Letters CCCXLVII

[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters347.html#Peter_F ]

Date: Mon, March 11, 2013 9:45 am     (Answered 12 March 2013)
From: "Peter F."
Subject: FW: THE DRUG WAR Will there be a ceasefire during our lifetime?

Peter Ferentzy, PhD
Author of Dealing With Addiction — why the 20th century was wrong
http://www.peterferentzy.com

From: noharm@canadianharmreduction.com Subject: THE DRUG WAR Will there be a ceasefire during our lifetime? To: pferentzy@... Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 11:53:41 -0400 Please circulate this announcement to friends and colleagues ... In order to continue to receive our periodic email announcements and newsletters, you will need to OPT IN by clicking here. This is in compliance with federal government legislation which will go into effect shortly. As always, your email address (and all other personal information) will be held in strict confidence and never shared with anyone else. Many thanks! If you have already opted in, it is not necessary to do it again. NOTE: if the OPT IN link fails to work, please email your request directly to noharm@canadianharmreduction.com with "I am joining the CHRN mailing list" in the subject line. Toronto Harm Reduction Task Force & Canadian Harm Reduction Network Invite you to join us on Wednesday, March 20, 2013, 9 am — noon SPEAKERS SERIES PRESENTATION: THE DRUG WAR: Will there be a ceasefire during our lifetime? Donald MacPherson is currently the Director of the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, a national coalition of organizations and individuals working to improve Canada's drug policies. Donald is involved in drug policy work at local, national and international levels. Formerly he was North America's first Drug Policy Coordinator at the City of Vancouver, where he worked for 22 years. He is the author of Vancouver's ground-breaking Four Pillars Drug Strategy, which called for new approaches to drug problems based on public health principles and the appropriate regulation of all psychoactive substances. In 2007 he received the Kaiser Foundation National Award of Excellence in Public Policy in Canada. In 2009 he was awarded the Richard Dennis Drug Peace Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Drug Policy Reform by the Drug Policy Alliance in the United States and the City of Vancouver was awarded the Canadian Urban Institutes Secure City Award for the Four Pillars Drug Strategy. MacPherson is currently Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver Canada. Ethan Nadelmann received his BA, JD, and PhD from Harvard, and a master's degree in international relations from the London School of Economics. He then taught politics and public affairs at Princeton University from 1987 to 1994, where his speaking and writings on drug policy — in publications ranging from Science and Foreign Affairs to American Heritage and National Review — attracted international attention. He authored Cops Across Borders, the first scholarly study of the internationalization of U.S. criminal law enforcement, and co-authored another book entitled Policing the Globe: Criminalization and Crime Control in International Relations, published by Oxford University Press in 2006. In 1994, Nadelmann founded the Lindesmith Center, a drug policy institute created with the philanthropic support of George Soros. In 2000, the growing Center merged with another organization to form the Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates for drug policies grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights. Described by Rolling Stone as "the point man" for drug policy reform efforts, Ethan Nadelmann is widely regarded as the most prominent proponent of drug policy reform. Koffler House — Multi-Faith Centre, University of Toronto (St. George Campus) 569 Spadina Avenue (* NB not The Koffler Centre) 2 blocks north of College on the east side of Spadina — enter from Bancroft Avenue http://tinyurl.com/cl9orll EVERYONE is WELCOME. No registration required. Coffee will be served. This notice was sent to you by the Canadian Harm Reduction Network. Please visit our Website and support us by becoming a member. Check us out on Facebook and on Twitter. To unsubscribe from this mailing list, please reply to this message, with the subject of your mail reading "Unsubscribe" (without the quotes).

Hi again, Peter,

That sounds very interesting. Alas, I'm too far away from Toronto to just pop over there for the evening.

You know, the word "war" is a dead give-away of something. People who wax enthusiastic about anything described as a "war" are dangerous people.

Have a good day now.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
*         http://forum.orange-papers.info/     *
*
**     "The war on drugs has nothing at all to do with drugs. It is
**     part of an all-out war on the American people by a government
**     interested only in control."
**       ==  Gore Vidal

[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters347.html#Thomas_R ]

Date: Mon, March 11, 2013 6:34 am     (Answered 12 March 2013)
From: "Thomas R OFS"
Subject: What worked for me

Thank you for the Orange Papers. I've seen them a couple of times over the years I've been sober (coming up on year 12 this summer) and usually felt threatened when I did. I went to AA constantly my first few years of being sober and much of what I saw in the OP I considered angry, nasty, insulting, all that stuff you've likely seen in every pro-AA letter you receive.

What pissed me off the most was that you backed up your arguments... in detail. So while I could be pissed at you, I couldn't argue back.
Bastard!!

Anyhoo... AA worked for me, in the beginning. Possibly in spite of the program rather than because of it. What worked was having an available group of people who shared my love of and my problems with getting obliterated on booze. Hanging out with guys who tried to stop but simply couldn't did help me... empathy really worked.

But the Steps themselves felt so contrived, the slogans so repetitive like a mantra. It IS a religion, but they don't do that very well really. I now get my spiritual food (and everything else) elsewhere.

Having folks around in a similar predicament was attractive and kept me out of immediate danger at the beginning. I don't get into the whys and wherefores, is it a disease, is abstinence the only way. I'm happier now than when I was getting obliterated 4-5 times a week... so, I don't do it.

"KEEP IT SIMPLE", right? Do I WANT to? Sure sometimes. I wouldn't be much of an alcoholic if I didn't. I'm also a grown man and I'm capable of deciding whether or not I'm going go out to buy a case of beer and a bottle of Bushmill to chase old feelings. I don't buy the "insanity before the first drink" thing. At least not anymore. It's an excuse which does nothing but coddle to a person who won't take responsibility for their own actions.

Keel on trucking! And thanks for your anger!

T

Hello Thomas,

Thanks for the letter and the story and the compliments. I agree about the comfort and encouragement that you can get from a group of other people who are also recovering. That's one of the good things that the other recovery groups, like SMART, SOS, and WFS, also have going for them. I prefer them because they do not push nonsense like the stuff that you mentioned — "powerless", "insane", "diseased", must "work the Steps"...

In case you don't have the list of addresses for them, here it is:
http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-alt_list.html

Have a good day now, and a good life.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
*         http://forum.orange-papers.info/     *
**     There is often as much independence in not being led,
**     as in not being driven.
**       ==  Tryon Edwards (1809—1894), American theologian and editor

June 17, 2012, Sunday: The Fernhill Wetlands A Mallard Duck family A Gosling June 20, 2012, Wednesday: The Fernhill Wetlands A Family of 4 The Family of 6 [More gosling photos below, here.]

[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters346.html#CW ]

Date: Sun, March 10, 2013 10:10 pm     (Answered 12 March 2013)
From: CW
Subject: My 37th AA anniversary

Dear Orange:

It has been years since I last visited your incredible site. It's still incredible.

I celebrated my 37th year of continuous sobriety in AA today by chairing a Sunday morning meeting at my home group. My wife of 35 years will celebrate her 37 years later this month. In the group this morning were two PhDs, four Master's degrees, six lawyers with prestigious firms, a clinical psychologist, the CEO of a large company, an ex-Marine drill sergeant, a project manager for a major firm, a software developer with 4,600 customers, a lovely former Broadway actress, a college professor, two truck drivers, three school teachers, five workers for non-profit helping agencies and a host of other men and women with spouses, families, jobs, friends galore, active social lives.

They are white, black, Hispanic, Oriental. They are married or divorced or single or widowed, as young as 19, as old as 86. The average length of sobriety is 15 years, ranging from 30 days to 45 years. All these people share sobriety, perfectly clear thought processes, and the same problems anyone faces in an uncertain world. In short, they are America. To suggest that these intelligent, witty, funny, capable people have been brainwashed by a sinister cult with various insidious hidden agendas is simply laughable.

We have long been aware of the sexual proclivities of our founder, Bill Wilson, and we do not excuse or condone it nor do we cover it up or minimize it. We are fully aware that, in large gatherings of alcoholics with such checkered pasts as ours, there will be sexual opportunists (both male and female), con men, shysters, and the mentally ill, amateur doctors who give inappropriate medical advice, and religious zealots that want to inject specific religious doctrines and ideas into AA meetings. The very size of AA makes it all the more susceptible to these misfits, and some groups do a better job of weeding them out than others But to suggest that AA is a "breeding ground" for perverts, quacks and religious fanatics is simply nonsense.

For every "study" that shows AA to have a low recovery rate, there are countervailing studies conducted by legitimate researchers (such as NIAAA) that show very high recovery rates. For example, a 1992 NIAAA nationwide survey found that members of AA who stayed in the program had a 64% abstinence rate, and 37% of those who attended AA but dropped out maintained their sobriety. A 2008 research project on AA sobriety exposed the many methodological flaws of the negative surveys (including one by AA itself) and found that AA's actual recovery rate came close to its initial claims: 75% to 93% sobriety.

One reason for these huge discrepancies is the failure of researchers to survey AAs who actually give the program a persistent effort over a long period of time (a longitudinal study). Like any other study of treatment for a medical condition, the respondent must be participating fully in the treatment to qualify for measurement. It is useless and distorting to include casual attendees and dropouts in the survey population (although AA dropouts have a surprisingly high abstinence rate). AA promises sobriety only to those who "thoroughly follow our path." No one would include diabetics or heart patients who did not follow the treatment regimen in any study of the effectiveness of treatment. Researchers who measure AA's effectiveness by the number of "attendees" miss the boat almost entirely.

Nor is it fair to suggest, as some who post here do, that because they did not "like" some aspects of AA and dropped out that AA has "failed." No one likes chemotherapy either, but it often works. So does AA, like it or not.

Finally, one wonders what fierce obsession drives "A. Orange" to invest hundreds of hours in maintaining a web site devoted entirely to savaging Alcoholics Anonymous. No one who pages through the reams of vitriol, distortions and outright lies would not immediately suspect that a very disturbed individual is running the anti-AA show. In our group, we routinely laugh about A. Orange, but unfortunately, the naive, the easily fooled, and the ignorant are not found in AA. They are found on A. Orange's weird rant.

Hello CW,

Thank you for the letter, and congratulations to you and your wife for your many years of keeping yourselves sober.

Obviously, you really believe in A.A. and you allow your beliefs to color your vision of A.A.

1. You began by declaring how many years of sobriety you have in A.A. That is the standard A.A. oldtimers' introduction. They say that "No one is entitled to speak for A.A., but I have a zillion years sober, and I say that..." He establishes his credentials in A.A. by giving his count of years sober, and then he spends the next ten minutes speaking for A.A. while claiming that no one is entitled to speak for A.A.

   I have that bait-and-switch trick list in the file: The Bait and Switch Con Game

2. The bragging about all of the members that you have, Ph.D.s and Masters, and lawyers, and drill sergeant, and actress and truck driver, etc., is standard PR boilerplate. Nothing has changed since Frank Buchman's Oxford Group, who used exactly the same speech to brag about his groups, and that's where A.A. got it from.

   And you can also get the same speech from Scientology and lots of other cults. Exactly the same speech.

3. Likewise, the boasting about white, black, Hispanic, Oriental, married, divorced young, old, is also just standard boilerplate PR. Frank Buchman also said the same stuff. He just loved to brag about his token Africans, and token Indians (both kinds, Native Americans and India Indians), and other races. Nothing has changed in 77 years.

4. Then you did the Minimization and Denial dance about sexual exploitation in A.A., trying to dismiss the Founder Bill Wilson's sexual behavior as old hat: "If we have known about it for a long time, then it doesn't matter, right?" Heck, doesn't every church have a corrupt fake holy man as a founder? What does it matter?

   And you said, "But to suggest that AA is a "breeding ground" for perverts, quacks and religious fanatics is simply nonsense."

   Sorry, but the problem is big and getting bigger. Entire subcults of A.A. are devoted to sexual exploitation of newcomers, like Mike Quinones' Midtown Group, and all of Clancy Imusland's many groups. Check out these files:

   1. Stories of the Midtown Group of Alcoholics Anonymous
   2. Stories about Clancy Imusland's Pacific Group. And the Atlantic Group, Foxhall Group, Badger Group, and Nursery...

   And the most damning fact is that the A.A. headquarters refuses to do anything to fix the problem. It's just like the Catholic Church going into denial and hiding sexual exploitation of boys by priests for more than a century, and refusing to fix the problem.

5. Likewise, you did the Minimization and Denial tap-dance some more over the issue of telling sick people not to take their medications.

   We are fully aware that, in large gatherings of alcoholics with such checkered pasts as ours, there will be sexual opportunists (both male and female), con men, shysters, and the mentally ill, amateur doctors who give inappropriate medical advice, and religious zealots that want to inject specific religious doctrines and ideas into AA meetings. The very size of AA makes it all the more susceptible to these misfits, and some groups do a better job of weeding them out than others But to suggest that AA is a "breeding ground" for perverts, quacks and religious fanatics is simply nonsense.
   

   The big problem there is that A.A. has no way to get rid of the criminals and the creeps. On the contrary, A.A. collects them. An A.A. sponsor can kill somebody with bad advice like telling him not to take his medications, or driving him to suicide, and they won't kick the bad sponsor out of A.A. And if the members of one group are actually so socially conscious as to shun and ostracize the monster, and "bad-vibe" him out of the meeting, he just goes to other meetings. And since everybody is anonymous, he can even be "Tom" at one meeting, and "Dick" at another, and "Harry" at another. A.A. meetings are a criminal's dream come true.

   The A.A. headquarters absolutely refuses to clean house. They hide behind the rubrik that "Every group is independent." And nobody warns little Suzie, who got caught driving home from a party buzzed, that the previous person whom the judge sentenced to A.A. meetings is a serial rapist.

   And A.A. does nothing to stop the judge from sending the worst criminals in the city to A.A. for baby-sitting. In fact, they encourage it:

   • Look here for quotes from the official literature.

   • Here is the official A.A. statement on using courts to get people sentenced to A.A. meetings:
     http://www.aa.org/en_pdfs/mg-05_coopwithcourt.pdf

6. Then you made some sweeping deceptive statements backed up by little or no evidence, coupled with Lying With Qualifiers:

   For every "study" that shows AA to have a low recovery rate, there are countervailing studies conducted by legitimate researchers (such as NIAAA) that show very high recovery rates.
   

   What studies? Please be very specific. I want links, titles, authors' names, dates, publication names, exact references, preferably with page numbers, and Internet URLs, if possible, so that I can go look those things up and see what was really said. I give all that information in my references, and I expect the same thing back in good arguments.

   For example, a 1992 NIAAA nationwide survey found that members of AA who stayed in the program had a 64% abstinence rate, and 37% of those who attended AA but dropped out maintained their sobriety.
   

   The deceptive qualifier is "who stayed in the program". What percentage of the newcomers were driven out by the cult religion and 13th-Stepping sponsors, and sponsors telling people not to take their medications? How about 95%?

   Trying to claim the sobriety of people who left A.A. and did it their own way is fraud. Heck, I'm one of the people who dropped out of A.A. and stayed sober. I have over 12 years sober now, and A.A. is not due the credit for that.

   In fact, the 37% who stayed sober without A.A. are a measure of spontaneous remission. Those are the people who recover without any "help", or "support group", or "treatment". A.A. routinely tries to steal the credit for those people, like in this example.

   And again, you are making a vague reference. Exactly which 1992 study? Where was it published? What is the author's name? What is his ax to grind? How accurate are his numbers? How did he get his numbers? Those things matter a lot.

   A 2008 research project on AA sobriety exposed the many methodological flaws of the negative surveys (including one by AA itself) and found that AA's actual recovery rate came close to its initial claims: 75% to 93% sobriety.
   

   Again, no links, no references, no publication name, no way to check what was really said. Or who said it. Or whether the author was just another publicity shill for the 12-Step treatment industry.

   I can give you a good reference for the opposite conclusion: The International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction refuted the Humphreys-Moos study that supposedly showed that A.A. was just as good as CBT. The Humphreys-Moos study was faked, fraudulent, and loaded with errors and deceptions. And you can read the full text of the article at that link.

   Now that is a reference.

7. Then you claimed:

   One reason for these huge discrepancies is the failure of researchers to survey AAs who actually give the program a persistent effort over a long period of time (a longitudinal study). Like any other study of treatment for a medical condition, the respondent must be participating fully in the treatment to qualify for measurement.
   

   You have a partial point there, but only a partial point. Dr. George E. Vaillant, who just loves A.A., and who went on to become a member of the Board of Trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., tested alcoholics in A.A. for 8 years, trying to prove that A.A. works. Isn't 8 years long enough? Isn't a Trustee of A.A. good enough?

   And the score with his first 100 A.A.-treated patients, after 8 years, was: 5 continuously sober, 29 dead, and 66 still drinking. You can read the whole story here:
   http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-effectiveness.html#Vaillant
   While trying to prove that A.A. works, Dr. Vaillant accidentally proved that A.A. kills. No way of treating alcohol abuse produced a higher death rate than did Alcoholics Anonymous.

   Over in England, Doctors Orford and Edwards did a year-long test of A.A., the biggest and longest test of A.A. in Great Britain, ever, and the results were that a full year of A.A.-based treatment was no better than just having a doctor talk to an alcoholic for just one hour, telling him to quit drinking or he would die. You can read all about it here:
   http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-effectiveness.html#Orford
   

   By "participate fully", you mean join the cult religion, believe in Higher Power, sell your soul to the group, do the occult practices in the 12 Steps, parrot untrue slogans and dogma, and spend the rest of your life going to A.A. meetings and seeking new recruits. That is an awful lot like selling your soul to the Devil in trade for sobriety.

   But you have a point that it is sometimes unfair to judge A.A. on the basis of people who only attend a few meetings. However, I have a point when I say that anything that is so offensive and repugnant that it drives people away after only a few meetings is not a good treatment for the "disease of alcoholism". That won't help people.

   If a medicine has such bad side effects, and is so distasteful, that the patients refuse to take it, then a good doctor will find another medicine. A group that drives the majority of the people away after just a few meetings is not a helpful group that will get people sober. America needs something better than that.

8. You declared:

   AA promises sobriety only to those who "thoroughly follow our path."
   

   Yes, you have to devote your life to A.A. That is too high of a price for sobriety for most people to pay.

   It is true that if someone totally devotes his or her life to A.A., and does its wierd occult practices every day, and believes in Higher Power, and always goes to an A.A. meeting instead of drinking alcohol, then that person won't drink alcohol. But only a few cult joiners are willing to sacrifice their lives like that.

   Furthermore, you are glossing over all of the problems with people who stay in A.A., like:

   1. An increased suicide rate
   2. An increased divorce rate
   3. An elevated death rate
   4. An elevated binge drinking rate
   5. An increased arrest rate
   6. Increased costs of hospitalization
   7. Disturbed Members, Mentally Ill Followers.
   Those are not the results of a good treatment program.

9. Then, as is so typical of A.A. true believers, you just had to finish your letter with an Ad Hominem attack. Why is it that Steppers just always have to do that? It's just the standard A.A. way to end a letter:

   Finally, one wonders what fierce obsession drives "A. Orange" to invest hundreds of hours in maintaining a web site devoted entirely to savaging Alcoholics Anonymous. No one who pages through the reams of vitriol, distortions and outright lies would not immediately suspect that a very disturbed individual is running the anti-AA show. In our group, we routinely laugh about A. Orange, but unfortunately, the naive, the easily fooled, and the ignorant are not found in AA. They are found on A. Orange's weird rant.
   

   And you finished with complaining about "A. Orange's weird rant". Wow, you almost made it to the end of the letter maintaining a sane and reasonable-sounding tone, but you broke down at the last minute. So it goes.

   Now, to answer your question, the answer is simple: I've seen too many good people hurt by A.A. misinformation and lies, and I want to get the truth out there for all to see.

   By the way, you accused me of printing "outright lies". I don't do that. I am very careful to make sure that everything I say is true. And if anything is wrong, I will fix it. (Unlike the A.A. Big Book, where Bill Wilson's errors and lies are never fixed.) Would you care to tell me about some of the "lies" that you claim I have printed? Please say what page you saw it on, and give an exact quote of my "lie", and then give your refuting evidence, complete with all reference information like author, publication, date, page number, or URL. And of course your refuting information must be better than my supporting evidence. Then we shall see what the truth is.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
*         http://forum.orange-papers.info/     *
*
**     The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his
**     own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for
**     his nation, his religion, his race, or his holy cause.
**     A man is likely to mind his business when it is worth
**     minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own
**     meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.
**       ==  Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

June 20, 2012, Wednesday: The Fernhill Wetlands Gus and Family Yes, Gus is down to one surviving child. That is rough. And that has happened the last three years in a row. He has three children now, one from each year. Gus and Family Gus Child of Gus [The story of the goslings continues here.]

[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters347.html#Chris ]

Date: Sat, March 9, 2013 5:51 pm     (Answered 12 March 2013)
From: "Chris"
Subject: Anti AA Writer from Healthy Place

Hi there Mr. Orange,

Thank you so kindly for the comment on my article 'One Step Forward — Twelve Steps Back' on Healthy Place.

(http://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/survivingmentalhealthstigma/2013/02/)

It's an article I have wanted to write for about ten years, but I guess feared the retribution. The kind of retribution I assume you feel on a daily basis! haha Your Orange Papers are remarkable and have done a great deal in bringing down the powers that be of AA.

I work in a treatment centre, and often hear of clients talking about the Orange Papers and I have also read most of it myself.

I have wanted to write a book about AA for a long time. I'm under the working title 'Beyond the Veil of Anonymity: A Critical Analysis of Alcoholics Anonymous.' I was in fact in the group for about four years, on and off, in both NA and AA, so I speak from not only a clinical perspective but also a personal one.

Anyway, just wanted to say hi and thank you for reading. It would be nice to talk sometime as we share extremely similar views.

Take care,

Chris

www.chriscurry.ca

Hello Chris,

Thank you for the letter and all of the compliments. I really didn't know that the Orange Papers were that widely read. Well, that's encouraging.

Good luck on your book. I know I will enjoy reading it.

So you have a good day too now.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
*         http://forum.orange-papers.info/     *
**     "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business,
**     and eventually degenerates into a racket."
**       ==  Eric Hoffer

[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters347.html#Sandra ]

Date: Sat, March 9, 2013 12:13 am     (Answered 12 March 2013)
From: "Sandra"
Subject: AA

Hello Mr Orange:

Someone in my AA group told me about this page, and I am NOT sorry to say that you are a fucking idiot. I am 2 weeks short of my 1 year, and I owe it all to AA. So unless your an alcoholic than shut the fuck up!!!!!

Sandra

Hello Sandra,

Thank you for the letter. Actually, yes, I'm an alcoholic who has 12 years of sobriety now, and I'm very happy about the fact that I stay sober without A.A.

And congratulations on your sober time. You are doing it, you know. Nobody is doing it for you. Nobody holds your hand every Saturday night but you.

Since you didn't know whether I'm an alcoholic, you obviously haven't read much of my web site, or seen any of the descriptions of my alcoholism and recovery. I just listed all of the autobiographical links in a previous letter, here.

Have a good day now.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
*         http://forum.orange-papers.info/     *
*
**     Man is ready to die for an idea, provided that idea is not
**     quite clear to him.
**         ==  Paul Elridge

[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters347.html#Sandra2 ]

Date: Wed, March 13, 2013 9:45 am       (Answered 14 March 2013)
From: "Sandra"
Subject: Re: AA

May I ask if you are an alcoholic? If so, are you an active alcoholic? because that would explain your misjudgement on your %'s about the many people that have recovered through the fellowship of AA. Not only does it help keep you sober, it sorts your mind out in ways we never thought possible. Our thinking becomes clear, and we learn how to grow again. We meet friends there. And I never thought I could go anywhere and have a good time without booze. I have tried other ways to quit, but AA does work, if you have the dire need or want to quit. Have a good day.

Respectfully

Sandra

Hello again, Sandra,

If by "active alcoholic", you mean that I'm drinking alcohol, the answer is, "No, as I said before, I have 12 years of sobriety now." And I do. I even have 12 years off of cigarettes and all other drugs too. And I'm very happy about it. I feel so much better. I feel like I escaped from Hell.

Unfortunately, A.A. does not keep people sober or clarify their minds. What you are describing is the combination of the euphoria of your body recovering from alcohol poisoning — the "Pink Cloud" effect — and the process of the 12 Steps warping your mind as the brainwashing takes effect. The 12 Steps are really brainwashing, you know. Or maybe you don't know. You should go look at the description of brainwashing as described by Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, Prof. Margaret Thaler Singer, and Dr. Edgar H. Schein, here. Those doctors studied the victims of Chinese Communist brainwashing of American prisoners of war during the Korean War, and they described the mechanics of how it works. The similarity of their descriptions of brainwashing, and the A.A. 12-Step program, is stunning. A.A. does all eight of the things that Dr. Lifton called the essential conditions for brainwashing.

The actual effects of staying in A.A. and "Working The Program" are:

1. An increased suicide rate
2. An increased divorce rate
3. An elevated death rate
4. An elevated binge drinking rate
5. An increased arrest rate
6. Increased costs of hospitalization
7. Disturbed Members, Mentally Ill Followers.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
*         http://forum.orange-papers.info/     *
**     "I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths,
**      but how myths operate in men's minds without their
**      being aware of the fact."
**       ==  Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked [1964], Overture.

[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters347.html#Marcus_M ]

Date: Tue, March 12, 2013 4:08 pm     (Answered 13 March 2013)
From: "Marcus M."
Subject: [Orange Papers] This type or quality of facility is not as...

Marcus Mergett posted in Orange Papers

This type or quality of facility is not as uncommon as one might think!

Ripoff Report | G & G Holistics Addiction Treatment Center | Complaint Review: 467589

http://www.facebook.com/l/QAQHmHbdGAQGxDI71rheCDUuhvhrCEiAU5dbt3Gqn5KcRpA/www.ripoffreport.com/healthcare-centers/g-g-holistics-addict/g-g-holistics-addiction-trea-y622f.htm

G & G Holistics Addiction Treatment Center — G&G HOLISTIC CAN BE DANGEROUS TO ONE'S HEALTH AND WELL BEING ! North Miami Beach Florida

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Hello Marcus,

Oh yeh, not uncommon at all. Thanks for the link. I didn't know about Ripoff Report until now. I have a few items of my own to give them. Nothing as big as this though.

Have a good day now.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
*         http://forum.orange-papers.info/     *
**    Falsehood and fraud grow up in every soil, the product of all climes.
**        ==  Joseph Addison (1672—1719), English essayist, critic, poet

June 20, 2012, Wednesday: The Fernhill Wetlands Child of Gus Child of Gus Mallard Family [The story of the goslings continues here.]

[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters347.html#Don_A ]

Date: Wed, March 13, 2013 5:35 pm       (Answered 13 March 2013)
From: "Don A."
Subject: Broken links to Zip files

Hello Orange,

I don't know if it affects the performance of your site, but three of the Zip file links are broken.

Orange_Papers-imgs102-2012-12-01.zip
Orange_Papers-imgs106-2012-11-28.zip
Orange_Papers-imgs117-2013-02-20.zip

Thank you for what must be thousands of hours of work that you have put into this amazing site.

I now believe that my sobriety was spontaneous remission. I am 15 years sober and consider myself recovered.

I no longer attend AA meetings since I was assaulted on October 10, 2011. (My case against the man who assaulted me has finally gone to the State Attorney after 17 months.) AA stopped being a safe haven after that event, and after I finally realized that I was using AA as a spiritual bypass and saw AA for what it truly is — a cult.

*Don U.*
*601.xxx.xxxx*
https://www.youtube.com/user/BillWhittleChannel?feature=watch

Hello Don,

Thank you very much for the bug report. It's fixed. The dates on the files were wrong by a couple of days. If you reload the first page, i.e. menu1.html or index.html, you will see slightly different dates for those files, and you can download them now.

And welcome to freedom.
And thanks for the compliments.
Have a good day now.
== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
*         http://forum.orange-papers.info/     *
**     "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.

[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters347.html#Doug_B ]

Date: Wed, March 13, 2013 4:54 pm       (Answered 14 March 2013)
From: "Facebook"
Subject: New message from Doug B.
To: "Orange Papers"

Doug sent you a message.

"Hey, Orange. For a little while now I've been reading you and have also spent some time on orangepapers. I just read your post on wildlife. I was hoping you could suggest for me some books on logic and propaganda. Anything else you could suggest would be appreciated. Thank you.
Doug "

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Hello Doug,

Thanks for the question. Oh, that is actually a tough question. Some of the stuff I learned so long ago that I don't remember where I got it. I think I learned about some Greek teaching deductive and inductive reasoning back in high school...

There are a few good books on propaganda techniques and logical fallacies and the workings of the mind listed in the bibliography, here: (Clicking on the name of the book will take you to the book's description in the bibliography.)

1. The Fine Art of Propaganda: a study of Father Coughlin's Speeches     The Institute for Propaganda Analysis; editted by Alfred McClung Lee and Elizabeth Briant Lee
   Father Coughlin was the inventor of hate talk radio way back in the nineteen-thirties. He was the original Rush Limbaugh. Coughlin only used eight propaganda tricks in his speeches and rants, but he used them constantly.

2. Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of 'Brainwashing' in China     Robert Jay Lifton.
   This is a pioneering classic.

3. Brainwashing, From Pavlov to Powers     Edward Hunter
   This is a pioneering classic.

4. Coercive Persuasion: A Socio-psychological Analysis of the "Brainwashing" of American Civilian Prisoners by the Chinese Communists     Edgar H. Schein with Inge Schneier and Curtis H. Barker
   This is a pioneering classic.

5. Battle For The Mind; A Physiology Of Conversion and Brain-Washing     William Sargant

6. Mind Control     Peter Schrag

7. Blink: The Power Of Thinking Without Thinking     Malcolm Gladwell

8. Propaganda     Edward Bernays (1891—1995)
   This is a pioneering classic. Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, basically invented the science of propaganda. Other infamous propagandists like Joseph Goebbels were influenced by his writings.

9. How To Lie With Statistics     Darrell Huff
   This is a classic. It only describes statistical tricks, but it explains them beautifully.

10. Propaganda, the Formation of Men's Attitudes     Jacques Ellul

11. Propaganda Comes Of Age     Michael Choukas

12. Beyond Hypocrisy: Decoding the News in an Age of Propaganda; including A Doublespeak Dictionary for the 1990s     Edward S. Herman; Illustrations by Matt Wuerker

13. Untruth, Why the Conventional Wisdom is (Almost Always) Wrong     Robert J. Samuelson

14. Brave New World Revisited     Aldous Huxley

15. Channels of Propaganda     J. Michael Sproule

16. Plagues of the Mind, The New Epidemic of False Knowledge     Bruce S. Thornton

17. Official Lies, How Washington Misleads Us     James T. Bennett & Thomas J. DiLorenzo

18. Total Propaganda, From Mass Culture to Popular Culture     Alex Edelstein

19. The Hidden Persuaders     Vance Packard
    This is a pioneering classic.

20. Age of Propaganda, The Everyday Use And Abuse of Persuasion     Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson

21. The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man     David W. Maurer

22. In the Sleep Room     Anne Collins

23. And of course there is the huge Orange Papers web page Propaganda and Debating Techniques

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.info        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
*         http://forum.orange-papers.info/     *
**     "Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people
**     can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round,
**     to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise"
**         ==  Adolf Hitler

Date: Thu, March 14, 2013 6:20 pm
From: "Facebook"
Subject: New messages from Doug B.

Doug sent you a message.

"I see and sense daily. Thanks again."

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Last updated 10 February 2014.
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