THE ORANGE PAPERS One Man's Analysis of Alcoholics Anonymous An Online Book by Secret Agent Orange "There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance -- that principle is contempt prior to investigation." HERBERT SPENCER The above famous misquote1 was put in the Big Book by William G. Wilson, in Appendix II, "Spiritual Experience", in the back of the second and third editions. Bill Wilson was trying to imply that we should not dismiss his "spiritual cure for alcoholism" without first trying it. That is curious, because in 1864 Herbert Spencer was actually arguing against fundamentalist religious beliefs and dogmatic blind faith, and in favor of Charles Darwin's new theory of evolution. Nevertheless, that quote sounds like good advice. So let's really, honestly, investigate Alcoholics Anonymous, without rejecting criticism of A.A. before investigation of all of the facts... CONTENTS: Introduction The 12 Biggest Secrets of A.A. The Effectiveness of the Twelve-Step Treatment The Twelve Steps Interpreted The Twelve Traditions Interpreted Twelve-Step Snake Oil Propaganda and Debating Techniques The Bait and Switch Con Game Powerless Over Alcohol The Funny Spirituality of Bill Wilson and A.A. The Dry Drunk Bill and The Other Women The "Us Stupid Drunks" Conspiracy Recruiting Mind Games The Heresy of the Twelve Steps A.A. and Religious Faith The Hazelden Coffee War "It's Spiritual, Not Religious" Birth of BigBook Birth of BigBook II: Financial Analysis of the Creation of the Big Book Boot Camps: Children's Gulags The Killjoy Cover-Up The 12 Biggest Lies of A.A. The Problem With Statistics: Who Is Killing Themselves? Sentenced to A.A. Tobacco A.A.-Booster Pseudo-Science: Spirituality: The key to recovery from alcoholism More A.A.-Booster Pseudo-Science: The Spiritual Dimension of Healing More Big Lies -- A.A. Propaganda As Usual More A.A.-Booster Propaganda: the book Cults: Faith, Healing, and Coercion, by Marc Galanter Dr. Harry Tiebout: The First Fascist Mad Scientist of A.A. Answer to a George Vaillant Speech The Recovery Propaganda Machine, part 7 What's Good About A.A.? What's Not Good About A.A.? Great Moments in Religion -- Jerry Falwell Random Thoughts More inconsistencies: More of the propaganda trick of inconsistency. Posts to the Alcoholics Anonymous thread on Rick Ross' web site, which he deleted. Links Wish List -- things I wish I could get Bibliography Jokes An Alternate View On Recovery: The Lizard-Brain Addiction Monster Rat Park and Other Children's Stories How To Deprogram Your Own Mind Top 10 Reading List The Cult Test, and Alcoholics Anonymous as a Cult The Cult Test Questions The Cult Test Answers, for A.A. The Religious Roots of A.A. and the Twelve Steps Introduction and Table of Contents Bill Wilson Writes The Steps Frank Buchman The Religious Tenets and Doctrines of Buchmanism The Cult Characteristics of the Oxford Groups The "First Century Christian Fellowship" Campus Crusade in the 1920s Hobnobbing With The Nabobs My God How The Money Rolls In Partying with the Nazi Party The Oxford Group Morphs Into MRA The Years Before the War: Appeasing Hitler, and Apologizing for Hitler Invasion of Poland, WWII starts in Europe A Slogan a Day Keeps The Thinking Away Pearl Harbor, The USA Is In It Now; You (Not Me) Can Defend America Dodging the Draft Sam Shoemaker Quits What Is Fascism? How Fascist Was Frank Buchman? The War Years: On the Road Again Henry Ford and Anti-Semitism After The War, Trouble With The Catholics Frank Buchman, Anti-Communist, Union-Buster, Spiritual Strike-Breaker Homophobia and Gay-Bashing Partying in a Fairy-Tale Castle Death of a Salesman, Peter Howard Takes Over The Last Hurrah: Up With People Obscurity Bill Wilson Gets Religion (And Drugs) And Sees God Bill and Dr. Bob start A.A. William Birney's interview of Frank Buchman for the New York World Telegraph Reinhold Niebuhr's "Hitler and Buchman" article Rev. Irongate's Sermon On Buchmanism Review of Garth Lean's book, On The Tail of a Comet Footnotes Bibliography Letters, We Get Lots of Mail... Letters I Letters II Letters III Letters IV Letters V Letters VI Letters VII Letters VIII Letters IX Letters X Letters XI Letters XII Letters XIII Letters XIV Letters XV Letters XVI Letters XVII Letters XVIII Letters XIX Letters XX Letters XXI Letters XXII Letters XXIII Letters XXIV Letters XXV Letters XXVI Letters XXVII Letters XXVIII Letters XXIX Letters XXX Letters XXXI Letters XXXII Letters XXXIII Letters XXXIV Letters XXXV Letters XXXVI Letters XXXVII Letters XXXVIII Letters XXXIX Letters XL Letters XLI Letters XLII Letters XLIII Letters XLIV Letters XLV Letters XLVI Letters XLVII Letters XLVIII Letters XLIX Letters L Letters LI Letters LII Letters LIII Letters LIV Letters LV Letters LVI Letters LVII Letters LVIII Letters LIX Letters LX Letters LXI Letters LXII Letters LXIII Letters LXIV Letters LXV Letters LXVI Letters LXVII Letters LXVIII Letters LXIX Letters LXX Letters LXXI Letters LXXII Letters LXXIII Letters LXXIV Letters LXXV Letters LXXVI Letters LXXVII Letters LXXVIII Letters LXXIX Letters LXXX Letters LXXXI Auxillary and Supporting Documents Definitions of Some Commonly-Used A.A. Words The Stock Prospectus for the 100 Men Corporation Works Publishing Financial Statement, June 1940. Bill's 1941 Memo (PDF) about bringing more money into the A.A. headquarters. Cleveland, 1944: Clarence Snyder's objections Bill Wilson's Last Will and Testament, leaving ten percent of his estate to his favorite mistress, Helen Wynn, and the other ninety percent to his wife Lois. Lois Wilson's Last Will and Testament, where the royalty money for all of Bill's books leaves the A.A. fellowship forever. Original Works Publishing Company name change document, page 1. Original Works Publishing Company name change document, page 2. Original Works Publishing Company name change document, page 3. Bill Wilson's royalty agreement of 1963 with A.A.W.S., Inc. Henrietta Seiberling's letter A Cult Called AA by Paul Roasberry S.O.S. Europe's Description of a Cult Berkeley Revive's cult description Totalism in Today's Cults by Jan Groenvald H. A. Ironside: The Oxford Group Movement: Is It Scriptural? Dr. Arthur H. Cain: First Harper's and Saturday Evening Post articles critical of A.A. Bill Wilson's speech at Dr. Bob's Memorial Service Bill Wilson's testimony before the U.S. Senate, 1969. Tiebout: The Act of Surrender in the Therapeutic Process Tiebout: Direct Treatment of a Symptom Tiebout: The Ego Factors in Surrender in Alcoholism Tiebout: Surrender Versus Compliance In Therapy with Special Reference to Alcoholism Judge John T.: The "We Are The Chosen People" Idolatry Robert Warner's page, "How A.A. Steals Your Soul" Paul Diener on A.A., the Oxford Group and the British Fascists at Oxford in the 1930s. Paul Diener's letters to the Addict-L mailing list. A pamphlet by A.A. members, criticizing the leadership More Humor: How To Win An Argument More Humor: Do You Think Too Much? Archive files now available: Get this entire web site in a set of compressed packages so that you can read it later offline (and burn CDs and give copies to friends). Archives are available in both Unix/Linux tarred-gzipped format, or Micro$uck Windoze winzip format. Current as of 2007-04-19 (yyyy-mm-dd). Total Size = 80 MB compressed (89 MB uncompressed), but no file is larger than 9 MB, to prevent file size problems with some systems. Get either set; you don't need both, as the files contained are identical. (And don't worry if the "alpha" file is newer than the image files; that often happens, because I update the text of the web pages far more often than the pictures.) Unix/Linux format archive Orange_Papers-alpha-2007-04-19.tar.gz Orange_Papers-imgs0-2007-01-28.tar.gz Orange_Papers-imgs1-2007-01-28.tar.gz Orange_Papers-imgs2-2007-01-28.tar.gz Orange_Papers-imgs3-2007-01-28.tar.gz Orange_Papers-imgs4-2007-01-28.tar.gz Orange_Papers-imgs5-2007-01-28.tar.gz Orange_Papers-imgs6-2007-01-28.tar.gz Orange_Papers-imgs7-2007-01-28.tar.gz Orange_Papers-imgs8-2007-04-12.tar.gz Orange_Papers-imgs9-2007-01-28.tar.gz Windows format archive Orange_Papers-alpha-2007-04-19.zip Orange_Papers-imgs0-2007-01-28.zip Orange_Papers-imgs1-2007-01-28.zip Orange_Papers-imgs2-2007-01-28.zip Orange_Papers-imgs3-2007-01-28.zip Orange_Papers-imgs4-2007-01-28.zip Orange_Papers-imgs5-2007-01-28.zip Orange_Papers-imgs6-2007-01-28.zip Orange_Papers-imgs7-2007-01-28.zip Orange_Papers-imgs8-2007-04-12.zip Orange_Papers-imgs9-2007-01-28.zip No special installation is required -- just make a new empty subdirectory ("folder" in Windowese) and put all 11 archive files in it, then unpack them, and then start browsing with the "index.html" or "menu1.html" web page. Detailed instructions for burning a CD are here.

Footnotes:

1) Michael has done a lot of research on that quote, and he found that it actually came from William Paley, not Herbert Spencer. See Michael's paper here:
http://www.geocities.com/fitquotation/

Last updated 2007-04-19
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