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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to consider aa a dangerous cult?

923 replies

Kirkers · 29/01/2010 03:47

I am ready to be attacked by cult members.

I have read 'theorangepapers' online which is very well researched, and 'twelve step horror stories' (also available to read online) and they prove to me (on top of my own experience) that aa does much more harm than good. In every proper, conrolled experiment aa produces worse results than any other treatment, including doing nothing. It is unquestionably a cult(Google, 'is aa a cult'). Yet 93% (I am not sure about that figure, sorry) of treatment centres follow the same model. That would be the £10 billion treatment industry.

I hope this isn't too off topic for mumsnet. They do involved children too. It is awful.

I first came to mumsnet following the Julie/Jake Myerson thread. The detective work that went on was phenonmenal. Is there anyone out there breastfeeding or too pregnant to move who could look into the orange papers and tell me I'm not Erin bigchest Eronovich.

This is an absolutely genuine request for feedback from people who are prepared to consider the actual black and white evidence of this extraordinarily powerful organisation.

Thanks.

OP posts:
jesuswhatnext · 21/06/2011 16:38

btw, what the fuck is 'AA corporate'?

jesuswhatnext · 21/06/2011 16:38

ok boss! Grin

TheBossofMe · 21/06/2011 16:40

Jwn exactly. Funny how they all refer to aa corporate, to moms not mums, to the same few crap online sources.

donewithit · 21/06/2011 16:40

What cover are you talking about?

Your opinion is that my pov is dumb. What is dumb about wanting AA to be safe - a sound safe place for everyone? Just because you don't see it happening with your own eyes, doesn't meant that sexual harassment and abuse and rape and financial exploitation doesn't occur. Criminals that do these things try and keep it under the radar.

BTW, one characteristic of a cult is that members "protect the cult at all costs".

That seems to be what you are doing. Just saying.

TheBossofMe · 21/06/2011 16:41

Night night!

MIFLAW · 21/06/2011 16:43

'Oldtimers that are "sober" and seem knowledgable about recovery are regarded as "miracles".' Not that I've ever seen. They are also at pains to insist the opposite in my experience - they are nothing special.

""Stick with winners" yes, because members that have long term sobriety are the winners. It doesn't matter what real principles they have (whether they have raped/killed/were or are violent). What is really important is that they are sober. Or that they claim to be." Correct - I don't go to AA for a moral compass, I go for help with not drinking. Someone who hasn't drunk for a long time is a winner who might have something useful to teach me, and someone whose illegal or immoral behaviour belongs to their drinking past is a winner who I am willing to associate myself with.

"People that relapse are humiliated because "they aren't working the program" right." Never seen it - sorry. I relapsed several times and I was never once humiliated in any of the meetings I attended.

"AA being a cult is pertinent to the many parents that attend or send their minor children." Still waiting for ANYONE AT ALL to give evidence of a minor attending AA in the UK, let alone being "sent by their parents."

donewithit · 21/06/2011 16:46

Report who and for what? For having a different opinion or view on the matters being discussed here?

jesuswhatnext · 21/06/2011 16:48

to report you for using multiple posting names - in short,for being a troll!

jesuswhatnext · 21/06/2011 16:49

i dont know any minors in aa, but i do know a morris!

Jamboreetomorrow · 21/06/2011 16:49

The West Yorkshire Police are currently carrying out an investigation into the Pontefract rapes in Pontefract AA (of a girl aged 5-7 years old and for which the principles have already been imprisoned for 3 years in Vermont). One can only hope that corporate AA is co-operating. The rapists may well be sitting in rooms tonight. The mother is being deported to Great Britain imminently. Where will she go to socialise, I wonder?

donewithit · 21/06/2011 16:53

MIFLAW

So, just because you have never "seen" it, it doesn't exist?

Yes, it is time for bed. I'll keep coming back.....if I want to and if I'm not thrown off of the site because I use different lingo and have a funny name.

NIGHT NIGHT.

MIFLAW · 21/06/2011 16:58

Jamboree

I have called run123's bluff on that one and actually read her tiresome link.

The ONLY involvement of AA is that the woman met the men in AA meetings. She then invited them to her house and ALLOWED them to rape her child (assuming the link is reliable.)

There is no suggestions that any of these men had a criminal record for this; so that, even if you wanted to vet every single member of AA (probably causing most of them to leave and destroying AA in the process - we like being anonymous, you know, the clue's in the name!) you would not have caught these men.

On this basis, please explain the relevance of this sad case to your views on AA as a cult.

MIFLAW · 21/06/2011 17:02

"MIFLAW

So, just because you have never "seen" it, it doesn't exist?"

FUCK ME you people are obtuse.

I have already said that my not having seen it does not mean it does not exist - but the fact that neither I, nor anyone else posting who still attends AA, nor even any of the people claiming it happens, can come up with a single personal testimony on this front surely suggests that, if we were just to rely on statistics, this would start to seem rare, don't you think?

"if I'm not thrown off of the site because I use different lingo and have a funny name."

No one wants to throw you off the site for that. They want to throw you off the site because you are tiresome and bitter and draw false and offensive conclusions and insinuations from irrelevant data.

Hope this helps.

run123 · 21/06/2011 17:05

jesuswhatnext-you asked if donewithit was drunk.
She stated that she no longer drinks.

sherbetpips · 21/06/2011 17:06

I guess I agree with what has been written but the reality of AA is that it is there to replace the constance of alchohol in its members lives and therefore it aims to do so utterly and completely - so pretty cult like

run123 · 21/06/2011 17:23

AGAIN-I am posting as only Run123. You would love to think it is only one person could not agree with you.Actually there is many people who feel aa is a dangerous cult and a dangerous place for people and minors.

MIFLAW · 21/06/2011 17:32

Sherbet

I drank every single day for at least three years, giving a minimum of four hours a day to drinking.

I now attend one or two AA meetings a week, each lasting 90 minutes.

Hardly fair to say that AA has replaced "the constance of alcohol" "utterly and completely" - it doesn't even come close to doing so!

merlincat · 21/06/2011 17:36

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

silentcatastrophe · 21/06/2011 17:42

I have been to one AA meeting, and frankly, never again. They had all sorts of weird rules and behaviours and things that were and were not allowed. It freaked me out. I recognised that I was in a room full of hardened junkies, and that only if you are close to death and are losing the will to breathe, can AA be of any use whatsoever. Like going to church really. Whatever.

I have also found it detrimental to be in a room full of addicts talking about their lives, with no structure, no professsional advice, no particular way forward, other than a dogma of 'what works'. If it helps a few people, it's anonymous, so nobody has to know. It doesn't really help anyone very much by hiding such things. The shame will always be there with AA.

helpmenow · 21/06/2011 17:53

Sorry that was your experience silent. If you don't mind me asking what capacity were you there in? My Mum, who is not an alcoholic, took me to my first meeting (at my request) and would probably say the same as you.

MIFLAW · 21/06/2011 18:29

Silent

You seem to have gleaned a lot from attendance at one meeting - most people can't take anywhere near that much in. As helpmenow said, how did you come to be there?

silentcatastrophe · 21/06/2011 19:44

Having been an addict and understanding some of what it means to have a life dictated by the addiction. Also being treated for that addiction through professional and pharmaceutical means, I am deeply sceptical about the dogma of the 12 step programme. There is no guidance in new thinking about addictions, no support from professionals, no outside help.

I am quite sure I am not alone in being to take things in.

AA is shrouded in secrecy, it is anonymous, after all. People don't go there for fun. They go there because either they are at the end, or because they have been told to. Other treatments are available, but little talked about. Why?

In America, in some states, under certain circumstances, people are made by law to go to AA.

run123 · 21/06/2011 20:10

Hi silentcatastrophe-welcome to the thread.we appreciate your thoughts on the issues with AA. You will find support here to express your views.
Of course you will also find some very pro-AA posters that wish we would just go away,dispite that the thread is here to discuss these very important issues that have an impact on so many people that have attended AA and it not work for them.

JoniRules · 21/06/2011 20:14

What I don't quite understand is - if all the very anti AA posters on here; run123 et al are so very passionate about the abuses that are taking place in AA/NA, isn't there a more appropriate platform than a parenting forum. Why Mumsnet? There are loads of media out there.
If it's as bad as you say go to the police. Some people go to AA/NA and it works for them, why not leave it at that? Really what objective are you trying to achieve by talking about your AA/NA issues here?

run123 · 21/06/2011 20:23

You are correct that in the states that people on probation are mandated to go to AA and NA.In the UK people on probation are sent as well to AA/NA.