Save yourself about three hundred sixty-five hours a year

[JimB...@google.com]

The Cult Called A.A.

by Paul Roasberry
Reprinted from Matrix, Denver Mensa, Janet Roder, Editor

When we think of cults, we usually think of bizarre religious sects,
armed compounds, mind control and eccentric leaders. Most of us do not
think of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) as a cult, but I do.

Three years ago, I was in the grips of a serious drinking problem. Like
most alcoholics, I rationalized my drinking, citing the many terrible
circumstances in my life. Then, almost three years ago, I stopped
drinking. Period. By myself.

Oh, I attended a half dozen or so A.A. meetings at the time, upon the
advice of someone recommended by a friend. The woman who suggested A.A.
to me was a licensed psychologist. She was a "recovered alcoholic" and
was very active in A.A.

What I found at the meetings was a weird mixture of the deplorable and
the laughable. It didn"t take long to notice that something was not
quite level with this organization.

I was tipped off to A.A.'s strong cult qualities when the lady
psychologist made a somewhat curious remark during the first week or two
of my sobriety.

I had an uncle then (he died this past January) who had been an
alcoholic prior to 1960. Uncle Ralph consumed, by his own subsequent
admission, about a quart of whiskey a day. He stopped drinking without
the assistance of A.A. when he met my aunt. It was a condition of their
marriage that he stop drinking, and he did.

I remember my Uncle Ralph as a sweet, generous man during the thirty-odd
years he was married to my aunt. He was not abusive or cruel, he worked
hard, and made an excellent stepfather to my three girl cousins. When I
mentioned Uncle Ralph to the lady psychologist, stating that he'd quit
drinking on his own, she immediately dismissed my observation with, "Oh,
well, he's just a dry drunk." She of course had never met my uncle
Ralph, knew positively nothing about his character and yet claimed to be
able to diagnose him as a "dry drunk" strictly on the information that
he hadn't progressed through the A.A.'s widely touted "twelve step
program." Bear in mind, this was a licensed psychologist making an
incredibly spurious, rash judgment.

Of course, all cults have this in common: they reject and label as
untouchables any who do not embrace their particular version of "Truth."
To died-in-the-wool communists, non-believers are "bootlickers of the
capitalists," or "counter-revolutionary hooligans." To the born again
fundamentalist Christian, non-believers are "agents of Satan." To
Moslems, Christians are "devils," and to Nazis, Jews are "swine." To the
Alcoholics Anonymous membership, anyone who stops drinking without
chanting the mantras of cult founder Bill W. are "dry drunks," pure and
simple. You don't even need to know anything more about the
self-quitters -- the fact that they quit drinking without A.A. makes
them dry drunks, a priori.

Don't get me wrong. I do not advocate suppressing A.A. or any other
cult. I simply want you to know, in case you are a problem drinker and
are toying around with the idea of quitting, that it's O.K. to develop
your own solution to your own problem. The last thing you need when you
undertake a major, radical transformation in your life is to be accused
by a bunch of self-righteous fanatics of being "a dry drunk," whatever
the hell that is.

The whole A.A. program hinges upon the alcoholic's acceptance of what
A.A. calls a "higher power." Conversely, adherents to the twelve-step
program are expected to renounce any personal responsibility for, or
control over, their problem. This blatant renunciation of the concept of
free will is also a characteristic of every single other cult I can
think of -- the individual counts for nothing, while the non-existent,
the illusory, the hypothetical, is all. Self-respecting, proud,
analytical achievers do not make good cult members. A cult follower must
be stripped of his sense of individual worth -- in many sects, he is
humiliated sexually, deprived of sensory stimuli, sequestered from the
larger community, or otherwise manipulated to look upon himself as
degraded and worthless. In A.A., you are plopped in a ring of cultists
every evening and pressured to place your entire destiny in the hands of
some "higher power."

When I began to ask hard questions about the nature of this "higher
power," half expecting to hear some gibberish about "god," I learned (no
kidding!) that one member even had his motorcycle represent his "higher
power." What form of silliness is this that empowers motorcycles to cure
us of alcoholism, I wondered.

At A.A. meetings, everyone sits around in a big circle. There are
readings from "the Big Book," a not-very-well-written compendium of
home-spun philosophy and anecdote authored by Bill W. and his colleagues
some decades ago. Every cult needs its sacred writings, its revealed
word. Members start talking about themselves and their alcoholism, and
oddly, this sounds more like "self-criticism" under Mao's cultural
revolution than anything therapeutic. In fact, it's all directed toward
precisely the same end as "confession" in the Catholic church and Maoist
"self-criticism" -- de-emphasis of the individual and a concomitant
glorification of the ethereal, the other-worldly, the imaginary.

At some point, if you begin to question this "program" of A.A.'s, the
talk gets tough and they start to lean on you. You are told that you can
never recover on your own, that you are doomed to lapse over and over
again into drinking binges, or at best, become a "dry drunk." (This is
supposedly someone who has stopped drinking but still manifests all the
unconscionable traits of a drunk: all the sociopathy, all the
abusiveness, all the manipulative behaviors.)

The more you try to trot out examples of persons who have transformed
their own lives under their own steam, the more the party line is thrown
back at you: you are powerless against drink. Powerless. Any so-called
examples of alcoholics who quit drinking without the twelve steps are in
reality only examples of "dry drunks."

When I left A.A., I made the comment to someone that if I were indeed
"powerless," I might as well commit suicide, because a life without any
control over my destiny would be pointless and absurd. I stated again my
conviction that I did not regard myself as powerless, and I went about
my recovery in the most sensible way I could imagine. I removed alcohol
from my home, I found some healthy pastimes to pursue (mountain
climbing, writing, and painting) and, in the whirlwind breakup of my
marriage, I devoted myself to staying afloat financially, making my new
company prosper, and seeking out some like-minded companionship -- that
was when I re-joined Mensa.

So, if you are determined to quit drinking, you can save yourself about
three hundred sixty-five hours a year, plus travel time.

Try the "one-step" program, instead: just stop drinking. Believe me: you
can do it.

I did.