You must have been reading my diaries

What a pleasure and a breath of fresh air to find your website! You articulated so well all the grumbling, unnamed thoughts I had during my nine years in AA. I entered AA a self-confident, self-advocating young woman and came out a depressed, confused, self-doubting, fearful wreck. How's that for "progress, not perfection"?!

I shared many of your experiences with AA. From the beginning I had questions and doubts, but I was quickly shamed out of finding the answers. I was also told again and again that I wasn't working a good enough program even though I had done all the steps more than once, attended a zillion meetings, made enough coffee to fill the Grand Canyon, and probably burned though an entire forest worth of trees writing those damn inventories! (Oops. That was a little forceful. Maybe I should call my sponsor.) The longer I stayed in AA, the worse I felt about myself. I couldn't understand why I couldn't relate, and why I was more of a misfit in AA than I ever was out of it. I managed to alienate all my non-AA friends with my ridiculous AA babble, learned helplessness and negative self-talk and I was having a terrible time forging new relationships in AA because I disagreed with their philosophy. I was beginning to feel like I couldn't relate to anyone anymore and I feared there was something seriously wrong with me. I also didn't feel any relief praying for the well being of people who were assholes or looking at "my part" when I was pissed off that some SOB nearly ran me off the road on the way home. And don't even get me started on the people I considered friends in AA; a more abusive, insulting, unsupportive, self-centered and condescending group of people I have never met in my life. I'm glad to say, however, that the AA folks I knew got one thing about me right: I really was one of those poor unfortunates too smart to get it.

It was pointed out to me early on that one of my biggest defects of character was my rebelliousness. Well thank God-as-I-understand-Him that "He" didn't see fit to remove that defect despite all those slavishly devout 7th step prayers I kept offering up. It saved me. I finally just went with it and "admitted to God, myself and another human being" that going to meetings made me feel like I was locked in the day room at the local psych ward, that many of the old-timers were the nuttiest people there, and that the last thing on earth I wanted to do at the end of yet another tedious, dreary meeting was hold hands and pray with a bunch guys so lecherous they made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I also came to the conclusion that the Big Book was, in fact, just as hackneyed, corny, antiquated, and loaded with melodrama as I had first suspected. I kept going out of fear of being struck drunk, but I was rolling my eyes in exasperation everytime another "miracle" uttered another stupid slogan. I began to wish there was such a thing as cliche repellent so I could spray it around the room and freshen the air everytime someone spouted out one of those holy nuggets. I attended fewer and fewer meetings until I was down to about one every six weeks. AA was beginning to feel like a life sentence.

The end came when I shared in a meeting about how angry and frustrated I was with my boss because he had forwarded an email I'd sent him that contained private medical info. to everyone in our department with a subject heading that read "FYI". Yep, shame on me. I was an old timer and I was allowing myself to be haunted by the demon of justifiable anger! I got the usual advice to look at my part, turn it over, write an inventory, etc. After the meeting, an old timer pulled me aside and thrust the number of a newcomer in my hand and told me I needed to work with her and get out of myself. Though this was far from being the most frustrating encounter I'd had in the program, I do remember thinking to myself, "This is not what I got sober for." I got into my car and pulled out of the chuch parking lot finally understanding that my nine years in AA had been a waste of time and that I could have achieved better recovery staying home and watching Jerry Springer.

Despite all the doomsday predictions of the Big Book and the old timers to the contrary, I have remained sober for close to a year without the help of AA and the steps and I think that if the worst thing I have to fear in life is getting drunk, then I'm pretty damn lucky. I am sober today because I want to be, not because I fear the consequences of drinking. It's been so healing and so empowering to realize that I am the one that got me sober and straightened out and that I control the bottle, not the other way around. Interestingly, in many ways I also felt a lot less lonely after letting go of the friendships I'd made in AA. I just wasn't getting my needs met. I do miss the social aspect and the feeling of community, but I feel strongly that it's better for me to stand on my own for the right reasons instead being part of a group for the wrong ones. Life without AA has meant life with a lot less guilt, shame, personal powerlessness and false dependencies. My self-esteem is much better, I'm much more clear headed and my assertiveness is coming back. I realize there have been many people helped by AA, but for me it was very, very hurtful.

Thank you so much for all the time, thought and obviously thorough research you've put into your site and for the courage to go public with it. I'm sure you've helped many, many people disillusioned with AA realize they're not alone. Looking forward to reading your book when it comes out--

Best regards,
J.

An AA member writes: "Liar liar, pants on fire..."

I have seen a few unfortunates like you that are incapable of being honest with themselves. They have died drunk.I have been very willingly brainwashed in AA for over 17 years now, thank God, as my brain needed washing!
-Anonymous AA member

A former member writes...

Thank you so much for putting together the resources on this website. As an unhappy former "attendee" of this ubiquitous recovery organization, I didn't know that there was so much information available on the subject of recovery that is supportive to people who are sincerely seeking help--and that, for some unexplained reason--don't manage to "fit in", or receive much help from the "twelve-step" approach.

Having been accosted myself by meeting "predators", I am absolutely convinced from my own personal experience that the eighties recovery scene was nothing more than a male, macho, power-guilt trip of the patriarchal society in which we live. All the more ironic, I think, since I am a heterosexual adult male who agrees with the feminist position on this issue. I'm not supposed to feel that way am I? There must be something (else) wrong with me, too.

An uninformed person would be very shocked, perhaps, to discover that this male-dominated recovery organization is also at, or very near the center of an interlocking system of courts, insurance companies, and mental health centers.

It has been my experience that alcoholism was the social narcissism of the eighties, the decade of public repentence for all the social excesses committed since the apparent repeal of Prohibition. Even in the nineties, to oppose or expose the beliefs and credos of Bill W. was worse than a heresy, it was a denial, the unpardonable act that proved the intention to repeat the wreckage of the past and the one-way ticket to despair and more misery. You were a pariah, a social outcast, if you had the spiritual pride and arrogance to question their freely-given advice, opting for that "easier, softer way".

It's truly pathetic that the recovery gurus have been able to redefine modern America as a pathological society in which everybody must be suffering from some form of mental illness. If you don't seem to have anything wrong with you, your only problem is that you just don't have a diagnosis yet! Worse yet, you may have a dual dagnosis! You may be mentally ill and an alcoholic! I guess we gave up thinking for ourselves in exchange for letting the self-proclaimed experts think for us. We don't have time to think. We're all too busy "surviving" to have the "luxury" to think for ourselves anymore or to question anybody's motive. Thank goodness there are still some individuals around who aren't afraid to say, "Hey, now, wait a minute...."

To say that AA "is a good, safe place to be" is questionable; to call it a cult is probably more near to the point. While I don't want to impede anybody's recovery, maybe people need to know that there are other approaches to wellness and spritual happiness outside of AA. This a great website with a lot of great links to other good sites.

Sincerely,
Jeff Chapel
ChapelJL@aol.com

Is this a great country or what?

Now this is some fun stuff! I am 10 years sober in AA and I find much here to challenge my thinking. Thanks for your efforts.

The ideas and opinions range from childish to heroic, much like an AA meeting. For me, the only new and truly disturbing information was regarding the current financial and litigation controversies with AAWS and GSO. More than anything else, backroom power politics in the national leadership undermines whatever good is to be found in AA. Interestingly, the links were provided by some of the most committed insider members.

I disagree for the most part with your opinions on the principle AA concepts regarding resentment, fear, humility, self-searching, service, and others. I think the analysis lacks depth; they don't mean in AA what you think they mean. Also, the phenomena of court ordered meeting attendance is the exclusive creation of the legal system and it is a total violation of AA's attraction policy. AA has no power to keep the courts from doing this but there is a growing movement to not cooperate. I'm a secretary and I won't sign slips. This will probably be a critical issue within a couple of years.

As to the rest, some individuals and groups are guilty of every offense mentioned and we need to be more internally critical. However, I suggest it is a mistake to extrapolate from anecdotal personal experience and generalize to the whole; for every negative experience, one can find a counter-balancing positive.

I have read most of the books listed at this site and so have my friends as an ordinary expression of recovery. The essays concerning emotions and emotional health are pretty much the common understanding and discussion in groups around here. The piece on "Predators" essentially describes the position and policy of my home group. I am an incest survivor with four years in therapy supported by the other survivors in my circle. I have experienced some of the rejection and bad advise related here but it never occurred to me to blame AA; I just aggressively re-educated individuals as necessary. I am an unconcerned agnostic myself but if the "God thing" is a deal breaker for some people then I guess that's it then. I have found it far more empowering to tell any number of people to fuck off rather than allow them to drive me away.

The difficulty lies in our decentralized organization; AA is autonomous and self-governing at the local level, optimized for maximum individual freedom. Unfortunately, this includes the freedom to be a real asshole and attempt to dominate others. However, there are no leaders with real power over membership. AA was deliberately organized this way to defeat the threat of personality driven dictatorship. It is a loose democracy that barely restrains outright anarchy. It may yet fail, but it will be a failure of self-government. Meanwhile, AA as an institution accepted and included women, minorities, gays, and the variously challenged way in advance of the general culture.

Most importantly, we don't take peoples money. A voluntary dollar in a passed basket is not real money folks. You can call AA a "cult" all you want but without the means to compel financial commitment or loss, you have no real power over people. This too was deliberate design. This is the source of the financial controversy mentioned at the beginning of this message. Because they cannot compel money from membership, the national leadership is pursuing copyright and publishing policies that have the effect of generating substantial income. These policies are in no way illegal or unethical in the ordinary sense; they are questionable because they may compromise our internal ethic of corporate poverty.

Well, I'm sure that is more than enough. Thanks for the opportunity to express myself.

Sincerely,
Fred
fredhiding@columbus.rr.com

Hi Fred:

Thanks much for your mail.

I like your courage, in that you'd rather re-educate the erroneous members with a hearty fuck off than allow them to drive you away. I am doing just this in print versus live and in person, which I may very well do at some later point.

From personal experience in the rooms (7 years), I did find the sad state of affairs with respect to resentment, fear, humility etc. as described in the written pieces. Maybe out of the 40 or so different meetings I've hit, I wasn't lucky enough to find the good ones. (ha ha)

I'm glad that coerced attendance will become a hot issue, as well it should. Such policies are a disgrace, in addition to being unconstitutional.

While you may be correct in your statement that for every negative experience there is a counter-balancing postive, however the negative experiences are systematically hidden from the public eye, and cloaked from view from the newcomer lest they be "turned away". I vehemently disagree with this secrecy. If the members must do a thorough personal inventory, so should the system. As explained in the mission statement, the goal of the site was to expose the dark side of the program. I do not wish to counterbalance it on the site with those positive experiences you describe because there are enough rah rah rah AA websites on the Internet. I have acknowledged in many of the essays that positives do exist, but AA deprogramming is not about pumping up AA. There's enough of that out there. I want the site to serve a different purpose. As it stands, the site is especially helpful for those individuals who truly need to leave the rooms in order to continue their personal growth. There's enough information herein to provide a strong enough pull to make that happen. This might not be the case if I focus on the pleasant side of recovery.

I'm glad that you found supportive people with respect to incest issues. I found a few supportive people with respect to rape issues, but found even more who were further punitive in their attitudes. My story will be published in the book "12 Step Horror, True Tales of Misery, Betrayal and Abuse in AA & NA" I guess it'll be my Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame.

As to whether or not AA is a cult, the answer is in the grey zone. Some groups are more cultish than others, that's for certain. A read-through of cult characteristics will show enough similarities between what constitutes a cult and AA standard practice, as to make this a viable concern for existing or prospective members. Some individuals do have cultic experiences within AA, and that is not a positive. They need to know what is happening to them.

Apple

Thanks for the belly laugh

Man i haven't laughed so much in along time. What a site. As a one time long standing member of the AA philosophy I have thouroughly enjoyed this site. All my life I felt like a fuck up. Then I get to AA and am joined by ten million fuck ups telling me i'm really fucked up now! And will be forever more!! If living and surviving an alchoholic home was not enough as a child I get to enjoy the company of all the other remannts of life's tragedies as a reward. What a sad and sorry place AA became for me after a long time of trying to feel like a human being. The reality is I hate the fucking place I should have left the minute i got my alchohol abuse under control. Not so, I let a conglomeration of absolute numb nuts convince me I was eternally fucked and that hanging with them was all I had to do to feel better. Well twelve years later I still didn't feel any better and I left.

Amazingly so, I felt better. Now there is a surprise. Most of them are dough balls living with their families of origin in AA. If I wanted the level of abuse that I got in AA I would still be living with my parents and psychotic siblings.

Swifti

Swifti writes again

As someone who took a conscious decision to leave AA on a particular nightI have never really felt the need, wish or desire to go back or attend an AA meeting. I have felt on an occasion a slight sadness at not seeing a couple of familiar faces whom I had come to like.

Looking at the whole experience I am absolutely amazed at my time within and without that organization. I came to it full of pain confusion and absolute misery. Some of my experiences with life had been really unsavoury and downright tragic most places. I stumbled and grew in an awkward style until I drank. I drank and drank until I could drink no more, I went to AA. My reality is that I had stopped inside before I got to AA. What was presented to me now were some techniques that allowed me to practice abstinence on a longer term basis, in spite of the 24 hour claims. My experience is that the emphasis is on who is longest sober.

The tales of love and fellowship always spoken of, were what I wanted to experience. I tried to, for over approximately 11 years. 11 years sober and looking for love that was not available in an place that did not fully understand the concept but displayed a self created facsimile of it. People I found were on the whole nice and wanting to be really 'good' people. But my experience of it all was, they, including myself, were just a bunch of kids trying to look into life and create what we believed was our vision of love and happiness. Why? Because most of us had never seen or experienced it. So how the hell were we ever going to create it? This went on for a long time.

My own life situation took me out of the local AA circulation network until eventually I sensed that my life was leading away from living with AA in it. It was scary for a lot of reasons. Primarily because I was leaving my 'family' for the second time. Yet they were not my family. If my sibling family had never really been my nurturing family what chance did these people have?. AA to me was always a lot of exceptionally lost and sensitive people looking for love. The trouble was the tools, methods and structures they used to obtain affection and love were absolutely destructive. The love that was given was a controlled conditional demanding thing that I today do not recognize as love. I see it as lots of fear and anger and hurt looking to possess people. Like many others I have experiences of neuters, crazies, evil men and women who circulate in AA and the stories to go with them. What I don't seem to have is the anger that needs to tell them "I really don't care any more."

The whole thing is such a sad and helpless organization that my life would be destroyed if I got involved with it. I have lots of love in me today for all sorts of people and reasons but I know in my heart that it would not last one second in that atmosphere of coercion and abuse of the soul.

The reason I write this? I don't really know. Probably its for the most part personal affirmation and for a little public acknowledgement of the reality that exists.

Sincerely,
Swifti

An Ex-Stepper's Story in a Nutshell

What a great site you have!! Let me tell you a little about myself.

First of all, I have recently (and finally!) managed to admit the truth to myself about my own drinking. What I mean is-- I AM NOT AN ALCOHOLIC! Man that feels good!

When I was seventeen years old I was abusing alcohol and marijuana. No use denying it. Anyway, through a series of conflicts with my parents, I found myself locked in a treatment center to 'get my mind right' The programming had begun!

I had plenty of problems back then. I was a screwed up kid (for various reasons) and was using the booze to cope. I immediately found what I thought was unconditional love and understanding in AA. I was vulnerable and, I'm ashamed to say, easily brainwashed.

For TEN YEARS I have been trying to "work the program" with only the briefest moments of the elusive SERENITY as reward. Walking around with constant inner turmoil, I was sure that I was just not following the program correctly. After all "if I am disturbed, it is because there is something wrong with me". This never seemed right, but I really believed the promises of "it only gets worse" and "jails, institutions, and death".

For years, I sat in countless meetings, drank countless cups of bad coffee, inhaled smoke, and, most importantly, towed the party line. I too was one of those who would become hostile toward anyone who dared challenge AA doctrine. I even led a Big Book study for a while. I had a pat answer to everything.

Did I mention I was almost NEVER happy? I can't even begin to say how much of the doctrine never felt right but I continued on anyway because, after all, "to drink is to die".

The disease model of alcoholism presented in AA never fit my experience (i.e.-physical addiction could not explain my compulsive pot smoking), but I created my own FALSE PERSONAL HISTORY as described in some of the essays on this site. People who had obviously done SERIOUS abusing of alcohol for long periods never questioned my dubious need for "recovery".

"My best thinking got me here.". BULLSHIT It was piss-poor thinking and a series of immature decisions that got me in the position I was in as a seventeen year old.

Where is all this going? Ok, here's the deal.

About a year ago, I moved far enough away from my home group that regular meeting attendance was difficult and very inconvenient. This, combined with a VERY busy schedule, caused my meeting attendance to drop off dramatically. A funny thing started to happen... I was feeling OK. Not just OK, I was feeling better than ever. But wait! My life should be falling apart, right? That is what all the AA's promised would happen if I dared to live and think for myself. I believe that I actually started to GROW again. I grew in confidence in my ability to think and make decisions. I grew in my social life (found friends outside the program), and grew intellectually as I began to question the "wisdom" acquired in AA and seek out others like myself on the web. I can identify with almost everything described on your site.

One day when feeling particularly in charge of myself and confident I decided "What the heck" and had myself a beer. I waited anxiously for the much-revered 'phenomenon of craving' to kick in and turn me into a wild-eyed monster with no self-control. I waited in vain. Months have passed and, if anything, my life continues to improve. I have had alcohol on a couple of other occasions (socially) and all appears to be fine. When I reported this whole thing to some AA "friends", I was treated coldly and it was obvious that, in their eyes, I am just "in denial" and I probably confirmed their myth that not attending meetings means relapse.

When I think that a DECADE of my life was spent essentially missing out on normal relationships with non-AA's I get a little mad. But then I remember to "Turn it over"....Just kidding.

Sincerely,
Brian

I Drifted Away from the Rooms

I have been sober for 15 years...over the past 4 years I "drifted" from the program...and feel much better about my life and myself.....since I learned to function outside of AA!!!

Once after being "gone" for about 1 year I attended an AA function... I was asked repeatedly if I was still sober... couldn;t they tell? I was also whispered about in the room... and remarks were made like "Oh did you graduate?" I felt as if I had done something wrong because I had developed a very fufilling life outside of their circle. It's like no one wants you to ever get out. It ocurred to me one day that just as my drinking had kept me from my family and responsibilities so was going to meetings everyday... and never feeling like I had earned a right to work for the things I wanted in life. I GOT OVER IT!

I am a business owner and have done very well for myself. I am almost considering driving up in my new car and telling them, no I didnt graduate I went out and started to live like everyone else. I was once told driving a nice car into one of the meetings that I should humble myself and drive a junker????? Why? I work hard and why shouldn't I have prospered?

Anyway I agree totally with you. I once heard an old timer tell a very young friend of mine at a table NOT to talk about her other drug use. I was pissed off. She died of a herion overdose a year later. This was a colledge student -- straight A's, parents with $$$. No one but me even knew she was doing heroin. She never had a chance to talk about it at the tables and that to me is insanity.

As far as my spiritual life is concerned, well God has blessed me tonight ...by helping me find you here to let me know once again..."trust my gut -- I'm NOT ALONE."
Thank you.....

Anonymous