept me there. I did meetings everyday, and occasionally would go on a short drunk so I could start the ballgame all over again. If I remember right, I had enough 6 mo and one year chips to play a mean game of poker.

Yes, I did drink a LOT before I originally walked into AA and.... I still drink now and then, but the kicker is.. I was not then, nor am I now an alcoholic. Yes, I did abuse it... I liked being drunk, but I never reached a point where it controlled me. I labled myself immediately though, and embellished my tales a bit, so I could stay a part of the gang. What hooked me mainly was the promise and attention of instant "friends", the promise of feeling better about my life, and the availability of young women who all now seemed to like and pay attention to me. (I was never too adept at attracting them, so I didnt have much experience in that area)

Anyway, I have rambled enough... thanks for such an open and TRUTHFUL site.

Sincerely,
John Petersen

PS... I am NOT afraid to use my name... funny how things have changed ! :  )

Hi John!
Thanks for writing, may I use your mail in my new mail section? If so, can I include your name?
Apple

Yes, feel free to use my email in your site. You may or may not use my name, I leave that up to you. I have nothing to hide and it lends credibility to my words. I have not attended a single meeting in over 4 years and never will again. I have encountered a few members in the area, but beyond a simple " hi, how are ya?" did not have much I cared to share with them. They are much like the "Borg" of Star Trek fame. All members are quite interchangable in their rhetoric and punitive attitudes.

As far as I know, my former wife married the one who was 13th stepping her. I imagine they both still attend meetings, but do not know for certain. The car incident was quite a blow, but happened just after I had made my final decision to never return. I was basically on emotional overload during this time period. Too many bad things all happening at once. Actually, it was perhaps a sort of blessing as it did strengthen my resolve to resist these people no matter what the cost. Hard to believe, but they can actually be dangerous in certain cases.

I'm going to bed now, but I'd be happy to correspond with you anytime in the future regarding this topic. There was so much that happened over my 8 years in the "cult" that I could easily write my own book. Basically, in a nutshell, back then, I was just too weak to resist the temptation of "friends, love, acceptance, popularity" etc. Thus far, I thought I was pretty much alone regarding the deep impact this chapter of my life had on me. I warn people to stay away when I can and try to steer them towards alternative routes if they ever ask me what I think. (This has happened maybe twice.)

I'm considering writing a piece to submit for your book. It would be a good deal of work for me, but I would truly go out of my way to expose the truth about what really happens behind the hallowed walls. I guess you could say I have a "resentment". Heh, I like my approach to dealing with it much better than theirs. :  )

Sincerely,
John Petersen

Makin' a list... checkin' it twice...

A few words to the pro AA people.

I have been to my share AA meetings. By training, I am a scientist and think logically. I am also the victim of reality. I lost a brother to alcohol when I was 13 years old, and my father when I was in college. I indulged in alcohol for many years to drown my sorrows. When my life was going downhill from alcohol abuse, a friend told me how AA helped him. So, with an open mind, I attended meetings, got a sponsor and worked up to the fourth step. I made a list, and I checked it twice, to see who was playing with a full set of dice. As it turned out, I was.

As an atheist, I must proclaim that AA is highly biased, and promotes the use of an invisible entity and tries to degrade individual people. After a short review of the books, meetings and self talk of the people in these church rooms, I came to the conclusion that I would no longer participate in this cultist environment. I quit going to meetings. After a month, my sponsor called me up and told me to get my ass to a meeting or else I would start drinking again. I shocked him with the reality that I had not drunk since attending my last meeting, and furthermore told him I was even more confident in myself since leaving the group.

Bottom line; ANYONE CAN STOP DRINKING WITH THE POWER OF THEIR OWN WILL! THERE IS NO SUPERNATURAL INTERVENTION ATTAINED BY GOING TO AA AND BELIEVING IN A "HIGHER POWER".

Why don't you pious people come to your senses and realize that you are in charge of your own actions, not some omnipotent super conscience.

I really dig this web site and will forward it to some friends.

Thanks
Eric Sheperek

Reader barely survived a New Age cult experience within AA

Please don't use my name, I am still too destroyed and alone after 12 years in AA during which time a member used our "pseudo-friendship" to lure me into a cult. I was, after 12 years of AA brainwashing, broken up quite nicely and it was easy for her to move in for the kill. The "friend" was in a New Age group, and for 2 1/2 years she worked to bring me to a breaking point. It happenned overnight and was mentally very violent. I had been in AA, an argumentive person, never quite buying all of the goodies and speaking up about it quite a lot, but when this happenned, I became like an ex war veteran in shock. I could not find REALITY. I talked to myself continuously for two years. The loving AA community, whom I expected to be there to hold my hand, seeing I'd been mowed down, kicked me in the head. I finally suspected, that I was trying to recover from a cult, within a cult (AA). I was so busted up from this intensive New Age "exorcism" that I could not talk; I thought at first that I was going to remain a vegetable all of my life and that the only way to get the holocaust in my brain to stop was to blow it off. The AA community virtually ostracized me as they could not perceive a difference between the cult's beliefs and their own... mainly, because, there is so very LITTLE difference once you start to know about the mind control game and brainwashing.

It has been 6 years since I crawled away, a broken person and have struggled to rebuild my life. I had to leave town as there were too many AA members, and cult members whom I knew locally. I had become too messed up and verbally impaired to defend myself from the relentless sloganning, the love-bombing, the warnings of what would befall me if I quit meetings (phobic indoctrination). Now AA members saw me as a potential threat to their own sobriety. I had dared to speak out in AA about the dangers of cults in AA. Now I see that was similar to being a Moonie, escaping to Scientology, then expecting the Moonies to help me out of a cult.

Because the New Age cult stripped me of my mind, memories, and ability to cope, I've been struggling to acheive basic survival for 6 years, not quite there yet, but winning somewhat. I've been dying to get on the Internet to get some cult awareness information, but when I stumbled into this website I began to cry to myself. Finally there are others, who've been there, done that AA thing and started to tally the high cost of their involvement.

Finding this website made me think: finally, in the face of the socially acceptability of AA, someone dares to start allowing the truth to surface.

The loneliness of being an AA outcast really showed me how false and unreal those friendships were. These friends never liked or loved me, they felt obligated to associate cuz "the Higher Power made 'em do it." The family feeling, the "love" was never really genuine. The amount of destruction AA and the other cult caused in my life is indescribable. I practice AA "blasphemy" regularly to keep in shape. I will also have a drink occasionally. All those bad things they warned me about have not happened. I don't want to be controlled by alcohol, gods, devils or any other inanimate objects or non-provable entities. The entities I fear most are human beings, especially beleivers, as they busted me up pretty bad in AA and thru AA, a cult broke me into a million pieces. Nothing the alkies warned me about the "evils" of returning to drink, could ever be as bad as what happenned to me in there.

When I "snapped", I broke away from the cult, but it's mindset had already taken too firm a hold and I had to fight my way past it all the time. I tried to find REALITY, because I knew somehow I'd been robbed of it. I spent the next year and a half trying to find reality in AA. But I just never could find it there again. None of it made sense anymore. The Higher Power thing didn't make sense, the only thing that made sense was that AA had created in me a tremendous sense of responsibility and yet had also systematically removed the authority necessary to live up to that responsibility.

After two years of trying to deprogram from the New Age cult, but meanwhile attending AA, I finally just decided to stop going and I never went back. Suddenly, I began to make remarkable improvements and that GLAZED LOOK was finally getting out of my eyes. I started to be able to think again, bit by bit.

I had learned a lot about cults and mind control by then and I wasn't looking for more of the same in AA. It just got to the point where I could no longer ignore them. Brainwashing is brainwashing. In AA we justified it by saying, Yeah, but it's a "good" kind of brainwashing. I'm sure that the members of Heaven's Gate felt the same way, just before they took their applesauce. Good to blow off some steam, and thank you again for your work.

I'm glad you found AA Deprogramming. While you're right that not everyone's experience is quite as mentally damaging, such abuses can and do happen within the AA subculture. This is exactly what we want to help prevent. A good book to help understand the "blown mind" feel you describe is Snapping: America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change by Flo Conway & Jim Siegelman. In it, the authors discuss information disease - a diagnosable disorder which is the result of long-term exposure to irrational information, such as that taught in cults or certain new age therapies.

Thanks for writing, and for having the courage to speak out.

Apple
AAdeprogramming

Sent here by his sponsor

Dear Everyone:
I have just been directed to your AA Deprogramming web page by my sponsor in AA. He was strongly criticizing the information you have on the web site. I was told to read it and form an opinion and let him know what I thought of it. Well, I agree with all I've read so far... 100% and just sent my sponsor an e-mail letting him know.

There is one line that my sponsor has used on me until I could scream and maybe you could print that one too. When I am hurting, he will look at me and say with a smirk on his face and a chuckle, "Leave me alone, I want to hurt a little longer". To put it bluntly, it pisses me off and needless to say I seldom talk to him anymore.

You see, I have been down the road with sexual abuse and every other type of abuse inflicted by my mother when I was a child, so I can identify with your site.

When I find someone in AA that is hurting, I like to be able to help and not throw little sayings at them. I like to ask, "How can I help?" Yes, you may use these words and name in your mail section if you wish. Perhaps it may help just one person.

I thank God for this new information I have found. God bless you all.

Thanks kindly,

Ron B.C., Canada ronz@attcanada.net

Ps. I have not drank for 19 years, but have only been in AA 5 1/2 years.