Some things never change!

Yep! The snake oil purveyors will always be with us. These days they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes whether it be the Wayne B “Last Mile Foundation” (a snip at only $5,000 to $50,000 “and more” for 7 to 28 days pain free dollar extraction) or all the other money driven treatment centres which, via their eternally 'revolving door' policy, will happily relieve you of all your cash if not your obsession. Then there's the Joe and Charlie roadshow (and their ilk) flogging yet another version of the 'programme' (with gaping great holes running through it, leaving out the bits they don't like and inserting the bits that they do – in other words just like the rest of us!). Next comes Wally P's “Back to Basics” ('express pain relief') which claims an extraordinary success rate but seems rather vague on the details not to mention (but we will) the sponsor obsessed Visions cult with its core tenet that a “human power” CAN relieve your alcoholism. Of course we couldn't possibly leave out the Big Book obsessives who can hardly leave their front door without referring to the Blessed Tome etc etc ….. So in our own INESTIMABLY humble opinion we SUGGEST that you keep a firm grip on your wallet and toddle off to your local FREE AA meeting (whilst giving control freaks, Big Book evangelists, programme lawyers, step Nazis and other assorted blood sucking parasites a swerve) and get stuck into your very own version of recovery. It all sounds a bit too simple doesn't it ….. Well guess what! That's because it is! Remember: no 'special' interpretations of the programme are necessary (Dr Bob's words .. not ours!)

Cheerio

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)

PS Of course if you absolutely cannot resist the impulse to throw away your cash we're more than willing to take the filthy lucre off you! After all there's one born every minute!

“Rights” denied – or duties ignored!

Comment: Again a question that didn't quite make it! And again a familiar refrain from the cult groups when the local AA service structure recognises the dangers these groups pose both to newcomers and to the fellowship generally, and then act accordingly. What about our rights they protest! But then it might equally well be asked of them - what about your duties? For example your duty of care to the newcomer, your duty not to subject them to abuse, your duty to support AA unity and not act divisively? But these are the very groups who assert so loudly their autonomy (through the usual misrepresentation of Tradition Four), defend so vociferously their “right to be wrong”, who claim that they can act any way they please but then protest when the surroundings groups elect to exercise similar “rights” and throw them out. Might we “suggest” (and we do mean “suggest”) that these groups take their OWN inventory, look to what they might be doing WRONG and amend their conduct commensurately. It might just be conceivable that it's not AA that's getting it wrong – but YOU! Now there's a thought!

Cheerio

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)  

PS For AA Minority Report 2013 click here

Another question to conference that didn't quite make it through!

Comment: We'd say this trend represents a healthy indication that the Fellowship – if not the conference - is finally taking its responsibilities seriously. The groups expelled or refused participation in intergroups are generally those which have elected to ignore THEIR RESPONSIBILITIES by; affiliating themselves with outside organisations (in which case according to Tradition 3 they may NOT call themselves AA groups); practising the systematic abuse of newcomers (under the guise of so-called 'tough love' promulgated through a dictatorial – and hierarchical - 'sponsorship' system) in some instances placing newcomers' lives at risk (including suicide) by giving improper and unqualified 'guidance' on prescribed medication issues; seeking to justify their conduct under Tradition 4 (but always ignoring the second part); endeavouring to conceal their actions by improper reference to the 'yellow card' (confidentiality) or more blatantly by simply lying; misrepresenting AA recovery rates in order to justify the dissemination of their so-called 'undiluted' message (thereby providing licence to those 'narcissists' (control freaks) who constantly seek to impose their will on others) .. and so on and so forth .. the list goes on and on ….. To sum up – by abusing others!

There are plenty more of these groups to deal with (see our Cult: Where to Find – and USA). But as always the solution lies in our own hands! So … INTO ACTION!

Cheerio

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)

PS For AA Minority Report 2013 click here

Some of the questions to conference that DIDN'T make it through!

Comment: Yep!.... Looks like you can be dual diagnosis AND a member of AA! And if you're on meds that's between you and somebody who knows what they're talking about ie. a health professional …. Plumbers (see question 4) and other SELF-APPOINTED EXPERTS need NOT be consulted!

Cheerio

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)

Case law (US) (relating to AA and religion) (contd)

State v. Lively 

921 P. 2d 1035, 130 Wash. 2d 1 - Wash: Supreme Court, 1996
... we reverse on this ground, we need not decide whether the Defendant's constitutional right of freedom of religion was violated. ... that police had information regarding "repeaters" who both used and sold drugs while attending 1052 Alcoholics Anonymous/ Narcotics Anonymous ... 

Warburton v. Underwood 

2 F. Supp. 2d 306 - Dist. Court, WD New York, 1998
... that the ASAT Program was based on the "Twelve Steps" and "Twelve Traditions" principles of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. ... condones the religious proselytizing that those expressions literally reflect, and which therefore in effect endorses religion. ... 

Hazle v. Crofoot 

Dist. Court, ED California, 2008
BARRY A. HAZLE, JR., Plaintiff, v. MITCH CROFOOT, individually and as Parole Office of the California Department of Corrections; BRENDA WILDING, individually and as Unit Supervisor of the California Department of Corrections; MATTHEW CATE, individually and as ...

 

See also Links and downloads

PS For AA Minority Report 2013 click here

Cult meetings (London N1, NW1, W1, WC2)?

We quote:

“Dear AA Cultwatch,

…..... I recently had a very bad experience going to meetings in Islington and Bloomsbury not realising they were cult meetings and it made me angry as it affected my feeling of safety in AA. The cult concerned is the Vision For You cult. Historically, cults always thrive during a recession. However I am very concerned that the Vision For You cult are not only setting up their own meetings but also now taking over large newcomers meetings that used to be ordinary, traditional ones. I think they are making a play for central London.

The meetings concerned are:

Saturday 10.30am Angel Into Action : St Silas Church, Penton Street, N1. Definitely cult.

Friday 6pm Euston We Have A Solution: Lancing St, Euston, NW1. Definitely cult.

There are two other meetings run by the same people which I need to check but which I strongly believe are in the process of being taken over or have already been taken over.

Wednesday 6pm Pass It On Newcomers: American Church, Tottenham Court Road, W1.

Thursday 7pm Bloomsbury Recovery: Bloomsbury Baptist Church, Shaftesbury Avenue, WC2

…..........

Best wishes,

…...”

(our edits)

Comment: Certainly the cult is not merely satisfied with promoting its own grossly distorted 'AA message' via its own meetings but has for a long time infiltrated regular AA groups to that end as well. The solution lies of course as always in OUR HANDS. After all WE ARE RESPONSIBLE …... aren't we?

Cheerio

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)

Why Rehab Fails The dogma of AA has taken over

"By Sacha Z Scoblic

Inside Rehab: The Surprising Truth About Addiction Treatment-and How to Get Help That Works

Anne M. Fletcher

My favorite two sentences in the Alcoholics Anonymous literature are: “Alcoholics Anonymous does not demand that you believe anything. All of its twelve steps are but suggestions.” When a drunk at the end of his tether, Bill Wilson, founded Alcoholics Anonymous in the late 1930s—a spiritual program based on meeting with other addicts—there was a fundamental humility to his ideology: It might work for some.

But that sentiment is often forgotten in the rooms of AA itself, where I spent a lot of time getting sober. There I found that what are suggestions to some are fundamentalist Scripture to others. In the rooms of AA, suggestions and traditions can sometimes feel more like ironclad laws, and when I inadvertently trespassed upon those laws, I was humiliated and rebuked. The predominantly AA-based culture of rehab in America has become one of imposition and tautology: If the program doesn’t work for you, then you didn’t work the program. If you succeed in staying sober, then you did a good job working the program; ergo, the program works.

In Anne M. Fletcher’s excellent and exhaustive book, she finds that almost all rehabs adhere to this intransigent dogma. Some just have better views, higher thread counts, and more horses (you know, for equine therapy). There is no individualized treatment. You check in, detox, and then go to addiction-education lectures, group therapy, and AA twelve-step meetings. “I often found myself wondering, ‘Where’s the counseling?’” writes Fletcher. Patients attend these group gatherings for 28 to 90 days, and are then released back into the real world. Problem is, the real world is teeming with temptations, and most people relapse. So what do we do with them? More rehab! Because it isn’t the rehab that has failed; it is you. Fletcher’s multi-year-long dive into the realities of rehabs is deeply unsettling. “Once you’ve seen any substance abuse program, you have seen the great majority of them,” Tom McClellan, co-founder of the Treatment Research Institute, tells Fletcher.

How did this come about? Addiction was stigmatized so fervently and for so long that for decades there was no body of science to advise desperate addicts. In that vacuum, McClellan says, the field “grew its own program.” The twelve steps of AA became the template treatment for just about every compulsive behavior there is, from Narcotics Anonymous to Debtors Anonymous. Meanwhile, as AA grew, a movement was brewing in Minnesota: rehabilitation. In the 1950s, a recovering alcoholic, Austin Ripley, began a sanitarium for alcoholics based on AA principles out on a farm in Minnesota. (It became Hazelden, perhaps today’s most well-known rehab.) Soon enough, this Minnesota model attracted more people from AA, and the prototype for modern-day rehab was born, guided by, as Fletcher writes, “the folk wisdom of recovering people, particularly through the perspectives of Alcoholics Anonymous and related twelve-step programs.”

To be sure, that folk wisdom has benefitted millions, including myself. Striving for honesty, communing with people who don’t judge, admitting when you’re wrong, working on the content of your character, learning humility, being of service to others—these are deeply valuable principles, ones this alcoholic needed to find after years of boozy nonchalance. In fact, the steps could be beneficial to anyone.

But moral principles are not medical treatment. And using AA as the only rehabilitation treatment—rather than as an adjunct to treatment—defies the reality that there are many different effective treatment methods. Fletcher underscores this point with profiles of dozens of recovered addicts who quit in varied ways—through church, paid incentives for clean drug tests, psychiatry, cognitive behavioral therapy, medication, and even people who simply “matured out.”

She also profiles dozens of addicts whose rehab experiences are unconscionable. Take Jessie, an alcoholic woman who was court-ordered to attend rehab or go to jail, after a drunk-driving conviction. Three days before finishing the rehab program, the police came for her. The rehab had kicked Jessie out, claiming she’d “failed to accept a higher power” (step two). Freedom of religion was apparently not a valid excuse. Other patients faced intense confrontations (“I heard clients characterized as dishonest, narcissistic, and selfish,” writes Fletcher); were made to wear punitive signs around their necks if they broke the rules; or were forced to divulge painful secrets in a group setting. One woman who was deeply uncomfortable around men was pressured into discussing past sexual abuse in a co-ed program.

For some, sharing with a group might be valuable and—more important—validating, but for many, group therapy and meetings can be injurious and completely inappropriate. Regardless of the benefits or drawbacks, most experts agree that all addicts should have highly personalized attention from a therapist. After all, the sources of addiction are myriad: past trauma, self-medication, masking another mental illness, genetics, etc. The point is, each addict has very specific needs.

But, as Fletcher masterfully shows, rehab culture has created a deep schism between science and its twelve-step methods.¹ There is now a vast body of research on addiction treatment, including groundbreaking medications that can quell urges, safely fulfill an addict’s need for dopamine, and often prevent relapse. And yet, Fletcher finds that some 80 percent of rehabs in the United States dispense no medication at all. In fact, many rehabs consider the use of opiate-replacement drugs and other medications—like naltrexone, Suboxone, and buprenorphine—as equivalent to drinking or using heroin, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence of their positive effects. In other words, you’re not truly sober if you’re “on” something. To that end, many rehabs kick addicts out for secretly using—that is, for being addicts.

By the end of Chapter 5, which is called “Rehab Isn’t for Everyone: In Fact, It’s Not for Most People,” Fletcher begins to wonder if rehab is right for anyone. Mark Willenbring, a psychiatrist and the former head of the Division of Treatment and Recovery Research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, gives her a stark answer: “The idea of changing the life course for people with severe, recurrent forms of addiction through a time-limited intensive transformative rehab is a fatally flawed relic of ancient times. What other chronic disorder do we treat that way?”

Despite the evidence she amasses for the limitations of rehab, Fletcher does not condemn rehab and walk away, and this balanced approach is to her credit. A large portion of the book, in fact, reads like a Princeton Review Guide for Choosing Rehab: Fletcher highlights unique integrative facilities, offers nontraditional solutions, and lauds excellent traditional programs. She tells you specifically what to look for in a rehab and what to ask—like, what are you getting for the money, and do any of the staff at least have a bachelor’s degree?²

Ultimately, Fletcher’s book is less about the dismissal of rehab than the dismantling of the idea that there is one way to treat addiction. Rehab isn’t wrong—it’s just one way. She envisions a menu of options. Might heroin addicts need something different than alcoholics? Might women need something different than men? Might teens require special treatment? Fletcher addresses each of these issues and more—but the answer is always the same: Everyone needs truly individualized treatment.

This is an important argument to make. Ask someone in Alcoholics Anonymous if there are treatment options for addiction other than the twelve steps, and you’re likely to hear: “Sure, you can end up in jail, be institutionalized, or die.” But the science, Fletcher shows, tells a different story: The vast majority of people who get and remain sober, Fletcher shows, do so without AA. It’s not that the traditional model is bad or wrong; it just isn’t the only way.

Inside Rehab is an invaluable addition to addiction literature. It is fascinating, insightful, and unafraid to upset the establishment. And Anne Fletcher is a measured, detailed, and insightful reporter. Her book is also a great tool for any family struggling with an addicted loved one. Getting sober is hard. Staying sober is hard. Having more options to get clean just might mean that more people do so.

Sacha Z. Scoblic is a contributing editor at The New Republic, the author of Unwasted: My Lush Sobriety, and a Carter fellow for mental health journalism.”

(our emphases)

Cheerio

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)

Conference Questions (2012) forum discussion (contd)

Committee No. 4

Question 1:

“Review the draft Structure Handbook.

Background

Draft Structure Handbook

Consider the contribution to the carrying of the message, financial and practical implications when deliberating each question.

Draft Structure Handbook can be found here in the document library:

http://www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk/members/index.cfm?PageID=98&&DocumentTypeID=8259

See also:

The Traditions

Preamble

Concepts

Extract:

“Draft Structure Handbook, page 70

There is evidence the term "Steering committee" can be misinterpreted, leading to disputes due to overweening personal power and authority; in other words, dictatorships whose decisions exclude participation of the whole group membership or the AA group conscience as a whole. As Bill W. pointed out in the April 1947 AA Grapevine:

“Growth brought headaches; growing pains, we call them now. How serious they seemed then! “ Dictators” ran amok; drunks fell on the floor or disturbed the meetings; “steering committees” tried to nominate their friends to succeed them and found to their dismay that even sober drunks could not be steered.” (AA Grapevine April 1947; The Language of the Heart pages 47-48)

The word "steering" implies possessing power to control or change the direction of something and can evidently be rationalized into meaning one possesses the power to direct or govern. Committees do have the power to govern, by withholding information from the group conscience, or by making hasty decisions without full participation of all the group members. Perhaps mindful of this when Bill W. wrote the Traditions, he did not use the term "steering committee" in Tradition 9/ Tradition 9 (Long form), instead he referred to: "Service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve", "rotating committee", "Intergroup association", "central or intergroup committee."

"Service" is a word plain in meaning. Therefore I suggest "Steering Committee" is changed to "Service committee" and "Steering Committee Officers" is changed to "Service Committee members". At present the 2nd and 4th Paragraphs, page 70, read as follows:

2nd paragraph:

"The meetings that constitute the multi-meeting Group are assisted in fulfilling the needs of the Group by a Steering Committee comprising Group Officers and representatives from the meetings belonging to the Group. These Steering Committee Officers - Chair, Treasurer, Literature Sec. etc. as set out in 1.2 Group Officers below - are elected from members of the Group’s meetings at a Group Conscience meeting attended by members or representatives of all the meetings in the Group."

4th paragraph:

"It has been found that there is Unity in multi-meeting Groups providing that the application of the principle of rotation of steering-committee officers is observed in order to avoid personalities becoming established at the expense of the Groups’ welfare: also, that regular Conscience and Business Meetings are held." “

(our emphases)

Cheerio

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)

Clubs In A.A. Are They With Us to Stay? April, 1947, Bill W

See also Links and downloads

PS For AA Minority Report 2013 click here

Alcoholics Anonymous wrestles with its spiritual roots

We quote:

“For Alcoholics Anonymous to continue helping addicts find freedom in sobriety, the 75-year-old organization has to reclaim its spiritual roots.

That’s the message coming from reformers who say the group has drifted from core principles and is failing addicts who can’t save themselves. But what constitutes the heart of AA spirituality is a matter of spirited debate.

Has AA become too God-focused and rigid? Or have groups watered down beliefs and methods so much that they’re now ineffective?

“Some think AA is not strict enough,” said Lee Ann Kaskutas, senior scientist at the Public Health Institute’s Alcohol Research Group in Emeryville, Calif. “Others think it’s too strict, so they want to change AA and make it get with the times.”

With more than 100,000 local meetings and an estimated two million members worldwide, AA is grappling with how much diversity it can handle. Over the past two years, umbrella organizations in Indianapolis and Toronto have delisted groups that replaced AA’s 12 steps to recovery with secular alternatives. More than 90 unofficial, self-described “agnostic AA” groups now meet regularly in the United States.

Faith language in AA goes back to the group’s founders, Bill Wilson and Robert Holbrook Smith. Six of the 12 steps, as prescribed in the original 1939 “Big Book,” refer to God either explicitly or implicitly. Step three, for example, cites “a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”

Now some worry the founders’ efforts to be as inclusive as possible are being undermined by attempts to ensure, as one Indianapolis AA newsletter put it, that “AA remains undiluted.”

“In the past, there was a great deal of elasticity and tolerance in terms of different views,” said Roger C., a Toronto agnostic whose book “The Little Book: A Collection of Alternative 12 Steps” came out in January, and who doesn’t use his last name to protect his privacy. “But there’s been an increasingly rigidity from those who say,’It’s got to be this way and only this way.’ That has alienated a great number of people.”

But others argue that AA seldom offers the tough love that alcoholics need. Too many meetings ignore the 12 steps posted on their walls, said Charles Peabody, a 35-year-old former alcoholic and drug addict whose 2012 memoir, “The Privileged Addict,” has an entire chapter on “Watered Down AA.”

For Peabody and many addicts he’s sponsored, the key to becoming “a free man” has been rigorous and urgent application of the 12 steps, from taking fearless moral inventory to making painful amends. Yet mainstream AA meetings routinely do a “disservice,” he argues, by leading attendees to believe that meetings and sponsors — rather than God and concrete action steps — are what they need most in recovery.

“In mainstream AA, you hear either the war stories or the sob stories,” said Peabody, who lives in Beverly, Mass. “This is the solution? I just keep coming, drinking crappy coffee and listening to people bitch and moan? I knew that wasn’t going to work.””

Source: Washington Post

Comment: Ah Mr Peabody! Who's bitching and moaning now! But he's got a point with the sponsorship fetish! Still whenever expressing opinions it's always handy to ignore the evidence. See here for a competent study on ACTUAL AA recovery rates rather than the misinformation put about by Mr Peabody and the like....

Cheerio

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)

PS Of course the term “watered down AA” is itself unoriginal and derives from another piece of 'fundamentalist' AA propaganda … the much publicised and equally poorly researched “Greshams Law etc.....” A critique of this is filed here

PPS Incidentally for "tough love" read BULLYING!  

ALCOHOL & THE FAMILY

A lawyer's perspective

by Jonathan Goodliffe, Solicitor

Extract:

“THE LAW'S ATTITUDE TO ALCOHOL PROBLEMS

Most lawyers who practise in the field of family law are aware that many of their clients' problems are alcohol related. In the early part of my career I specialised in domestic violence cases. Most of the husbands against whom I obtained domestic violence injunctions, and many of the victims, had alcohol problems of one kind or another.

English law and lawyers, however, tend to treat alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence as something incidental to disputes arising in family law, rather than central to them.

There are several reasons for this:

• Lawyers are trained to understand human behaviour by assuming that people are responsible for their behaviour and that their motives and actions are taken at face value. The law recognises that some people are mentally disordered and therefore not fully responsible for their actions. However, to quote an American court judgement:

  "... alcoholic behaviour, unlike insanity on the one hand or ordinary conscious behaviour on the other, is neither purely involuntary nor purely voluntary. Individuals who eventually become physically addicted to alcohol, at some point voluntarily chose to drink. Not all drinking alcoholics are totally unable to control their behaviour."”

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)

See also Links and downloads

PS For AA Minority Report 2013 click here

How It Works: Sobriety Sentencing, the Constitution and Alcoholics Anonymous. A Perspective from AA's Founding Community

Max Dehn - Cleveland, Ohio, September 2005

“Abstract

This paper analyzes the public health as well as constitutional issues that arise when persons are required by courts to participate in 12-step recovery programs.”

Extract:

“Part I. Introduction

Alcoholism, whether viewed as a disease or as aberrant behavior, poses a significant public health risk to drinkers and to those whose lives they affect. In 2000, there were an estimated 6,689,000 men and 2,716,000 women who were alcohol dependant.

A 1994 study estimated that 9.6% of men and 3.2% of women will become alcohol dependent in their lifetimes.

The impact on public health generally and upon alcohol abusers is significant. For instance, alcohol played a role in 30.5% of the 37,795 traffic fatalities recorded in the United States in 2001.

Problem drinkers are at increased risk for liver disease, immune system deficiency, and heart disease.

And children born to alcoholic parents are exposed to pre-natal injury as well as alcohol related violence and family dysfunction. The cost of alcoholism may also be measured in dollars. In 1998 the estimated national cost of alcohol related health care, loss of productivity, automobile accidents, social welfare administration, and law enforcement, totaled $184,636,000,000.

In this paper I address the American legal system’s response to the problem of alcoholism in the context of sentencing for alcohol related crimes. Specifically, I identify legal issues that arise when courts sentence offenders to participate in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and related 12-step recovery programs, and I also discuss the efficacy of AA. Part II will examine the nature and history of Alcoholics Anonymous as well as its effectiveness in treating alcoholism, and will also address the religiosity of AA and the importance of religious practice in the program. In Part III, I will explore the First Amendment and broader constitutional problems that arise when defendants are sentenced to participate in 12-step programs, and I will suggest curative measures. In part IV, I will summarize the practical difficulties that plague 12-step sentencing, and offer solutions that will ameliorate the constitutional and practical problems.

I conducted interviews with sentencing judges, probation officers and other court officials, attorneys, persons attending AA pursuant to sentencing, and various members of AA in order to obtain a practical view of the issues. The interview subjects and my observations are derived primarily from sources in Northeast Ohio, a region of interest for two reasons. First, the program of Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in Akron, Ohio in 1935, and early chapters were established in Cleveland.

As of September 2004 there were 984 organized meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous per week in the Cleveland area, providing a diverse and abundant resource for researching the nexus between AA and the legal system. Second, the region has few non 12-step sobriety options for uninsured and/or low-income clients.

The confluence of an abundance of AA groups, a comparatively small number of alternative sobriety programs, and a significant alcoholism problem creates an environment in which the constitutional and public health issues are starkly joined.“

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous) 

Cult meeting Essex

We quote:

“I wanted to alert the fellowship of a new cult meeting in Essex, set up with the help of the great John (10970 days) C from Chelmsford.

Its a "big book study meeting" Sunday night, 20:00, Military Road, Colchester.

The following applies:- members of the group stating that other meetings in Colchester are sick. If members are being sponsored by any other means than a 12 week book study, they are putting the sponsees at risk or "killing them"

Members of the group "scout" other groups for newcomers. You are asked only to share on the passage read. if you have anything else to say then leave it until after the meeting. It it closely linked to a big book study group on a Wednesday night (started up to clash with an established 12 step meeting). This is invitation only, "chosen" attendees are asked to contribute to the study. All other AA literature, "living sober/12*12" is discredited. The Wednesday night book study group is not recognised by intergroup.

Most worryingly, same sex sponsorship is not discouraged.”

Comment: Of course AA members can set up any enterprise they want including study groups. What is questionable however is the message being carried by these groups – and of course the presumption that this is in any way 'superior' to that carried by AA generally! Moreover we would be fascinated to know by what extraordinary feat of insight they are able to claim that any alternative necessarily lends itself to the early demise of AA members (a viewpoint which is directly (and also implicitly) contradicted within the Big Book itself). Surely these God-like individuals must be endowed with quite outstanding faculties of foresight and percipience! Do tell!

Cheers

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)

PS Our usual thanks to our AA correspondent

PPS To all the Big Book 'experts' out there! Do at least read the tome in question from time to time! You never know …. you might learn something!

Abuses in the Troubled Teen Industry

One Day Conference 20^th April 2013 (USA) for details Click Here:

http://icsahome.com/pdf/fax_mail_spev_dc.pdf

Co-sponsored by the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) and Community Alliance for the Ethical Treatment of Youth (CAFETY) Including: Overview of the Cultic Influences in the Troubled Teen Industry. 

Can't make it? Shame. So why not put your feet up with a packet of crisps and watch a few home videos instead..

Straight Inc. and its descendants: Torture and Treatment

Surviving Straight, The documentary: http://www.survivingstraightincthemovie.com/

“Don’t have your son and your daughter become one of us. Don’t think for a minute that place went away. It’s too smart for that. It just changed, and moved, and put a new name on itself. But there are still children out there being tortured, one day at a time.” 

Straight Inc. Boston: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_JBV2_etGk

 

“..and to make matters worse, Scots mother says she was not informed, and not even allowed to ask about her son’s injuries..” 

 

CBS News: Kids and Straight Inc:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDH3IT_ddTc

“I have grave concern that the program has evolved into a cult” 

The Times Online: SAFE = Straight Inc. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5PXmvknypI&list=PLBE196CC2C08C3212

“It was something like the Twighlight Zone or something, everyone was yelling, like stop, wait. Two people, you know, grabbed me, had me up against a wall…” 

WCPO TV investigates Kids Helping Kids closure: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkIMcJ0MlFU&list=PLBE196CC2C08C3212 “..when we first  investigated after former clients and some parents called it a brainwashing cult.”

Congressional Hearing 2008; Straight Inc. model pervades:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyK3XlsWIEQ

 

Return of Pathway: http://www.pfctruth.com/ 

NATSAP - Jan Moss 2007 Congressional Hearing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtQJ8MWINtM&playnext=1&list=PL92FE4010DF42541C&feature=results_main

“..We just know that there are thousands of cases of reported deaths and abuse….” 

Congressional Hearings 2008, Government Accountability Office investigation telephone recordings:

 

1)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-nkRyp-p28

2)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAkkOU74if4&playnext=1&list=PLEE758B17681E3F1F&feature=results_video

3)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5txr_Vy6jWc&playnext=1&list=PLEE758B17681E3F1F&feature=results_video

4)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CII5u97LKP0

5)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiHsqWuFRlU 

Synanon Cult: Origin of Straight Inc., The Seed, Pathway, as well as a multitude of various behaviour modification programmes in the United States:

http://www.pfctruth.com/pathwayorigins.htm 

“By the early 1970s, the federal government itself had funded its own Synanon clone. It was located in Florida and Ohio and was known as the SEED……On September 1st, 1976 Mel Sembler and Joseph Zappala founded a program virtually identical to the SEED, staffed by former SEED parents and participants. They named it Straight Incorporated…… This program was highly controversial due to the style of therapy it used, called “Tough Love,” that has been likened to brainwashing…….The Pathway Family Center, Detroit was founded in 1993 by former Straight Inc. program director Helen Gowanny, 15 miles from the old Straight Inc. facility near Detroit……” 

Over the GW - full movie: http://vimeo.com/28493462 “Over the GW based on a true story of an abusive, cult-like drug-rehabilitation center.

“Eventually led to believe that the only thing keeping them alive is the program, the frightened siblings fall victim to a detestable form of brainwashing while navigating a cult-like maze of confusion and struggling to maintain their true identities.” 

“Must-see indie film!” - Huffington Post 

“Not to be missed!”- Chicago Sun-Times 

“The rehab drama is here to stay!”-The New York Times

31% of AA’s USA membership results from treatment centre referrals (Wikipedia) - Time to keep an eye on ICYPAA [International Conference of Young People in Alcoholics Anonymous]? 

Happy viewing,

Cheerio,

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)

International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA)

“Founded in 1979, the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) is a global network of people concerned about psychological manipulation and abuse in cultic groups, alternative movements, and other environments. ICSA is tax-exempt, supports civil liberties, and is not affiliated with any religious or commercial organizations.

ICSA's mission is to apply research and professional perspectives on cultic groups to educate the public and help those who have been harmed”

Comment: A source of useful information for those so affected

Cheers

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous) 

aacultwatch forum daily reflections

Extracts from our forum: http://forums.delphiforums.com/aacultwatch under thread: “aacultwatch forum daily reflections”

“Many a power-driven ego ran hog-wild among us in those days, and it was the Traditions that finally brought order, coherence, and effective functioning out of the noisy anarchy which for a time threatened us with collapse.” –Bill W. (AA Grapevine July 1960 [sic] [actually AA Grapevine, November 1972]. Language of the Heart page 248)

“AA draws frankly upon emotion and faith, while the scientific intellectual would avoid those resources as much as he can. Yet the more intellectual techniques do work sometimes, reaching those who might never be able to take the stronger dose. Besides, they remind us, when overly proud of our own accomplishment, that AA has no monopoly on reviving alcoholics” - Bill W. (AA Grapevine September 1944. Language of the Heart page 98)

“It is tradition among us that the individual has the unlimited right to his own opinion on any subject under the sun. He is compelled to agree with no one; if he likes he can disagree with everyone. And indeed, when on a ‘dry bender,’ many AAs do.” – Bill W. (AA Grapevine September 1944. Language of the Heart page 98)

(our emphases)

Cheerio

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)

The Language of the Heart, Grapevine, November 1972, Bill W

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PS For AA Minority Report 2013 click here