It is all a big bait-and-switch con game. There are so many bait-and-switch stunts pulled in AA that it borders on amazing.

• They start off by telling you that AA is a loose, easy-going fellowship, where the Twelve Steps are only a suggested program for recovery. Later, they will tell you that you will die if you don't follow the Steps.

• 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.

• To get you to join, they will tell you that "it's spiritual, not religious" -- just a wonderful spiritual quit-drinking program. Later, they will talk endlessly about moral shortcomings, confessions, God and religion. You will only gradually find out that it is an intensely religious cult based on the strange teachings of Dr. Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman. Finally, they will tell you that the real purpose of the program is to get you to "seek and do God's will."

  And what is God's will? Theoretically, you find out when God talks to you in Step 11. But you have to submit all such received guidance to elders for approval, so in truth, they will tell you what God's will is.

  The recruiting manual in chapter 7 of the Big Book treats alcoholics as just so much trash to be filtered for new cult members to do God's bidding:

  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.

  It's simple: go find desperate people, and exploit them. Go find sick people with clouded thinking, and take advantage of their weaknesses. And if they won't do what you want, then to Hell with them. Let them die. We "took the message to them," and they wouldn't receive it. So screw 'em.

• They start off by telling you that alcoholism is a disease over which you are powerless, but they end up telling you that you are guilty of moral shortcomings, that you have a moral problem more than a medical problem. In Step One, you have a disease -- "an actual disease that has a name and symptoms like diabetes or cancer or TB" is what AA calls it. But by Step Four, they have you busy doing a "searching and fearless moral inventory", not a medical examination. And even worse, they will tell you that it's a moral problem that can only be repaired by confessing all of your defects and shortcomings to man and God. Then they will tell you that you can't ever recover, and that you must spend the rest of your life confessing.

• Likewise, you aren't guilty, and then you are. As a come-on, to get us to join, AA said that we were innocent, that alcoholism is a hereditary disease and that we couldn't help it -- "we were powerless over alcohol" -- and we were spared from all feelings of guilt. The Big Book said, "a disease was respectable, not a moral stigma!" But now, after we have joined, we suddenly find AA making us feel horribly guilty, having to confess everything we ever did in our entire lives: the exact nature of our wrongs. Whoops! What happened to "not a moral stigma"?

• AA initially says that you are free to have any religious beliefs you wish, but they will soon try to convert you to the official AA beliefs. The Big Book, in the chapter "We Agnostics" describes how and why all agnostics and atheists must be converted to true believers. (And even the arguments for faith in that chapter utilize bait-and-switch logic.) The book also describes how newcomers are told, "As soon as a man can say that he does believe, or is willing to believe, we emphatically assure him that he is on his way." But after that, the old-timers will set to work indoctrinating the newcomers, pressuring them to bring their beliefs into agreement with the standard AA theology.
  

  That "We Agnostics" chapter also describes how that bait-and-switch stunt was pulled on the original members of AA, half of whom were non-believers who only joined because they wanted to escape from death by alcoholism.

• Chapter seven of the Big Book is a training manual for recruiters. That chapter teaches a similar bait-and-switch trick: first, the bait is a promise of complete religious freedom, and then the switch comes later, when the new member finds that he must accept the AA beliefs, and discard his own.

  Stress the spiritual feature freely. If the man be agnostic or atheist, make it emphatic that he does not have to agree with your conception of God.
  ...
  There is no use arousing any prejudice he may have against certain theological terms and conceptions about which he may already be confused. Don't raise such issues, no matter what your own convictions are.

  Note Bill's arrogance: non-believers are "prejudiced" and "confused" about theological terms. Bill doesn't tell the recruiter what to do with an agnostic prospect who is not at all confused about theological terms. But chapter four of the Big Book does tell us what is really in store for the non-believers:

  ... you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer.

  To one who feels he is an atheist or agnostic such an experience seems impossible, but to continue as he is means disaster, especially if he is an alcoholic of the hopeless variety. To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face.

  But it isn't so difficult. About half our original fellowship were of exactly that type. 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. Perhaps it is going to be that way with you. But cheer up, something like half of us thought we were atheists or agnostics. Our experience shows that you need not be disconcerted.

  Lack of power, that was our dilemma. we had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves. Obviously. But where and how were we to find this Power?

  Well, that's exactly what this book is about. Its main object is to enable you to find a Power greater than yourself which will solve your problem.

  Note the illogical progression: First, "you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer." Never mind the fact that there is no such illness, outside of Bill's imagination. Then Bill declares "you are doomed to an alcoholic death, or to live on a spiritual basis" (whatever that means), and "we must find a spiritual basis of life -- or else." Bill's mind jumps from "you may be sick" to "you will die if you don't live on my spiritual basis" without a single supporting fact, or any new facts at all.

  Bill and AA will define just what this "spiritual basis" is later.

  Start believing Bill's way, or suffer an alcoholic death. But you need not be disconcerted; such forced religious conversions have already been done to half of the AA members. Hint: that is a cult.

  Finally, Bill says of the Big Book, "Its main object is to enable you to find a Power greater than yourself which will solve your problem." It may be nit-picking, but it does not say that the goal is to help you quit drinking. The goal is to get you to believe in a Higher Power, "that Power, which is God." (BB page 46.)

  Bait and switch again: Offer them help in quitting drinking, but give them Intro to Cult Religion 101. Don't bother teaching them any strategies or techniques for quitting and staying quit; God will solve that problem.

• Step Two says that you only have to believe in a "Power greater than yourself" -- which can be anything, including "a doorknob or a potato" -- but the rest of the steps instruct you to do things that require a very specific kind of God:
  • believe that God can restore you to sanity.
  • turn your will and your life over to the care of God.
  • confess all of your wrongs, defects of character, and shortcomings to God.
  • pray to God for a number of things, like:
    • conscious contact with God.
    • the miraculous removal of all of your defects of character and moral shortcomings.
    • knowledge of His will for us.
    • the power to carry out His will.

  Likewise, Step Three says that we only need to believe in "God as we understand Him." But the subsequent steps become increasingly specific about just Who and What God is, until by Step Twelve, AA has precisely defined their version of God.

  Just any old Higher Power won't work for all of that. A Buddhist Higher Power, for instance, is out of the question. So is a Native American Great Spirit. And the Jewish Jahweh does not micro-manage the world and perform miracles on demand, so He's out as well.

  Many Christians will have problems with the required Higher Power, too. In fact, very few sects believe in a God who controls and manipulates the entire world and everyone in it like so many little puppets. Most Christian sects believe that humans have free will, and can either do good, or royally screw things up, all on their own.

  Few Christian sects believe in predestination, or that your future moral life will be determined by inheriting a gene for alcoholism, and hence, a "spiritual disease". But AA does.

  So you really aren't free to believe in just any old Higher Power you like, or just any "God as you understand Him." Like Henry Ford's joke about model-T car colors, "You can have any color you want, as long as it is black," in AA, you can have any God you want, as long as it is the AA God.

The bait-and-switch strategy is also embedded in the recruiting rule of "Teaspoonfuls, Not Bucketfuls." The recruiter is to dole out only a little bit of the truth at a time, only just as much as the prospect can handle, or less, but never more. Remember the strategy above, "There is no use arousing any prejudice..."

Don't tell too much truth too fast; just tell the prospect what he will like to hear; save the unpleasant stuff for later, after we have him thoroughly hooked.

Last updated 29 May 2001.

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