Escape from AA

February 12, 2008 in 12 Steps to ...where?. 18 Comments
Tags: AA, alcoholics anonymous, drinking

 I am so happy to find this blog.  I quit drinking over 4 years ago.  I too was told that AA was the only way and that if I stopped going to meetings that surely I would drink and die.  

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…………….

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The anti-intellectualism of AA and the 12 Step Doctrine

January 23, 2008 in 12 Steps to ...where?. 8 Comments
Tags: 12 steps, alcoholics anonymous, booze, mental health, sobriety

 

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.

Some Thoughts on Wilson’s “Spiritual Axiom”

January 20, 2008 in 12 Steps to ...where?. 3 Comments

“It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us”, writes Bill Wilson on page 92 of “Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions”.  Well, this statement certainly disturbed me the first time I heard it read out at an AA step meeting about 17 years ago, and it still does.

My dictionary defines an axiom as “a self-evident truth or universally accepted principle”, yet I have never encountered this idea of Wilson’s, either in my early religious upbringing as a Catholic, or in my fairly extensive reading in the areas of comparative religion and philosophy as an adult.

Jesus Christ would certainly stand condemned by this “axiom” of Wilson’s as having a great deal wrong with him spiritually, judging by how “disturbed” and angry he was over the self-righteousness and hypocricy of the Pharisees and the behaviour of the money-changers in the Temple, according to the gospel accounts.

Historically, everyone from Martin Luther to Martin Luther King, who felt sufficiently strongly about injustice to want to right it, would be characterised as spiritually defective, according to Wilson’s way of thinking.

On a more everyday level, people who suffer distress as a result of abuse or social disadvantage beyond their control are implicitly deemed, according to Wilson’s “axiom”, to be somehow responsible for their suffering themselves. This is a contemptible message, and is indeed cause for a thinking and feeling person to be disturbed.

The Big Book does not offer a plan of recovery from an illness

January 10, 2008 in 12 Steps to ...where?. 5 Comments

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.

The AA Creed of Powerlessness or Spiritual Fascism

January 5, 2008 in 12 Steps to ...where?. 5 Comments

When I began attending AA meetings I was led to believe that AA was a source of mutual support and encouragement for people who had been addicted to alcohol and shared a common goal of abstinence.  I hoped we could help one another rebuild self-esteem shattered by years of destructive drinking.

I was disappointed to find instead that there was a pervasive emphasis on individual powerlessness, not only with regard to alcohol, but in all areas of life.  Fatalistic defeatism seemed to be an article of faith to AA members. It was expressed in stock sayings, which were repeated at meetings like mantras:

“I’m powerless over people, places and things”

and

” I know I’m in trouble when I start thinking I can run my own life”

were just two of these sayings thatI heard counless times.

It was evident that those voicing these self-sabotaging sentiments were repeating some kind of received wisdom. Their source became clear over time.  They derived from AA literature, and in particular from the writings of AA’s co-founder “Bill W”.

I tried hard to ignore these disempowering messages and only listen to the minority of people who honestly expressed their own thoughts and feelings in their own words.  In practice, however, the format and tone of the meetings paid such reverence to the morbidly sanctimonious writings of Bill W that those who did not parrot his words were forced into the position of AA heretics, who were at best barely tolerated, and were commonly treated with overt condescension and contempt.

I later discovered that this creed of powerlessness, as I call it, was derived from a now forgotten religious movement in which the founders of AA were involved.  It was  started early in the twentieth century by the Rev Frank N D Buchman, and over time went under the different names of “First Century Christian Fellowship”, “The Oxford Group Movement” and “Moral Rearmament”.  Buchman aroused hostility amongst leading Christians who considered his ideas heretical and occultist.  He also became notorious for his far right-wing sympathies, and especially his widely publicised praise of Adolf Hitler in a newspaper interview.  Nowhere in AA’s main text, “Alcoholics Anonymous” or “The Big Book”, is this debt to Buchman acknowledged, probably because of his notoriety.

A creed of individual powerlessness has obvious attractions for those drawn towards fascist ideas, and it certainly gained Buchman plenty of financial support from weathy businessmen of extreme right-wing political persusion, who welcomed the preaching of a “spiritual” message which told the underdog he must not question his place in the world.

However, the implications of this creed of powerlessness have wider and graver implications than those of narrow class politics. If this ideology had gained universal acceptance historically (as Buchman insisted it must) then it would have prevented all advances in human freedom, including the abolition of slavery and child labour and the emancipation of women.

When applied to people already suffering from damaged self-esteem and psychological problems, it imposes a particularly insidious kind of learnt helplessness.  When framed as a “spiritual” solution to a potentially life-threatening problem such as addiction, it constitutes a form of oppression and disempowerment which I think is best described as spiritual fascism.