12 AA Secrets They Don't Want You To Know Pt. 1

Let's get real here folks. AA doesn't work. According To AA's own report from their New York head office, less than 5% of attendees stay sober for 1 year. Coincidentally, that is about the number of people who quit by themselves anyway. So why do all agencies in health care and government court and penal systems automatically direct clients to meetings they will not succeed with anyway?

Well, for one thing, AA is still toted as the only program that works. That's pretty sad because there are other methods that do work. But all the agencies fund AA anyway and they know the truth - or do they? In case they are blind, as I suggest, I'll reveal 12 secrets AA doesn't want anyone to know. Here are 6 in my Part 1 of this reality check. For my postings, I had to shorten them. If you want to get the full fact page, visit the link below. But here is my cut down version of the AA secret truths. (Used by permission.)

http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-secrets.html

Secret 1

One of the most enthusiastic boosters of Alcoholics Anonymous, Professor George Vaillant of Harvard University, who is also a member of the Board of Trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. (AAWS), showed by his own 8 years of testing of A.A. that A.A. was worse than useless — that it didn't help the alcoholics any more than no treatment at all, and it had the highest death rate of any treatment program tested — a death rate that Professor Vaillant himself described as "appalling". While trying to prove that A.A. treatment works, Professor Vaillant actually proved that A.A. kills. After 8 years of A.A. treatment, the score with Dr. Vaillant's first 100 alcoholic patients was: 5 sober, 29 dead, and 66 still drinking.

(Nevertheless, Vaillant is still a Trustee of Alcoholics Anonymous, and he still wants to send all alcoholics to A.A. anyway, to "get an attitude change by confessing their sins to a high-status healer." That is cult religion, not a treatment program for alcoholism.)

And also note that the apparent five percent of A.A. newcomers who are still left after one year is exactly the same number as the usual rate of spontaneous remission among alcoholics — five percent per year. That is, in any randomly-selected population of alcoholics, approximately five percent per year will finally get sick and tired of being sick and tired, and they will just quit drinking. And the Harvard Medical School says that 80% of those successful quitters do it by themselves, alone, without any "treatment program" or any "support group". If we subtract the normal spontaneous remission rate for alcoholism of five percent per year from A.A.'s claimed success rate of five percent, we get zero for A.A.'s real effective cure rate. A.A. does not actually make anybody quit drinking; it just takes the credit for the people who were going to quit anyway. A.A. is just taking the credit for peoples' efforts to save their own lives.

Secret 2

On their own:
There is a high rate of recovery among alcoholics and addicts, treated and untreated. According to one estimate, heroin addicts break the habit in an average of 11 years. Another estimate is that at least 50% of alcoholics eventually free themselves although only 10% are ever treated. One recent study found that 80% of all alcoholics who recover for a year or more do so on their own, some after being unsuccessfully treated. When a group of these self-treated alcoholics was interviewed, 57% said they simply decided that alcohol was bad for them. Twenty-nine percent said health problems, frightening experiences, accidents, or blackouts persuaded them to quit. Others used such phrases as "Things were building up" or "I was sick and tired of it." Support from a husband or wife was important in sustaining the resolution.

Treatment of Drug Abuse and Addiction — Part III, The Harvard Mental Health Letter, Volume 12, Number 4, October 1995, page 3.
(See Aug. (Part I), Sept. (Part II), Oct. 1995 (Part III).)

And note that the Harvard Medical School says that the support of a good spouse is more important than that of a 12-Step group. But A.A. says just the opposite: "Dump your spouse and marry the A.A. group, because A.A. is The Only Way."

Bill Wilson considered everything but drinking alcohol to be the real cause of alcoholism:
        "Our liquor was but a symptom." (The Big Book, William G. Wilson, page 64.)
        "After all, our problems were of our own making. Bottles were only a symbol." (The Big Book, William G. Wilson, page 103.)

Secret 3

Alcoholics Anonymous isn't just about quitting drinking:

Alcoholics Anonymous is also a cult religion, one that uses alcoholism as a hook to get people to join. (The sister organization, Narcotics Anonymous, uses drug addictions in the same manner.) A.A., N.A., and all of the other 12-Step clones have the goal of getting everyone to practice "The Twelve Steps", which include commandments to seek knowledge of, and carry out, the will of God, as they hear God dictating His orders.

The manual of Alcoholics Anonymous is also named Alcoholics Anonymous, but is popularly called "The Big Book". All of Chapter Four of the Big Book, "We Agnostics", covers just one subject: how all agnostics and atheists must be converted to having the same religious beliefs as the author Bill Wilson. (It is not about how to quit drinking.) Wilson actually instructed people to abandon human intelligence and reason, and embrace blind faith in "the realm of the spirit." And then the recruiting manual in Chapter Seven of the Big Book teaches that other people's religions are inferior to A.A. beliefs, because those other religions didn't keep those people from drinking. (As if the goal of all religions is to keep people from drinking.)

The 12-Step true believers can make such sweeping grandiose claims about the broad applicability of the Twelve Steps because those Twelve Steps are not really about alcoholism at all. The Twelve Steps have absolutely nothing to do with alcoholism; they are all about converting people to belief in a cult religion, and then recruiting more new cult members and indoctrinating them. That's what those practices did for their creator, Dr. Frank N. D. Buchman, and that is what they still do. So the 12 steps really are equally applicable to everything from drug addiction and alcoholism to compulsive shopping and being a rape victim, because The Steps have nothing to do with any of those things.

Secret 4

A.A. meetings are religious rituals more than they are therapy sessions. Every meeting is begun by reciting the contents of pages 58 and 59 from the Big Book, which contain the Twelve Steps, and statements that everyone there got sober by doing the Twelve Steps, and that "RARELY HAVE we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path", except for people who are defective — people who are "constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves" — people who were born that way — and people who thought that they "could find an easier, softer way."

Actually, it is A.A. that is being dishonest with itself. Those statements are cherished religious beliefs and wishful thinking, not facts. The A.A. old-timers have seen millions of people fail while practicing the Twelve Steps, but they just play "blame the victim" with those failures.

Secret 5

It is a myth that A.A. sponsors are wise and knowledgeable and able to give sage advice. A.A. propaganda is always telling stories about sponsors who are able to perceptively psychoanalyze their sponsees and always come up with just the right answer to solve the sponsees' problem and guide him or her towards sobriety and spirituality. That is just so much wishful thinking, and it is just another part of the Big Lie — part of the story that A.A. is a great treatment program. They don't want to tell you that healthy, wealthy, and wise people simply do not join A.A. and become sponsors. They don't want to tell you that you are likely to get some neurotic power-tripping fool who has simply memorized several dozen slogans, and he will just spout one at you in every situation. The truth is that A.A. is managed at the grass roots level by incompetents who literally do not know what they are doing. They have no training in treating alcoholism; they are just people who have been members of A.A. and "worked the program" for a few years, and still they presume to act as doctors, ministers, priests, and recovery counselors to the newcomers.

One of the most interesting pieces of new "recovery" research, from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, no less, has shown that newcomers do not benefit from getting sponsors. In a recent controlled study, a group of new Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous members who got sponsors did no better than another group who didn't get sponsors. But strangely enough, the sponsors did better than other members who did not act as sponsors. It seems that getting their egos stroked by acting as puffed-up, all-wise, all-knowing sponsors, ordering the wimpy newcomers around, helped the sponsors to stay clean and sober, even if it didn't help the newcomers any.

Secret 6

There is nothing moral or spiritual about trying to shove the funny Buchmanite religious beliefs of Bill Wilson on everyone else.

It is not moral or spiritual to tell people that:

       "It isn't a religion, it's spiritual."
        Nonsense - It's a religion.

"It isn't a religion, it's just an easy-going, spiritually-oriented quit-drinking program."
Nonsense - It's a religion.

"You should not reveal the religious nature of the program to new prospects; 'We might arouse their prejudices'." That's called "deceptive recruiting". It's also called "lying". There is nothing moral or spiritual about it.

"Don't tell the newcomers too much stuff too fast. Don't emphasize the religious feature. Dole out the truth to prospective recruits and newcomers 'by teaspoons, rather than by buckets.'"

That's called "deceptive recruiting". It's also called "lying". There is nothing moral or spiritual about it.

It is not moral or spiritual to keep making up screwy "spiritual diseases" like compulsive shopping or being a diabetic, or being an abused child of an alcoholic, or being a victim of incest, and then declaring that only a life spent doing the Twelve Steps will save the sufferer from a life of sin.

It is not moral or spiritual to mislead people and make them think they are getting great therapy and great treatment for what ails them, when all they are getting is quack medicine. That keeps the people from seeking some other medical treatment that could really help them.

Likewise, it is not moral or spiritual to tell sick people who are having troubles that their problems are of their own making, and that all that they need to do is Work The Steps and Work A Strong Program harder, rather than seek help from a doctor or psychiatrist.

And it is not moral or spiritual to tell sick people that the answer to all such problems is "Work The Twelve Steps, Get A Sponsor, And Read The Big Book".

It is not moral or spiritual to shove an ineffective "spiritual" treatment program on people who are seeking medical treatment for a deadly illness.

In fact, it is hard to understand how people who are otherwise pretty okay, nice, honest people can actually do it. They rationalize their actions by saying that the A.A. program saves lives, but they cannot help but see the huge failure rate of A.A. if they have been around A.A. for very long. So that rationalization doesn't really wash. They are in denial about what A.A. really is, and they are in denial about the immense A.A. failure rate, and they are in denial about what they are really doing.

It is not moral or spiritual to use judges and parole officers — the criminal justice system — to coerce people into the Alcoholics Anonymous organization. But they do it all of the time.

Foisting quack medicine on critically-ill people is criminal fraud and manslaughter.

Look forward to Part 2, tomorrow. From:

Let the fetus do its job of becoming your baby.

No Booze. No Drugs. Being Real.

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