The dangers Alcoholics Anonymous

I'm an alcoholic in recovery, I recovered without AA, however I have friends that are in AA and they tell me that I'm bound to relapse if I don’t "keep coming back", I cant go back. I hate the program with such rage and downright despair that the mere mention of the program can send me into an inner rage that is indescribable.

Somehow I need to recover from the program of AA and am finding it difficult. When I talk about my feelings about AA with AA's they look at me like I'm an alien, and the old-timers shake their heads and mumble stupid little sayings like, go back out, your bottom wasn't low enough. My bottom wasn't low enough? I almost died a couple of times. I was suicidal and unable to stop drinking. I was like many other alkies, home alone drinking nightly by myself and often waking up on the bathroom floor wondering what and how many pills I had taken. I woke up once only to find that I had a sharp blade to my wrist and I knew that I needed to quit, but I couldn't. Oh I tried, and one time after an overdose I quite for 5 days!

Finally my therapist managed to convince me that maybe I needed to get myself some help. I also caught wind that an intervention was being planned and I just couldn’t go through it, and I had an odd fear that it was only a matter of time before I was put on a pysch ward, in fact looking back I think I wanted to be locked up. I was a danger to myself and I just needed help. So 10 years after my first rehab I went back in.

I was forced to go to AA daily, I did the steps and I prayed that this would be the end of my drinking. You see I wanted sobriety, and I had hoped that I would be something someday. After 6 weeks of treatment I came home after promising my counselor that I would attend daily meetings, get a sponsor and really work the steps.

I was stupid. I really was just incredibly naive and vulnerable....so away I went to my first AA meeting and that was the beginning of the end for me. The people there were nice enough, but they were all the same. They all kept saying silly sayings and they began to look and talk like robots. When I questioned the steps or *gasp* the Big Book I started to hear things like;

“You're a dry drunk”

“If you actually had a higher power, you wouldn't have any anxiety"

“You are angry, you need to pray to have that anger removed, your anger will kill you”. (Damn rights I was angry, who wouldn’t be hearing all of this shit?)

My favorite:

"If I had your sobriety I'd kill myself"

This was spoken by my big book thumping sponsor, who is now a counselor at the last rehab I went to.

To me that all began to feel like blame. Like any other alkie I was dealing with the fallout of my drinking and there was fallout. But I was doing it responsibly and ethically and truly dying inside. I was alone, and scared and very uncertain of my future. When I tried to speak about this at meetings, I was made to feel that my life and past abuses that were inflicted upon me where my fault. I have always blamed myself for these past ‘issues’, but as I sobered up I began to realize that some things really weren't my fault. Tell that to an AA and you will be laughed out of the room.

I needed to stop going. I was sinking deeper and deeper into a black hole depression and again was told that I was simply sitting on a 'pity pot'. Fuck that, I was depressed. Plain and simple and I needed help, and I sure as to hell didn’t need it in form of someone shoving slogans down my throat, and accusing me of being so stupid that I didn't quite understand what a 'higher power' was. So I quit!

Now, if I ever talk like this to an AA then I am ostracized and told that I didn’t work the program. What other program would blame a victim for the abuse? A cult would. I believe that AA is a cult, a very dangerous cult that is run by fellow alkies with a large number of them having co-occurring disorders, and I believe that I suffered abuse from many of these twits. So now I need to recover from AA, and it’s my hope that this journey will help others.