Alcoholics Anonymous Exposed: Addressing the Critics.

Interestingly enough, when I had my first self-help channel on YouTube, the best performing videos were largely the published ones on how to rid oneself from the disease of alcoholism. And I point blank declared that Alcoholics Anonymous was not the route to follow if one wanted to change his status from that of an addict to one of a restored and fulfilled human being.

As expected, when one turns his boat against the tide, there will be resistance, usually heavy backlash. And that was the case with these videos, which became the foundation for this blog today. Many remarks told me I was right on point from their experience with AA. But others were outraged. How dare I comments were frequent. Who was I to knock a hundred years of protocol? Which is ironic since the majority who enter the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous fail.

It became apparent to me that the next endeavor was not only going to be in the realm of self-help, but how to recover from the addiction of alcoholism as I have been recovered for now over seventeen years. A status which I defiantly call cured, challenging the AA mantra that one is never cured but always in recovery. And I also declare that the entire method of AA needs to be completely reconstructed if they want to have better success rates.

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

So came the advent of The Anti AA Concept. And like my original videos that were published a few years ago, the responses are the same from the AA propaganda machine. This is nothing I didn’t expect. If one is going row against the tide on social media, one can expect this severe reaction. The battle cry from their largely failed program remains to ring. You were never a real alcoholic. What do you know about AA in your whole two meetings to judge? AA has helped millions of people. This is the most successful time tested program to date. The members who fail refused to follow the program. My life is great with AA. Why don’t you just do your own thing and leave AA alone? You’re dangerous to others’ future sobriety.

These mantras remind me much of a Christian fundamentalist cult. I also have a channel as a non-specified theist, closer to a Jew than anything else, on challenging Christian doctrine and apologists’ claims. By someone who left Christianity years ago. Here are some of the responses I get from fundamentalists. You were never a real Christian. Christianity saved me. Christianity is time tested for two thousand years. Why don’t you just do your own thing and leave the apologists alone. You’re under the influence of Satan.

Do you see my point?

So now I’m going to address these cult-like comments from the AA bullhorn. And I’ll show easily why their content has no merit. For just because something has been done a certain way for a hundred years doesn’t mean it is correct. AA could be a wildly successful program if it would change its methods. But it adheres to a protocol that largely fails. It fails because of the mentality of AA, exhibited by those commenters.

First, AA has helped millions of people. I’ll contend that it doesn’t help as many as it fails. By a lot. There is one study from Stanford that claimed AA method is the best method for those who entered its doors. I’ll be doing an entire article on this study in the future as the brief overview I’ve done so far points that its research conclusions and metrics reviewed are questionable at best. Because all other consensus shows that the success rate of AA is dismal. You cannot argue that fact. If Alcoholics Anonymous was a business, it would be out of business. Regardless of their reasons why, the sad fact is the program fails most.

A smart person knows if he is engaging in something that isn’t working, he needs to change his methods. That goes for business, side hustles or whatever one is pursuing. The Einstein definition does hold here. Continuing the same method and expecting different results is insanity. But AA is adamant that their way is the only way. But yet they fail most of the time. Step back, commenter, and think of the illogic of your assertion.

Which leads to their second argument: The people who fail do so because they don’t follow the program. They don’t start the steps. They don’t get a sponsor. This argument also falls flat. People come to AA because, as of today, AA is where most people are directed. They know they are in trouble. But those who are aware know what is being presented to them is not going to be helpful. They see the minority who are ten years sober, now addicted to the rooms. They see the members guzzling caffeine and sucking the cigarettes to ward off cravings, which should have been long minimized. They hear cult-like mantras much like those in a fundamentalist church. And they don’t see this program as beneficial. So they walk.

The problem is now the AA recruits who leave don’t know what to do. The only support group they see resembles a cult. They leave a meeting feeling more cravings and negativity than when they entered. That’s how I felt and I was eleven months sober when I investigated the meetings in the rooms. No one is there to present them a better alternative. Some non-twelve step programs are having more success, but they aren’t mainstream yet. I hold that one day they will be. But the fact that the group, Passages, has a much higher success rate not engaging in AA protocol negates the contention that the reason people fail is because they don’t follow the AA method. The founder of Passages started this program because his  son failed multiple times with the traditional route of recovery. He succeeded with the alternative treatment. So did I. And we aren’t hostage in the rooms every night long after we beat the addiction.

And let’s go back to the AA helps millions of people argument. We already established they fail most. But let’s talk about the minority who stay sober. How AA “helps” them is a matter of great debate.

Physically, AA is unhealthy. I’ll judge that by all the smoking outside the rooms, sugar cookie consumption and caffeine intake. Not to mention, if you are in the rooms most nights, you aren’t exercising. In the meetings I attended, there was not one person, who was long sober, whose after work life wasn’t AA. It is absolutely ludicrous that people are in meetings most nights at ten years sober. They should be physically active and emotionally tranquil. And the fact is—the AA member isn’t. If you are years sober and feel like you can’t continue to live in sobriety without AA, then you have a psyche problem now. You are afraid to live on your own. AA may have kept you sober. At the expense of your emotional freedom. I’m sure there is an exception to the rule. But that is the exception and not the rule. 

This contention makes AA cringe with rage. Because it is coming from someone who has been sober nearing two decades and did it without them. Just like the Christian fundamentalist group seethes when one states he is a Christian yet has no need for their church. Most humans are sheep by nature. No one likes the sheepdog, who walks alone with enough fortitude to ignore the flock.

So the counter from AA will be the third point. You were never a real alcoholic. You were never a chronic alcoholic. What a bunch of self-absorbed B.S. First, let’s address the word chronic. I drank from eighteen years old, my first real drunk at a high school graduation party. Twenty-two years passed before I quit it at age forty. The last thirteen years I would have considered myself a “real” alcoholic. And so would anyone else who lives in reality.

Which addresses the next point. What is a “real” alcoholic? An alcoholic is someone who can’t stop drinking. Someone who has to have it by the end of the workday or goes into withdrawal. Some can’t even make it through the day without it. And as all of the AA members know, as well as non-AA recovered alcoholics, this addiction is progressive in nature. No one starts out a “real” alcoholic. It starts a few nights a week. It may progress to only heavy consumption on the weekends. It will wax and wane. Then it may progress to every night but not excessive intake every night. It waxes and wanes some more. Then the day comes where the intake is in the alcoholic realm every day.

My first real hangover was the result of about six beers and a cup or two of vodka. I didn’t touch alcohol again for a week. From eighteen to twenty-two, I would never be able to consume an entire twelve pack. By the last year of my alcoholism, I was drinking about twelve to fifteen beers every night at a hundred and fifty pound body weight. That number increased on the weekends, where I drank literally every waking hour. When I quit, I went into acute post alcoholic withdrawal. I’m sure I don’t have to explain that nightmare to you. I had severe cravings every day for about forty-five days from my last consumption. Does that sound like someone who wasn’t a “real” alcoholic? All of you commenters saying that are flat out deluded, plain and simple. No doctor would agree with you. What it really comes down to is you can’t comprehend that someone went clean without your rooms. And you despise that fact because you don’t know how to free yourself of them. That’s it and that’s all.

Then AA will fire over the bow that my experience is limited with their program. You went to a whole two meetings? You didn’t even attempt the Twelve Steps? Who are you to say anything?

First of all, alcoholics were rampant growing up. Uncles, cousins and immediate family. Second, I was involved with open meetings for family members via my once alcoholic brother—who also dropped AA as non-helpful after a few years. I’ve known many AA members. And I’ve studied your Big Book thoroughly as well as your twelve steps, mantras and protocols. I’ve talked extensively with a few of your sponsors. And more importantly, even a non-alcoholic can read the stats of massive failure rates in your program. Anyone can see your protocol doesn’t work for most—again, that’s most, AA.

Second, even if I didn’t have all this contact with the AA family, I wouldn’t need it. If you are an aware person, it doesn’t take much to see the absolute toxicity of your meetings. Do you think I would need a year of meetings to determine that the Hare Krishnas are a cult? It didn’t take more than two times in the rooms to see the cult mantras of your organization. The high authority platitudes of this is the only way. The obvious fallacy of method that indoctrinates one into thinking he is ten years sober and still needs to be in the rooms six nights a week. The fact that everyone is smoking and in agitation every night due to the negativity and constant rehashing of the past. And as far as not starting the Twelve Steps? Apparently, I didn’t need them. I’m over seventeen years clean. Most who enter AA will never be able to claim that.

Which will lead to the fourth comment I usually see. My life is going great with AA. You need AA to learn how to live. Also followed with: you’re just a dry drunk. What a massive delusion. First, if all of your time is spent in AA, if AA activity is your life at years sober, you aren’t living, you’re just existing. Think of all of the things you are missing in life because the center of your life is AA. My God, many of you won’t go on a vacation where there is no access to the rooms. Again, you aren’t physically healthy with your cigarettes and lack of exercise, and you aren’t emotionally healthy because you are afraid to live sober on your own.

Let’s compare that existence to my life. I am engaging in physical fitness two out of every three days. Most of you aren’t exercising at all. I’m engaging in yoga and tai chi two out of those three days. You’re sitting in a circle regurgitating your past in fear you will return to it. I am progressing my life, trail walking all over the world, engaging in activities like this blog and am in constant state of advancing every aspect in my life. You’re spending all of your off- time in the rooms. For myself, cravings for alcohol and thoughts about alcohol are almost nonexistent today and if they do occur, are very minimal in symptoms and transient. Many of you still fight cravings after years of sobriety, unaware that the very methods of AA’s constant recovery are actually causing them.

So no, commenter from AA. I don’t buy your life is going great. I buy your physically and emotionally unhealthy life is now just your new normal.

So why don’t I leave you alone as a final comment point from AA? I don’t hate the AA member. I abhor the organization. And I feel sorry for these commenters. I hope my endeavor can rescue as many of you as able. I’m not leaving AA alone because AA is destructive to people. It wouldn’t have to be if it would just change its protocols, especially in light of these recent and budding non-twelve step programs that may produce better results than the AA method.

For ask yourself, AA member—what other program do you actually know? What alternate method did you attempt? Did you ever actually get on a physical fitness and emotional program? Did you ever quit smoking and engage in a healthy diet with minimal caffeine and sugar? Did you ever address the rebuilding of all of your planes: the physical, mental, career and emotional?

Most of you didn’t. You were captured by AA in your weakest condition. You didn’t have any other option that you knew of so blindly listened to your ten-year sober sponsor who must know so you followed his lead. Just like the Krishnas capture many who are in weakened states of mind. Then years went by and pretty soon you were chanting their mantras as ingrained truths. You never thought outside of the AA box again—if you were in the minority who stayed sober.

I’m not going to leave AA alone. Because I am on the other side of the fence. And it is such a better pasture to graze on. All of those who went non-twelve step and are sober today know exactly what I’m talking about. The AA members don’t. But if you would open your mind and begin a holistic recovery program that I describe here and in other articles, a year later you would realize that Alcoholics Anonymous was not only not your friend but a closet enemy that was stealing your life by placing you in its prison.

And I’m offering the key to walk out of that cell into the sun of a renewed life and full recovery.

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

(Usually free on KDP)

To recreate your life on all planes for the best version of yourself as possible:REINVENTION OF SELF: HOW TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE AND BEING FOREVER 

(Usually free on KDP)

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

Content opinion of creator only and not to be taken for medical advice.