AA's Biggest Lies Start Right Here. The Truth About Bill Wilson And The Big Book.

The bible of the AA meeting is The Big Book. This is where all the answers lie, according to those who follow it like Christian fundamentalists follow their Bible. The text which indoctrinates that Noah was saved in a flood and the planet and its fixings were created in less than a week approximately four to six thousand years ago. These concepts are completely absurd, of course, but one can never underestimate the ability of someone to believe something that is counterintuitive when the person is surrounded by those who continually confirm the illogic.

This is exactly what happens to a new member of the Alcoholics Anonymous cult. It is evident that the program does not work for most. It is apparent that the few who do stay sober, using the Twelve Steps, are never free from the rooms. The person who enters the doors of AA sees the chaos in the other members in the circle. They watch the majority face plant back into the dirt from the wagon they fall off repeatedly. But they are in a weakened state, usually right after the initial detox phase. They want to be sober like the sponsors they just met. No one has given them another alternative for sobriety; the recent alcoholic doesn’t even know other programs exist. So they concede with the long-time members who chant the mantra of AA is the only way.

Then they are handed the bible and now believe in Noah’s ark as well.

It is written in The Big Book, in the second chapter, the very premise on how Alcoholics Anonymous was founded. The work describes the alcoholic in specific detail as one who does not have the self-control to stop drinking. The words point to the alcoholic having an entirely different make-up when compared to the non-alcoholic, who lightly or even moderately consumes John Barleycorn’s magical potion. There is only one way this person can be saved, according to the philosophy established by Bill Wilson. The redemption given to him outside of all man-made efforts.

There must be a spiritual intervention.

THE SMALL BOOK: HOW I BEAT ALCOHOLISM AND WHY ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS DOESN'T WORK

So let me get this straight. No solution formulated by man is applicable to the raging alcoholic. The alcoholic is completely powerless to cease being an alcoholic. The way to recovery of this forever deficient individual is only by magic. The supernatural. God’s divine hand reaching down to restore the alcoholic to reason.

This is the first lie of The Big Book. It is a huge lie because it establishes the foundation on which AA stands. The members from the rooms keep insisting that AA is not concerned with religion. But yet, the fact the entire platform of never-ending recovery is based on intervention with a divine being, surely and emphatically proves that it is. It isn’t my opinion that AA was founded on religion and those views came from the Oxford Group’s fanatical and evangelical Christian tenets. The Big Book has flat out stated its religious worldview in chapter two.

Now it is a definite fact that anyone who looks in the mirror and sees the reflection of an alcoholic will clearly be able to recognize that his life is unmanageable. The error of the AA philosophy, established by The Big Book, is attributing this condition to powerlessness. No person is lacking power to cease the addiction. Those who continue to be alcoholics are not using that power. The error that the bible of AA propagates is the person can only be redeemed through God’s grace versus his own volition.

There are valid rebuttals that would lead one to believe that God largely has not much to do with the methods in the rooms. If the Magic Elf were the one to restore us to sanity, then why would he not go ahead and remove all those deficits they supposedly ask Him to delete in the Twelve Steps? By AA logic, confirmed by the initial chapters in The Big Book, the almighty, supernatural being is going to take this addiction away from us but keep us in a forever state of disease, spending the rest of our lives sitting in the circle, smoking at the breaks outside while constantly regurgitating our horrific past and never letting it go. God wishes us to obtain a master status of addict and AA member. He doesn’t want us to move on and progress our lives, he wants us in the rooms until our last day. That way the always alcoholic can say: I was a prisoner to the meetings, but at least I was sober while doing it. Thank you so much, God.  

Jack London, in the work where I coined the phrase, John Barleycorn, died at forty years old after a lifetime of alcoholism. He stated one of the largest obstacles in his inability to stop drinking was that he was constantly pressured to consume. This would be valid in those days, where a man who refused to drink with friends or not so much in a pub, may be the man facing a fist in the face shortly afterward. And I’m sure that London finally became physically addicted to the substance. Whether pressured or not, he would have had great difficulty, like all of us alcoholics and former as such, in giving it up for good.

This would have been a valid reason to hide in the rooms in the days of Bill and Bob during the off hours. There really was no concept of rehabilitation and the first one that established a program, set in stone that only bowing to the supernatural grace could give one any sort of chance to become a sober being. As a matter of fact, this connection of the divine is stated in the second chapter as being the sole answer only if those addicts reach out their hand to take it. The chapter continuously states that only this pursuance of God’s grace will redeem the unredeemable. No other means will.

But this is an untruth. The chapter pontificates all those, stretching from coast to coast, who are saved by this spiritual intervention. The fact is and always was that the vast majority were not and are not helped by the methods of Alcoholics Anonymous. This is the real truth. It was true back then and it is true today. Now one could argue that, again, there were no alternatives to the rooms back then and medical intervention was limited. Counseling was not even a thought. People were too involved with surviving the Great Depression to spend time and money on a therapist’s couch talking about their unsatisfactory childhood.

But today there are other methods in dealing with alcoholism, programs that the members in an AA meeting scoff at as they have been too indoctrinated to consider these alternative methods. And the uncomfortable fact for AA is a few of these non-traditional programs are having good results and the philosophy of AA continues its dismal success rate that has been ongoing for almost a hundred years running. One would think that its members would have the common sense to see a program that largely fails and rectify and modify that program to one that would gain more success. But when you belong to a cult instead of a support group, then your glasses will be foggy to that reality. You cannot see reality when you are blindly following a book, where the very first chapters establish a premise that is a complete and total lie.

Imagine if Bill Wilson had started with the premise that the alcoholic is not powerless and able to use self-control. What if Bill had never ventured into the doors of the Oxford Group, had never copied their principles to formulate the Twelve Steps? What if Bill and Bob had built a foundation of their program as reinvention of Self. Establishing physical fitness to aid in recovery, even if archaic in those times? Endorsed healthy and clean diet versus using cigarettes to counter cravings and the negativity of their circle? What if the focus had targeted the why a person drinks, which they would find many who suffered from emotional trauma, especially the veterans of World War I? What if they established the rooms as a temporary measure until the person would claim cure? AA would most likely have had a great success rate and would have been continuous in holistic re-creation advancements through the decades. They wouldn’t still be quoting a long-outdated book. The Christian Bible is still read today. But most Christians don’t state that the Book of Genesis was factual. The fundamentalist cult members do. We have gained knowledge through the decades and centuries since those books were written.

But AA is still quoting the story of Noah as fact when the real fact is it is a lie. The idea that alcoholism is genetic is starting to lose ground in the medical community. Many state, yes, if you are from an alcoholic family, you will have a tendency to drink as well. I would give consideration to that theory. But stating that you are a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off with that first drink is nonsense. No one is unaware that a drinking problem is developing. That river in Egypt is a dry bed.

Setting one up for the belief that only spiritual intervention can save you from alcoholism is a recipe for failure. And it isn’t true. If it was, then all of us who do not seek spiritual intervention should never be able to gain sobriety. But more and more of us are coming out every year, years and decades sober without AA’s methods. Many are leaving the rooms, finding them nothing but a toxic cult that is negative for their souls. And they are not only staying sober but improving every aspect of their lives, physically and emotionally. They are reinventing themselves to a better version than before they began drinking. They are healing the past traumas and going on with their lives, their sober lives. These recovered and cured people know that The Big Book is a lie. It isn’t divine intervention that cures the addiction of alcoholism.

It is the person who puts down the bottle for good.  

To journey on a tale of epic transformation on a 2,660 mile trail check out: THE SHEPHERD AND THE RUNNINGWOLF: A PATH TO FORGIVENESS ON THE PACIFIC CREST TRAIL

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REINVENTION OF SELF: HOW TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE AND BEING FOREVER 

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For the condensed and orderly version of how I beat the addiction of alcoholism check out: THE SMALL BOOK: HOW I BEAT ALCOHOLISM AND WHY ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS DOESN'T WORK

(Usually free on KDP)

John Barleycorn taken from Jack London's book John Barleycorn. First published 1913