A.A. Suicides

I believe that a good case can even be made that Alcoholics Anonymous also increases the suicide rate of its members. People have sent me these stories of A.A. suicides:

1. The suicide rate in AA of people sober longer than 15 years

2. there was 7 suicides the first year and 5 the second year.

3. I... saw 2 suicides in that time period.

4. another sponsee commits suicide after his sponsor tells him him not to take his medications

5. I have seen many young men commit suicide

6. That young man, along with at least two others he sponsored committed suicide.

7. Two of my sponsors had kids either dead from, or attempted, suicides.

8. Total of seven overt suicides of people that attended meetings, my first two years of sobriety.

9. Out of 60 people 2 suicides (that i know of) in 1 year after "recovery".

10. a mental patient commits suicide after his sponsor deprives him of his medications

11. I myself, have heard more than a handful of stories of people I KNEW in AA over the last 17 years, who, on the advice of their sponsor, stopped taking medication and as a result committed suicide because their depression was untreated.

12. Not long after I returned I went to a meeting one night to note that some of the older members were in a rather stunned state. Another older member who attended a nearby group had commited suicide.

13. another mental patient commits suicide after the A.A. old-timers talk him into not taking his medications

14. the source of that story

15. more on that suicide story

16. The Heaven's Gate suicides in 1997 disturbed me greatly, but when it happened I ran into immediate opposition within NA to automatically making these people out to be wrong.

17. that poisonous pedagogy is so harmful that it seems to drive some people to suicides

18. on this same tape Bob, Jr., told the story of his son (Dr. Bob's grandson) killing himself!

19. The use of alcohol often stems from undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder and/ or psychogenic amnesia where sobriety prior to cure may render the person suicidal and worse off than if they continued drinking.

20. doctors, nurses, and dentists driven to suicide

21. "Go to AA and all your problems will be solved". I was suicidal for crying out loud!

22. I nearly committed suicide while I was in the program.

23. I have known of some violent tragic suicides — nice people, they just couldn't quit drinking.

24. Three women from that AA-group had committed suicide in as many months, but nobody questioned themselves or the group, let alone the program.

25. My first nine months, two new comers killed themselves

26. I had a sponsor by now and was scared that if I didn't go to meetings, then I would go "back out" and then I would commit suicide, like two people in the program had done recently.

27. But maybe you have to have actually lived the darker side (watching street people with diseases 13th step young confused people and see people commit suicide during the re-socialization therapies), to understand the implications.

28. Trying to defend myself against these crazy, erroneous ideas caused such a horrifying state of confusion that I could have wrecked my car... anything. I almost was led to suicide.

29. ...two of my sponsers had dead kids from suicide. You'd have thought that might stop them from "helping" so many other youngsters.

30. he did all the necessary stepcraft, and proceeded to take some anesthesia and slit his aorta, causing instant death

31. A good friend of mine that came from another state, 38, married, good life ahead, changed noticeably after some dickhead gave him the Big Book, he told me about it but I never told him what I knew about A.A., and he killed himself last year.

32. she hung herself

33. ...lots of people kill themselves after 20 years or so, it is the hump thing.

34. my own sister had five years sober when she committed suicide in a most horrible way.

35. The suicide rate was almost a dead even 5 percent.

36. two more suicides

37. I knew a woman who was fresh in AA, told to stop her psych meds & when attempting suicide during a meeting in the meeting bathroom, she was shunned ...

38. And two months after my "AA Anniversary" I myself attempted suicide and drank again.

39. "they" had told her that she could no longer take her prescribed meds for her depression and bi-polar disease because if she did, she would be "using" ... at about 90 days she found a gun and blew her brains out.

40. Robin Williams commits suicide while working a 12-Step program for depression.

41. 4 people from the [Deleted] Foundation (the program I was recruited to initially for gambling) committed suicide or overdose in the last month — two being close friends.

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Last updated 8 January 2015.
The most recent version of this file can be found at http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-suicides.html