(To go back and forth between the questions and the answers for Alcoholics Anonymous, click on the numbers of the questions and answers.)

81. Hypocrisy
A.A. scores a 10.

A.A. is extremely hypocritical.

• A.A. claims that it is only a spiritual program, not a religion, and then
  • it does everything in its power to convert people to its religious beliefs.
  • A.A. members accuse the mainstream churches of being "unspiritual" because they are "into property, authority figures (priests), pomp and serimony" [sic.],
  • A.A. members declare that "religion is a shackle...; spirituality does indeed free us to make connection with the Living God."
  • Hazelden propaganda even tells people to "set their religion aside" and just do the practices of Alcoholics Anonymous in order to get "spirituality".

• A.A. claims that it is a "spiritual" program of "rigorous honesty" while it:
  
  • tells members to "Act As If" and "Fake It Until You Make It."
  • routinely pulls a large number of bait-and-switch stunts on new members.
  • lies about what it is and what it does. See the file on The 12 Biggest Falsehoods of A.A. for the details.
  • practices deceptive recruiting and lies to newcomers about what membership in the program really entails.
  • lies about its history, and covers up every fault and shortcoming of the organization and its founders.

• Bill Wilson talked constantly about "moral inventories", "rigorous honesty", "spirituality", and "unselfish, constructive action", while Bill's behavior was the extreme of unethical, immoral, and selfish:
  • Bill stole all of the money he could from the fledgeling Alcoholics Anonymous organization, and then he stole the copyright of the Big Book, and then, with that copyright, he blackmailed the A.A. organization into supporting him in comfort for the rest of his life. They even bought him a Cadillac car and a house in the country.
  • Bill acted as a sexual predator and took advantage of the pretty young women who came to A.A. seeking help with alcoholism.
  • Bill lectured others about overcoming addictions while he smoked himself to death and insisted that it was okay.
  • Bill lied constantly about everything from his own history to the history of Alcoholics Anonymous to the failure rate of the A.A. program.
  • Bill advertised Alcoholics Anonymous as a universalist organization where all faiths and beliefs are welcome, where unconditional love and complete acceptance are the practice, but Bill ostracized and abandoned to death by alcohol a fellow who refused to convert to Bill's religious beliefs.
  • Bill Wilson's behavior was completely hypocritical.

• Likewise, even today, the Alcoholics Anonymous organization will not tell the truth about its history, or Bill Wilson. It keeps the archives of historical documents locked and sealed, and not available to any investigators. That is its "rigorous honesty".

• Speaking of "rigorous honesty", the leaders of A.A. at Alcoholics Anonymous World Services Inc. have committed perjury in the courts of both Mexico and Germany to stop other A.A. members from printing and giving away (or selling extremely inexpensively) copies of the old out-of-copyright editions of the Big Book. See the write-ups of the story.

• And then Bill Wilson criticized alcoholics who rationalize and minimize their drinking by writing:

  If you draw this fallacious reasoning to the attention of an alcoholic, he will laugh it off, or become irritated and refuse to talk.
  The A.A. Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 2, "There Is A Solution", page 23.

  But Bill didn't bother to mention that A.A. members act that way whenever you point out the flaws of Alcoholics Anonymous.

• The most amusing example of Bill Wilson's hypocrisy and "rigorous honesty" has to be his lecture in the Big Book on how to cheat on your wife and not tell her about it. Bill declared that:

  The husband begins to feel lonely, sorry for himself. He commences to look around in night clubs, or their equivalent, for something more than liquor. Perhaps he is having a secret and exciting affair with "the girl who understands."   ...
        If we are sure our wife does not know, should we tell her? Not always, we think.   ...
        Our design for living is not a one-way street. It is as good for the wife as for the husband. If we can forget, so can she.
  The A.A. Big Book, William G. Wilson, pages 81-82.

  ("Yeh, honey, you should just forget about whats-her-name. I already have -- I'm not screwing her any more. I've got two other cuties now.")

  And right after that, on the next page, he wrote:
  

  "The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it. ... We should not talk incessantly to them about spiritual matters. They will change in time. Our behavior will convince them more than our words."
  The A.A. Big Book, William G. Wilson, page 83.

  ("Yes, eventually those nagging wives will learn to be just as spiritual as us philandering, lying, good old boys...")

• A.A. accuses competing recovery programs of killing alcoholics even though A.A. World Services trustee Prof. George Vaillant found that A.A. actually had the highest death rate of any of the treatment programs that he studied.

• Bill Wilson constantly lectured A.A. members about "selfishness" and "self-centeredness", and said that they must be rid of it.

  Selfishness, self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles.   ...
  Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kills us!
  The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 5, How It Works, page 62.

  The talk about getting rid of selfishness is hypocritical. A.A. is actually an enormously selfish program. Everything in the A.A. program is about "my sobriety". The Big Book actually teaches A.A. members that wives and families are expendable in the pursuit of sobriety. A.A. members go recruiting, getting new converts (which Bill called "helping others"), because they are taught that they will loose their sobriety -- they will relapse and die drunk -- if they don't spend all of their spare time recruiting for Alcoholics Anonymous. So they are doing it for themselves. In the Big Book, Bill taught the recruiters:

  Outline the program of action, explaining how you made a self-appraisal, how you straightened out your past and why you are now endeavoring to be helpful to him. It is important for him to realize that your attempt to pass this on to him plays a vital part in your recovery. Actually, he may be helping you more than you are helping him.
  The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, chapter 7, Working With Others, page 94.

  Recent research has even shown that to be true -- that the sponsors benefited from being in a sponsor-sponsee relationship, while the sponsored newcomers did not. So the sponsorship system was only helping the old-timers.

• Alcoholics Anonymous Tradition Eleven says,
  "Our public relations should be guided by the principle of attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films."
  But A.A. has always been conducting a promotion campaign, since the very first days. In the book Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age, Bill Wilson calls missionary work to distant cities and countries "pioneering", and says:

  Pioneering in A.A. of course has not stopped. I hope it never will.
  Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age, William G. Wilson, page 80.

  And Bill says:

  Years ago we found that accurate and effective publicity about A.A. simply does not manufacture itself. Our over-all public relations couldn't be left entirely to chance encounters between reporters and A.A. members, who might or might not be well informed about our fellowship as a whole. This kind of unorganized "simpliticity" often garbled the true story of A.A. and kept people away from us. A badly slanted press could prolong preventable suffering and even result in unnecessary deaths.

  When in 1941 the Saturday Evening Post assigned Jack Alexander to scout A.A. for a feature story, we had already learned our lesson. Therefore nothing was left to chance. Had Jack been able to get to St. Louis for the Convention he himself could have told how skeptical he had been of this assignment. He had just finished doing a piece on the Jersey rackets, and he didn't believe anybody on a stack of Bibles a mile high.

  After Jack checked in with us at Headquarters, we took him in tow for nearly a whole month. In order to write his powerful article, he had to have our fullest attention and carefully organized help. We gave him our records, opened the books, introduced him to nonalcoholic Trustees, fixed up interviews with A.A.'s of every description, and finally showed him the A.A. sights from New York and Philadelphia all the way to Chicago, via Akron and Cleveland. Although he was not an alcoholic, Jack soon became a true A.A. convert in spirit. When at last he sat down at his typewriter, his heart was in it. He was no longer on the outside of A.A. looking in; he was really inside looking out.   ...

  The kind of help we gave Jack Alexander -- our organized service of public information -- is the vital ingredient in our public relations that most A.A.'s have never seen.   ...   Could this be a ballyhooed promotion stunt, something quite contrary to A.A. traditions?

  Not a bit.
  Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age, William G. Wilson, pages 35-36.

  Alcoholics Anonymous has always had a policy of aggressive promotion, not attraction.

  The A.A. history book PASS IT ON adds this bit of information: It was not long before Alexander was "converted"; his cynicism evaporated; and his endorsement of the Fellowship was so wholehearted that he was to remain a close friend for years to come. (He became a trustee in 1951 and remained on the board until 1956, although, because of poor health, he attended few meetings.) 'PASS IT ON' The story of Bill Wilson and how the A.A. message reached the world, Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. staff, 1984, page 346. Jack Alexander was not the neutral observer of A.A. that he pretended to be. He too was an active promoter, even one of the leaders, of Alcoholics Anonymous. Indeed, Bill Wilson wrote about the creation of his second book, Twelve Steps And Twelve Traditions: The final draft was widely circulated among our friends of medicine and religion and also among many old-time A.A.'s. This rigorous checkup was topped off by none other than Jack Alexander, who added the final editorial touch. Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age, William G. Wilson, page 219. So, Jack Alexander helped to create Twelve Steps And Twelve Traditions? That book was undoubtedly Bill Wilson's most vicious and dogmatic book, a piece of industrial-strength cult religion propaganda. Anybody who could edit and approve of that text was not a neutral reporter at all.

  And today, A.A. has front organizations to promote A.A.:

  • ASAM (the American Society of Addiction Medicine),
  • NCADD (the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence), and
  • the NAADAC (the National Association of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors).

  The worst promotion of A.A. is the coercive recruiting. A.A. routinely encourages judges, parole officers, counselors and therapists to force people to go to A.A. meeings to "to get help." (Often, the counselors and therapists are themselves members of A.A. or N.A..) And then the A.A. boosters deny any responsibility, and say that they don't force anyone to do anything.

• Alcoholics Anonymous Tradition Eleven also demands anonymity. Bill Wilson told one story of humble anonymity:

  The kind of sacrifice that we shall always need to make is beautifully illustrated by a talk I recently had with a certain Texas lady. Her temptation was extreme because she is in show business and has great national popularity as an entertainer. This is what she told me: "I sing in the best barrooms only, and I have been doing it for fifteen years. Within a year after joining A.A., I lost about ten pounds, the bags came out from under my eyes, and I began to feel like a human being. My manager couldn't figure it out, but at last I told him what had happened to me. At once, he said, 'But aren't you and I going to tell the public about this? Why, this would make terrific publicity, both for A.A. and you too.' 'Well,' I said, 'temporarily I know that it would. Other people have proved that. But, please, not for me. Alcoholics Anonymous has a principle called anonymity -- no public big shots allowed. We all know that A.A. can't be run like show business, no matter what the short-term benefits may be. A.A. saved my life and my career. Therefore the future welfare of Alcoholics Anonymous is more important to me than any publicity that I could get as an A.A. member.'" Then a little wistfully she added, "You know, Bill, I often see drunks in my audience and wonder how I can help them. If only I could tell them from the stage that I am in A.A. But that would only be temporary, wouldn't it? In the long run, we'd all be ruined if everybody did it." I looked at the lady from Texas and was glad, very glad.
  Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age, William G. Wilson, page 135.

  No public big shots allowed, except for Bill Wilson and Marty Mann, who constantly broke their anonymity while promoting Alcoholics Anonymous, which they did for many years. They even went and testified before Congress, identifying themselves as members of Alcoholics Anonymous. Bill even revealed that he was a cofounder and then bragged about all of the great things that his organization had accomplished with alcoholics. Bill Wilson spent most all of the nineteen-forties on the road, touring the country, grandstanding and promoting Alcoholics Anonymous and breaking his anonymity. By 1944, Bill Wilson was the most famous anonymous person in America.

  Bill's picture was featured in a newspaper article on alcoholism in the August 9, 1942 issue of the Knoxville Journal. Chester E. Kirk Collection of the John Hay Library at Brown University

  And yet Bill Wilson wrote,

  We simply could not afford to take the chance of letting self-appointed members present themselves as messiahs representing A.A. before the whole public. The promoter instinct in us might be our undoing. If even one such person publicly got drunk or was lured into using A.A.'s name for his own purposes, the damage might be irreparable. At this altitude (press, radio, films, and television), anonymity -- 100 per cent anonymity -- was the only possible answer. Here principles would have to come before personalities, without exception.
  Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age, William G. Wilson, page 134.

  100 per cent anonymity, without exception, except for Bill Wilson, of course...
  That way, there could be no leader besides Bill Wilson. No one else could grow in fame and influence and come to rival Bill's leadership role (which Henry Parkhurst called "The Grand Poohbah of Alcoholics Anonymous").

• And, speaking of traditions, Tradition Nine says,
  "A.A., as such, ought never be organized...",
  but A.A. is completely organized, with a national headquarters, a Board of Trustees, Executives, committees, a national Council, and it is legally incorporated into two corporations -- the G.S.O. and A.A.W.S., and they have several million dollars stashed away in the bank. They are even committing felony perjury in the courts of Germany and Mexico to make more money.

  That is in spite of Bill Wilson's statement that:

  Then our Trustees wrote a bright page of A.A. history. They declared for the principle that A.A. must always stay poor. Reasonable running expenses plus a prudent reserve would henceforth be the Foundation's financial policy.
  Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age, William G. Wilson, page 114.

• The Seventh Tradition says that every A.A. group ought to be self-supporting, declining outside contributions, but Bill Wilson gleefully took an outside contribution -- a stipend from John D. Rockefeller Jr. -- to support himself.

• And Bill Wilson wrote of himself:

  Because I myself have always had strong tendencies toward the pursuit of prestige, wealth, and power, all of A.A.'s Traditions have borne down on me with great force. You will remember the episode back in our living room on Clinton Street. That was the time when my group told me I could never become an A.A. professional. With nearly every Tradition much the same thing has happened. At first, I obeyed because I had to; I would have lost my standing in A.A. if I had not. After a while I began to obey because I saw that the Traditions were wise and right.
  Alcoholics Anonymous Comes Of Age, William G. Wilson, pages 135-136.

  That is all lies. Bill Wilson was nothing but an A.A. professional -- Bill lived off of Alcoholics Anonymous. A.A. supported Bill in comfort for the rest of his life, and he never worked a straight job again. And Bill died rich because of the royalites that he got from the Big Book and his other books published by AAWS. And the Traditions didn't stop Bill from pursuing fame, prestige, power, sex, and wealth, or from breaking his anonymity constantly. Bill didn't obey the Traditions at all. (And Bill did not lose his standing in A.A., either.)

  And note the funny reversal of reality: "At first, I obeyed because I had to... With nearly every Tradition... I saw that the Traditions were wise and right."
  That is just the opposite of the truth. Bill wrote those traditions, and then he spent years selling them to the other A.A. members. And then Bill made it sound like the Traditions had somehow just been dropped on him from Heaven or Mars or somewhere, and Bill was amazed to see how "right and wise" they were...

• Finally, A.A. propaganda says:

  Honesty, Openness, and Willingness
  Alcoholics Anonymous can only be effective if the individual is committed to working the program in the spirit of honesty, openness, and willingness.
  Alcoholic Thinking: Language, Culture, and Belief in Alcoholics Anonymous, Danny M. Wilcox, page 95.

Alcoholics Anonymous is immensely, outrageously, hypocritical.

Oh, and just to put the frosting on the cake, Hazelden gives us this meditation thought for the day:

I will remember to guard myself against irrational compliance.
July 5, The Promise of a New Day: A Book of Daily Meditations, Karen Casey and Martha Vanceburg, Hazelden.

82. Denial of the truth. Reversal of reality. Rationalization and Denial.
A.A. scores a 10.

• Alcoholics Anonymous says "A.A. is the best, 'the time-tested and proven', way to recovery", when A.A. actually has effectively a 100% failure rate.

• A.A. says that it is a "spiritual" program of "rigorous honesty" (Big Book page 58), while it practices deceptive recruiting, coercive recruiting, and pulls many bait-and-switch stunts on the newcomers. Also, A.A. is extremely dishonest and lies about many things: its success rate, its history, its religious dogma, and even its current behavior. A.A. keeps its historical archives locked and sealed, and will not allow anyone except a few very pro-A.A. writers access. Basically, anyone who will tell the truth about A.A. cannot see the archives. That includes NBC and ABC news.

• And everybody is reenacting The Emperor's New Clothes -- pretending to be getting great spiritual benefits from working the program -- just doing the Fake It Until You Make It and Act As If routines.

• A.A. claims that it is just a nice little neighborhood self-help group, while it actually practices coercive recruiting, using the criminal justice system to force more people to attend the church services that it calls "meetings".

• A.A. claims to have the best knowledge and information about alcoholism and recovery, but the A.A. "recovery program" is really nothing but a recycled old cult religion from the nineteen-thirties -- the Oxford Group:

  Where did the early AAs find the material for the remaining ten Steps? Where did we learn about moral inventory, amends for harm done, turning our wills and lives over to God? Where did we learn about meditation and prayer and all the rest of it? The spiritual substance of our remaining ten Steps came straight from Dr. Bob's and my own earlier association with the Oxford Groups, as they were then led in America by that Episcopal rector, Dr. Samuel Shoemaker.
  The Language of the Heart, William G. Wilson, page 298, published posthumously in 1988.
  

  If, when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably alcoholic. If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer.
  The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 4, We Agnostics, page 44.

  There is no disease recognized by either the American Medical Association, or the American Psychiatric Association, which "only a spiritual experience will conquer." But this is the dogma, one of the core beliefs, upon which Alcoholics Anonymous is based. A.A. teaches that you can't just quit drinking. You must join A.A., do the Twelve Steps, and have a "spiritual experience", in order to quit drinking.

  Remember that we deal with alcohol -- cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much for us. But there is One who has all power -- that One is God. May you find Him now!
  The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 5, How It Works, pages 58-59.

  Actually, most of the alcoholics who successfully quit drinking do it without the aid of Alcoholics Anonymous or its "Higher Power", so alcohol is not too much for them.

• Bill Wilson demanded that his followers give up their rational, thinking minds, human intelligence, and 'Reason', and just 'have faith'. And his grandiose proclamations about alcoholism, A.A., and God that he wrote in the Big Book and "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions" are totally irrational. And Bill was seriously mentally ill, and under the care of a psychiatrist. And yet, Bill Wilson accused all other alcoholics of being irrational and insane. (That's psychological projection, again.)

        Few indeed are the practicing alcoholics who have any idea how irrational they are, or seeing their irrationality, can bear to face it. Some will be willing to term themselves "problem drinkers," but cannot endure the suggestion that they are in fact mentally ill. ... no alcoholic ... can claim 'soundness of mind' for himself.
  Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, pages 108-109.

  Well, Bill Wilson certainly couldn't claim any 'soundness of mind' for himself, but not all alcoholics are in such bad shape.

• An official A.A. history book says,

  He said, "Duke, I think this A.A. program will appeal to you, because it's psychologically sound and religiously sane."
  Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1980, page 253.

  That statement is the exact opposite of the truth:

  • A.A. is not psychologically sound at all. It is not based on psychology or any science at all. A.A. is based on superstition, the Oxford Group cult religion, and gross misconceptions about how the human mind and alcoholism actually work. A.A. is completely irrational and unscientific, and even brags about it.
  • And A.A. is religiously insane -- it is just Frank Buchman's discredited old fascist cult religion with a new coat of paint on it.
  And still, A.A. prints and distributes large quantities of propaganda that claims just the opposite. That's the Big Lie technique.

• In chapter four of the Big Book, Bill Wilson's sermons about faith versus logic and human intelligence were a reversal of reality -- rational thinking, reason, skepticism, and agnosticism were labeled illogical, perverse, cynical, vain, biased, mushy, and unreasoningly prejudiced, while blind faith in Bill Wilson's religious beliefs was described as logical, intelligent, reasonable, sane, honest, and open-minded:

  Instead of regarding ourselves as intelligent agents, spearheads of God's ever advancing Creation, we agnostics and atheists chose to believe that our human intelligence was the last word... Rather vain of us, wasn't it?
        We, who have traveled this dubious path, beg you to lay aside prejudice, even against organized religion. ... People of faith have a logical idea of what life is all about.
  The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, We Agnostics, page 49.

  Some of us had already walked far over the Bridge of Reason toward the desired shore of faith. The outlines and the promise of the New Land had brought lustre to tired eyes and fresh courage to flagging spirits. Friendly hands stretched out in welcome. We were grateful that Reason had brought us so far. But somehow, we couldn't quite step ashore. Perhaps we had been leaning too heavily on Reason that last mile and did not like to loose our support.
  The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Page 53.

  Hence we are at pains to tell why we think our present faith is reasonable, why we think it more sane and logical to believe than not to believe, why we say our former thinking was soft and mushy when we threw up our hands in doubt and said, "We don't know."
  The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Page 53.

• A.A. pretends to offer newcomers complete religious freedom, when in fact the Twelve-Step program cannot work unless God conforms to the A.A. standards. You cannot just choose any old Higher Power of your liking and still expect the Twelve Steps to work. Your Higher Power must be a meddling, micro-managing, wish-granting servant who waits on you hand and foot and delivers miracles on demand. In A.A., your Higher Power must do the following for you:
  1. Restore you to sanity in Step Two, or else you stay insane.
  2. Take care of your will and your life for you in Step Three, or else your unmanageable life stays unmanaged.
  3. Listen to your confessions in Step Five, and soften His vindictive attitude towards you, or else God will continue to torture you with alcoholism.
  4. Remove all of your sins, moral shortcomings, and defects of character, especially your desire to drink alcohol, in Step Seven, or else you continue to drink.
  5. Talk to you and teach you in Step Eleven, and then give you work orders and the power to go do the work, or else you remain ignorant and don't know what to do with yourself.

  If your Higher Power isn't the kind of deity who will work for you and do all of that stuff for you then the Twelve Steps cannot possibly work correctly. So much for "any Higher Power of your choosing."

• See the web page on The Bait-And-Switch Con Game for many more reversals of reality.

• See the web page on Propaganda Techniques for more examples of minimization and denial.

83. Seeing Through Tinted Lenses
A.A. scores a 10.

A.A. true believers have a bad case of seeing the world through rose-colored glasses, or some kind of strange color of lens:

• They see relapsers as proof that failure to work the 12 steps correctly will result in relapse. They never see relapsers as proof of the fact that the 12 steps don't actually work.

• A.A. judges people on the basis of their drug and alcohol consumption or abstention, and, essentially, declares that the worth of a man can be measured in sober time. Visiting old-timers with 20 years or more of sobriety are treated like royalty.

• A.A. judges people on how well they parrot the standard dogma and beliefs (in spite of their claims of being non-judgemental and offering newcomers complete acceptance).

• One blatant example of seeing through tinted lenses is this story:

        An A.A. sponsor was hitting on a newcomer, trying to get another sponsee. They discussed how the newcomer had quit drinking. The newcomer explained that he had not gone into D.T.'s when he quit drinking because he had been slowly tapered off of alcohol -- being so sick, broke, unemployed, down and out, that he could buy neither food nor much alcohol for months.
        The sponsor remarked, "Isn't it wonderful how our Higher Power arranges things like that?"

  The sponsor could not see the obvious truth that there are easier and healthier ways to detox than to starve for months, and that a "Higher Power" who really wishes to arrange the world to make things easy for us could have just not made us born alcoholics in the first place.

84. You can't make it without the cult.
A.A. scores a 10.

This is obvious. A.A. flat-out says that you won't be able to stay clean and sober without A.A. or another 12-step organization like N.A.. They say that you will relapse if you don't continue going to meetings for the rest of your life. They say that your choice is A.A. forever or dying drunk in a gutter:

• It's Alcoholics Anonymous -- or else!
  The A.A. Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 378.

• None of us in Alcoholics Anonymous is normal. Our abnormality compels us to go to AA... We all go because we need to. Because the alternative is drastic, either A.A. or death.
  Delirium Tremens, Stories of Suffering and Transcendence, Ignacio Solares, Hazelden, page 27.

• "To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face.
  The Big Book, William G. Wilson, page 44.
  (Actually, they are not alternatives at all. There is a third choice: quit drinking without a cult religion, and live a healthy, happy, and sane life.)

• If you leave, you'll come back on your knees.
  -- A.A. slogan

• Either work a strong program, or your fate is Jails, Institutions, or Death.
  -- A.A. slogan

• It's Our Way or the Die Way.
  -- A.A. slogan

• Work the Steps, Or Die!
  -- A.A. slogan

• If you don't work a Fourth you'll drink a fifth.
  -- A.A. slogan

• Keep Coming Back... It Works If You Work It, You Die If You Don't.
  -- A.A. slogan

• You must find time for A.A. -- it's as necessary as inhaling and exhaling.
  Getting Better Inside Alcoholics Anonymous, Nan Robertson, page 216.

• Unless each A.A. member follows to the best of his ability our [Bill Wilson's] suggested [required] Twelve Steps to recovery, he almost certainly signs his own death warrant. His drunkenness and dissolution are not penalties inflicted by people in authority; they result from his personal disobedience to [Bill Wilson's] spiritual principles [cult religion].
  Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 174.

85. Enemy-making and Devaluing the Outsider
A.A. scores a 10.

Devaluing the outsider includes name-calling. A.A. members often call outsiders things like "normies", "flatlanders", "pigeons", and "A.A.-bashers".

A.A. has a bad case of the "Us versus Them" mindset:

• "Normies" don't understand.
• "Regular people" don't know.
• "A.A.-bashers" don't tell the truth.
• "They" don't have a working recovery program.
• "They" don't have Bill Wilson's doctrines or wisdom.
• "They" aren't doing the Twelve Steps.
• "They" don't believe.
• "They" don't have faith.
• "They" don't know what it's like.
• "They" aren't part of The Fellowship.
• "They" aren't "our kind of people".
• "They" aren't part of "The Recovery Movement".
• "They" aren't "spiritual".
• "They" aren't Friends Of Bill.
• "They" aren't doing the Will Of God.
• "They" are luring vulnerable alcoholics to their deaths by telling them that they can quit drinking without A.A. and the Twelve Steps.
• "They" have bad motives -- they are only in it for the money.
• And those who leave the group become pariahs to be shunned, because "they might make someone relapse."
  

In the Big Book, an A.A. member says of a non-member:

"You poor guy. I feel so sorry for you. You're not an alcoholic. You can never know the pure joy of recovering within the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous."
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 334.

And Hazelden advocates this policy towards competing religions:

        "... Alcoholics Anonymous is a spiritual program, not a religious one. It is important to note the difference."   ...
...
        "Religion is more structured and external. Spirituality is freer, more personal, broader. Ideally," Jerry added, "religion helps you achieve spirituality, but if it doesn't, then set it aside for a while."
The Way Home, A Collective Memoir of the Hazelden Experience, Hazelden, 1997, page 109.

So if your own religion isn't like Alcoholics Anonymous, then dump it and just do the A.A. practices.

86. The cult wants to own you.
A.A. scores a 10.

A.A. wants you to Keep Coming Back to their meetings for the rest of your life. They say that you have to continue practicing the Twelve Steps for the rest of your life, and you must go recruiting as if your life depends on it. Then, once you become an old-timer, you are supposed to act as a sponsor, and train and indoctrinate other newcomers.

Bill Wilson wrote that when "Father" discovers Alcoholics Anonymous:

Father feels he has struck something better than gold. For a time he may try to hug the new treasure to himself. He may not see at once that he has barely scratched a limitless lode which will pay dividends only if he mines it for the rest of his life and insists on giving away the entire product.
The A.A. Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 9, "The Family Afterward", pages 128-129.

So "Father" must work the A.A. program and recruit new members for the rest of his life.

Bill Wilson actually wrote that he wants everyone to abandon their intelligence, "Reason", and logical, thinking minds, and just "have faith" in his teachings. Bill claimed that his A.A. program offers complete religious freedom to members, but then he claimed the right to dictate everybody else's thoughts and beliefs. Bill even wrote that you don't have the right to decide all by yourself just what you will do and what you will think.

Bill Wilson went so far as to plant the suggestion that newly recovered people should not bother to get jobs; they should continue to neglect their families and just concentrate all of their attention on working the A.A. program and recruiting new members for A.A. (like Bill Wilson did):

We think it dangerous if he rushes headlong at his economic problem.
...
For us, material well-being always followed spiritual progress; it never preceded.
The Big Book, 3rd edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 9, The Family Afterwards, pages 126-127.

In Bill Wilson's mind, "spiritual progress" meant doing A.A. activities, particularly recruiting.

Though the family does not fully agree with dad's spiritual activities, they should let him have his head. Even if he displays a certain amount of neglect and irresponsibility towards the family, it is well to let him go as far as he likes in helping other alcoholics. During those first days of convalescence, this will do more to insure his sobriety than anything else. Though some of his manifestations are alarming and disagreeable, we think dad will be on a firmer foundation than the man who is placing business or professional success ahead of spiritual development. He will be less likely to drink again, and anything is preferable to that.
The Big Book, 3rd edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 9, The Family Afterwards, pages 129-130.

Letting him "go as far as he likes in helping other alcoholics" really means letting him spend all of his time recruiting for Alcoholics Anonymous.

Note the threat: Either let him waste all of his time on Alcoholics Anonymous, or else he might drink again, and "anything is preferable to that." That's the propaganda trick of Argue From Adverse Consequences:
"If you don't do what I want, then something really terrible will happen."

A.A. even insists that one's wife or husband must be considered less important than A.A.:

"I decided I must place this program above everything else, even my family, because if I did not maintain my sobriety I would lose my family anyway."
The Big Book, 3rd Edition -- Chapter B10, He Sold Himself Short, page 293.

And a rehash of the Big Book that is targeted at youths tells this story of an allegedly-successful recovery, where the spouse gets third place in the A.A. member's life:

Even after she remarries, she doesn't lose sight of her priorities. She places God first and A.A. second. Her husband is never more than the third most important aspect of her life.
Big Book Unplugged; A Young Person's Guide to Alcoholics Anonymous, John R., page 107.

But the "God" that she is placing even before A.A. is the meddling 'God' that A.A. defines, so she isn't really placing anything before A.A..

87. Channelling or other occult, unchallengeable, sources of information.
A.A. scores a 10.

Essentially, Step Eleven demands that the A.A. follower "channel" God. (Yes, channelling, just like Shirley MacLaine taught.) The A.A. member is supposed to just sit quietly, "seeking Guidance" "through prayer and meditation", and wait for God to talk to him. Then he assumes that his own internal mental noise, the voices in his head, are The Voice of God, talking to him and giving him religious instruction and marching orders:

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

(Note the contradiction here: The standard A.A. dogma says that you can use anything you wish for your "Higher Power" -- a doorknob, a teddy bear, a bedpan, a motorcycle, or your A.A. group itself. But when you practice Step Eleven, and pray to your Higher Power, your bedpan doesn't talk back to you, "God" does.)

Bill Wilson learned this particular technique from the notorious fascist cult leader Dr. Frank N.D. Buchman, whose Oxford Groups would sit silently during the "Quiet Hour", listening for God to give them messages. (Apparently, God told Frank that Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler were really wonderful fellows.)

On awakening, let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking...
...
Here we ask God for inspiration...
...
What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration becomes a working part of the mind. Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely on it.
      We usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be...
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, pages 86 to 87.

So, if we practice the Twelve Steps enough, we will supposedly end up in a state of mind where we are in constant conscious contact with God, and God is just always guiding us and telling us what to do, all day long. We may get into trouble by doing all kinds of absurd things and believing all kinds of absurd ideas because we think that God is telling us to do it; we may, in fact, become totally delusional and insane, but nevertheless, Bill says that "We come to rely on it."

See The Heresy of the Twelve Steps for more information on channelling.

88. They Make You Dependent On The Group.
A.A. scores a 10.

A.A. is just a substitute addiction, and just another dependency.
A.A. says that you must remain in A.A. for the rest of your life, and you must continue going to meetings forever. A.A. says that you are powerless over alcohol, and will never be able to maintain sobriety without your "support group".

A.A. tells the newly-sober people that they must put their "sobriety" (meaning: A.A.) before everything else, and come to depend upon A.A. to run their lives for them. Absolutely nothing must come between themselves and their "sobriety". That includes wife, children, job, career, everything. The Big Book actually teaches that wives and families are expendable in the selfish pursuit of "sobriety" and "spirituality." The new A.A. member must spend all of his spare time going to meetings, preferably 90 Meetings In 90 Days, and must get a sponsor who will supervise his indoctrination and keep him busy with reading the Big Book and making lists of personal defects.

Note that A.A. "treatment" of the so-called "disease" of alcoholism is the antithesis of good medical treatment. No attempt is made to actually cure the patient of the disease. Just the opposite: the object is to addict the patient to the so-called "treatment program", to make him psychologically dependent upon A.A., and to keep him coming back to meetings for the rest of his life.

The Big Book specifically states that A.A. is a substitute for an alcohol addiction, as well as a substitute lifestyle:

"I know I must get along without liquor, but how can I? Have you a sufficient substitute?
      Yes, there is a substitute, and it is vastly more than that. It is a fellowship in Alcoholics Anonymous. There you will find release from care, boredom and worry. Your imagination will be fired. Life will mean something at last. The most satisfactory years of your existence lie ahead. Thus we find the fellowship, and so will you.
A.A. Big Book, William G. Wilson, Chapter 11, A Vision For You, page 152.

We admitted we couldn't lick alcohol with our own remaining resources, and so we accepted the further fact that dependence upon a Higher Power (if only our A.A. group) could do this hitherto impossible job.   ...
Our whole treasured philosophy of self-sufficiency had to be cast aside.
The Grapevine, William G. Wilson, March 1962, quoted in The A.A. Way Of Life; a reader by Bill, page 109.

His lone courage and unaided will cannot do it. Surely he must now depend upon Somebody or Something else.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 39.

When we saw others solve their problems by a simple reliance upon the Spirit of the Universe, we had to stop doubting the power of God. Our ideas did not work. But the God idea did.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Page 52.

I Can't Handle It. God, You Take Over.
-- A.A. slogan

I Can't... God Can... I Think I'll Let Him.
-- A.A. slogan

I Can't Handle It, God. I'll Give It To You.
-- A.A. slogan

I pray to God every day that I never get the idea that I can run my own life.
-- A.A. slogan

Job or no job -- wife or no wife -- we simply do not stop drinking so long as we place dependence upon other people ahead of dependence on God.
A.A. Big Book, Chapter 7, William G. Wilson, Working With Others, page 98.

Bill Wilson declared that self-reliance was bad, very bad: The book "The A.A. Way Of Life; a reader by Bill" is a collection of the writings of Bill Wilson on every subject, published by AAWS. It has an index in the front of the book. The entry for "self-reliance", on page viii reads:

Then the entry for "Will" lists 26 items, all of which tell us what is wrong with having a will, or being willful. In the theology of Alcoholics Anonymous, there is no difference between self-reliance, managing your own life and taking care of yourself, and stubborn willfulness, disobeying your orders from God. See the next item, Demands For Compliance, for more on this.

Bill Wilson's second book, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, adds this Orwellian double-think:

Therefore dependence, as A.A. practices it, is really a means of gaining true independence of the spirit.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 36.

... By so accepting our dependence on this marvel of science [electricity], we find ourselves more independent personally.   ...
      But the moment our mental or emotional independence is in question, how differently we behave. How persistently we claim the right to decide all by ourselves just what we shall think and just how we shall act.   ...   We are certain that our intelligence, backed by willpower, can rightly control our inner lives and guarantee us success in the world we live in. This brave philosophy, wherein each man plays God, sounds good in the speaking, but it still has to meet this acid test: how well does it actually work? One good look in the mirror ought to be answer enough for any alcoholic.
      ... The philosophy of self-sufficiency is not paying off. Plainly enough, it is a bone-crushing juggernaut whose final achievement is ruin.
      Therefore, we who are alcoholics can consider ourselves fortunate indeed.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 37.

"Because I depend on electricity to do things for me, I shouldn't mind depending on Alcoholics Anonymous to tell me what to do and what to think. I'm "fortunate" that alcohol destroyed my brain, because it forced me to become a dependent slave of Bill Wilson's cult, which saves me from the pain of having to think for myself...
"After all, I don't really have the right to decide all by myself just what I shall do and what I shall think... That would be 'playing God', wouldn't it?"

First of all, we had to quit playing God. It didn't work. Next, we decided that hereafter in this drama of life, God was going to be our Director. He is the Principal; we are His agents. He is the Father, and we are His children.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, Chapter 5, How It Works, page 62.

89. Demands For Compliance With The Group
A.A. scores a 10.

This one is also pretty obvious. In the theology of Bill Wilson, everyone is supposed to be a slave of God. A.A. demands that newcomers just shut up and work the program, which includes "Seeking and Doing the Will of God". No questioning of the program is allowed. Newcomers must work all of the Steps and do whatever their sponsor says. Dissenting opinions are not welcome. The slogan is "Take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth."

Bill Wilson wrote that

We alcoholics are undisciplined. So we let God discipline us in the simple way we have just outlined.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, page 88.

[A.A. members are] impersonally and severely disciplined from without.
(A personal letter from Bill Wilson to Dr. Harry Tiebout, 9 Nov 1950, quoted in Not-God, Ernest Kurtz, page 129.)

In the Big Book, one member says:

Since I gave my will over to A.A., whatever A.A. has wanted of me I've tried to do to the best of my ability.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 340.

Yes, she has completely surrendered, and become a regular passive dependent, just doing whatever she is told to do. And the same authoress, The Housewife Who Drank At Home, also says:

I heard one very ill woman say that she didn't believe in the surrender part of the A.A. program. My heavens!
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 340.

Yes, My Heavens! You are an appalling mess, a real sicko, if you won't surrender your will and your life to Bill Wilson's cult!

And another A.A. member wrote in his Big Book story:

A willingness to do whatever I was told to do simplified the program for me.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, page 381.

According to Bill Wilson, self-reliance and will power are bad things. Thinking for yourself is a mortal sin. In Bill Wilson's theology, there is no difference between using your own intelligence to plan your life and willful disobedience to God's Will -- You are a good person only if you are grovelling on your knees before God, dependent on God for everything:

We had approached A.A. expecting to be taught self-confidence. Then we had been told that so far as alcohol is concerned, it was a total liability. Our sponsors declared that we were the victims of a mental obsession so subtly powerful that no amount of human willpower could break it.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 22.

The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, page 60.

We trust infinite God rather than our finite selves. We are in the world to play the role He assigns.
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, page 68.

The notion that we would still live our own lives, God helping a little now and then, began to evaporate.   ...
"Of myself I am nothing, the Father doeth the works"...
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 75.

... newcomers ... have experienced nothing but constant deflation and a growing conviction that human will is of no value whatsoever.   ...
      It is when we try to make our will conform with God's that we begin to use it rightly.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 40.

Thy will, not mine, be done.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 41.

Bill Wilson's Third Step Prayer says:

God, I offer myself to Thee -- to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life. May I do Thy will always!
The Big Book, 3rd Edition, William G. Wilson, page 63.

And of course there is Bill Wilson's classic death threat:

Unless each A.A. member follows to the best of his ability our [Bill Wilson's] suggested [required] Twelve Steps to recovery, he almost certainly signs his own death warrant. His drunkenness and dissolution are not penalties inflicted by people in authority; they result from his personal disobedience to [Bill Wilson's] spiritual principles [cult religion].
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, William G. Wilson, page 174.

Three of the Twelve Traditions also demand conformity and obedience to the group's will: