Why You Are Addicted To AA. How AA Steals Your Life. You Can Recover Without AA.
- chphurst
- Nov 8
- 7 min read
There is a small but growing movement that is beginning to awaken to the fact that Alcoholics Anonymous is largely a failed method to obtain lifelong sobriety. The fact is that the AA and twelve step ideology has never worked since the program began for the vast majority who enter the doors of “the rooms.” AA has only survived as long as it has because it was largely the monopoly of recovery. When someone entered a detox center, upon completion of the initial withdrawal from alcohol, they were directed to the nearest AA meeting. And the sad fact is most still are today.
A few long-time members have managed to escape the cult of Alcoholics Anonymous. YouTube content creators, Kirsten and Victor from Sobriety Bestie and Quackoholics, respectively, stayed in AA past the decade mark. They preached the mantras, sponsored the newly sober and held to the infallible tenets they were brainwashed with years earlier shortly after they ended the friendship with John Barleycorn. One day both realized they were in a cult. They reveal in their videos how astounded they are, even to this day, that they never saw the ridiculous, shriveled, old man behind the curtain who gave the illusion of being the all-knowing wizard in Oz. They came to the slow realization that not only was he not all-knowing but gravely in error in his worldview, proven by the dismal success record that AA has always held.
They both managed to escape and reclaim their lives, which is very unusual with that amount of time invested in the program. But it begs the question on how one can let himself become so indoctrinated in a program that is well known to fail to begin with.
I have compared the Alcoholics Anonymous program to that of the Christian fundamentalist churches, in which I am well familiar. Have you ever listened to their worldviews? They actually continue to maintain, in the face of all the genres of science and historiological record, that the world was created approximately four to six thousand years ago and a great flood, which covered that world, was escaped by a man and a pair of every animal type on a giant ark that he constructed. Regardless of what is presented and proven right in front of them, most from these churches will go to their graves believing this convoluted representation of science that their pundits propagate. If one is not a fundamentalist, he will sit dumbfounded that intelligent and educated people can maintain their grasp on this ludicrous belief system.
Most from these fundamentalist camps are raised in them, brainwashed from birth. But there exists another type that enters the doors to these cults. It is the damaged individual. A lot of those damaged are from the world of substance abuse as well. The tactical arms that reach for these newly converted wear the same sleeves as those in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous.
No one who has gone through detox will argue that it wasn’t one of the worst things they have endured in their lives. I have a prior article explaining how to get through hour by hour in those first five days. The process is physically and mentally horrific. If I ever even have an inkling of a thought of consuming alcohol to this day, all I have to do is reflect on that time I walked through the inferno of those first five days sober.
When you exit the initial detox stage and enter the second phase, you are probably at the lowest point in your life. You’re exhausted from the gauntlet you just ran through in initial alcohol withdrawal and are badly bruised and cut to ribbons. You can’t picture yet a life where you will never put that bottle to your lips ever again. You are on an emotional roller coaster, you can’t sleep and the cravings are continuous and almost unbearable. And probably none closest to you are former alcoholics so you have nowhere to go to find refuge in a new and terrifying world.
And here enters Alcoholics Anonymous.
Like the severely distraught who find their way through the doors under the steeple of the fundamentalists, the freshly detoxed walks into a tribe that welcomes with open arms and tells him he is finally home. They have taken him in at his weakest and most fear induced state. And the brainwashing begins immediately. The Serenity Prayer. The circle of alcoholic story time, where the new recruit sees the commonality of himself. The indoctrination of the twelve steps, which is the only way per the unofficial sage of the group, who has twenty years sober. And then the freshly sober begin to chant as well. Why wouldn’t they? They have been told this is the method to gain sobriety. Very few have alternative treatment programs offered and usually if they are, it was because AA already failed them.
Have you ever read the work by Sinclair Lewis, Elmer Gantry? It is about one who becomes an Evangelist type and embarks to roam the country, spreading the faith for a sizable cut of the donations he collects on the unsuspecting towns. In the beginning, Elmer wasn’t a practicing man of faith. But he started the chant, first for appeasement, but then he repeated the words so many times he became unwittingly and fully indoctrinated as well. I have seen this occur outside of the literary world. I had a girlfriend who was a fundamentalist Christian. We ended because I wouldn’t sip from their cups of Kool Aid. But the fellow she dated and married after me did. He wasn’t a fundamentalist when he met her and I’m sure was simply appeasing as young men do when they fear a girlfriend may relinquish that title. But he certainly is today. He has repeated the mantra so much that he believes it now.
When one has a thought pattern that he adheres to long term, a neuroplasticity is developed in the brain. Think of it like walking every day through the same brush. Eventually the grass will be beaten down and a new trail is formed. And then over years it becomes an old trail. This is why it is difficult to battle anger or depression if you have had it for a significant time in your life. Because that is the old, worn path that the brain now immediately ambles toward.
And this is what happens to the newly sober in an AA meeting. Remember, most aren’t going once a month or even once a week. They go nightly. It becomes their safe haven. The grass in the brush is pushed down a little more every meeting in the rooms. They are chanting the mantra, following the steps and the neuroplasticity is being reinforced by the sponsor. For the sponsor has been sober far longer than them, so he must know.
And like a cult, AA will continue to circle the wagons. Fear tactics of returning to the bottle are implemented. There are given examples of Jane or John who didn’t lockstep march to the tenet and look at them now! They screwed up. They are back in the bottle. Do you want to be next? No? Then you better keep that lockstep to the cadence of those in the know. What they don’t see is that possibly the program failed Jane or John. That the program absolutely fails most who begin it. Nope, AA doesn’t reconcile that inconvenient fact. The failed weren’t ready. They weren’t following the steps. They lost contact with their sponsor. They didn’t chant the mantra. Relapse is part of recovery.
This is exactly the strategy a cult uses.
The rest of the indoctrination is easy for the cult leaders. They just wait for time to pass. They make the recruit feel worthy when he gets his thirty-day chip. And the six month one that will follow. Soon he gets to give a speech about his recovery, which he was programmed to believe will never conclude.
Do you see the parallels in indoctrination with AA compared to any other cult? They take someone at their weakest, which makes the person a prime candidate for the brainwashing. They enclose him into their highly negative and toxic community, which he doesn’t know is toxic because outside of his addicted tribe, it is the only community he knows. Then they give a false sense of worth measured by days abstained from the offending substance while they slowly steal his life. The spouse doesn’t know what to do with him. All of his time is dedicated to AA. Vacations are planned around the rooms. Conventions must be attended. She has nothing in common with his new life. They end up divorced while the pundits in AA shake their heads knowingly that all must be sacrificed for the path of sobriety that never ends and forever disease, which is never cured. Years pass and that once new recruit is wholly entrenched into their cult and now spends his time brainwashing new recruits and the cycle continues.
With this sort of long-term emotional programming, it is amazing that Kirsten and Victor could find the strength to leave it after being in all those years. But when they did, that curtain was removed. They now saw that the wizard wasn’t a wizard at all. He was a small, old man inflated by false significance whose air pump only blew in the rooms.
You can leave AA anytime you want. Think about it. If you are years sober, why would you spend the majority of your free time sitting in their circle? Just because you chanted the mantra for years doesn’t mean the mantra was right. Kirsten and Victor were swept with a tidal wave of snarl when they exited AA’s doors. The reason is because deep down, somewhere in the hidden psyches of their guru grandmasters, they know they are trapped in the prison they constructed in the rooms. When you exit, your strength will reflect their weakness. Your freedom reveals their slavery.
You may have been indoctrinated into the cult of Alcoholics Anonymous. But there is no law that says it has to be permanent. Your life is waiting for you, the life the cult doesn’t want you to have.
You walked into the doors of the rooms once.
There is no rule that says you can’t push those doors open and walk back out.
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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