The Daily Bitch 4th March 2012

I've never seen anyone who has done both say they are similar either. Clara's stretching and stretching and twisting things to confirm her cognitive bias. The people I know who have gone to SMART rave that it's like nothing they had ever seen before and I agree. Shortly before I left AA for good, I showed one of the tools to my sponsor when she was going through a bad time. I didn't tell her where it came from because I knew if she had known it was a recovery alternative she would dismiss it. She looked awed and said in a kind of shocked way "In all my years in AA, I've never read or heard anything so helpful..."

After 75 years of manipulating people, cults often adapt the "canned rebuttals" called slogans to the current times. Do you think AA may have evolved to this point? Will they lie to get a new "prospect?"

Maybe I went to the wrong meetings, or hung out with the wrong people. I can honestly not recall ever hearing anyone in AA offer up an alternative. Unfortunately, I've heard the opposite time and time again.

No one here is interested in it and the slogans don't work anymore. Are you still breaking the female/male Sponsorship rule. You should be ashamed of yourself allowing newcomers to even hear or see about it.

Did you take them out to the parking lot and drag them to a different type of meeting? Google it folks....

From the Orange Papers:
http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-bait-switch.html#the_only_way

Bait and Switch: First, Bill Wilson declared that Alcoholics Anonymous was only one of many ways to achieve sobriety, then he declared that it was The Only Way.
Similarly, first, "A.A. isn't for everyone", and then it is.

First, Bill pretended to be humble as he declared:

Upon therapy for the alcoholic himself, we surely have no monopoly.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Foreword, page xxi.
Again, Bill Wilson pretended to be open-minded when he declared in the Big Book that A.A. was not the only way to recover from alcoholism (although he switched the goal to "acquire faith"):

We have no desire to convince anyone that there is only one way by which faith can be acquired.   ...
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, There Is A Solution, page 28.
(Again, A.A. was advertised as a "quit-drinking" program, not an "acquire faith" program. That's another bait-and-switch trick.)

Bill continued:

If he thinks he can do the job some other way, or prefers some other spiritual approach, encourage him to follow his own conscience. We have no monopoly on God; we merely have an approach that worked with us. But point out that we alcoholics have much in common and that you would like, in any case, to be friendly. Let it go at that.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Working With Others, page 95.
Our book is meant to be suggestive only. We realize we know only a little.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, A Vision For You, page 164.
Perhaps you are not quite in sympathy with the approach we suggest. By no means do we offer it as the last word on this subject...
The Big Book, 3rd edition, William G. Wilson, page 144.
It would be a product of false pride to claim that A.A. is a cure-all, even for alcoholism.
As Bill Sees It, quotes from William G. Wilson, published by A.A.W.S., page 285.
But then Bill wrote:

Any willing newcomer feels sure A.A. is the only safe harbor for the foundering vessel he has become.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 35.
... you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer.
...
At first some of us tried to avoid the issue, hoping against hope we were not true alcoholics. But after a while we had to face the fact that we must find a spiritual basis of life — or else.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, page 44.

"Or else", indeed. Finally, Bill Wilson wrote that you must do all of Bill Wilson's Twelve Steps all of the time, or else you are "signing your own death warrant".

Unless each A.A. member follows to the best of his ability our suggested [Bill Wilson's required] Twelve Steps to recovery, he almost certainly signs his own death warrant. His drunkenness and dissolution are not penalties inflicted by people in authority; they result from his personal disobedience to spiritual principles [Bill Wilson's cult religion practices].
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 174.
Likewise, the A.A. "First Tradition", which Bill Wilson wrote, says:

A.A. must continue to live or most of us will surely die.
And the Big Book also says:

...he was insisting that he had found the only cure.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 257.
...they had found the only remedy...
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 259.

And other pro-A.A. literature from the Hazelden Foundation declares:

None of us in Alcoholics Anonymous is normal. Our abnormality compels us to go to AA... We all go because we need to. Because the alternative is drastic, either A.A. or death.
Delirium Tremens, Stories of Suffering and Transcendence, Ignacio Solares, Hazelden, 2000, page 27.
These statements come from more A.A. promoters:

One way or another Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) or a similar Twelve-Step program is an integral part of almost all successful recoveries from alcohol or drug abuse. In fact, it is widely believed that not including a Twelve-Step program in a treatment plan can put a recovering addict on the road to relapse.
The Recovery Book, Al J. Mooney M.D., Arlene Eisenberg, and Howard Eisenberg, pages 40-41.
So, "it is widely believed" that A.A. is essential to recovery? Widely believed by whom? That is the propaganda trick of using the passive voice, where things get done by some invisible unnamed people.

And the authors are also using the propaganda trick of Everybody's Doing It, and Everybody Knows. It's just like "Everybody knows that the world is flat." Well, "Everybody knows that A.A. works great."

The A.A. and N.A. recruiters and promoters are, of course, totally ignoring the simple fact that the 12-Step program doesn't really work at all, and it just raises the death rate.

The statement that "One way or another Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) or a similar Twelve-Step program is an integral part of almost all successful recoveries from alcohol or drug abuse" is nothing but a blatant lie. Even a simple examination of the facts reveals that A.A. has an immense drop-out rate and that the A.A. program rarely works. The NIAAA's 2001-2002 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions interviewed over 43,000 people. Using the criteria for alcohol dependence found in the DSM-IV, they found:

"About 75 percent of persons who recover from alcohol dependence do so without seeking any kind of help, including specialty alcohol (rehab) programs and AA. Only 13 percent of people with alcohol dependence ever receive specialty alcohol treatment."
Likewise, the Harvard Medical School stated that 80% of the alcoholics who successfully quit drinking for a year or more do it alone, without any "treatment" or "support group".

Telling newcomers one thing, and then changing the story later, is called "deceptive recruiting" and "bait-and-switch" selling. For more on A.A. deceptive recruiting, see The Cult Test — Deceptive Recruiting

For more on "The Only Way", see The Cult Test — The Only Way

Oh, and I see your buddy, Clara, has logged out. I wonder why...

Maybe tomorrow if you are a really good person you can call me by my name,Trisha K.
OK....it would be nice. I don't even have anyone in my family by the name of Danny.
Good night...sista!

This is the one I'd hear:

Unless each A.A. member follows to the best of his ability our suggested Twelve Steps to recovery, he almost certainly signs his own death warrant.

No Clara, you haven't. That's a big lie. Your answer was that you didn't know where it was. If you know, why don't you just say?

No, you're a liar. You never ever answered my question. You're the one making the assertion. The onus is on you to back it up. I'm not reading the big book again, since I already have. Quite frankly, it's looking bad on you.

Also, nobody objects to AA collecting contributions. What we do object to is any government funding going to religious indoctrination and you have been haunting this place long enough to know that. We also object to rehabs charging top dollar for the same superstitious fail healing nonsense devised by a delusional stock scammer. SMART has a right to accept any kind of funding since it's based on evidence based science.

And SMART doesn't say anyone has to share it with others. It's very nice when people do that, but it's nothing like AA where people may feel obligated to do so. I'd like to see where you read that "You have to be willing to share SMART with others, same as AAs passing it on." Please provide a link to that.