I never felt like I fit in, I hated the cheesy slogans that you hear over and over, I hated holding hands and reciting christian prayers, I hated being a lemming.  

When I moved to another state after 18 months of not drinking, AA seemed even worse to me.  My first 3 months of meetings and not one person offered me their number or welcomed me.  I was not disappointed, nor was I surprised.  But I was intrigued.  These people had no idea I wasnt someone who was trying to quit drinking, but surely I didnt look like I would fit into their little click.  

I stopped going, despite the fact they had armed me with the knowledge that “surely I would drink and die”.  Hell, I like to live life on the edge.  One month passed, two months passed, then three and four and I seemed to be sober AND happy.  In fact I noticed I was happier than when I was going to meetings.

A year after I stopped going to meetings, I went back to a meeting, just to see.  Before the meeting, I was getting all those pity looks and the incinuating question “Has everything been alright?” (aka. Did you drink!  ARRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGG!  I wanted to scream and I was feeling fiesty). I shared that I hadnt been to a meeting in a year and that I hadnt felt like drinking, my life was good and I was happy. Yeah……..I felt like stirring up a little trouble.  Nearly everyone who shared after me had some robotic comment about how I was setting myself up for a relapse, I was a dry drunk, I was fooling myself…….One woman however, went on and on about how she relapsed on vanilla ice-cream…you know, the vanilla extract.  She said she actually felt something. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  I have since baked several things that require vanilla extract and never got drunk.  (You know, like I said, I like to live life on the edge.) 

After the meeting, not one single person acknowledged my existance.  I was the black sheep, for sure.  I left with a smug feeling, they werent going to win me over, they werent going to trap me this time, I wasnt going to play their cultish games anymore……….  

And  I wondered, as I walked away….how could these people actually speak about God and a higher power ? They didnt even know how to treat a fellow human being with kindness just because she didnt do exactly what she was “told”.  

Back on the east coast… my “friends” from my meetings back home would call me once in a while.  The first question out of their mouths was “How are your meetings?” I am not going to lie, I told them I didnt go anymore.  They all dropped away from my life. 

 I treated these people as family, letting them use my car, listening to their problems, we had dinner together, saw shows, went for hikes…….but since I stopped going to meetings, they have had nothing to do with me.  One even said, “call me after you have been to a meeting”.  I never went, so I never called, and I never will.

I feel sorry for these folks.  Most of them attend 3-4 meetings a week and have no time for anything but work and AA.  AA is just another addiction, but harder for some to quit.

It is tough to say if I would have quit drinking on my own, but I will certainly stay quit on my own.

I KNEW there had to be others out there like me.  Funny how the AA’ers tell you to “stick with the winners” and automatically assume that everyone who leaves AA drinks immediately.  What a loser thing to think…………….

One of the most worrying aspects of the 12 Step ideology, to anyone of a thoughtful and enquiring mind, is its insistence that one must abandon the use of reason and the asking of legitimate questions, accepting AA’s assertions instead through some sort of leap of faith.
This approach is made clear at a person’s first attendance at an AA meeting. Typically, the newcomer is told to just listen to what is said by existing members, rather than take an active part or ask questions. They are also told to “look for the similarities, not the differences”. Thus they are advised from the outset to overlook things which are said which conflict with their own understanding and experience, which is already implicitly denigrated.
In practice, this leaves the newcomer with little to identify with beyond the bare fact that they have the experience of having drunk problematically in common with others present.
This instruction to concentrate on the similarities between what they hear at meetings and their own experience would really be quite unnecessary if a large part of the content of the meeting did not consist of the presentation of ideas which might affront their reason and common sense.
The advice “look for the similarities” is really a veiled admonition that newcomers should discard their critical faculties, and not ask awkward but pertinent questions regarding the true agenda of the meeting. Telling newcomers that they should only listen rather than speak helps ensure that no difficult questions are raised, for instance, regarding the obvious religiosity of the meeting’s format.
As newcomers continue to attend meetings (assuming they do) they become increasingly immersed in a closed world where critical thought is strongly discouraged by peer pressure reinforced with the use of thought-stopping cliches, and a sneering disdain for the intellect exemplified by the slogan “your best thinking got you here”, amongst many others.
The “drunkalogues”, in which members recount stories of the damage alcohol did to them, may remain the only “similarity” they can relate to, but they mostly end with an impassioned endorsement of AA’s program as the only thing which could save the speaker, and by implication other alcoholics, from certain destruction.

Meanwhile, the aspects of AA ideology which the newcomer found unreasonable or unacceptable, and was disingenuously advised to overlook, are being gradually absorbed, almost by osmosis, through repeated exposure to them within an enclosed group of mutually-affirming true believers. In this environment, reality can be effectively re-defined for the duration of the meeting and beyond.

Despite himself, the newcomer is now becoming saturated with messages he may have found unreasonable and unacceptable on a frequent and regular basis, if he follows the injunction to go to thirty meetings in thirty days. When he reads AA literature (as he will have been strongly urged to do) he again encounters an aggressive anti-intellectualism, coupled with a belligerent insistence that the only insurance against an alcoholic death is the acceptance of a perverse and wayward form of religious practice. The sneering and dismissive tone adopted towards anyone with reservations about adopting the doctrine elaborated in the “Big Book” is shown by this quote from “Doctor Bob” Smith:

“If you think you are an atheist, an agnostic, a skeptic, or have any other form of intellectual pride which keeps you from accepting what is in this book, I feel sorry for you”.

One has to ask why AA has such a strong anti-intellectual bias. I think it can only be because it sees critical and analytical thought as threatening to its precepts. In other words, AA’s message simply does not stand up to rational examination, hence the intellect is treated with scorn and contempt to try to preempt such examination.
Fear of the intellect, as well as hatred and contempt for it, to the extent that the very word “intellectual” is a term of abuse, are typical of totalitarian states from Nazi Germany to Maoist China. They are also well-documented features of totalist cults.

We are told at the beginning of “Alcoholics Anonymous” (“The Big Book”) that alcoholism is an illness and, by implication, nothing to be ashamed of.  This idea is not supported with any evidence, only with a brief piece by Dr William D Silkworth, who treated AA’s co-founder Bill Wilson for alcoholism.  Silkworth speculates that alcoholism may have something in common with allergies,but offers no evidence, and the idea is not explored in any depth.
There is no further discussion of alcoholism as a medical problem. Instead, the discourse shifts abruptly to discussing alcoholism as a matter of alcoholics’ supposed lack of contact with God, and of their moral shortcomings. Thus it is, by definition, presented as a cause for shame after all.
There is then a blatant attempt to convince the alcoholic reader of the need to develop a spiritual orientation, with the odd proviso that the nature of the spiritual power believed in remains so undefined that it may take any form which appeals to the individual, from some personal conception of a supernatural “power greater than himself” to AA itself.
The thinking behind this idea may be summarised as follows:
because alcoholics are supposedly powerless to do anything about their problem themselves, they must develop a belief in, and reliance on, a “power greater than themselves, which can and will do for them what they cannot do for themselves.  What is implied, though not explicitly stated, is that this “higher power” must be amenable to entreaties to solve alcoholics’ drink problems, being somehow crucially interested in their welfare in this specific respect.
When the book goes into detail about how the “higher power” is to be approached by alcoholics, it becomes clear that what is really required of them is belief in a God who must intervene at their request to relieve them of their alcoholism, and who is bound to remove their “defects of character” on demand. Thus not only has the supposed need to believe in God been intruded into what was at first presented as the discussion of an illness, but the nature of the belief required, involving God having to perform miracles on demand, is seriously at variance with all mainstream religious faiths. It really constitutes a peculiar occult religion in its own right.
The subject of this book shifts far from its original ostensible theme, rendering it not only logically inconsistent and self-contradicory, but disingenuous.  The pretence that the “recovery” doctrine offered does not ultimately entail a very specific (albeit religiously heretical) conception of God is downright deceptive. Under the guise of offering a plan of recovery from a medical problem, this book introduces a superstitious form of religion by stealth.

In the year 2000 at the age of 45 I was diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder (manic depression). This was eight years after stopping drinking and following a stay in hospital after my first ever full-blown manic episode.

Since getting this diagnosis, along with properly informed medical treatment, support and advice, I have tried to learn everything I can about this condition so that I can manage it better and avoid succumbing to the extremes of uninhibited elation and extreme depression to which it makes me prone.

Having this problem properly diagnosed has focussed my mind wonderfully. On balance, I wouldn’t take a tablet that made me “normal” if such a thing existed, because I value the extraordinary flights of mental energy and clarity of imagination that come with hypomania, even when the downside is that I have to ride out periodic depressions.

I am happy to say that alcohol has no place in my life today because it would undermine my physical and mental health and render any medication I take ineffective. I have not drunk alcohol for over fifteen years.

I am fortunate in having found a sympathetic GP and a very well-informed and helpful psychiatrist who encourages me to find whatever treatments work best for me with the emphasis on managing my own condition so as to avoid becoming seriously unwell again.

Since my late teens I have been aware that I had frequent fluctuations of mood between states of elation and enthusiasm when I was creative, talkative and gregarious and states of depression during which I became withdrawn. This mood pattern did not seem to apply to anyone else I knew. I now know it to be typical of a condition known as cyclothymia, a comparatively mild form of bipolar disorder, but nonetheless highly disruptive to people’s lives because of the frequency of the fluctuations between opposing moods. Cyclothymics often go on to develop full-blown Bipolar I, as I did, or Bipolar II. Cyclothymia commonly remains undiagnosed unless one goes on to develop full-blown bipolar disorder, which can then replace or accompany it.

Bipolar people very commonly self-medicate with alcohol or other drugs to sedate themselves when experiencing uncomfortably “high” periods in their mood cycle or to raise their spirits when sunk in a depression. The single greatest reason why I began to drink to excess was to calm myself down when hypomanic or “high”. It was a crude and ultimately ineffective medicine for an as yet undiagnosed illness. It was never a “drug of choice”. I didn’t even like it that much. This didn’t stop me developing the classic signs of alcohol dependence, from greatly increased tolerance to withdrawal symptoms and blackouts, which I liked even less.

In 1991 I finally conceded that the most appropriate course of action for me was to cut out drinking altogether so that I could physically recover and have a chance of addressing my underlying mental problem.

At that time I attended a day centre where counselling and group therapy were offered for people with drink problems. Some of the staff were AA members and passionate advocates of attending AA. They described AA only as a self-help and mutual support fellowship which believed in total abstinence. There was no mention of any “spiritual” agenda. Nor do I remember the pamphlets I was later given as an AA newcomer giving clear information about that.

I began to attend AA hoping it would be a source of support and encouragement from other people who wanted to remain abstinent and regain their health and control of their lives.

I was rather dismayed to find that, although many individuals seemed kind and helpful when talked to outside the meetings, the meetings themselves seemed to be full of a morbid and judgemental religiosity. The very format of each meeting was strangely liturgical in nature, like an odd parody of a church service, complete with “scriptural” readings, confessions and group prayer.

I eventually found out that the “scriptures” which were afforded such respect and authority (it really bordered on reverence) were mostly the writings of a failed Wall Street speculator who had once had a drink problem and was one of two people who started AA in the 1930s.

There was also a strange insider jargon used in meetings, which made no sense to me at all. People said things like:

“My mind is enemy territory…I handed it over, then I took it back…. I have to give it away to keep it…my disease is doing press-ups…I mustn’t trust my own thinking” and innumerable other gnomic utterances. I only gradually discovered that all of these odd notions derived, directly or indirectly from the writings of the author mentioned above, one “Bill W, whose rather muddled and, in my view, dishonest writings seemed to claim a religious solution for alcoholism.

I tried for some eight years to use AA as a mutual support and self-help group which is what it presents itself as to the outside world and to the newcomer, but in practice this was an uphill struggle. I received constant mixed messages: on the one hand there was no requirement for membership beyond a desire to stop drinking, but on the other I endured constant harangues and sermons from believers in the strange creed of Bill W that if I didn’t admit I was “powerless” and practice his “spiritual” precepts I would relapse into drinking and die.

Well, in 2000 real life intervened in the form of my manic episode and made me focus on the real problem which largely led to my having past difficulties with drink and seek out proper effective help. I’m glad it happened. That episode of mania may have saved me from a fate worse than death- a life stuck in the cult of AA!

I thought that attendance at these meetings, sometimes very unwillingly, was keeping me sane. Then something happened. I hadn’t had a drink, I’d been following the instructions, talking to sponsors, doing what was ‘suggested’, going to meetings all over the city I lived in, sometimes twice a day, but still I was unhappy, I felt desperate most of the time and miserable. 

But as I’d been taught to do in Alcoholics Anonymous, I blamed myself for feeling so terrible because I wasn’t ‘Working the Program’ properly…there must have been something I wasn’t doing right. Maybe I wasn’t praying in the right position, maybe I needed to do another step 4, maybe I needed to make tea and coffee at some other meetings, get more commitments.

What I realised was in fact I no longer liked going to Alcoholics Anonymous. It didn’t somehow feel ‘healthy’ to sit in room after room in which the predominant emotion is fear. 

I don’t know how many times I heard in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results (drinking) and that’s ultimately why I stopped going to those rooms.

Meeting-hopping, I was going insane.

The fundamental concept of Alcoholics Anonymous, one person with a problem talking to another with the same problem, is a great one and I always kept in the forefront of my mind right until then end when I stopped attending meetings. Ultimately though, all the extraneous bullshit that has been built up around that core idea, and passed from room to room, swamped me. I wanted to feel happy and not be metaphorically looking over my shoulder the whole time for another character defect to battle. 

Now I live a normal life. Married, kids, jobs, cat and I no longer refer to myself as an ‘Alcoholic’. I don’t feel the need anymore to identify myself as such and it is a huge relief. In my youth I drank hugely to excess for millions of different reasons, but I feel if I’d had a good therapist I could have avoided Alcoholics Anonymous.

Alcoholics Anonymous is a cult and I willingly, desperately and out of terror gave several years of my life to it. I have no contact with anyone from AA at all now. I feel relieved to be free from it and glad to be back in the ‘real world’.

I became a member of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1984. I didn’t get sober until 1999. AA taught me that I couldn’t do it on my own, that I was a “mental defective” that I was insane. I became a “True Believer” when I finally sobered up. I was one of those people who told the newcomer that they would “Drink and Die” without AA. I told people that AA was the ONLY WAY. I have a dog eared, highlighted Big Book that would stack up against any of the true believers books. I have sponsored multiple women and have seen some of them die because they just couldn’t “Get It”…..I blamed the failures on them, not the sacred program. I was a local celebrity speaker. I came in high demand, because I could bullshit better than the best of the best bullshitters in the program…..I WAS an AA nazi.

I left the program in July, 2007. I had been questioning AA for a very very long time, something wasn’t right. Something wasn’t right with me. I felt like a phony and a liar, because I knew that something was wrong. I started to pull away from AA, but didn’t give up my sponsees, they were my badge of honor. I still showed up at my homegroup, but sat in those meetings feeling angry and bored. I decided to leave AA when I poured myself a drink of whiskey over the summer. I brought the glass to my lips and stopped. I realized AA was the problem not me. I poured the drink out and called my sponsor (because that is what I have been taught) and she told me it was MY fault. That once again I had FAILED the program. She said I needed to start all over again with step one. She said that next time if I don’t do exactly as she said I would drink again…and probably die.

That is when I cried BULLSHIT! I realized in that split second of almost taking a drink after 8 years sober that the ONLY thing that kept me from swallowing that drink was ME…..NOT the 12 steps, NOT the fame in AA that I had acquired, NOT the Big Book, NOT my multiple sponsees and surely NOT MY SPONSOR.

I started doing some research about AA and found out that my gut feelings had been right all along. I left AA. After I left AA, all of the things I had read about AA being a cult started to ring true. I left AA ……but AA wouldn’t leave me. It first started with the phone calls of, “How are you doing?” The so so called caring phone calls reeking of condescension. The ones where the caller really means “Did Ya Drink Yet?” I stopped taking the calls. That’s when several of them showed up at my door. I was scared, I really thought they would never leave me alone. All of them, standing at my front door asking me why I left, and when was I going to come back……Then the famous

scare tactic that the AA Nazi’s employ so well was fire bombed at me….. “If You Leave Us You Will Surely Die.”

AA is a cult, I have no doubt in my mind. I was a true believer in AA. Now I am a true believer that AA is a mind numbing cult that produces glazed eyed robots that cannot feel. Feelings are anathema to true believers, for if you feel, you might THINK. If you THINK you might begin to question what AA is really all about.

I have been away from the rooms since July. I still get phone calls, I just don’t answer them. I got one the other day from a woman I do not even know. She had the phone list from my old home group. She called my number to see how I was doing. She said “We Miss You”……..I don’t miss any of them. I didn’t pick up that call….thank GOD for caller ID.

So I joined Alcoholics Anonymous and spent a lot of time in church basements drinking powdered coffee and eating cheap biscuits trying to get rid of the ‘defects’ in my character, the defects that AA told me would keep me in the mess I was in. They introduced me to many concepts, and made many ‘suggestions’ to me. The concepts that I was supposed to work the hardest at were surrendering myself to a ‘Higher Power’ which would ‘awake’ me spiritually and in the meantime, while waiting for that Higher Power (or GOD) to take over, I should pray and pray and pray to get rid of those defects.
Because, they said, if I didn’t get rid of those pesky defects I’d drink again and most likely die.

That was lie number One.

This site is for people who want didn’t have such a good time in AA or don’t believe any longer what AA told them. If attendance at Alcoholics Anonymous has been suggested to you as a possible treatment for a drinking problem, then only you’ll be able to decide whether meetings might help you. I, like many. many others have decided the meetings no longer help me. These are our stories.