Why do people follow AA???

no, he was a human being, we make mistakes



It is not a simple mistake, IMO. It is a pattern that fits into cult induced frameworkings.

Nixon made a mistake. What happened to him?

Does TIME magazine footnote that he did LSD???? No. TIME is part of the industry to make you helplessly dependant on the media, Drs., lawyers, etc....

BUT DON'T GO TO CHURCH!!!!! that is bad.

you need professionals to provide you with such info.

AA is non-professional, but the REHABS are filled with $$$$$$$$$$!!!!!!!!!

from Orange Papers.

I am far from an atheist. I am a right-wing fundamentalist, if anything.



1. The Twelve Steps do not work as a program of recovery from drug or alcohol problems.
o The A.A. failure rate ranges from 95% to 100%. Sometimes, the A.A. success rate is actually less than zero, which means that A.A. indoctrination is positively harmful to people, and prevents recovery. Some tests have shown that even receiving no treatment at all for alcoholism is much better than receiving A.A. treatment:
o One of the most enthusiastic boosters of Alcoholics Anonymous, Professor George Vaillant of Harvard University, who is also a member of the Board of Trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. (AAWS), showed by his own 8 years of testing of A.A. that A.A. was worse than useless -- that it didn't help the alcoholics any more than no treatment at all, and it had the highest death rate of any treatment program tested -- a death rate that Professor Vaillant himself described as "appalling". While trying to prove that A.A. treatment works, Professor Vaillant actually proved that A.A. kills. After 8 years of A.A. treatment, the score with Dr. Vaillant's first 100 alcoholic patients was: 5 sober, 29 dead, and 66 still drinking.
(Nevertheless, Vaillant is still a Trustee of Alcoholics Anonymous, and he still wants to send all alcoholics to A.A. anyway, to "get an attitude change by confessing their sins to a high-status healer." That is cult religion, not a treatment program for alcoholism.)
o The A.A. dropout rate is terrible. Most people who come to A.A. looking for help in quitting drinking are appalled by the narrow-minded atmosphere of fundamentalist religion and faith-healing. The A.A. meeting room has a revolving door. The therapists, judges, and parole officers (many of whom are themselves hidden members of A.A. or N.A.) continually send new people to A.A., but those newcomers vote with their feet once they see what A.A. really is. Even A.A.'s own triennial surveys, conducted by the A.A. headquarters (the GSO), say that:
X 81% of the newcomers are gone within 30 days,
X 90% are gone in 3 months, and
X 95% are gone at the end of a year.
That automatically gives A.A. a failure rate of at least 95%. But the GSO does not count all of those people who only attend a few meetings before quitting -- they don't qualify as "members". (That amounts to "cherry-picking".) If we included them, then the numbers would be much worse.
And also note that the claimed five percent of A.A. newcomers who are still left after one year is exactly the same number as the usual rate of spontaneous remission among alcoholics -- five percent per year. That is, in any randomly-selected population of alcoholics, approximately five percent per year will finally get sick and tired of being sick and tired, and they will just quit drinking. And the Harvard Medical School says that 80% of those successful quitters do it by themselves, alone, without any "treatment program" or any "support group".
If we subtract the normal spontaneous remission rate for alcoholism of five percent per year from A.A.'s claimed success rate of five percent, we get zero for A.A.'s real effective cure rate.
A.A. does not actually make anybody quit drinking; it just takes the credit for the people who were going to quit anyway. A.A. is just taking the credit for peoples' efforts to save their own lives.
o The Twelve Steps are actually a hopelessly bad program for recovery:
X Cult religion is not a good cure for alcoholism, and A.A. most assuredly is a cult religion.
X One of the biggest problems with the Twelve-Step program is the learned helplessness caused by the First Step, where people are taught to confess that they are "powerless over alcohol." This leads many people to believe that once they have a drink, that a full-blown relapse and total loss of self-control is inevitable and unavoidable. So some people go on suicidally-intense binges, thinking that it is pointless to try to resist temptation.2 --
X Step Two is just as bad: it teaches people that they are insane, and that only a Supernatural Being can restore them to sanity -- which means that they are helpless, and cannot heal themselves.
X Then Step Three teaches a lifestyle of infantile narcissism and passive dependency, where A.A. members turn control of their wills and their lives over to "the care of God as we understood Him", and then they expect God to take care of them and run their lives for them, and solve all their problems, and wait on them hand and foot, and do all of the hard work for them from then on...
"Let Go And Let God"
is their official motto, their lifestyle, and their approach to problem-solving.
X Then Steps Four through Ten induce guilt in the members by forcing members to make lists of all of their sins and flaws, and "defects of character" and "moral shortcomings", and confess every intimate dirty little secret to another A.A. member who isn't even ordained clergy, or even sworn to secrecy.
X In Step Eleven you are supposed to "channel" God and receive psychic work orders and power.
X Then Step Twelve tells you to go recruiting, to draft more alcoholics into this madness.
o There is also experimental evidence that the A.A. teachings about powerlessness lead to binge drinking. In a controlled study of A.A.'s effectiveness, court-mandated offenders who had been sent to A.A. for several months were engaging in five times as much binge drinking as the no-treatment control group which got no A.A. "help".
o A.A. boosters and propagandists constantly repeat the Big Lie that A.A. works great, and A.A. with its Twelve Steps is the way that everybody recovers:

i have a spiritual connection today that i never knew existed,it is working for me and lots of others, so why bash it??

AA is a bunch of hocus pocus - a placebo if you will.

I spent a large amount of my life drinking and have gone to several meetings, but they do not offer any foolproof method that isn't available outside of AA to become sober. That's the truth.

The spiritual aspect of AA boils down to believing that a higher power will take control of your addiction and somehow keep you from taking another drink, which doesn't mean anything, is not scientifically proven to be successful either because it is based on belief, yet alcohol has a physical addictive component as well as psychological that God or whatever your higher power is, does not take away.

That is the fallacy of AA. They expound that if you "believe" God will take away your addiction, which is false.

If it were that easy, many a drunk with a hangover would ask God to make them sober and they would never have another physical craving again, but any alcoholic knows this is not true. You still have them.

So God is not at work here like the rest of the worlds problems taking them away just for the belief or the asking. What we are left with is a superficial belief system, called spirituality within AA, that does not actually accomplish anything other than making people believe AA works by reinforcing this belief using only the people who actually became sober through pot-luck.

This would be like saying, "the reason you are dying from that snake bite, in spite of the bible saying poison would not harm you, is because you lack faith."

Pullleeeeeeeeeeeze.

Any idiot can claim the way to sobriety is by not drinking inbetween meetings, but that does nothing to address the physical causes that make an alcoholic pick up the glass in the first place.

Since he was Prescribed LSD and it worked well for him, it doesn't surprise me that he advocated the use of LSD

just because someone stops going to AA doesnt mean that AA has failed
(also a 100% fact)

Since he was Prescribed LSD and it worked well for him, it doesn't surprise me that he advocated the use of LSD


kudos! Now we have an interesting discussion.

If the 12 Steps are so spiritual, healing and uplifting, what in the world was Bill Wilson doing by participating in the experiments to begin with??

Obviously the 12 Steps must snake oil, because it didn't do much for the original author. HE MUST HAVE BEEN A DRY DRUNK TO PARTICIPATE!!!!

And AA knows what being a dry drunk means. Your not working the Steps! But how is the original architect of the 12 Steps, not working them???

not according to AA Bible the Big Book.

you quit drinking, stopped going to AA, but still give AA the credit??

What about when someone drinks?? Doesn't AA deserve THAT credit too? When a guy relapses, is ashamed to return to meetings, and kills a family of 4 in an automobile?

Been there, done that for 12+ years.

I was a walking/talking Big Book 12 Stepper. Seriously. I never personified alcoholism. I had a problem in my teens, joined the military, got student loan $, graduated college and grew up.

But AA tells you its a spiritual program. So, I thought I could benefit and go to meetings, my Dad went and sobered up; and I was grateful. But he left after 2 years and remained sober.

I had been entertaining idea(s) for a while and knew somewhere I would have to leave AA; only under very solid evidence against it. For the life of me I could not imagine what. Then I came across the Orange Papers (do a google search). It says AA is a cult. Wilson did LSD 20+ years into sobriety (I knew this already but somehow justified it because Wilson was a GREAT man!), the OxFord Group had ties to Nazi Socialism, Wilson was an incurable alley cat, the recovery rates at AA are worse than spontaneously quitting, etc.. etc..

Now I walk a new/old path. Back to my Church of origin, which is normally slammed in meeting rooms. My Church has always been there, but I couldn't entertain it because I had been so brainwashed in AA.

The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. What does that mean??? Me or someone else?? I've met this requirement for 15+ years. And I am willing to help people quit drinking by getting them back to Church where they belong, not in cult induced church basements lighting candles and quoting mind controlling slogans.

One cannot read the Orange Papers with an open mind, and not want to be a part of AA fellowship.

And listen up buddy, YOU ARE CONDITIONED TO BE PART OF A GROUP from kindergarten on (school is a training ground to get you ready for the rest of your life -- get you used to going to work at 8am and leaving at 5pm so you make money for the overlords. I'd have respect for you if you left aa AND church, but leaving aa to go to church? THOUSANDS have done it. Big deal. You're still OWNED.

k. you're retarded. a cult doesn't allow its members to leave. a cult does a lot of things aa doesn't. you can come and go and quite frankly, not many people give a rat's patooty if you're there or not.

Truly. You can GROW A SPINE AND DO A SMACKDOWN. You're just a pansy and afraid of the group. You're the one who's allowed yourself to be governed by the group. Speak up ya weiner!

And listen up buddy, YOU ARE CONDITIONED TO BE PART OF A GROUP from kindergarten on (school is a training ground to get you ready for the rest of your life -- get you used to going to work at 8am and leaving at 5pm so you make money for the overlords. I'd have respect for you if you left aa AND church, but leaving aa to go to church? THOUSANDS have done it. Big deal. You're still OWNED.





Amen!

k. you're retarded. a cult doesn't allow its members to leave. a cult does a lot of things aa doesn't. you can come and go and quite frankly, not many people give a rat's patooty if you're there or not. in fact, some of us are glad when some people don't come around any more, spreading hate or sanctimoniousness or big book bible thumpers.

That's what its all about - being responsible for YOURSELF and not relying on someone else to do it for you.

And listen up buddy, YOU ARE CONDITIONED TO BE PART OF A GROUP from kindergarten on (school is a training ground to get you ready for the rest of your life -- get you used to going to work at 8am and leaving at 5pm so you make money for the overlords. I'd have respect for you if you left aa AND church, but leaving aa to go to church? THOUSANDS have done it. Big deal. You're still OWNED.

If your life is better drinking...by all means, go ahead with that.

Spoken like a true cultie, if you're not in the cult you must be drinking or wanting to. Only those on the one true path to serenity could possibly be free from alcohol.

I am not the first to leave AA and join the church. I am one of millions who have returned.

So your saying that organized religion is the only TRUE way.

I was a low bottom drunk, I had a grand mal seizure, a 5 day hallucination and finally a full body paralysis. Finally I took control of my life like an adult and it's been 6 yrs. since I drank or had any desire to. No AA except the ones that rehab requires and no church, just a belief in myself and the power of the human body and spirit to heal itself.

It sounds like you need a drink.

I am sure if anyone asked Bill he would have said LSD probably isn't for everyone, just like AA isn't for everyone. But it worked for him and he wanted to share that with people.

I drink 2oz of Jack Daniels daily does that make me an alcoholic? The doctor thinks it's perfect, the one AA meeting I went to said yes you are WHY because I drink alone. HHHMMMM let's see I'm single yea I drink alone.

So the question is what is an alcoholic?