Letters CCLXXXII
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Date: Sat, January 7, 2012 7:59 pm (answered 11 January 2012) Interesting read. Personally, I have found AA to be quite helpful for me to break the habit. Do you have a personal grudge against the program? Carl Hello Carl, Thanks for the letter. The fact that you like A.A. does not make it a good organization with a good cure rate. Do I have a grudge? Start here, at the introduction. Have a good day now. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * ** The Sagan rule: ** "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." ** The far-fetched claims of Bill Wilson that Frank Buchman's ** cult religion could cure alcoholism have not been backed ** up by even a little ordinary evidence, never mind some ** extraordinary evidence. 
Date: Mon, January 9, 2012 1:16 pm (answered 11 January 2012) Dear Orange, I am a 44 year old man living St. Louis, Missouri. For the second time in as many years, I was just released from the hospital after being treated for Major Depressive Disorder. My depression has consumed and destroyed my life in recent years. I am a recovered alcoholic with 26 years of complete abstinence. I spent the first 23 years of my sobriety very active in AA. It would be hard to find a person that has "worked the program" more vigorously than myself. My recent depressive episode was so severe that I became suicidal. I was in so much pain that I was compelled to buy a bottle of vodka. As badly as I wanted to drink, I ended up throwing it out. Desperate and afraid, I called an old AA "friend" in an effort to save myself. Predictably, he offered up the breath-takingly arrogant response that my condition was due to the fact that I was given the gift of sobriety and that I had not even begun to "repay the interest" on my debt to AA, and concluded that I was a "drama queen". I was the owner of lucrative construction business that became a casualty of the economic downturn. I ended up in federal bankruptcy court. The consequences were devastating. I lost everything, including my beautifully restored Victorian home. My sponsor pointed out that my failure wasn't a result of the macroeconomic landscape, but rather to the fact that I was "selfish and self-centered". I joined AA at the tender of 18. I was extremely vulnerable and willing to do anything to alleviate the suffering associated with my addiction. Needless to say, the damage done by years of guilt indoctrination and self-loathing fostered in the rooms of AA is incalculable. As the years went by in AA, my depression deepened. Several years ago I sought the help of a Psychiatrist who happened to be in AA. I gave him my complete trust. His prescription for depression was going to meetings rather than "feeling sorry for myself" and "carrying the AA message". At that point I was completely demoralized and every instinct told me to run like hell away from AA. I did and I found another doctor who was horrified by the way I was treated by the "wise" AA psychiatrist. If I could prove the indescribable suffering at the hands of this incompetent doctor I would sue him for medical malpractice. In hindsight, I recognize that one of the primary causes of my depression was the constant cognitive conflict created by trying to "practice the principles in all of my affairs". The cult of AA instills fear, self-doubt, excessive guilt, and self-loathing — all of the primary components of depression. I am not alone in my experience. My research has confirmed my suspicions of the correlation between long term affiliation with AA and mental illness. I have perused your website extensively and I agree with most of your conclusions regarding AA. At one point I felt that AA was the best thing that had ever happened to me. I never would have suspected that it would end up nearly destroying me. Depression is not a "character defect. It is an illness. I have thrown away the poorly garbled screed known as the "big book" and have walked away from AA. I am not an atheist. I do believe that there has divine grace in my life and recovery from addiction. I pray that the same God that saved me from my addiction will save me from AA. Not Anonymous, Daniel Loker Hello Daniel, Wow. Thank you for an impressive letter. I can't think of anything to add, except "I hope you are feeling better now".
And, "The first rule of the Hippocratic Oath is, 'Do No Harm'." So have a good day, and a good life. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * ** "A useful idea has turned into a religious movement — ** and a hindrance to research, psychiatry, and to many ** alcoholics who need a different kind of help." ** == Dr. Arthur H. Cain, Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure?, ** Harper's Magazine, February 1963.
Date: Tue, January 10, 2012 1:45 am (answered 11 January 2012) First of all I would ask that you indeed keep my email address anonymous and that for all tense and purposes refer to me as "Richard 82". In response to the letters 244-245 by Ms Anonymous and George M, if I could contribute any additional experience on Atlantic Group it would indeed be helpful. In this instance I would like to set the record straight on Atlantic Group. I had begun my relapse back in August 2011 and it ended on October 14th of that same year. While I had been active in Atlantic Group (I had five service commitments and over a year sober) prior to my having relapsed, I was not rigorously honest with myself and continued to hold on to those destructive behaviors that lead me out to drink once again. That being said, my experience at Atlantic Group was: Not as great as it could have been because I was not willing to open up honestly and let my sponsor in as to what was going on with me and take advantage of the fact that I was in a place where there were people willing to help me and who wanted to get to know me. Atlantic Group is just like any other group in Alcoholics Anonymous. I never saw any impropriety as far as what was described with the Midtown group on your page, mixed gender sponsorship (although there were women who sponsored and still sponsor gay men as some gay men do not feel comfortable with having straight male sponsors which is understandable) insofar as Men sponsoring Women, or anything remotely cult-like. The tradition of "each group ought to be fully autonomous", well Atlantic Group may be pretty rigid, however it works for those who do what is ask of them, have faith in God, clean up your affairs, and help someone else do the same. I was fortunate during my time at Atlantic Group to hear of stories of men and women who overcame serious obstacles in their lives and are now happy and contented individuals who smile because they have something to live for. I think there is something to be said for the adage, "it works if you work it" Sincerely, Richard 82 Hello Richard, Thank you for the letter and the input. You are blaming yourself for your failure to stay sober. Yes, you are responsible for your sobriety. But the fact still remains that the A.A. program did not work for you. You can make excuses for the program's ineffectiveness like, "I didn't let my sponsor in", or "I wasn't rigorously honest," but the fact still remains that the A.A. program did not work. If you have to do all of the work, and you get all of the blame for failure, and A.A. gets all of the credit for successes, then that is just fraud. They are playing a game of "Heads I win, tails you lose" with your life. You are just assuming that the A.A. program would have worked, and would have helped you if you had done better and "worked a strong program". Where is the evidence for that? What is the real A.A. cure rate? (Look here and here.) You are overlooking one obvious conclusion: The reason that the A.A. program didn't work for you is because the A.A. program doesn't work. By the way, how can you be so responsible for your failure if you are also powerless over alcohol? It takes a lot of double-talk to explain how you can be powerless over alcohol and unable to control your behavior and unable to manage your unmanageable life, but you are still responsible for controlling yourself and doing everything right. Hearing some happy stories from people who quit drinking does not make A.A. a good program, or good treatment for addictions. It doesn't even make their dogma true. Lots of people just quit drinking because they have matured out of their addictive behavior, or they got sick and tired of being so sick and tired. The fact that some of those sober people got fooled into believing that they quit drinking because of some cultish practices only proves that they can be confused about what causes what.
If you are still working on getting sober, may I suggest some other organizations and methods that may
help you more?
Here is a printable list: Have a good day and a good life now. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * ** During my eighty-seven years, I have witnessed ** a whole succession of technological revolutions; ** but none of them has done away with the need for ** character in the individual, or the ability to think. ** == Financier Bernard Baruch
Date: Sun, January 8, 2012 9:42 am (answered 11 January 2012) The video on this page titled, "Aspartame, MSG, and Excitotoxins" is very informative about many different aspects of diet and a long list of toxins and how they are related to behavior. The part I like is the use of the term "behavior" vs. saying behaviors are diseases. He even mentions AA's low rate of success, because it fails to address the root cause of deficiencies. I am going to use this video to alter our diet even more to see where it helps to improve brain function related to over-all health. http://www.experimentalvaccines.org/dr-russell-blaylock/
Dr. Russell Blaylock on Vaccines
To see your Wall or to write on Anne's Wall, follow the link below: Hi again, Anne, Thanks for the input. This bears investigation. Have a good day now. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * ** The principles of Washington's farewell address are still sources ** of wisdom when cures for social ills are sought. The methods of ** Washingtons's physicians, however, are no longer studied. ** == Thurman Arnold
Date: Tue, January 10, 2012 8:49 pm (answered 12 January 2012) Hahaha.. I feel sorry for you A. Orange. (or who ever wrote this crap). Jack Hello Jack, That sure sounds like Denial. Do you have any specific statements or items to refute? Have a good day now. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * ** "Denial ain't just a river in Egypt." ** == Mark Twain (1835—1910)
Date: Wed, January 11, 2012 12:49 am (answered 12 January 2012) Thank you for this great site about propaganda. So many examples too. Could you work on the design to make it even better? There is so much on one page.
I found one, not error, but too harsh judgement :
yours Hello Moritz, Thank you for the letter and the compliments. I would like to break up the Propaganda Techniques web page into dozens of smaller pages. I need to sort the tricks by type, into categories, and make a bunch of web pages that only list half a dozen or so related propaganda techniques on each page. It is just a ton of work, because then I will have to go back through all of the other web pages, especially the letters, and fix all of the links that refer to propaganda tricks. I'll do it as soon as I get a Round Tuit. About the small camera: I agree that tiny cameras can have better focus, because of the pin-hole effect that you mentioned, but that isn't really what I was thinking about when I wrote that. Maybe I should make it clearer. I was thinking about the cheap plastic film cameras that I find being sold surplus at Goodwill. They feature flimsy plastic bodies that contain one roll of film, and low-quality plastic lenses that cannot be focused — the lens won't move — and they are intended for only one use: Expose the roll of film and then send the camera in for developing, where they just break the camera body to get the film out, and trash the camera body. Guess what the cardboard box around such cameras says? "Focus-Free! No focusing required." That is spin-doctoring, turning a low-quality limitation into a "feature". And that is Making a Virtue out of a Fault. (And see, those two techniques are related — they are variations on the same theme — and they should both go onto the same web page in the future.) Have a good day now. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * ** Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it. ** == Mark Twain (Samuel Longhorne Clemens) 1835—1910
From: "Moritz G." Ah, I get it. I now know what you mean. Just call them "one-way", "disposable" or "one-film" instead of "ultra-cheap cameras". Nowadays there are so many types and young people might not even remember them. I misunderstood because those tiny digital cameras in mobile-phones and webcams were on my mind. I bookmarked your page and will return when I forget. I strongly believe that this needs to be taught in high school. Here we have a class that is called "Ethics, Standards and Values" and one "Politics". It needs to be the subject of one of them.
Have a good weekend
Date: Wed, January 11, 2012 4:23 pm (answered 12 January 2012)
Peter Ferentzy, PhD Hi again, Peter, Well, assuming that this is a true story, rather than a scam, it's a good thing to publicize. The parents and the child have my sympathy. What I find appalling is how the Republicans cry about "Obamacare", and how government funding of health care will lead to "Death Panels". Well, the Death Panels are really located in the office buildings of the "free enterprise" profit-making health insurance companies. Every so often, they decide that it will be more profitable to just let a child die rather than to pay for an expensive operation or treatment. I am lucky enough to have some of that "horrible" single-payer health care. That is, I'm an old veteran who gets health care from the Veterans' Administration. Yes, I enjoy Socialized Medicine. The "Big Government" owns it all. It's wonderful. I don't pay a penny. I show up, flash my plastic card, and get free treatment and free medications. If they are "rationing" my health care, I can't find where they are doing it. In fact, the situation is so far the other way that just last month I went to the doctor again for an annual checkup because he was complaining that it had been like 21 months since I'd seen him. He was demanding that I come in for an appointment, just to see what condition my condition was in. (Sorry, Kenny Rogers.) Well, when you are healthy, there is no rush to go see the doctor. So I went in, and they ran a zillion tests on me, and everything is great. If that is "rationed health care" and "death panels", I like it. I wish that kid could get the same treatment. Have a good day now. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * ** The selfish pursuit of self-interest does not necessarily lead to ** any "greater good". "The Market" does not magically transform greed ** into something that is good for the country, or good for society.
Date: Fri, January 13, 2012 10:33 am (answered 16 January 2012) I have just read through "The Orange Papers" and am intermittently laughing my ass off or shaking my head saying, "God, that poor f-ed up soul who wrote this needs help!". What I got from the Orange papers: 1) The writer of them has spent an enormous amount of time being a "hater". 2) The writer is every bit as much the zealot and narcissist as he/she accuses Bill W. of being! Sure — I am willing to hear your opinion but, quite frankly, it's being "preached" and delivered with the exact same zealotry and insane level of intensity you accuse the 12 Step co-founders of possessing! Kind of like the pot calling the kettle black, isn't it? 3) Who are you trying to convince of all this stuff anyway...others *or yourself?* And, the bigger question is, *why?* 4) If you don't believe in the 12 Steps, the co-founders, the principles, the "cult" nature of the organization...don't go to the meetings or read what they've written! Geez...doesn't take the IQ of a rocket scientist to figure that one out. Why does all of this stuff "rattle your cage" to the point of making you a raving crusader against it? Carry on with your crusade!! It is glaringly obvious that you have some serious need to hate and spread hate with great intensity. I feel sorry for ya, man. The writings you offer, if nothing else, beautifully illustrate the viewpoints of someone who is *way, way, way *extreme. Not balanced. Fanatical. Again — the very words you use to describe Bill W. If this is your true opinion of him, you guys sure have a lot in common!! Hello Elizabeth, Thank you for the letter. I know that you think that you are making good points there, but you actually have not made any points at all. To start with, laughing something off is a defense mechanism to avoid your real feelings and to avoid dealing with the actual facts. It is a standard propaganda technique. Look here: Laugh It Off. Then, for your numbered list of objections:
Most important of all, what is the actual A.A. cure rate? All of what you called "believe in the 12 Steps, the co-founders, the principles, the "cult" nature of the organization" is quite useless if it doesn't actually save the lives of the alcoholics. So please answer this one simple question that no true-believer Stepper has ever answered honestly:
Obviously, if A.A. does not actually sober up the alcoholics, then it is useless and a waste of time. It is also very harmful because it induces guilt and feelings of inadequacy and powerlessness, and increases the failure rate. Have a good day now. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * ** Just because people say that they are working for a good cause ** does not make them good people. Remember that both the Nazis ** and the Communists were "working for good causes." So was the ** Medieval Catholic Church that burned girls and men to death ** at the stake for "heresy" and "witchcraft", while the Pope ** sold indulgences and Bishops' offices. [The next letter from Elizabeth_B is here.]
Date: Fri, January 13, 2012 10:43 am (answered 16 January 2012) Dear Orange, I am reading with great interest your critique of AA, cults and blind-faithers in general. In your "Funny Spirituality of Bill W and AA", however, I notice something that runs counter to my experience. Bill was apparently attempting to plead for leniency early in recovery. Let the man stay off the booze for awhile since it was his main problem. Back when that was written, many people smoked and drank gallons of coffee on a daily basis, and there was not so much research indicating the full extent of tobacco's dangers. I was sober for 24 years in and out of the program, BTW, made a decision, stayed fairly drunk off and on for a year, and then sobered myself up. Originally I was disgusted with the fact that I was in a crippling atrial fibrillation which my VA docs were either unwilling or unable to do much about. After several years of greatly reduced physical activity, I said what the hell and decided I might as well get a little relief somehow, and started on the vodka again. I'm sober now, but I enjoy a new ability to see through AA somewhat. AA didn't turn off the blaming/scapegoating mechanism in me that seems to be looking for a culprit to drink at. Since I've been sober, and stopped blaming fate or sundry devils for my problems, the "Higher Power" has "miraculously" got me an A/V node ablation and a pacemaker. I still have the unstoppable atrial fibrillation, but not the consequent ventricular irregularity, just a steady, regular beat. A tremendous improvement, for me. Now, you could say I still have a big problem. But it's one that that is apparently beyond the scope of current medical science. Meanwhile, the ventricular thing, which was slowly causing my heart to be unable to pump blood at all anymore, is, for the present time, relieved. This guy in the story must have been a holy terror while drunk; most drunks are, when they end up in a position susceptible to AA or treatment or any of our society's woefully inadequate "answers". The idea Bill is trying to promote in that instance is that we get him off the booze and continue to let him numb himself down with caffeine and tobacco. Surely these are the lesser evils, in a sense? I'm not willing to argue whether lung cancer or emphysema or heart disease are better or worse than any of the diseases that can be traced back to alcohol abuse. But, at least as far as my many years of familiarity with AA is concerned, I never knew anybody who was pitching AA to a drunk (as you call it, an "AA recruiter") in the way of a "twelfth step" (usually at the drunk's invitation, these days) who would do anything other than accept it as "a valid excuse" when a hungover drunk (we never 12-stepped drunks while they are still drunk) frankly said he wasn't ready to stop drinking; what's the use of carrying on when someone is unwilling to try things differently, or at least recognize that alcohol's a problem, or listen? If you would rather be miserable when you realize it's the booze that is the greatest source of your misery, you're welcome to it. And yes, an alcoholic who is drinking himself to death can (and they do, all the time) say, "Frankly, I'm over-doing it, but I'm just not ready to stop, right now?" and there is no one in the world that can do anything about it. So at this point, although you go on, and get yourself in deeper, it seems that you have already done as much to undermine and disprove your argument, as you have to truly critique AA's "funny spirituality". That is, their spirituality may be funny, the reader says, who knows? but your means of exposing it seems just as funny. I get the idea from this that you're willing to use the same tactics you're attributing to Bill W., who was certainly a charlatan in many ways, just to expose him. And you're right, in many ways, about AA's "funny spirituality". But in this case, you are making a false attribution, in this example, and all Bill W. was saying was that maybe if you get someone to sober up you can put some of his other addictions that aren't making him shit-faced on the back burner for awhile. Nowadays, a lot more is known about smoking and drinking, and I can only think of a rare few drunks who sobered up in the program who didn't after a few years give up smoking and eventually coffee and other stimulants. My own experience is that you get tired of hawking up phlegm and having that jittery feeling over the years and just eventually stop. What a lot of people discover at that point is that they have a hard time staying away from snacks and simply overeating. You go on to say the "spiritual" AA member "became annoyed at his wife's attempts to save his life". For one thing, some recently sober drunk is not to be considered any more or less spiritual than any other bloke off the street. And who says "spiritual" people can't or don't become annoyed with the actions of others? It's a long and winding road, isn't it? Furthermore, the wife isn't saving anyone's life — she's just nagging about something that annoys her. If the guy is so screwed up that he gets drunk because she's nagging him, I guess he's no better than I am, although it took me 24 years to get tired enough and pissed off enough. But I'm afraid the substance of this little article, though well-intentioned, is based on some false attributions and a "mountain of bull" and "untruths" rather as insidious as those you are trying to expose. The funny thing about this, the feeling I get, is that you won't even get this or listen to it in your attempt to argue your way out of it or prove me wrong. In some sense you've lost self-perspective. I guess that's because you have succumbed to another error that seems as bad as anything a bunch of misguided falsely-pious drunks could ever do to themselves or a newcomer. You are condemning the whole because of its parts. No matter how much I detest some of the things that go on in AA, and some of the attitudes it propagates, I remember a lot of very good stuff as well, simply the kinds of things that go on between people engaged in some effort to better themselves or help others. Human interactions can't be snuffed utterly by dogma or the mechanics of superstition. But if you didn't get the foregoing about the reasons why a "recruiter" (never met or knew of one in AA) wouldn't bother pressing someone who frankly didn't want to quit drinking, I don't know if you ever had much real life experience with AA anyway before you decided to start your attack on it. What's funny is, as Morton Kelsey notes in one of his books, you can be just as happy and fulfilled being, for example, a hater who runs a white supremacist organization and passes out pamphlets about the blacks and the jews, as you can being a pro bono civil rights lawyer working for the justice project in the deep south. Since most of human perception, including yours, is based on delusion and altogether murky as the cloud of unknowing always is, just finding a way to be happy or to feel useful is some kind of miracle, I suppose. That Aquinas or you would argue (as I would) that anything which proceeds from a "bad" motive must be bad, that no wrong can make a right, doesn't stop anyone from doing it?and it doesn't take away from the goodness of the effects as they are experienced by the unknowing beneficiaries. That's simply common sense, and seeing theings the way they sometimes are. I will continue to read your stuff, but maybe first, if you're at all interested in pursuing cogent arguments relatively free from deceptive tricks and false attribution, get hold of a text on the principles of argument and the nature of fallacies. After all, anyone who spent any time at all studying rhetoric, persuasion, or forensics could tear your house of cards down with one breath, even if they didn't know a damn thing about AA. Now, when you run into someone who knows a lot about AA, and about fallacious argument, you're perpetually going to be in trouble. And that's not really going to help dismantle the black, real evil, the badness that cults represent socially. Yours, Thomas Smith Hello Thomas, Congratulations on your sobriety, and I hope you are doing well and feeling healthy. Thanks for the letter. Alas, I have to disagree with your major points:
Have a good day now. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * ** Being surrounded by a group of people who keep ** telling you that you are powerless over alcohol, ** and that your will power is useless, is not ** getting "support". It is getting sabotaged. ** With friends like them, you don't need any enemies.
Date: Fri, January 13, 2012 8:28 am (answered 16 January 2012) This fight is far from over: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/../../dr-peter-ferentzy/occupy-movement-canada_b_1190849.html
Peter Ferentzy, PhD Hi again Peter, Thanks for an interesting article. You make a bunch of good points there. I won't repeat them all; I'll just let people read the article themselves. Have a good day now. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * ** "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue ** of their currency, first by inflation then by deflation, the banks and ** the corporations will grow up around them, will deprive the people of ** all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent ** their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the ** banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." ** — Thomas Jefferson
Date: Fri, January 13, 2012 4:59 am (answered 16 January 2012)
Peter Ferentzy, PhD
Okay, Peter, I'll be happy to publicize this. Have a good day now. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * ** Imagine how people will interact with each other when they know they ** cannot harm another person, place, condition or thing without harming ** themselves. Imagine the difference when people, everywhere, accept ** the divine truth: as they give, so shall they receive. ** — (Mayan) Don Alejandro Cirilo Perez Oxlaj
Last updated 15 March 2013. |
The Family of 4
