Date: Mon, July 16, 2012 3:05 pm (answered 16 July 2012)
Subject: Re: Sheilah B. sent you $0.02 USD
>
> Just thought you'd like to know Sheilah B. sent you $0.02 USD.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Note from Sheilah B.: Just thought you'd like to know, someone read
> your painstaking article at
> http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-effectiveness.html. I want you to
> know it's really well written. If you put into working THE program what
> you put into this article, you would never ever have use or drink again.
>
>
Hello Sheilah,
I don't need to "work the program." I have 11, almost 12 years now, off of
alcohol, tobacco, and all other drugs. So I'm doing just fine without
any cult religion practices in my life.
Have a good day now.
== Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info *
* AA and Recovery Cult Debunking *
* http://www.orange-papers.info/ *
* http://www.orange-papers.info/forum *
** "Now I know what it's like to be high on life.
** It isn't as good, but my driving has improved."
** == Nina, on "Just Shoot Me", 13 Jan 2006.
Date: Mon, July 16, 2012 12:35 am (answered 16 November 2012)
From: "Sheilah B."
Subject: Wishing you well.
I only wish you'd wish yourself as well. I'm awestruck by the
animosity you have for A.A. Terry, I have had some hum dingers as
resentments but yours is so vicious, I feel compelled to let you know
that it's likely to kill you. Are you a drinker? Or has someone you
loved died due to alcohol and this is your way of punishing A.A. for
not working fast enough to save them? Or was someone you loved been
killed by an alcoholic and you wish every alcoholic dead? Is this
rant of yours your attempt at mass murder? So far, A.A. is the
closest mankind has come to a cure. There are millions of people
who's lives have been saved by that program. And it truly does work
for those who actually work the steps (and it's like salvation, once
saved is NOT always saved...salvation and sobriety has to be
maintained) take the advice of those who have had success. If not
100%, one's lives are so drastically improved....they keep coming
back. Which I kinda think by evidence of your rant, is something YOU
might consider.
So spill it please. I'll give you $5.00 if you reveal who pissed on
your pop tart. That ought to be enough to get you a 40.
I can't say I "got" the program right off the bat. I didn't. But my
life improved for the effort. There's no way in hades I would ever
EVER be alive today if I hadn't found A.A.
I was destined in ALL ways to die on one of my binges either directly
from the alcohol or the events that transpired when I was drunk.
I was desperate to get sober. I had every reason to. I tried
everything. Hypnosis, Counseling, Religion, Prayer oh LORD did I
pray**....but I was ignorant of what to pray for or what to pray
about. (I kept asking GOD to help me with my drinking problem and all
that happened was my drinking got bigger and bigger) Only by taking a
suggestion *that wasn't initially directed to me......did I ever get a
clue.
I have had 12 consecutive years of complete sobriety thanks to
stopping my shit, and working THE program.
I have had 22 days of drunkenness in the past 24 years.....Thanks to
finding A.A.
I hope if you meant to kill people with your tirade that you fail
miserably, esp. if that tirade was your self justification for
continuing to drink....May you never have an even reasonable drinking
or drugging event for your crime. May you know such humiliation, you
become one of A.A.'s hardest working members.
By the way, having a "resentment" against frauds who foist quackery on sick people is not a bad thing.
Are you a drinker?
No.
Or has someone you loved died due to alcohol and this is your way of punishing A.A. for
not working fast enough to save them?
No. Because I know that A.A. does not work at all, I sure don't expect A.A. to "work fast enough."
Or was someone you loved been killed by an alcoholic and you wish every alcoholic dead?
No. Again, A.A. does not work. If I wanted every alcoholic to die, I would tell them to go to A.A.
Is this rant of yours your attempt at mass murder?
Again, since sending people to A.A. kills more of them than not sending them, my discouraging people from
going to A.A. could not possibly be mass murder.
So far, A.A. is the closest mankind has come to a cure. There are millions of people
who's lives have been saved by that program.
No, it doesn't work. The A.A. claim that it has "saved millions" is just another
Big Lie, some completely untrue grandiose bragging
that they have parrotted for so many years that they don't know when it started. Well,
it started with Bill Wilson, here.
A.A. does not even have 2 million members in the entire world, so they cannot possibly have saved millions.
The truth is that most of the A.A. membership is just churn — another 100,000 people are
forced into A.A. meetings for a little while, and then another 100,000 drop out.
And then another 100,000 go in, and then another 100,000 drop out.
There are only a few hundred thousand committed A.A. cult members in the whole world.
Look here for much more about the A.A. churn rate.
We have discussed the "millions" claims of A.A. many times before.
And it truly does work for those who actually work the steps
No, it doesn't work. It's just a cult religion hoax.
A.A. won't save you any more than Scientology or the Moonies will.
Please answer this one simple question that no true-believer Stepper
has ever answered honestly:
What is the REAL A.A. success rate?
Out of each 1000 newcomers to A.A., how many will pick up a one-year
sobriety medallion a year later?
Or even several years later?
And how many will get their 2-year, and 5-year, and 10-year coins? Ever?
How about 11 years and 21 years?
and it's like salvation, once saved is NOT always saved...salvation and sobriety has to be
maintained.
Obviously. You did 12 years in the cult, and then relapsed, and now you have 12 years again.
By the way, you are misinterpreting Christianity. They say that salvation is forever, and that all
of the demons of Hell cannot take back one of the saved.
take the advice of those who have had success. If not
100%, one's lives are so drastically improved....they keep coming
back.
"About 75 percent of persons who recover from alcohol dependence do
so without seeking any kind of help, including specialty alcohol (rehab)
programs and AA. Only 13 percent of people with alcohol dependence ever
receive specialty alcohol treatment."
So spill it please. I'll give you $5.00 if you reveal who pissed on
your pop tart. That ought to be enough to get you a 40.
Congratulations. You are now among those Steppers who have wished me to relapse and
get drunk on a 40-ouncer.
I have never done that to a Stepper. I never suggest that Steppers go out and get drunk.
But the "spiritual" 12-Step people do that to other people, often. It is even documented
practice in the Big Book:
If somebody won't surrender and submit to an A.A. sponsor and believe Bill's Bull, the A.A. recruiter is supposed to
tell him to go out and do some more research
on the subject.
Now that is vicious.
You wonder who "pissed on my pop tart"? Alcoholics Anonymous did. It has harmed
millions of people, including friends of mine, with lies, misinformation, bad advice, quack medicine and cult religion.
Now we have Freedom of Religion in this country, so you can believe whatever screwy superstitions you wish to.
You can worship Satan as your "Higher Power" if you like.
You can believe that you can contact saints and spirits and demons
through a Ouija board,
like how Bill Wilson did.
But when you push an old cult religion from the nineteen-thirties as a cure
— or "not a cure, but a treatment" — for a deadly disease,
you have crossed an important line. You are practicing medicine without a license, and that is a crime.
And when your patients die, that is felony manslaughter.
I can't say I "got" the program right off the bat. I didn't. But my
life improved for the effort. There's no way in hades I would ever
EVER be alive today if I hadn't found A.A.
I was destined in ALL ways to die on one of my binges either directly
from the alcohol or the events that transpired when I was drunk.
Again, there is no evidence that a cult religion saved your life.
What saved your life was getting a grip and quitting drinking.
I was desperate to get sober. I had every reason to. I tried
everything. Hypnosis, Counseling, Religion, Prayer oh LORD did I
pray**....but I was ignorant of what to pray for or what to pray
about. (I kept asking GOD to help me with my drinking problem and all
that happened was my drinking got bigger and bigger) Only by taking a
suggestion *that wasn't initially directed to me......did I ever get a
clue.
I believe you when you said that you were desperate to get sober. That is why you quit drinking.
It had nothing to do with joining the 12-Step cult, or praying to God, or "working the Steps", or any of that.
You quit drinking because you wanted to quit drinking, and then you did.
But what happened 12 years ago? Did God stop answering your prayers and let you get drunk?
Why?
Actually, I don't think that either your sobriety or your relapse had anything to do with God.
You probably lost your resolve, and
the Lizard Brain Addiction Monster started yammering that "Just one will be okay."
And you made the mistake of believing it.
Look here for more on that:
The Lizard Brain Addiction Monster
And you most assuredly did not "try everything". That is a common over-used old
A.A. cliché that A.A. members
parrot mindlessly without even thinking about what it means.
Did you try SMART? SOS? Lifering? Women For Sobriety (WFS)?
Rational Recovery and AVRT (Addictive Voice Recognition Therapy)?
The Veteran's Administration program?
The Catholic CALIX or St. Vincent de Paul programs? The Salvation Army program?
Naltrexone?
You did not "try everything."
I notice a common characteristic to all of the things that you say you did try:
passive laziness.
You expected somebody else to do the quitting for you. When you prayed, you expected God to keep
you from drinking. When you went to the hypnotist, you expected the mental mechanic to fix your
behavior for you.
When you went to counseling, you expected the counselor to somehow change your behavior for you.
And then you went to A.A., where you believe that A.A. and its 12 Steps and God will make you quit drinking.
The truth is, there is no substitute for self-control.
I find it very curious that you say that praying to God did not work. But then joining A.A. did.
But the A.A. program is based on praying to God, and waiting for God to save you. Care to explain that
contradiction?
You hint:
"but I was ignorant of what to pray for or what to pray about."
So are you saying that praying didn't work because you didn't pray quite right?
God didn't love you or save you because you didn't mumble the correct words?
The magic spell doesn't work unless you get every word right?
God let you die because you didn't incant the correct prayer?
Man, that is one cold-hearted hard-assed "god".
(He reminds me of the Gaoul monsters in Stargate SG-1.)
I'm glad that I don't believe in a "god" like that.
Living with a "god" like that would be Hell.
Did you first pray,
"Dear God, please help me. Please help me to quit drinking."?
And that didn't work? Was that too "selfish"? So what prayer did you have to say instead?
Was it Bill Wilson's groveling Third Step Prayer where he cons God by telling God that God will have
a better slave, and God will look like a better slave-master, if He fixes Bill?
Bill's Third Step prayer is:
We were now at Step Three. Many of us said to our
Maker, as we understood Him: "God, I offer myself to
Thee — to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt.
Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy
will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may
bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love,
and Thy Way of life. May I do Thy will always!" We thought
well before taking this step making sure we were ready; that
we could at last
abandon ourselves utterly to Him.
The Big Book, 3rd edition, William G. Wilson, page 58.
Is that grovelling masochistic mess the magic spell that you have to incant?
By the way, can you explain how you rate so highly in the A.A. God's list of priorities? Your A.A. God lets
millions of little brown and black children die of diseases and starvation on the other side of the
world without lifting a finger to help them, but when a white woman in the USA drinks
too much alcohol, God supposedly comes running to save her.
Care to explain why God favors you so much more than black children?
I have had 12 consecutive years of complete sobriety thanks to
stopping my shit, and working THE program.
I have had 22 days of drunkenness in the past 24 years.....Thanks to
finding A.A.
You have zero evidence that you got sober because of A.A. I suggest that you got sober because you
were desperate to get sober.
So why did you relapse for a month 12 years ago? What happened there?
I mean, you "worked the Steps" for 12 years, and then you drank alcohol. So
the A.A. program doesn't work either, does it?
The only thing that works is "Just Don't Drink Any Alcohol."
Just don't take that first drink, not ever, no matter what.
Now that is a "program" that works.
I hope if you meant to kill people with your tirade that you fail
miserably, esp. if that tirade was your self justification for
continuing to drink....May you never have an even reasonable drinking
or drugging event for your crime. May you know such humiliation, you
become one of A.A.'s hardest working members.
Sheilah, telling people the truth about alcohol, alcohol addiction, and
Alcoholics Anonymous is not "killing them."
Actually, sending people to A.A. and giving them bad advice is what kills them.
Telling people not to take their doctor-prescribed medications is what kills them.
Telling people that they are powerless over alcohol is what kills them.
Telling people that they are sinners and full of defects of character and moral shortcomings and
can never recover is what drives them to suicide.
Making people dwell on the past with endless "moral inventories" is very depressing, and is
harmful to people's mental health.
Sexually exploiting the young women who come to A.A. and N.A. is what drives them away from even trying to
get clean and sober.
One of the Trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous,
Prof. and Dr. George E. Vaillant, found that Alcoholics Anonymous produced a zero-percent
improvement in sobriety, along with the worst death rate of any way of treating alcoholism
that he studied.
He spent nearly 20 years shoving A.A. treatment on sick alcoholics, and trying to prove that
A.A. works, but in the end, the best that he could say for Alcoholics Anonymous was:
"...there is compelling evidence that the results of our treatment were
no better than the natural history of the disease. ... Not only had we
failed to alter the natural history of alcoholism, but our death rate
of three percent a year was appalling."
Have a good day now.
== Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info *
* AA and Recovery Cult Debunking *
* http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ *
** The biggest truth to face now — what is probably making me unfunny now
** for the remainder of my life — is that I don't think people give a damn
** whether the planet goes on or not. It seems to me as if everyone is
** living as members of Alcoholics Anonymous do, day by day. And a few
** more days will be enough. I know of very few people who are dreaming
** of a world for their grandchildren.
** == Kurt Vonnegut
May 11, 2012, Friday: The Fernhill Wetlands
Gosling Portrait. This is one of the Family of 6 goslings.
The Family of 6
The new little baby is the third one in line.
The Family of 6
The new baby is the small one on the left.
White-fronted Geese
These guys are so named because of the white feathers on the front of their faces, just before the beak.
Every so often, something different shows up here, just passing through.
From Tundra Swans to Pelicans to obscure species of geese,
there are a lot of birds that use the Fernhill Wetlands as a safe international airport.
Date: Sat, July 14, 2012 2:49 am (answered 21 July 2012)
From: "iamnotastatistic"
Subject: Addiction treatment and medical malpractice
Hi Terrance,
I've just read a very detailed and damning report on the treatment industry
from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia
University. Among the many things that this report stated was the following:
"Given the prevalence of addiction in society and the extensive evidence
regarding how to identify, intervene and treat it, continued failure to do
so signals widespread system failure in health care service delivery,
financing, professional education and quality assurance. It also raises the
question of whether the low levels of care that addiction patients usually
do receive constitutes a form of medical malpractice."
The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia
University, New York, (2012). Addiction Medicine: Closing the Gap between
Science and Practice, page 200. Available at:
Date: Sat, July 14, 2012 3:21 am (answered 21 July 2012)
From: "iamnotastatistic"
Subject: Statistics on 13th stepping
Hi again Terrance,
I haven't read the complete report below, just an extract, but the extract
shows that over half of the female AA members in the report had experienced
harassment or abuse (13th Stepping) and 3.6% had been raped by male AA
members. It appears that odds of getting raped in AA are higher than the
odds of remaining a member for 10 years. That's horrific!
"13th Stepping: Why Alcoholics Anonymous is not always a safe place for
women." Cathy Bogart, Carol Pearce. Journal of Addictions Nursing,
2003,Vol. 14, No. 1 , Pages 43-47. Extract available at:
I know that correspondents often suggest ideas for the website (i.e. more
work for you) but it would be great to have a section on the website
dedicated to incidences of psychological/physical/sexual abuse in AA which
includes personal stories, media reports and publications (maybe you've
already got this and I haven't found it yet?) It would be very useful to be
able to direct professionals to a section like this where they could
quickly and clearly see the evidence of the widespread abuse in AA.
Just an idea.
Thanks for all great work that you do.
Iamnotastatistic
Hello again, Iamnotastatistic,
Thank you very much for the reports. Both of them are appalling. And yes, there is no doubt that
the current treatment for alcohol abuse and substance addiction is medical malpractice.
Interchurch Center
The statistics on rape in A.A. are just beyond any limits of sanity, and yet the Alcoholics Anonymous headquarters,
"Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.",
in the Interchurch Center in New York City, refuses to do anything about it. Year after year, scandal after scandal,
horror story after horror story, they refuse to do anything.
They just sit on their hands and pretend to be spiritual.
They hide behind the slogan that "Every A.A. group is independent," and
"We are powerless over A.A. groups."
That is also a kind of malpractice.
There is a section for stories about psychological/physical/sexual abuse in AA
— the "A.A. Horror Stories" section of the forum:
I don't know if we need an additional, separate, section for just
"psychological/physical/sexual abuse" stories,
since such abuse is a big part of the horror stories.
Have a good day now.
== Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info *
* AA and Recovery Cult Debunking *
* http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ *
** Underage binge drinking occurs more frequently if child
** maltreatment such as neglect, physical and sexual abuse
** is experienced, U.S. researchers said.
** == UPI, March. 4, 2009
Date: Tue, July 17, 2012 6:57 pm (answered 21 July 2012)
From: "Meatbag"
Subject: My Adventures in Slackware
Sorry to spam your inbox. But, you're really about the only person I can
tell this stuff to, since nobody else would have any idea what I'm talking
about.
So, I get bored with Lubuntu. I look into new distros. The Slackware-based
distros catch my eye, though Slackware itself intimidates me. I discover
Salix OS, which is basically Slackware with more tools. Seems good for an
intermediate user. So I install and discover that my wifi doesn't work out
of the box. Kind of a major problem for a laptop.
I do some research and discover that linux drivers did exist. I also
learned that I had to install my kernel source and something called the
mac80211 subsystem. So, I plug in an ethernet cord and download everything.
I discover that installing the mac80211 subsystem involves recompiling my
kernel. Kind of intimidating for somebody who just switched from the Ubuntu
family. But I take a stab at it, wait a while, and reboot. Kernel panic.
User panic. Reinstall, do some research, and learn that I needed to
compile-in the filesystem used by my root partition.
So, I try again, selecting all the right options in menuconfig. Wait a
while again. Reboot. Mac80211 subsystem successfully installed. Victory! I
place the microcode for my wifi in the right place. I try to build the
drivers. No matter what, they wouldn't build. Make kept failing with an
error. I make a post on the Salix OS forum asking for help. Some nice guy
directed me to updated kernels that already had the drivers installed. So I
download. Put everything in the right place and run all the included shell
scripts. Reboot. Find wi-fi works. Victory!
Anyhow, I just needed to vent and brag. Thanks for being a good listener.
Hello again, Meatbag,
Congratulations on your venture into "the Nightmare".
Ah, yes, compiling in additional device driver sources. What a pain. I have never succeeded in doing that,
and I tried several times with several different things.
And I'm an old computer programmer with more years of experience with "sysgen"
than I care to brag about. ("Sysgen" was an old Digital Equipment Corporation program that generated
operating systems for PDP-11 and Vax computers.)
Right now, I have a neat little high-quality autofocus Apple webcam that won't work with
Linux because of no drivers for it. I found and downloaded a package of source code for drivers, but the source code
won't install right because the patch file is trying to fix an empty file. The source code file
that is supposed to get the additional code patched into it is an empty zero-bytes file. How can that be? Easy:
the kernel writers moved the source text to some other file, and left the empty file there so that it wouldn't break
the Makefile and installation scripts.
So there is a mismatch between the driver source code and the kernel version.
So the camera sits here unused.
Yes, it is immensely easier when they put the driver source code into the kernel source code and just compile it in.
Do it right, for once and for all.
I'm glad that you found a version that works for you.
The built-in wifi in my laptop has never worked either. Not ever, not once. I use a USB wifi adapter.
Have a good day now.
== Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info *
* AA and Recovery Cult Debunking *
* http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ *
** Twenty-nine percent of the people who call computer tech support
** end up cussing at the tech support guy.
** == 60 Minutes TV program, 30 December 2007.
May 11, 2012, Friday: The Fernhill Wetlands
Mama + 2 goslings of the Family of 6
The New Family of 3
The New Family of 3
Canada Goose couple.
Their short necks show that they are of the Cackling Geese variety.
Date: Fri, July 20, 2012 1:17 pm (answered 21 July 2012)
From: "Ed K."
Subject:
Orange,
I had to respond to this article someone sent to me. It's not meant to be
confrontational, but I had to take exception to some of your statements. My
experience in AA has been extremely positive and I have seen many others
get well in this program.
I hope you read my comments with an open mind and not as a means to argue
or debate.
Hello Ed,
Thanks for the letter. I find that when people ask me to be "open-minded", it almost invariably means
that they want me to agree with them.
Your statements are in black, mine in red.
Alas, the colors did not come through the email at all. It's all just undifferentiated
black text. I'll have to recreate colorized text.
I'll do the usual color codes that I always use, where your statements
are in black, and mine in blue. Quotes from my previous letter are blue and
indented and in a San-Serif font like Lucida.
Thanks,
Ed
Actually, it is not an issue of "anonymity". If A.A. really practiced
anonymity, there would be no last names in the document (The document was
not for public display. We are not anonymous amongst ourselves. That is why
you were asked to remove it.)
Rather, what you are really practicing is merely secrecy, where you don't
want outsiders to know names, or know who is doing what. (We have many
"open" meeting where anyone is welcome to learn about AA.)
A.A. gave up on anonymity a long time ago. (Anonymity, as practiced in AA
is a spritual principal. It it suppose to squash ego and pride and foster
humility. It has little to do with secrecy.)
We all know the full names of lots of A.A. members ranging from Mel Gibson
to Tara Conner to Aaron Sorkin to Gary Busey to Martin Sheen. And we all
know when Mel Gibson or Tara Conner or Lindsay Lohan is going back into
rehab again.
(More pop culture than anything AA endorses)
And then there are the sub-cult leaders like Mike Quinones and Clancy Imusland.
(We have 2 million members. Only two out of two million? I'ld say we're doing pretty good)
And then there are famous A.A. authors like Mel Barger going on TV on The
History Detectives, using his full name while he spouted A.A. mythology and
misinformation.
(See above)
The A.A. "tradition of anonymity" is not a tradition at all. It's just a
policy of partial secrecy.
(You're right. Tradition might not be the right word. See item #3)
I would edit out the last names in that document if I could, just to be
nice. Unfortunately, it is in PDF format and no editor that I have can edit
it. That document is too important and revealing to delete. What makes that
document so important is the issue of crazy fantical dogmatic oldtimers
telling sick people in treatment centers to not follow their doctors'
orders, and to not take their medications. That is beyond
outrageous.
(Beyond outrageous is a good description. No AA member should ever give
medical advice. We are warned about it in several pieces of our literature.)
TREATMENT: Neal K.: The Committee meets quarterly at Sylvan Lake Lutheran
Church in West Bloomfield, 2399 Figa. The Committee has received a few
complaints, from various Treatment Facilities. The panels going in for the
Bridging the Gap Program have been giving advice to patients, in
contradiction with what their attending physician has recommended. These
problems were addressed and the coordinators for the facility were
contacted and advised of the situation. The Committee decided to send a
letter to all facilities participating in the Bridging the Gap Program
stating that if problems arise, to contact the Corrections Committee.
That is not dealing with the problem, or fixing it. Just telling the
doctors and facilities to complain to the "Corrections Committee" is a
non-answer to the problem. That is basically just giving the doctors the
run-around routine. Why didn't you tell the crazy fanatics who were
contradicting the doctors' orders that they were no longer allowed to visit
treatment centers as part of the "Bridging the Gap Program"? After all,
they were committing a crime in the name of Alcoholics Anonymous,
practicing medicine without a license, and endangering the lives of the
patients. Why don't you really solve the problem by stopping it?
Permanently.
(I agree. Our area attends about 60 meetings per month in
treatment facilities. All participants are required to read material on the
dangers of giving medical advice. When it happens, and it is very rare, we
immediately contact the treatment centers and make sure the patients know
that they should always follow the advice of their physicians. AA members
are only suppose to share their experience, not give advice, of any kind.)
Why is it that any criminal can do anything to anybody in Alcoholics
Anonymous, and there are no repercussions? Rapists can rape the newcomer
young women, con artists can rob the cloudy-headed beginners, unscrupulous
sponsors can make themselves slave-masters, and religious fanatics can tell
shaky newcomers not to take their medications, and nothing ever happens to
correct the problem, and the offenders are never punished.
(This statement
is so extreme and offensive, it really removes all credibility from your
article. To insinuate that AA endorses rape and robbery is beyond belief.
Does it happen? Of couse, just like in any other social setting. Probably
much more so in the workplace or on college campuses. However, when
alcoholics refuse to live by spiritual principles, they go back to drinking
and die. Maybe that is their punishment.)
Why do you "unconditionally love" the criminals, but not their victims?
(AA
teaches us to love everyone. And we would never support behavior that is
harmful. The best we can do is teach change
There will be some big lawsuits some day, after one too many A.A. nutcases
kills one too many sick newcomers with bad medical advice and quackery.
Would you like to see all A.A. assets wiped out by a multi-million-dollar
lawsuit? You should really deal with the problem before it's too late. (Members
of AA act independently of the AA organization. If you were a member of a
church and killed someone, could the church be sued? No. Same thing.)
Never mind actually being concerned about the welfare of the patients whom
A.A. is supposed to be helping. Why should you do that?
(The only reason for our existence is to help alcoholics regain their life. And they have,
by the millions.)
Such quackery is one of the reasons why I say that A.A. kills more people
than it saves. And they do. (So if AA was not around, it would save
lives? Do you have any idea what the success rate for recovery was
pre-1940? Almost zero. For most of us, it was the last house on the block.)
Now, about the document. If you want to send me an edited version, where
the last names have been abbreviated, and that is the only change to the
document, then I will post that document as a replacement for the current
document. Like I said, I don't have an editor that can edit PDF files.
Have a good day now.
== Orange
Thank you for your time. I don't really expect you to change your mind
based on my comments. I only know what I've seen and what I've experienced.
I just believe that AA, in general, is a good thing.
Good luck and best wishes,
Ed
Okay, Ed, now I'll go down the list of your comments:
More pop culture than anything AA endorses
Sure, the pop culture is more famous, but so what? It always is.
Remember the story of Rollie Hemsley, the famous baseball player
who declared to newspapers that he was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous? Bill Wilson hit the roof, and
went on a years-long self-aggrandizement campaign, touring the country and presenting himself
as the leader of Alcoholics Anonymous. By 1944, Bill Wilson was the most famous "anonymous"
person in the USA.
Then Bill made up a fake "tradition" about
"anonymity" so that celebrities could not get more publicity than him:
[Long Form]
Our relations with the general public should
be characterized by personal anonymity. We think A.A. ought to
avoid sensational advertising. Our names and pictures as A.A.
members ought not to be broadcast, filmed, or publicly printed.
Our public relations should be guided by the principle of
attraction rather than promotion. There is never need to praise
ourselves. We feel it better to let our friends recommend us.
We have 2 million members. Only two out of two million? I'ld say we're doing pretty good
No way does A.A. have 2 million members. The total worldwide membership is under 2 million, and the vast majority
of them will drop out soon. They are just churn, newcomers coming in and going out of the A.A. revolving door.
And no way are there 2 million sober A.A. members. A.A. most assuredly does not have 2 million sober members
out of 2 million alleged members.
Again, the vast majority of the A.A. members get drunk and drop out. A.A. really
only has a few hundred thousand hard-core committed members, and there is no evidence that they got sober
because of A.A. or the 12 Steps or "the program", or the meetings, or anything else that A.A. does.
About Clancy and Mike:
You are minimizing what is going on there. The
Clancy I. Cult,
of which
Mike Quinones
was a part (he was Clancy's grand-sponsee), is a militant wing of A.A.
that is taking over A.A. They have sent out missionaries all
over the country, and even to England. They specialize in taking over meetings by invading them
in large numbers and then voting the current leaders out, and installing their own leaders, and changing the
rules so that only they and their sponsees can vote in future elections.
Then they move on and do the same thing to another meeting, and another, and another,
until they have taken over a whole area.
They are like a spreading cancer.
There are far more than only two obnoxious sub-cult leaders in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Clancy Imusland and Mike Quinones are just the most famous ones, especially because
of the blatant sexual exploitation. Also look at:
And then, just to make life interesting, there is
a web site that monitors
"cultish sub-sects of A.A.", and criticizes subsects that deviate from
its own A.A. orthodoxy. The web site's description of how sub-cults operate is
informative.
Let's face it: The strucure of A.A. is perfect for spawning junior cult leaders who answer to no one.
You're right. Tradition might not be the right word. See item #3
Tradition, slogan, custom, habit... Call it what you will, they don't really practice anonymity. Just secrecy.
Beyond outrageous is a good description. No AA member should ever give
medical advice. We are warned about it in several pieces of our literature.
Yes, there have been a few letters or memos telling A.A. members to stop doing it, but the membership ignores
such papers just like how they ignore the instructions to not rape the newcomer girls. Look here:
Memos and chiding web pages and confidential documents are all fine and well, but they don't really do anything, do they?
The criminal A.A. members just keep right on doing their thing, and hurting vulnerable people, and
the A.A. leaders do nothing to stop it.
I agree. Our area attends about 60 meetings per month in
treatment facilities. All participants are required to read material on the
dangers of giving medical advice. When it happens, and it is very rare, we
immediately contact the treatment centers and make sure the patients know
that they should always follow the advice of their physicians. AA members
are only suppose to share their experience, not give advice, of any kind.
It is good that your area does that. Unfortunately, from the large number of horror stories that I receive,
it is obvious that many other areas do dispense medical advice and tell newcomers not to take their medications.
And mind you, that is an old list that I haven't updated in years.
When I get around to it, I'll have to add all of the new letters.
UPDATE: I got around to it. There is now an entire file of "No Meds" stories, here:
A.A. "No Meds" Stories.
This statement is so extreme and offensive, it really removes all credibility from your
article. To insinuate that AA endorses rape and robbery is beyond belief.
Does it happen? Of couse, just like in any other social setting. Probably
much more so in the workplace or on college campuses. However, when
alcoholics refuse to live by spiritual principles, they go back to drinking
and die. Maybe that is their punishment.
Sorry if you find the truth offensive. And it is not extreme. It's the truth.
I did not say "endorses". What I said is that they tolerate it,
they know about it and allow it, and they do nothing to stop it. Although
Clancy Imusland
and
Mike Quinones
and their branches of A.A. do endorse sexual exploitation, and they and their minions do it a lot.
And the A.A. headquarters does nothing to stop them.
Oh, and there is no evidence that either Mike or Clancy "went back out"
as their spiritual punishment.
That is just wishful thinking. They didn't get their comeuppances.
Mike enjoyed his cult leader position until he died of prostate cancer. Clancy is still doing it.
And the offenders are never punished or kicked out of A.A. Serial rapists can stay in A.A. forever by
chanting,
"The only requirement for membership is a desire to quit drinking."
Of course their real reason for being in A.A. is to get more victims, not to quit drinking,
but nobody ever talks about that.
Furthermore, A.A. is a wonderful environment for criminals and sexual predators
because of the "anonymity". A predator can move from group to group,
using new fake names, and do the same things to new victims, again and again and
again, for many years. And again, the A.A. headquarters will do nothing to stop it.
Do Sexual Predators Thrive in Alcoholics Anonymous?
When I got sober at 17, AA welcomed me with open arms. I didn't know back then that some of them were dangerous.
...
I got sober at 17. For all of my drinking and drugging, I was still pretty naïve. I had never had a boyfriend, I was a virgin, and I'd maybe kissed three boys ever. I was still a kid in all the important ways, except for the fact that I was a blackout drinker.
I thought young people's meetings would be a safe place to clean myself up, but it turns out, not so much. Without knowing it, I was becoming a target.
The young people's meetings I went to all over Los Angeles featured a revolving cast of men that I would call perverts. They weren't the obvious kind of creeps, either, with windowless white vans and long trench coats. They looked like everyone else at the meetings: tattooed and cool and smoking cigarettes.
These men swarmed me, as they did every other newcomer too young and inexperienced to distinguish between the loving hand of AA and the clammy hand of a predator. They welcomed me to the meetings, they gave me over-long hugs, they offered me smokes when I was still too young to buy my own. I felt absolutely enveloped by the program. I had never had so many people pay attention to me in my life.
But what I thought of as harmless flirting — and all flirting is harmless when you're 17 and your curfew is 10 pm — these men rightly interpreted as vulnerability.
There was J, who asked me to his house to "read the Big Book." When I arrived and asked
what we were going to read, he laughed and showed me to his bedroom. ...
There was C, who was 36 and also had double-digit sobriety. He had a daughter a
few years younger than me. It's strange to look back and call it rape — because
I've been assaulted under much less ambiguous circumstances — but that's absolutely what it was.
...
I wish someone had told me, "Just because a guy has long-term sobriety doesn't mean he isn't going to take advantage of you."
...
I don't know if I will ever shake the shame and anger I feel every time I think
of C or J, and the way most of the AA community pretended not to notice what was
happening to me or to countless other girls I got sober with. Maybe AA will change,
and we'll get better about protecting our most vulnerable members. I don't know
what the solution is, but I hope there is one.
The leaders at the top, like Greg Muth, really rake in the big bucks.
Greg Muth was taking $250,000 per year, and he gave his friend Thomas Jasper $469,000 as a going-away
present.
We discussed all of that before, in many places. Start here:
Other members have many different reasons to keep Alcoholics Anonymous going, starting with
ego kicks from being an old-timer, respected and revered by the young.
And of course the sexual and financial predators want A.A. to continue to exist.
Then there are the people who imagine that they are living a spiritual life...
Then there is the feeling of being special, and in a really cool hip in-group...
And then A.A. is a social club.
And then there are the people who are afraid to leave because they suffer from
phobia induction,
who are afraid of "Jails, Institutions, or Death". Or afraid of
dying drunk in a gutter or of becoming a "dry drunk" if they leave A.A.
We've discussed and listed such things before, so here are the lists:
* orange@orange-papers.info *
* AA and Recovery Cult Debunking *
* http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ *
*
** "Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its
** victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under
** robber barons than under omnipotent, moral busybodies. The robber
** baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be
** satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us
** without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience....
** To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not
** regard as disease is to be put on a level with those who have not yet
** reached the age of reason."
** == C. S. Lewis, "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment",
** God in the Dock. William B. Berdmans Publishing Company,
** Grand Rapids, MI, 1994.
May 11, 2012, Friday: The Fernhill Wetlands
A very tame Great Blue Heron
Today this unusual heron showed up. It actually likes hanging out near people. It is fishing near the parking
lot where people visit. I think it has noticed that people throwing bread into the water for the ducks and geese
attracts the fish.
A very tame Great Blue Heron, fishing
You can see an American Coot in the background.
A very tame Great Blue Heron
This heron just caught a very small fish, just a little snack. You can see it in the heron's beak.
