AA and Authority. Why AA Leaders Have So Much Power.
- chphurst
- Nov 15
- 7 min read
I went to two meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. I went after eleven months of sobriety. I stepped into two meetings in two weeks in two different locations in the town I was living in Montana at the time. I had already long survived the initial five-day detox from alcohol withdrawal. I managed the next forty days to day forty-five—the first day that I could say I felt good. Second phase completed, where the cravings are the most intense and largely continuous. I never picked the bottle back up. I had made my non-negotiable contract of never touching alcohol again. I continued on to the six-month mark, the time when if you cross that milepost, you have a better than average chance of staying sober for keeps. I continued on my program of holistic reinvention all the way to the two-year mark, the end of protracted withdrawal and claimed cure from the addiction.
And I did it all without the help of Alcoholics Anonymous.
So what led me to wander into the rooms at almost one year sober? I wanted to see what AA had to offer. Now I have been accused of making grand assumptions about the methods of AA after my mere two instances sitting in their circle. But I came from a family of alcoholics. My brother was a long-time member of AA who finally left it as well and deems it a cult like I do. I have great familiarity with your program, AA. And your dismal outcomes. But I wanted to see for myself. After all, at one year sober you still feel like a stranger in a strange land. You aren’t sure how to exist in your new world. I thought possibly other escapees from John Barleycorn’s grasp might have some insight, some coping tools . . . something.
And what I found was a cult. It was a cult that snarled when I declared that I used to be an alcoholic. You could have heard the pin drop in the room when my turn came in the circle and I stood up and announced this fact. I saw others who had the same or even more time sober than myself. They didn’t seem to be on a path of reconstruction of their being. They weren’t involved in a fitness program, that was evident. They smoked, guzzled cup after cup of coffee and dumped sugar into their systems. People with a year sobriety resembled where I was at month two. And I noticed something else.
Most of the attendees were new to sobriety.
Now I expected some newly sober. But I also expected a wide spectrum of members; some who quit last week, but many with years in sobriety and, of course, the senior members in the circle, who had a decade or two since their breakup of their friendship with Johnny B. And that was puzzling. Where were the intermediate members of the group? Outside of one member who had twenty years sober and a handful of sponsors with long term sobriety, there was only one thirty something man who had two years clean. And he looked to be an absolute anxiety ridden mess. The rest of the room was filled largely with people who had mere months to a year in sobriety.
This makes perfect sense. Most of what I read outside of one outlying study says AA has at least an eighty percent failure rate. If you take the sample of people who actually stay sober long term. And the people who do manage to be in that minority never leave AA. If you stay long enough in any given organization, you will eventually be “promoted.” You become the esteemed sponsor. You gain your emblems of high-ranking chips. You become one of the designated leaders of the group. There are committees you serve on. And more importantly, people start looking to your guidance, your advice and word. And your word is now infallible.
Now AA will deny they have “leaders.” They state they are alcoholics for alcoholics, nothing more. No one is designated to wear the gold robe, they say. But the fact is this is not true. After my shocking heresy of declaring I used to be an alcoholic, the leader of the room came over to me to give a lecture that no one used to be addicted. You are always an addict, he stated emphatically. If I didn’t accept this from the wizened sage in front of me, I was doomed to topple off the wagon rolling across the prairie.
I shut him down immediately. I told him I was highly fit now and his clan wasn’t. That I was involved in the advancement of Self. They were not. I could go to a social outing without being panic stricken like a story we just heard from the guy who had a year more in sobriety than me. My diet was clean, I didn’t smoke and when I hit the two-year mark of sobriety, my neurochemistry would be balanced and I would declare cure from the addiction. He wasn’t happy for me. He was incensed. He walked away with a glare and I’m surprised he didn’t just call me a dry drunk like they usually do. Or state I wasn’t a real alcoholic. The two standbys when you defy their program.
I already had noted by the second and final meeting in AA that the members in the room had nothing to offer me. If anything, they were living examples of what not to do. But I wondered why the twenty-year sober guy was still there? He stated in the opening that he attended meetings five and six nights a week and AA was the only way. In which he heard my litany shortly afterward, which only compounded his anger.
But after years of reflection, as I am now seventeen years sober, it makes sense why the senior members hold on to that seniority night after night. Why AA is so integral in every aspect of their lives. Why their existence revolves forever around the twelve steps and the rooms.
The senior members of Alcoholics Anonymous now have status.
Years before I started The Anti AA Concept, I had a YouTube channel much like the one that parallels these articles. It was focused on attacking and debunking Christian fundamentalism. I grew up a sleeve length away from the Bible Belt’s fiery brimstone. I had friends who were Evangelicals. The status of the senior members was exactly the same as those in Alcoholics Anonymous. The pastor, who was usually ignorant of his own biblical historicity, gave infallible words during his Sunday sermons and anywhere else he decided to intrude. As did those in the tier right under him. The ones who ran Bible study before the sermons. The leaders of their youth groups, like Horizons. They are regular Joes and Janes outside of their pews but are lords in them. They get to be somebody when they enter the church doors.
It is the exact same scenario in AA as well as any other cult, which I accuse AA of being.
When one first enters the doors of AA, that person is in the worst shape of his life. I would have been if I had entered the first week sober. They pay their dues by listening to their sponsors and senior members without question. Their chips accumulate over time. Pretty soon they are giving speeches and if they are in the minority of those who manage to abstain from good old J.B.’s handshake, they will elevate to the all-knowing sponsor. And one day they will reach the rank of grandmaster of the room, whether it is designated or not. What they have to say matters and will be accepted. If a rogue like me utters verbiage outside of the established and unquestionable tenets, the cadre will be reinforced by the echoing cries from the sickly sheep who follow them blindly. Very few will question this perceived earned authority when that tidal wave of repercussion is always close to the shoreline.
Have you ever heard the concept that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely? The adage doesn’t just apply to politicians. It is evident in any situation where a person is elevated to infallible status, whether a pastor in a fundamentalist church or just a room in a church full of AA members. These long-time senior members are people who largely are big nothings outside of their rooms. They certainly aren’t living well if this is where they spend their time every night. They aren’t pursuing excellence, they are reiterating their addict status. Their diseased state, which will never be cured. But when you’re the high priest of the leper colony the other lepers will follow. No one outside of the colony would.
And that would be my end point to those who are in AA and questioning whether they should remain. The last person to ask if you should leave a cult is one of the cult leaders. It is like announcing that you are leaving that Evangelical church to the pastor. You will be shamed. Fear tactics will be used. In the church, they indoctrinate the fear of hell. In AA, the terror is returning to the hell of alcoholism. They would not be happy if they ran into your fulfilled life five years after you departed from the rooms. They would be enraged. They would be enraged because you put their power in check. You ignored their infallible words, their wizened law. And worst yet, you made them insignificant to you. For an AA leader, this is the only significance he has in his life.
I hope if you have achieved sobriety that you exit yourself from the cult of AA’s sermons. You must remember, the senior members there only hold status in those rooms. Those meetings are what give them self-esteem and sense of purpose. They are repeating only what they were programmed with long ago. It doesn’t mean they are right and the failure rate of Alcoholics Anonymous shows they certainly are not. They have gained their status by the means of advancing in a cult.
Outside of the cult, they don’t hold anything at all.
And to reinvent all of your planes to progress forward check out:
John Barleycorn: taken from Jack London's memoir of his alcoholism. John Barleycorn: First published, 1913
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