Cult Education Forum

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I don't receive complaints about AA.

There is no conspiracy to suppress complaints.

No families have contacted me since 1982 with complaints that AA has somehow "brainwashed" a loved one, is controlling thier life and/or exploiting them.

As said before I have received such complaints about other substance abuse programs, just not AA.

i highly disagree with the assumption that AA is a cult group. then you would have to say that NA is also. and then go even farther and say that any type of group consuling is a cult activity.

Try googling "Alcoholics anonymous + cult" See the hundreds of websites.

I just had a garage sale yesterday with a friend. She had a couple books for sale on alcoholism recovery, one of which was called [i:6157899146]How to Quit Drinking without AA.[/i:6157899146] Here is a review of it on Amazon.com:
[www.amazon.com]

A man ended up buying it, and the 2 of them got into a really interesting discussion about why they disliked AA. I mentioned this thread to them and both agreed that in their opinion it was a very cultlike organization.

By the way, here is a link I found when I googled the book:

www.orange-papers.org/orange-Cult_Called_AA.html

If AA is a cult, it is a wonderful cult. If AA is a fraud it is a wonderful fraud that has tricked me into 21 years of continuous sobriety, a wife of 16 years, 3 beautiful children, my own company, serenity, spiritual freedom, freedom of religious thought, healed relationships with family, self esteem, self respect, physical and physiological health and more.


If AA is a cult it's not a very well organized one:

* it has no leader apart from the presence of God
* it relies on voluntary contributions from well healed homeless people of $1 in the hat at the meeting.....if you can.
* It refuses large donations from member's upon death, I think the limit is $1,000
* we pay rent for meeting space refusing any charity from outside influences.
* we have no opinion on politics or anything outside of AA
* each meeting is autonomous.
* we have a policy of attraction not promotion
* and we will let you have your misery back anytime you want it.

Colter

Colter, I'm very happy that AA has worked for you. I am aware that it has worked for millions of people. But AA does NOT work for EVERYONE. Why can't you just admit the fact that not everyone responds fits into the AA mold and not everyone responds well to that particular type of program?

Quote:

Gulab Jamon
Colter, I'm very happy that AA has worked for you. I am aware that it has worked for millions of people. But AA does NOT work for EVERYONE. Why can't you just admit the fact that not everyone responds fits into the AA mold and not everyone responds well to that particular type of program?

Hi Gulab,

I do not recall being asked that question so I'm not sure why you use the term "admit."

AA is not for people who need it, it's for people who want it. Many come and never actually work the program and then find the most trivial of reasons to get drunk. What alcoholics "think" is what gets them to AA in the first place. Naturally they don't like AA, it exposes the self delusion that the self centered alcoholic lives in, it deflates their EGO's and they rebel against that to the bitter end.

For the manipulative alcoholic their is always an enabler to join their cause such as in the case of your friend who went back to drinking after the break up of a relationship in AA. So now in his mind that's the fault of AA avoiding his own responsibility.

If their are other programs in which the alcoholic gets honest with themselves and faces the real internal problems for which alcohol was the solution then by all means do it. AA claims no such monopoly on sobriety.

Colter

One of the central tenets of AA is that it does not have a monopoly on recovery. There are other methods of recovery that will work just fine. One of the problems with the treatment profession is that it is a money making machine drawing in huge amounts of revenue on unproven therapies. AA on the other hand has proven its success over decades.

Consider the DSM-IV criteria for addiction as it was changed from the DSM-III in that it is based upon the effects of withdrawal rather than on the effects of intoxication. The point here is that addicted people will go through withdrawal from a substance while non-addicts will not. It is simply untrue that there is a matter of choice for an alcoholic to drink or not.


Science bears this out with what I consider one of the more profound discoveries in that the drug Naltrexone can have on the craving for alcohol. It is in fact a chronic disease that can be treated with a pill, yet most substance abuse professionals resist this idea because they would then have to throw out their pet theories.

Stanton Peele is one such theorist, he does not recognize that fact that alcoholics possess a physically different central nervous system.

A few years ago, I was interested in what Peele had to say about Project Match, which was being funded by the NIAAA and was hoping to learn how to match patients with the appropriate type of treatment. He was certain that the AA model would fail to pass muster since it relied so heavily on "non-scientific reasoning". The funny thing was that after the data came in, the AA model was the most successful of any treatment type used. (This is also where the data strongly suggested that no treatment was in fact more effective than either of the other two in achieving stated goals.)

After the results came out, Peele whined about the methodology simply because it did not support his agenda. (His agenda being to further the idea that alcoholics must seek continued treatment throughout thier lives from professionals.)

From my personal perspective, there is potential for cult-like behavior within AA and I have seen this up close and personally. There are groups within AA that function quite like cults and if Rick really wants a few names, I could supply them. Only problem is that like Synanon, they have spun off from AA and more or less have ostracised any and all mainstream AAers. They will say that they are AA, but in fact they misrepresent themselves.

In my experience, the worst part of my treatment experience was dealing with the mental health system that used an ineffective model to try and treat me. In the end what worked for me was a method that has worked for many people for decades. The simple program of AA...

The idea that AA keeps people addicted to meetings is simply not true. It is true that many people keep going to AA for the rest of their lives and rely on it for social activiteis, but to the best of my knowledge I have never heard of anyone having a grand mal seizure because they missed too many AA meetings.

There are a lot of sick people in AA, no two ways about it. But to think that AA is a cult is plain silly.

After following this thread for a long time, I have noticed a definite trend;

Most of the men (here) seem to adore AA, most of the women seem to hate it.

What could this mean?

Is it possible that women experience the most predation and damaging effects from their involvement in AA?

Open your eyes.

Quote:

barabara
After following this thread for a long time, I have noticed a definite trend;
Most of the men (here) seem to adore AA, most of the women seem to hate it.

What could this mean?

Is it possible that women experience the most predation and damaging effects from their involvement in AA?

Open your eyes.

Well, AA will ruin your drinking but in my case ( I am a man) I can't think of anything about my life that I hadn't already damaged and I can't think of any aspect of my life that hasn't been improved by my attendance at AA meetings.

Maybe AA has brain washed me into just thinking my life is good when in fact it's awfule :shock:

I think the real problem for secularists is the idea of faith in God, on that basis you think every spiritual group is a cult.

Colter