Date: Tue, June 26, 2007 7:33 pm     (answered 28 June 2007)
From: washboy
Subject: 12 step bashing

AO,

It's obvious what your addiction is. I pray you will find the help you need to overcome it.

God Bless,

Washboy

Hello Washboy,

"AA-bashing" is not an addiction. Neither is habitually telling the truth. And I certainly don't want to be "saved from it".

If you ask this goose, who knows me much better than you do, she will tell you that if I'm addicted to anything, it's to playing in the sunshine -- going down to the river and feeding the geese and ducks, and working on my suntan and guitar playing, and drinking lemonade and soda pop. I hardly have the spare time to waste on answering letters from AA members, or in writing about Alcoholics Anonymous, especially when the summer is so beautiful.

The white stuff on the edge of her beak is bread crumbs. She's been munching bread, and now she wants some more.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.org        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
** "I have sworn, before the altar of God, eternal hostility
**  against any form of tyranny over the mind of man."
**    == Thomas Jefferson

Date: July 3, 2007     (answered 3 July 2007)
From: Jay V.
Subject: Link to interesting AA commentary

Hi: Murder suspect apparently met his victim in the rooms. Paper's report draws ire from AA'ers about "anonymity."
http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/vaden/story/622882.html

-- Jay V.

Hi Jay,

Thanks for the tip.

That's outrageous. The anonymity of A.A. meetings is such a perfect cover for a predator. A woman gets killed, and all that the group members can do is complain about someone telling the truth about a killer meeting his victim in an A.A. meeting...

And then there was this paragraph,

"It's really unfair to AA as an anonymous place for safety, for people to come and get sober, to be accused of such a thing as being a place where murderers lurk," said one caller, who identified herself as a recovering alcoholic. "That's what the title is insinuating."

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.org        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
** "Now I know what it's like to be high on life.
** It isn't as good, but my driving has improved."
** == Nina, on "Just Shoot Me", 13 Jan 2006.

P.S. I also heard about a sequential predator in California and Nevada who went to A.A. meetings to find lonely old women. He used a false name, of course, to hide his real identity. He would pretend to be their friend and lover until he had emptied their bank accounts and retirement funds and then he was gone, to another city where he would show up in another A.A. meeting with a new name...

Date: Sun, July 1, 2007 12:54 am     (answered 5 July 2007)
From: "cvmweb"
Subject: what the..

here read this because you need to. Aldous Huxley called him "the greatest social architect of our century."
http://www.time.com/time/time100/heroes/profile/wilson01.html

Hello cvmweb,

I know all about the TIME magazine "100 Most Influential People of the 20th Century" list.
I also know that Adolf Hitler made the same list too. And I agree that both Adolf Hitler and Bill Wilson greatly influenced the course of history during the 20th century -- for the worse.

And guess who wrote the flattering TIME magazine article about Bill Wilson? None other than Susan Cheever, the sycophant who is "just in love with Bill Wilson", and who wrote a whole book of brown-nosing praise of Bill Wilson that even included the rationalization that it really was okay for Bill Wilson to practice necromancy -- "maybe the dead are not gone" -- and that it was normal for people like Bill Wilson to conduct séances with a Ouija board and spirit rapping and channeling, and talk to the spirits of the dead. And then Susan Cheever even rationalized that it was okay for Bill Wilson to be a sexual predator who exploited the pretty women who came to A.A. meetings seeking help for a drinking problem.

(And then, her reward for such parrotting of the A.A. party line was that Susan Cheever was then elected to the Board of Directors of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependency -- the NCADD -- the A.A. front group that was founded by "Mrs." Marty Mann to promote Alcoholics Anonymous.)

Most importantly, do you know where Susan Cheever got the claim that Aldous Huxley had praised Bill Wilson? Only from Bill Wilson. That was just more of Bill's bragging about himself. But Wilson was notorious for making up lots of self-aggrandizing lies, and for bragging about great success that didn't really exist.

Nowhere in the writings of Aldous Huxley have I been able to find one word of praise of Bill Wilson or Alcoholics Anonymous, and I've looked for it. If Huxley really said that Bill Wilson and his organization were so great, then you would think that he would have said it somewhere, in one of his books. Maybe just a tiny little mention -- a paragraph or two -- in a utopian novel like Island. Island was one of Huxley's masterpieces, and in it he talked about how to solve all kinds of social problems. Huxley even had high-school graduates mountain-climbing together, to build bonds of trust between them, and then taking psychelic drugs together to get their spiritual experiences. (That was the graduation ceremony.)

But there was no mention of "support groups" or 12 Steps or anybody like Bill Wilson in that utopia. In fact, when the crown prince of the island showed signs of a neurotic sexual disorder, the island elders prescribed sex lessons from an older woman. No 12-Step support group.

By the way, remember that Aldous Huxley and Bill Wilson met because they were both getting LSD from Doctors Humphry Osmond and Abram Hoffer. Bill Wilson's first trip was August 29, 1956, in Los Angeles. (See PASS IT ON, pages 368 to 377.) That was where Huxley got the idea of using psychedelic drugs to reform and improve society. So Huxley had already met Bill Wilson before he wrote Island. In fact, Island was inspired by Huxley's psychedelic experiences with LSD and mescaline. Still, Huxley didn't consider Bill Wilson or 12-Step support groups worth including in his vision of an ideal enlightened society.

I challenge you to show me anything in Huxley's writings or letters or speeches where he praised Bill Wilson or Alcoholics Anonymous. Really. Let's see the evidence. Bill Wilson's grandiose bragging about himself isn't good enough evidence. It isn't really evidence of anything except Bill's narcissistic personality disorder.

Have a good day.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.org        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
** "You can fool all the people some of the time, and
** some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool
** all the people all the time." == Abraham Lincoln

Date: Thu, July 5, 2007 9:48 pm     (answered 8 July 2007)
From: William (not Bill!) M.
Subject: Aldous Huxley

Dear Secret Agent Orange:

I have always wanted to write you and tell you what a splendid job you have done in creating these pages. I spent 3 years in aa (I wont capitalize them) and all the yammering about God solving their problems and all the contradictions and shell games drove me nuts (among other things). I was never a True Believer. In fact I wasn't very well liked in aa. So I quit and went to grad school instead (what a relief!).

PLEASE KEEP UP THE EXCELLENT WORK AND SERVICE YOU HAVE PERFORMED FOR THE TRUTH!!! The message is getting out there, and the Internet has been a great boon. Trimpy's Small Book was a great attack on aa but it only preached to the choir at the time of publication. You can't do an Internet search about alcoholism or aa without running into you, aaDeprogramming, Ken Ragge's stuff, and more. So now the parishioners get to read the truth about aa without having to look very far. (Yes I'm using this religious metaphor on purpose.)

There is so much I want to say to you about aa and recovery. But I don't want to get into my stuff here and now.

Over the past 4 years or so I have read and reread your pages in rapt attention. One other thing: it amazes me when aa members accuse you of not having done research. If it wasn't so pathetic I'd have to laugh. That Masters degree I spoke about was in Library science, and I worked in academic library where I was expected to publish research to keep my job, so I know what constitutes research and what doesn't. Your research is staggering, and especially for a nonacademic. You're Eric Hoffer writing about aa! (He did too but didn't know it)!

Anyway:
I have been a fan of Aldous Huxley since I was 19. There is 1 reference to Bill Wilson by Huxley. It is in The Letters of Aldous Huxley ed. by Grover Smith (I hope I got all this right). I own this book, but unfortunately most of my books are in storage, until I can get a larger place to live, so I can't go and get it and write down the quote for you. I forgot what Huxley said, I think it was sort of flattering, but as I recall it's only a sentence long. And I don't remember who Aldous was writing to. May very well have been Dr. Humphrey Osmound. I'm sorry I can't supply you with the quote at the moment.

If Huxley thought BW was such a great social architect one would think Island would be full of stepism shit. But as I think of Island I get no wiffs of stepism coming from it. In fact I think a lot of the ideas in Island are the direct opposite of core 12 step beliefs. (I'm loath to call it a philosophy, as 12-Step facilitators like to call it).

I'll run down the reference if you want me to. The book went out-of-print long, long ago. I have no idea how easy it may be to find. I'm sure hundreds of university and large city libraries bought it at the time of publication. So an ILL request by either you or me.

HAVE A NICE DAY ORANGE!!!!

William (not Bill!) M.

Hello William,

Thank you for the letter, and the compliments, and the information. I did a WorldCat lookup on the letters of Aldous Huxley, and found the book easily. It is: Letters of Aldous Huxley, edited by Grover Cleveland Smith. 1970, New York, Harper & Row.

I'll put in an ILL (Inter-Library Loan request) and get it. It will be good to read some Huxley again. I too have been an admirer of Aldous Huxley since I was 20.

I agree about how Island contradicts a bunch of core A.A. beliefs. The whole thing is so totally different from Alcoholics Anonymous that it's hard to know where to start.

• The wise people of the island discouraged the existence of religions, and A.A. certainly is another one of them -- just the kind of religion that they would have frowned upon, what with the worship of Bill Wilson and the Big Book.

• The cure for big guys' aggressive tendencies was to have them work it off logging big trees with an ax, not sitting in meetings and confessing their moral shortcomings.

• In fact, everybody had to get outside and work for half of the day. No sitting in meetings or in an office all day long.

• And of course, group psychedelic sessions for high-school graduates weren't exactly Alateen meetings.

• And above all, the people of Island used scientific research and medical progress to improve their society, like x-raying the children's wrists to detect nascent Peter-Pan Syndrome and prevent the rise of another Hitler. Oh, and they treated that "defect of character" with medications, not 12-Step meetings.

• The Islanders would never have worshipped one book from The Founder and declared that it was a gift from God and must never be changed (-- the first 164 pages, that is).

• And the people of Island used healthy psychological techniques like imagining a dozen ridiculous copies of something that bothered them, to laugh it off. They would never have practiced a neurotic guilt-inducing routine like listing and confessing all of one's moral shortcomings and defects of character and declaring that one is powerless and incurable.

• And people with mental problems got therapy and counseling, not 12-Step meetings.

• And there must be another dozen glaring discrepancies between Island and 12-Stepism, if I think about it long enough. Above all, there is simply a very different spirit and feel between Island and Stepism.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.org        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
** At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human
** stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and
** justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism
** and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or
** political idols.  ==  Aldous Huxley

That alone is a good reason to continue to stay sober.

[another letter from William:]

Date: Tue, July 10, 2007 11:05 pm
From: William
Subject: Huxley quote

Dear Agent Orange:

Hi again! Below is a PDF file of the letter where Aldous Huxley mentions BW in The Letters of Aldous Huxley. Out of nearly a thousand pages this is the only reference to BW in the index. I hope you can open the file. Huxley says nothing good or bad about aa or Bill W. He just uses what Bill was talking about over lunch as a spring board for a larger topic. Oh well, so much for "The greatest social architect of the 20th century." I think it can be safely said that Aldous never said any such thing. And I am so glad Huxley never said it! I found this quote by Huxley on Wikipedia: On _social organizations_ ( http://www.cybernation.com/quotationcenter/quoteshow.php?type=author&id=4470) :

"One of the many reasons for the bewildering and tragic character of human existence is the fact that social organization is at once necessary and fatal. Men are forever creating such organizations for their own convenience and forever finding themselves the victims of their home-made monsters."
[No citation given.]

Enough said?? (Come on Susan Cheever prove it!)

You got me very interested in rereading Island again after so many years. (I'm 51 and read Huxley back in my early 20's. I've read some essays and biographical stuff since then, but not one of his novels). So I picked Island up this evening and started reading it. I flipped to near the end of the book and Huxley was parodying Onward Christian Solders. That would shock an Oxford Grouper, let alone an aa True Believer! (I'm sure Aldous heard of the Oxford group just because they were so big during part of his life.) I'm certain Aldous would have never bought into Frank Buckman's ideas, therefore aa by extension (oh, by the way, he wrote an essay where he rips apart the Lord's Preyer).

I'd like to tell you that yesterday I celebrated 2 years of sobriety!! Congrats to you for more then 6 years!! Glad all aa people who wished you would go drink lost! Your pages really helped me though some rough spots. Now I don't want any alcohol at all (and it took about 11 months for the cravings to go away). Now that my mind has really cleared up, also about 11 months, I just can't see sitting around consuming like 9 beers a night. People need to start believing that it is a human problem that does have a human answer -- not ONLY by divine intervention. [well actually most people do believe it has a human answer. The aa people don't]. No one's alcoholism is just removed magically by God and then proclaim that it just isn't a problem any more, just like that. It's such an affront to all of us who are working on recovering from this dreadful problem.

Someday I'd like to tell you about my experiences with the 12 step treatment mill. Hey, I didn't know this for the longest time, and I'm sure you know. To become a "Chemical Dependency Counselor" only requires you to be 18, posses a high school diploma, and take about 12 seminar classes that can be completed in about 9 months at most. I know that it's true in Michigan (I live north of Detroit), I know it's true in New York, and in California you need an associates degree. A friend of mine works at a treatment center in New York City and they train them and have the requirements on their web site. The sick train the sick to help the sick get well. One good reason treatment is such a colossal failure! This really burns me. Any other psychological problem can't be touch by someone without atlest a masters up to MD. And alcoholism is surly a psychological problem (with some biological components). Well, after all it is listed in the DSM-4 as alcohol abuse/depndency. I'm not saying that people with masters or above would all make splendid alcohol councilors, but the bar is way too low. It was designed that way I think so the aa true believer can become a councilor, otherwise most of them never could hack the education to make it into the field. It's interesting to note that people with higher academic training who get a job in a treatment center, who were not alcoholic and had never been to a meeting, just fall into the belief systems exposed by the treatment centers. They think this all has sound psychological validity. That the way we treat alcoholics in the therapeutic setting is actually based on a lot of real research. WRONG.

Well, I could go on forever this way. But it's late and I want to read more of Island before falling asleep. Isn't sobriety wonderful!

Great day to ya Orange!

William

Hello again William,

Thank you very much for the PDF file. Now that is interesting.

[To readers, the Huxley letter is here: orange-Huxley_letter.pdf]

What is particularly revealing is that Bill Wilson was also messing around with other strange experimental chemicals in addition to LSD. And Bill was either giving the chemicals to his fellow "ex-alcoholics", or some doctor that Bill knew was. (Don't you love that wording -- "ex-alcoholics"?)

I know that Bill Wilson was going around handing out LSD. He dosed everybody he could talk into it, from his wife and secretary to his minister Sam Shoemaker, to other alcoholics. So he was probably handing out other stuff too.

That makes the current A.A. attitude that you don't have "perfect sobriety" if you are taking psychiatric medications ridiculous. Bill Wilson himself didn't believe in such "purity".

And yes, Aldous Huxley spoke no praise of Bill Wilson there. Certainly not a declaration that Bill Wilson was the greatest social architect of the 20th century. Not even a statement that he had done anything good. Just a statement that Bill Wilson was taking experimental drugs, and giving them to his neurotic ex-alcoholics, and that those drugs might also help Huxley's wife.

Wow. That is so far away from the current "Back To The Basics" 12-Step fundamentalist religion that I'm sure the fundies don't want to hear the truth about Bill Wilson.

(And they don't. That's why they send hostile letters. And why they keep the historical archives locked and sealed.)

It is impressive how Aldous Huxley clearly foresaw that Freudian psychoanalysts would be upset and angered by chemicals that cured mental problems like neurosis. The new medicines would put the Freudians out of business -- and they did. Rather than paying $300 per hour to lay on a couch and talk about sexual fantasies about your mother, mental patients now just pop a pill and get fixed. Freudian psychoanalysis is as dead as the dinosaurs.

Curiously, we have history repeating itself with Alcoholics Anonymous being opposed to any medications to cure alcoholism. New medicines could put A.A. out of business, too.

Congratulations on your 2 years of sobriety. Now it gets easier.

(Just watch out for the mind games where old lizard brain tells you that "You have it under control now -- two or three years of perfect sobriety, with no cheating whatsoever, so you can have just one now..." That's what got me, once.)

And the training of "drug and alcohol counselors" really is a disgrace, isn't it? And what you didn't mention is that in many states, most of the training and education is really just indoctrination in 12-Step slogans and Alcoholics Anonymous dogma. The classes are just training in how to push people into Alcoholics Anonymous. Just memorize all of the A.A. sayings and misinformation and you get your certificate.

And I never heard of would-be counselors having to pass some kind of mental evaluation to make sure that they are sane and qualified to counsel anybody.

Most of those drug and alcohol counselors are really better equipped to teach you how to take drugs and alcohol than in how to avoid them. (Ten or twenty years of training with drugs, smoking and drinking; less than one year of education about abstinence, sobriety, and sanity.)

My so-called "counselor" certainly was more qualified to teach drug consumption than to teach clean and sober living. After a day at the treatment center, telling people not to take drugs or drink, he would go home, snort cocaine, and molest his step-children. And the Oregon Health Plan actually paid a lot of money for people to get "treatment" from that guy. Unreal.

And what is really funny is that while I was going to that so-called "treatment center" -- PAAC, the Portland Alternative Addictions Center -- they claimed that it was one of the best programs in the nation. They had people coming in from all over the country to study the program and learn how to do it. Meanwhile, my cocaine-snorting counselor screwed his step-children. It was all a hoax and quackery.

It really is a case of having the lunatics running the insane asylum.

Oh well, have a good day anyway.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.org        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
** Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently
** stable world at peril.

Date: Tue, July 10, 2007 4:04 pm
From: "Chase T."
Subject: So hows the white knuckling going for you?

Ok so you have a problem with AA we all get it.

Have fun white knuckling it pal. And if you are really truly happy -- then what's with the freakin 100+ page rant about AA?

Regards,

"Recovered"

Hello "Recovered",

It's very revealing that A.A. members have to claim that anybody who quits drinking without joining Alcoholics Anonymous must be very unhappy -- "white-knuckling it."

I am not white-knuckling it. I am quite comfortable with my sobriety. And I am very much enjoying life now.

But I am not happy with how A.A. is lying about its success rate and foisting cult religion and quackery on sick people, though. That's why I write about it -- so that people will have some true facts available to them.

You, on the other hand, seem to be very unhappy with somebody telling the truth. Why is that?

Have a good day.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.org        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
**  A fanatic is a man who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt.
**  == Aldous Huxley

Date: Mon, July 9, 2007 11:20 pm     (answered 14 July 2007)
From: "Steve M."
Subject: AA

Hey man or what ever your name is I will call you Mr. orange. Why are you so hard on AA's Mr. Orange? How many people have you help or rescure, from death? We of AA have the largest sucess rate of any organization. And that includes churches and Jails.

Hello Steven,

Right there, you just answered the question of why I am so hard on Alcoholics Anonymous. A.A. constantly lies about its success rate. Everything you just said is A.A. misinformation. A.A. does not have a success rate; it has a failure rate. Alcoholics who quit drinking on their own do as well or better than with Alcoholics Anonymous. But A.A. lies about that and claims to be the best thing that there is for alcoholics.

Has it ever occurded to you why the courts, send thier poeple to us? In 1977 a judge came to us ( intergroup, i was the chairperson at the time) and ask , if he could send some people to us, ( they were men and women that had problems with drinking) these people had been arested many times, this judge was asking for help! " he said nothing was working to make a change in there lives, he read where AA had some success with people. He ask if he could send some people to us for help. Now we did not ask him,he came to us. This what we said to that judge, " that we could not get involved in outside controvery, but the AA program will not turn away anyone, court ordered or other wise." Next week people started comming,that were from the courts. That was in publeo Coloardo 1977.

Again, you are proving my points for me. The judge "read where AA had some success with people."
The judge read some A.A. propaganda. The judge was lied to. He was fooled into thinking that A.A. works. That's why he sends people to Alcoholics Anonymous.

I would like to know, are you the anti-christ? Mr. Orange don't fight with God! You aren't going to win.

I am not fighting against God. I am fighting against a lying cult religion.

By the way, you just demonstrated that A.A. really is a religion. It's very typical for A.A. members to complain that someone is "against God" when they criticize Alcoholics Anonymous.

Good luck, and thanks for the good advertisemennt Your friend Steve M. God bless you.

You have a good day too.

== Orange

Date: Tue, July 10, 2007 12:32 am     (answered 14 July 2007)
From: "Steven M."
Subject: AA

Its me again, steve m. I have been sober for 33 yrs. doing ok. Matter of fact Would like to say everything you have written has some good and bad points, what the hell, AA help me save my like where was (smart) 33 years ago, now I'am stuck with this God thing.

You are assuming a cause and effect connection where none exists. You quit drinking because you wanted to. There is no evidence that A.A. "made you" quit drinking, or even helped you to quit drinking.

If A.A. really helped alcoholics to quit drinking, then alcoholics who go to A.A. should quit drinking in greater numbers than the alcoholics who go it alone. They don't. A.A. does not improve the situation at all.

When A.A. was put to the test, Alcoholics Anonymous was actually shown to cause:

• a much higher rate of binge drinking,
• a higher rate of re-arrests,
• higher costs of hospitalization, and
• a zero-percent improvement in the sobriety rate accompanied by a much higher death rate.

All of those facts were revealed by carefully controlled medical tests.
The last test was even done by a leader of Alcoholics Anonymous. He tried for many years to prove that A.A. works, and he accidentally proved that A.A. does not work; it just raises the death rate of alcoholics.

Oh yes in 1979 I help start the crossroads detox and rehab. in pueblo colorado, over those yrs we have carried AA message and help 60,000, men wemen childern, to start a new life.

So you go recruiting and proselytizing for your cult religion -- "carrying the message" as you call it. So what? So do Scientology and the Moonies.

Hey why don't you rename your group smart the anti-christ, or smart pride, or or the smart atheist hey here is one, I hate God and that makes me smart.

SMART is not against religions or God. It is neutral on the subject. SMART simply teaches some sane, rational, sensible techniques for straightening out your mind and breaking addictions.

Once again, you are showing that A.A. is a religion, and a rather jealous and angry one at that.

By the way, my web site is not about SMART. I am not promoting SMART per se -- I recommend any and all of the sensible sane recovery methods and organizations, including SMART, Rational Recovery, WFS (Women For Sobriety), SOS (Secular Organizations for Sobriety), and LifeRing Secular Recovery (LSR)

I haven't actually been to a SMART meeting in years.

I haven't in all your writing ( course I haven't read every word) you don't talk about love, careing for your bothers and sisters. You sound mean and you have hate in your heart, you sound troubled. I know I know that is some more of that cult religion you were talking about.

I love the alcoholics so much that I think they deserve to be told the truth, so I'm doing it.

Mr Orange P what is your problem, you can't slow down AA no more than you can stop God. Why don't you spend some time feeding the poor, and the hungry. what you are doing is helping us more than you are hurting AA, you are hurting yourself, I can tell by the way you talk.

I'm not going to brag about the other stuff that I do, so I won't.

You wrote something about the civil war and General Grant, he was far from fighting a thinking war, come on they kill over 600,000 people and wounded another 3 million. How stupid can one be! to line-up thounsands of men and have them to fire point blank at each other, hell If I pull such an act I'd be drunk too. Don't make sence to me but I'am one of those religious cult and dam proud of it. Hey if I join you smart guys, would I have to give up my religion?

Yes, war is stupid. But that was not the point of the story about Abraham Lincoln joking about Grant's drinking. Lincoln was saying that he found General Grant to be a more competent General than the sober ones.

It's funny how many A.A. members go non-linear over that story. You would think that they would be happy to hear something good about an alcoholic, but no, they aren't happy. And that is in fact the point of that file, "The Us Stupid Drunks Conspiracy".

Get all your programs, keep real good track of your people, see what kind of success they will have, better hurry,we have little head start of 4 million sober Alcoholics. That have recoved.

No, A.A. does not have 4 million sober alcoholics. Again, you are just repeating the usual grossly exaggerated propaganda of Alcoholics Anonymous. That isn't true at all. A.A. MIGHT have 2 million members world-wide (probably much less than that due to duplication), and the vast majority of them will drop out and return to drinking.

And those few who do get sober and stay sober don't owe their sobriety to Alcoholics Anonymous, because A.A. doesn't work. Those people should thank themselves. All that A.A. does is steal the credit for some people who were going to quit drinking anyway.

If you really believe that A.A. works, then please answer these simple questions:

That is what you call a complete failure. Alcoholics who quit drinking alone, on their own, do better than that.

If you would like to some serious writting, why don't you come to South America with me (that is where I have lived off and on the last 9 years), Cali Colombia, they need smart people like yourself, to feed the poor, you could help me in the soup kitchens,. I bet you would be calling up some kinda God before you got back home. I go there not because, I'am brave, but because the AA book say He will keep me safe as long as I'am doing his will. I know more cult.

I see that you use the A.A. Big Book as your Bible. And you imagine that "If it's written in the Big Book, then you can believe that it's true."
Yes, that is more cult stuff.

And again, you assume that I must be an atheist because I criticize the quackery and cult garbage of Alcoholics Anonymous. Not so.

Now it is good that you are going to South America and doing charitable work. But that is not the way of Alcoholics Anonymous. In fact, Bill Wilson instructed A.A. members NOT to help alcoholics, and NOT to do service work, remember?

The minute we put our work on a service plane, the alcoholic commences to rely upon our assistance rather than upon God.
The Big Book, 3rd and 4th Editions, page 98.

well I will be leaving for Cali Colombia, in about month let me know if you would like to tag along.

Please keep slamming AA you'll get your rewards. God bless you

Okay Steve,

I will continue to tell the truth. And you have a good day anyway.

== Orange

*             orange@orange-papers.org        *
*         AA and Recovery Cult Debunking      *
*          http://www.Orange-Papers.org/      *
**  "Not only had we failed to alter the natural history of alcoholism,
**  but our death rate of three percent a year was appalling."
**  == Dr. George E. Vaillant, currently a member of the A.A. Board of
**  Trustees, describing the treatment of alcoholism with Alcoholics
**  Anonymous, in The Natural History of Alcoholism: Causes, Patterns,
**  and Paths to Recovery, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA,
**  1983, pages 283-286.

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