The "Politics" of Twelve Steps

Okay, I did it. I threw up my hands and have removed myself from the local AA honcho scene. I was working my ass off for a local AA event, when I hear a supposed friend tell a newcomer that the meeting I started wasn't "real AA." That remark, and one "kill Obama" joke too many forced me to my senses. I gave up trying to educate these hicks. Here's my resignation letter that I posted in the local AA newsletter.

FAREWELL TO THE INTERGROUP

I am quitting all my service positions. CVI & MCVYPAA will need someone to run their websites, create the newsletter, keep the calendars current, and act as Intergroup Chairperson. I have tried to sophisticate AA in this area, but it’s no use when the founding text is laden with religious terms and when this area has gleaming churches next to rundown schools. The courts find AA to be a religious institution; I agree. I got sober without a Higher Power and I received little benefit, and perhaps some harm, from working the Steps. But the religious mind ignores and discounts all evidence that does not support its orthodoxy. I think it is a fraud and unlicensed medicine to imply to desperate folks that a Higher Power and working the Steps are necessary to stay sober. I hope AA can make a searching and moral inventory of its Big Book and beliefs and weigh them against clear reasoning and all the evidence. Ciao bebes, [Diogenes Akritas].

At my weekly Saturday morning meeting last week, the topic was which step you are "on." I shared about the AA philosophy - not worrying about things I can't control and looking for what I can do. I shared that this philosophy has greatly helped me. I also shared that sobriety has improved my life, health, and attitude immensely. AA philosophy and sobriety - two great things that have NOTHING to do with each other. There are too many counter-examples of drunken Twelve Steppers and non-Stepper folks with long term sobriety. I repeated that it's bad medicine to tell people that the Steps will get them sober.

After my share, someone said they wanted to stay out of "the politics" surrounding the Steps - they just did them and they helped. Politics?! When I state that something is bad science - that has nothing to do with politics. It is or it isn't. These Stepper cult members would like to think my statement was mere politics - that way they can rest smugly in the belief that their opinion is as valuable and as important as anyone else's. But science isn't democratic. Credentials, mental prowess, and careful observations matter.

My friend is just another cult member missing the point - there is no evidence that the Steps get people sober. There is some evidence that getting together for sober social support helps, but that is not the Steps. In fact, there is no step that states "we regularly went to meetings."

What about all those sincere people that really believe the Steps got them sober? Well, sincerity doesn't fucken matter when it comes to science - integrity does. Someone may have noticed that birds return each Spring before the lake thaws - someone may sincerely believe the birds' return caused the thaw - but someone would be wrong. When people are finally ready to quit drinking and using, they become willing to stop. That willingness may also cause them to do tasks other people suggest such as the Steps. The willingness causes both the abstinence and the step-work. The fact that they happen around the same time does not mean that either caused the other.

My recovery hiatus...

I would like to apologize to the well-wishers who have encouraged me to begin posting again. I have been busy with my activist sober life and haven't felt angry enough about AA meetings to voice my dissent. I only go to "safe" meetings that I had a hand in developing so I'm comfortable and don't have to defend my atheism or my belief that the twelve-step system is a medical fraud.

My anger, however, has been building toward religion and faith in general. I started a Facebook group called The Godless Horde that hopefully will arrange atheist pride parades, atheist lobbies, atheist fellowships, and actively attack religion and faith — picketing places of worship with provocative slogans and come-on-let's-fight postures.

I am a trained philosopher and a lawyer. I’ve spent over 25 years wrestling with theodicies, trying to come up with answers to the Problem of Evil. The best answer I found is that there is no loving God. I do not have time for the immoral Jewish jingoism of the Hebrew scriptures and the bloody genocides committed by Jews against those in their way. I don't have time for the Quran and its reiteration of the Jewish and Christian exclusion and animus against outsiders.

I do not have the time to waste with Christian apologies. I still love certain passages of the Koine scriptures. I still try to live by the principles in the Sermon on the Mount. (Matthew 5-7; Luke 6) But the whole gospel premise is silly and mean. A gruesome death is required to pay for the theft of a fruit 4000 years earlier. God can’t forgive humanity without a gruesome death. Oy!!!

RELIGION IS EVIL. It's our job to get rid of it.

DoubleBlood in the news...

Forgiveness...

means giving up all hope of a better past.

- Landrum Bolling

What the American public doesn't know...

is what makes them the American public.

Take a look at http://home.earthlink.net/~bbaa.library/quiz_on_world_affairs.WMV

Original closing of How It Works

You can find a transcription of the original manuscript here or here. You can see a copy of some of the original pages here.

How It Works originally offered people the choice of completely ignoring the steps and the Big Book. This was obviously not a good idea for an ambitious, fledgling alcoholic cult. But it does show that a certain free spiritedness and enlightened secularism were present in early AA. How It Works originally ended with these words:

Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after, have been designed to sell you three pertinent ideas:

(a) That you are alcoholic and cannot manage your own life.
(b) That probably no human power can relieve your alcoholism.
(c) That God can and will.

If you are not convinced on these vital issues, you ought to re-read the book to this point or else throw it away! [Emphasis added.]

Well said, Mr William Griffith Wilson!

Another thoughtful review of Bufe's AA: Cult or Cure - A MUST READ!

Marty N of LifeRing Secular Recovery wrote a very insightful review of Charles Bufe's AA: Cult or Cure? To read Marty N's must-read review, click here. To read Bufe's book, click here.

Marty N reminds me of earlier remarks I have made on this blog concerning AA's pretension to practice medicine. He states:

It seems to me that AA’s attachment to the disease theory is skin-deep and purely opportunistic. The disease theory serves as a psychological hammer with which to crack the tough egos of certain types of alcoholics and open them up for religious indoctrination. It serves as respectable, scientific windowdressing for AA’s evangelical religious program, much like the "Science" in "Scientology" and in "Christian Science," which AA most resembles. It serves as political camouflage for the maneuvers of the invisible AA to channel public funds into AA pockets. It is the sheep’s cloak on the Buchmanite wolf.

Instead of peremptorily dismissing the disease theory, as Bufe does, it would be sounder strategy to hold AA to its claims and to demand from it the same accountability that is applied to other medical and quasi-medical efforts. Since alcoholism is a disease, those who purport to dispense advice about it to sufferers, e.g. AA sponsors, should be examined for basic medical competency and either licensed and bonded or prosecuted. Since alcoholism is a disease, accurate epidemiological and outcome statistics should be required of all entities that benefit from public funds related to its treatment. Refusal of an entity to submit to controlled double-blind efficacy studies using standard sociometric techniques should be immediate ground for termination of funding. Since alcoholism is a disease, there should be no less openness toward alternative treatment modalities than in treatment of other diseases. Since alcoholism is a disease, an approach that relies primarily on religious conversion should get the same short shrift as such methods receive in the medical treatment of diabetes, allergies, and other diseases with which alcoholism is often compared. The disease theory, if really taken seriously and applied consistently, is the burial shroud for the whole legacy of Buchmanite "soul surgery" in AA.

I'm beginning to feel less alone and more convinced in my criticisms. Thanks, Marty N of LifeRing Secular Recovery!

To become the person you want to be...

you have to give up the person you are.