Letters CCCLXIX
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Date: Wed, September 18, 2013 8:57 am (answered 23 September 2013) I'm not sure if this is the proper place to unload this, but I don't know how to operate a forum or a chat room on the internet... and need to dump this somewhere. Matt
Hello Matt, Thank you very much for the story. I put it in the letters section of the Orange Papers, and I'm adding it to the list of A.A. Horror Stories. Your story says so much. It also says a lot about the A.A. "no medications" insanity, and the harm done by that superstition, so I'm also adding your story to the list of A.A. "No Meds" horror stories. The thing that really resonated with me was when you talked about resigning yourself to an alcoholic death. I went through the same thing. I got so down and depressed that I thought that there was no sense in quitting drinking and smoking again, even though it was killing me, because I would just relapse again. So why waste your time trying? Better to just stay stoned and kill the pain until the bitter end. (By the way, alcohol makes you depressed.) Fortunately, something changed. Something snapped inside me. When a doctor told me, "Quit drinking or die. Choose one.", I thought it over for a while and then decided to live. I cannot explain what made me suddenly change my mind, but all of a sudden, death was unacceptable and I was determined to not die that way. And I didn't. In another month, I'll have 13 years off of alcohol (and also off of all drugs). And I not only quit drinking, but three weeks later, I also quit smoking, because that was messing with my recovery too. I was so sick that I couldn't both smoke and breathe, so I went to the doctor and got some patches, and put one on, and never looked back. In 6 more weeks, it will be 13 years off of cigarettes, too. I really wish I could package whatever it was that made me suddenly decide to live and really quit all of my bad habits, and stick to it. I know it would help a lot of people. But I cannot even say what it is. What I can say is, there is hope. There is a way out. And you don't have to become a true believer or a slave of a cult to get better. You can be free. It is possible. And speaking of what worked, I wrote a letter answering the question "How did you get to where you are?", where I talk about some aspects of that. Have a good day and a good life now. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * * ** Spiritual quackery: ** God wants you to bleed your patients. God wants you to take a sharp razor, ** and open a vein in the patient, and bleed out those bad humors. ** Oh, and don't give your patients any medications. Trust God to heal them. ** It's spiritual, not religious. NOTE: This letter is also a thread over in the forum: [ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters369.html#Matt_J2 ]
Date: Wed, September 25, 2013 6:27 am (answered 26 September 2013) Thank you Orange.... for hearing and understanding my story. I find your story heartening and will allow it to sink in. I think I just need to re-learn how to trust folk around this issue. I think at present, just understanding/sympathetic others who hear what I've had on my plate is enuff for now. Perhaps the rest will fall in place when the time is right? Matt Hi again, Matt, Yes, I can relate. After you get your fingers burned by a bunch of grinning, lying, con artists who pretend to be in love with God, it's hard to trust. Who isn't just running a scam for their own benefit? Fortunately, there are a bunch of good people around. They just don't form cults and go recruiting and advertise, so they can be hard to find. Have a good day now. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * * ** "We trust, that somehow, good will be the final goal of ill." ** == Tennyson * ** "WHEN a pretension to free the world from evil ends only ** in a new proof of the danger of a fanatic to the commonweal, ** then it is not to be marveled at that a distrust is aroused ** in the observer which makes sympathy impossible." ** == Sigmund Freud [The next letter from Matt_J is here.] 
Date: Tue, September 10, 2013 3:57 pm (answered 23 September 2013) I hope you enjoy this story has much as I did!
Hello again, Ctmjon, Thanks for the story. I'm not sure about the connection between what he is describing and "God". I think that there is a lot of confusion over the word "God", and different people have different definitions. What he is describing is more of a spiritual or psychic connection between living beings, rather than any "Ruler of the Universe". Now I'm not saying that there isn't a God, I'm just saying that what this story shows is that elephants seem to have a psychic connection to those whom they love. Not coincidentally, people who care for and study dolphins — John Lilly's crew, in fact — saw the same kind of reaction when one of the dolphins died. The other dolphins knew it immediately, even though they were physically separated. (See the Omni magazine article about John Lilly's dolphins. Unfortunately, I don't know the date. All that I can say is that it had to be about 25 years ago.) Like I've been saying, there is more to this world than meets the eye. Have a good day now. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * ** "The thinking man must oppose all cruel customs no matter how ** deeply rooted in tradition or surrounded by a halo. We need a ** boundless ethic which will include the animals also." ** == Albert Schweitzer, physician/Nobel Laureate.
Date: Mon, September 16, 2013 6:42 am (answered 25 September 2013)
A bit of Foucault might help explain why psycho-behavioral disorders confound us
Peter Ferentzy, PhD Ah, thank you Peter. Clear, concise thinking, as usual. I think you are squarely nailing the semantic problem of "Is alcoholism a disease?" Have a good day now. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * ** We must think things, not words, or at least we must constantly ** translate our words into the facts for which they stand, if we ** are to keep the real and the true. ** == Oliver Wendel Holmes, Jr. ** address, New York State Bar Association, Jan 17, 1889.
Date: Fri, September 20, 2013 12:57 pm (answered 25 September 2013) Dr. Peter Ferentzy published a new article on The Huffington Post Dr. Peter Ferentzy wrote a new post: Toronto's Future: Safe Injection Sites Are a Win-Win
Dr. Peter Ferentzy There has been much talk recently about the possibility of a safe injection clinic in Toronto. With Vancouver's Insite clinic leading the way, Canada is at the forefront of a major advance both in... To comment on this post, follow the link below: Thank you Peter. Something that a lot of people don't seem to recognize is that it costs about a quarter of a million dollars to care for an AIDS patient until he dies. Every junkie who catches AIDS uses up a lot of taxpayer money that could otherwise be doing something more useful, like giving children better schools. Or fixing roads and bridges. Or giving better and free medical care to other people. Now we are too kind-hearted and Christian a people to just abandon the sick junkies and let them die in the streets, so that money-saving option is out. It seems like the most economical solution is to give them clean syringes and safe places to shoot so that they don't catch AIDS and Hep C in the first place. Have a good day now. == Orange
Date: Thu, September 26, 2013 2:12 am
Thanks for your thoughts Orange. I could't agree more.
Date: Fri, September 20, 2013 1:14 pm Hi all, I am writing to remind you of the free documentary screening that will be taking place at the 519 Community Centre on Saturday, September 28th. [Toronto] Please see the poster attached for details. Hope to see you there! All the best, Sibyl Likely
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * ** One must live the way one thinks, or end up ** thinking the way one has lived. ** == Paul Bourget, "Conclusions," ** Le Démon de midi (1914).
Date: Tue, September 24, 2013 5:26 pm (answered 25 September 2013) Are you on Twitter? I'd love to follow. Todd PS: I have an absolute disdain for AA and tend to believe that most people (re 12 steps) tend to confuse most successful with most popular. Hello Todd, Thanks for the compliment. I don't tweet. Twitter has the nasty habit of stealing the copyright of anything that you post. I got disgusted with Twitter when I learned that a young woman tweeted a photograph of Capt. Sully Sullenberger landing his plane in the Hudson River that she captured with her cell phone. Well, Twitter took it and sold it to the news networks and kept the money. So I don't tweet. I do have both a personal page on Facebook, and a group there. Both have the name "Orange Papers".
Oh, and of course there is the Orange Papers Forum: You are quite welcome to join. Just register. (See the box in the upper left-hand corner of the page.) Make up any user name that you like, and then email me and tell me what user name you registered, and I'll approve you. (That last step is to stop the spammers, who are really obnoxious.)
Have a good day now.
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * ** "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: Wed, September 25, 2013 5:05 pm Thanks for this. I have been a clinician for 28 years and have never seen an increased success rate when 12 step is paired with traditional outpatient treatment. Perhaps one day people will be more willing to question the method and not the client. Perhaps one day. We can hope. Have a good day now. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * ** Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, ** Which we ascribe to heaven. ** == William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well, (1602-03), 1.1.231
Date: Sun, September 22, 2013 7:46 pm (answered 25 September 2013) Thanks a bunch for all the work you've done putting this website together. It has been an awesome resource, and I'm glad I found it because there have been times where I've wondered "is this really going to be the rest of my life, sitting in a church basement inhaling second hand smoke and labeling myself a dirty drunk for the rest of my life?" Since I read quite a bit about you and what you've done, here's a little bit about me. Last year in September I got into a near fatal motorcycle accident that resulted in me nearly dying — my heart stopped 3 times in the hospital. Luckily nobody else was hurt. I was, very stupidly, twice the legal limit. Thus ended my 7 year abusive relationship with vodka. I was court mandated to complete 75 hours of alcohol education along with 2 AA meetings a week. I had to get the piece of paper signed each time I went. Almost immediately I noticed I was treated with an almost mild to moderate disdain by the other people, who were quite a bit older than me and looked very beat up. It was a newcomers meeting, so I figured that would be the best place to start as I was indeed a newcomer. They talked a lot about "dry drunks" and how people that don't follow the steps, yet remain sober and by all appearances have their act together — in actuality do not because they are not here following the steps. I found that odd. I was given the information packet with a bunch of names and phone numbers and I was told to call any of them whenever I needed to. So one week I did, I nervously picked up the phone and dialed the first number. An exasperated voice answers "Hello!". I told him who I was and that I was the new guy last week and that I just wanted to call. He told me in an exasperated voice that he was busy with family and didn't have time to talk, and to call later. I never did. I went to 4-5 different locations thinking that maybe that meeting just had people with antisocial tendencies. Everywhere I went it seemed like Catholicism and AA were inextricably tied together. I found this odd, considering they say that they aren't affiliated with any particular belief system. I had to do these meetings for almost an entire year. The longer I went there, the longer I realized that for a lot of these people, this was their whole life. They go to church basements, smoke cigarettes and sit in the basement lamenting their alcoholism. It was all very depressing to me. They would yammer on about how "special" they were because they had the "secret" to life that other drunks and, this really gets me, non-alcoholics did not have. They were better, and chosen because of their alcoholism. This even though they were worthless and helpless. I've had to lose a bunch of my so-called friends over the last year. But I have managed to find a group of non-alcoholics that don't drink often and that know my situation and respect it. I don't know about you, but as for me I'd like to leave my alcoholism behind. I don't want to sit in basements lamenting my alcoholism for the rest of my life. I need to put it to rest and move on. I want to be with functional people that go on vacations, and have normal relationships. I don't want to have to freak out because I go somewhere and don't have to have my all important AA meeting. I've done the classes, attended the court ordered meetings. Now it's time to grow up and move past needing to label myself as something so negative. I don't want to be known as the alcoholic (once you're an alcoholic you're always one, what garbage) that has to attend meetings with the "chosen few" to make myself feel special. I need to be done with the chain smoking basement dweller chosen few and become a part of society again. Anyway, sorry for the long rant. I had to do it. I've been sober for a little over a year but it's because I'm done with that life. I'm on a new chapter, not a constant rehash of the previous one. Take care, and if you've read this far, thank you for listening. Hello Chris, Thanks for the letter and the compliments. You do a good job of describing the cult religion called "Alcoholics Anonymous". Of course their ideas are goofy and illogical. You are a "dry drunk" because you don't participate in their religion enough? Nonsense. I just received another letter that nailed it. That writer said:
Again: the hubris of the movement is amazing! But the whole idea that one could stop doing drugs in the wrong way shows that AA is not about drugs at all. Or about alcohol. If they really cared about people quitting drinking, they should be cheering for every person who quits drinking, no matter how he quits. But they don't. In fact, I've had a bunch of Steppers sneering at my years of sobriety, claiming that they don't count because I'm not "working a strong program". And I "have a resentment." And I "wasn't in recovery" because I wasn't going to A.A. meetings so I "wasn't dealing with any issues." Baloney. My healthy liver says that I'm not drinking, and it's happy about that fact. You also noticed that A.A. sponsors are not necessarily good, caring, counselors. But of course. How could they be? A.A. members cover the entire range from relatively normal to psychotic and insane. For many of them, drinking too much alcohol was just a sign of a much deeper and more serious underlying mental illness and neurosis and other disorders. Just quitting the alcohol does not instantly restore someone to sanity. Trusting such people to be wise life coaches and helpful counselors is as crazy as going to the local mental hospital and asking the patients for wise advice. Years ago, somebody sent this to me:
A flawed idea that AA is built upon: The idea that a deeply flawed person will cure another deeply flawed person. A dynamic fraught with peril. You are quite right about the need to move on. Spending the rest of your life in meetings, putting yourself down and declaring that you are defective and flawed and diseased and cannot ever recover is a good way to drive yourself insane. Really insane. Suicidally insane. No thanks. But that's a standard cult characteristic. Or rather, at least two of them: No Graduates, and No Exit. In fact, what you have described pretty much covers more than the first dozen of the standard cult characteristics:
Oh well, have a good day now, and a good life. And welcome to freedom. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * * ** If someone has cancer or diabetes or coronary disease, ** we don't use a quack doctor to treat those sick people — ** a quack whose only qualification is that he used to drink ** too much alcohol or take too many drugs, and who is now ** a member of a cult religion. But with the so-called ** "disease" of addiction, the standard treatment is ** to have former alcoholics or dopers dispensing their ** platitudes and slogans, and insisting that "spirituality" ** is the cure. ** ** The fact that it is difficult to break established bad habits ** does not mean that those bad habits are diseases.
Date: Fri, September 20, 2013 3:33 pm (answered 25 September 2013) Mister T, I have read "The god delusion" by Richard Dawkins. Is there a book "The AA delusion?" If not do you see it in the near future? Thank you for all you do. Long Island Bob O. Hello again, Bob O., Now that's an idea. It would especially be fun to have Richard Dawkins write it. He would logically rip A.A. to pieces. Have a good day now. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * ** Like computer viruses, successful mind viruses will be hard ** for their victims to detect. If you are the victim of one, ** the chances are that you won't know it, and may even ** vigorously deny it. ** == Richard Dawkins
Date: Sun, September 22, 2013 4:06 am (answered 25 September 2013)
* 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. ** == Don Alejandro Cirilo Perez Oxlaj (Mayan)
Date: Wed, September 25, 2013 8:12 am (answered 26 September 2013) Hi Terrance: I was reading in your recent blog note about the pain with your sciatica. I can certainly relate, I started having issues with it at only 29 due to a couple of degenerative discs in my lower back. The pain can be excruciating, so bad that on a few occasions I couldn't function for weeks, and could find no way to relieve the pain. What finally worked was physical therapy. I was taught exercises to help strengthen the muscles around the lower spine to basically keep everything in place. While I still have minor pain and occasional stiffness, I'm glad to say it's been four years since I've had an unbearable episode. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbZzeO4P9YA Hope it gets better. Dennis M. Hello Dennis, Thanks for the note. Yes, that is it exactly. I've also been crippled and non-functional for weeks. And I couldn't even lay down flat on my back without it hurting. There was no position that was painless. Up until the last few weeks, I wouldn't have even been able to do the exercises. Any bending or stress on my body hurt too much. But things are improving. I will be able to do the exercises now, and I shall. This has been a long time coming. For the last year and a half, I've had a problem with my hip hurting a lot if I walked more than half a mile. So I transitioned to riding a bike everywhere. I thought it was arthritis. Wrong. Alas, it was much more degeneration of the bones than just arthritis. (By the way, alcohol abuse can cause osteoporosis. It seems totally unfair for it to pop up years after I quit drinking, but sometimes, that's just the way it goes.) Early this summer, I got a flat tire on my bike just as I arrived at the Fernhill Wetlands. I had a full load of grain and bread for the ducks and geese, and didn't want to just abort the mission, so I pushed my bike around the wetlands and fed all of my little friends, and then pushed my bike home. It was 2 or 3 miles of walking and pushing, and it was too much. Something broke or got strained, and I got totally wrecked and crippled, I haven't recovered yet. For a couple of months there, just walking from the bedroom to the bathroom was very painful, and a major exertion. I'd actually plan the trips, also stopping off at the kitchen to get stuff, so that I could accomplish as much as possible in one trip so that I wouldn't have to make a second trip. But things are getting better. Right now I'm at the yo-yo stage. That is, I'm laid up and crippled for weeks, but then I get to feeling better, so I immediately get on my bike and go shopping and go to the wetlands, and overdo it so that I'm back in pain for the next week or two. Then I get to feeling better, so I want to get caught up on things to do, so I overdo it again... Up and down, round and round. I'm learning to take it easy. Have a good day now. And thanks for the video. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * ** "What is it all but a trouble of ants ** In the gleam of a million million of suns?" ** == author unknown
Date: Thu, September 26, 2013 10:55 am (answered 26 September 2013) Cool article: http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-cult_a0.html I'm curios how you came up with this checklist. Is it derived from an accepted standard or from scratch? Hello Erol, The answer is "both". I got the original idea from a 10-point checklist for identifying cults that was published in a magazine some 25 or 30 years ago. I described that article in a previous letter, here. Then I read a huge number of books about cults, and extracted the common denominators of many cults to get the rest of the items for the Cult Test. You can see the list of books here: http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-bibliography.html#cults Then, interestingly enough, someone found another cult test online, and about three-quarters of their items agreed with mine. So other people are seeing the same problems with cults as I do. (I would give you the URL but I can't find it at this minute. It is listed somewhere in the letters, but darned if I can find it now.) Have a good day now. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * ** ** "Wanting to believe is perhaps the most powerful dynamic ** initiating and sustaining cult-like behavior." ** The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in ** American Society, Arthur J. Deikman, M.D., page 137.
Date: Thu, September 26, 2013 3:22 pm (answered 27 September 2013) Pete H. has sent you a link to a blog: An Open Letter I hope you publish!
Blog: Whats-the-word-mockingbird?
-- Hello Pete, Now that is interesting. I am not surprised at the way that the A.A. true believers reacted to your revelations about how much money Bill Wilson took from A.A. They believe in the A.A. fairy tale just as intensely as any fundamentalist Christian believes in his goofy dogma. Their reactions to your information about Bill Wilson's income was typical: Yes, that is how cults carry on "discussions". By the way, you guessed that the value of Bill's estate might have been $900,000. I heard that Lois Wilson's income from Bill's royalties at the time of her death was $900,000 per year. Yes, just one year, and she got something like that every year. To establish the value of an asset like a copyright, estate attorneys have to figure out how many more years the copyright has yet to run, and what the expected income per year will be. Today, copyrights last for the lifetime of the author plus 70 years, but it was a lot less back then. Maybe Bill's copyrights were good for 20 more years. If the books would continue to sell at the same rate, and the copyrights would collect money for another 20 years, then the value of the copyrights was $18 million dollars. And what I hear is, the sales of Bill Wilson's books steadily increased as A.A. grew, and peaked out some time in the nineteen-eighties or -nineties. So the worth of the copyrights might be higher. So that was quite a nice nest egg that Bill left to Lois. Not bad for a poor impoverished alcoholic who only lived to serve others. The actual hard numbers must exist somewhere. Bill's estate must have gone through probate at the time of his death, so someone had to calculate the numbers for tax purposes. Also check out these documents:
About the events on 9/11: I can't really comment there because I have not studied that situation. I don't really know a whole lot about it. I haven't had the time to read the full 9-11 Commission Report, for example, because I'm busy reading things about alcoholism and recovery and cults. Oh I've heard a lot of things, and I'm also curious about why Building 7 just fell down when neither of the Twin Towers fell down on top of it. But I haven't devoted any time to studying all of the facts and all of the evidence, and I don't really have the time to do it. I'm busy with this addiction and recovery stuff. Have a good day now. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * * ** Was it not mostly people from Saudi Arabia that were involved ** in 9-11? Our ally? Bush 41 was in a meeting that morning with ** Osama's brother. Nothing is getting under your skin here? ** == Alan E. Moses ** http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=28122
Date: Thu, September 26, 2013 9:46 am (answered 27 September 2013) At 30 I stopped drinking. I was married with children. I went to AA because I could stop but I did not stay stopped for any amount of time. I went because I was ready to stop for good, I was determined. I thought that was what AA was about. I was wrong. I did stay sober for 13 years. But I stopped going at around 7. It caused me a lot of trouble and like drinking when it got bad enough, I stopped going. I always got a mixed message when some people would tell me how great I was doing and then others would tell me that I have to work the steps. It bothered me that I had to give AA all the credit. A lot of things did not sit well with me. At 5 years I did a 4th and 5th step. I think I did it okay, but things did not work out to good. My now ex-wife came into the program and worked all the steps, including 13. Oh well. The children stayed with me and they turned out fantastic. I think getting out of AA was a good idea. It was my choice to go. It caused me a lot of problems. AA may have not caused all of them, but it was involved. I did go back to drinking for many years. It did not get worse, like they said it would. But it was still not a good thing for me to do. At the age I was when I started going to AA, I was not able to keep AA's bs out of my head. All of the things that Orange and others say about AA are true. They have happened to me and others that I have known. I do not need to go into it all, I have enough evidence to satisfy me. I would not recommend anyone to go to AA. I did go back a few years ago. I thought I would give it another try. More than that, I needed to deprogram myself. But this time I did not buy into it. It's funny, at one meeting a guy asked me if I was staying or just visiting, I told him I was just visiting. I had found the OP and the other sites and have read it all. But there was not much that I could bring myself to say. I could tell that it was no use. I thought, like others, that maybe I could help someone to see how bad it was. In the end decided to stop and not ever go back. I do not want AA or any other 12 step program involved with my life. Thank you Orange, for providing the information that you have put on your site. It has helped me and I am sure it will help others, if they will just take the time to read it. Hello Subhuti, Thank you for the letter and the story. And all of the compliments. I'm glad to hear that you are doing well, and you are free, and your mind is working. So have a good day now, and a good life. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * ** To have freedom is only to have what is absolutely necessary to enable ** us to be what we ought to be, and to possess what we ought to possess. ** == Rahel [The next letter from Subhuti is here.]
Last updated 11 November 2013. |
