Just wanted to pop my head in whilst waiting for this AOD worker to take me to the doctor....

Only a few random thoughts, gleaned over several years now:

Orange papers letters in particular (and there are now thousands of them) are very instructive of so many people's real life experiences in AA. And A Orange's replies are invariably courteous. Yes, his site is somewhat overburdened with glaring changes of fonts and so forth (a bit hard on the eyes) but his researches are deep and mostly well-argued.

Agnostica AA site is the one for me lately, even now I've stopped attending my meetings. The primary essayists and respondents (commenters) are almost ALL long time AA members; many with 20 and 30 PLUS years sobriety whilst battling along in AA. They have written extraordinarily erudite and well researched bits of AA history, prosecuted well-founded arguments as to the ways in which latter day AA has become somewhat (!) infested with fundamentalists, especially the so called 'back to basics' / Wally P / lineage of zealots. They have only a few days ago posted about their efforts to seek a compilation of stories of atheist / agnostic/ freethinkers to be published in a full book by Grapevine. The response, from GSO (?) in New York is to say the least, frightfully underwhelming.

I mention this because one of my chief anxieties about virtually ALL of the now hundreds of meetings I've attended (and chaired) here in Melbourne, is that the back to basics / zealot crowd have and continue to drive more of us away than 'keep us coming back'. You only need a handful of them in any one meeting on any one day, and - as I said to my AOD worker (who got sober in AA /NA USA) - one feels like one requires a pretorian guard around one to be able to duck and weave before and especially after a meeting. In order to leave that meeting feeling just a teensy bit like an ordinary, unique, thinking individual.

I've lost count of the numbers of times in meetings when I've squirmed, felt nauseous, angry (yes, angry! Buddha forbid), frankly dead bored, extremely uncomfortable with the ritualisation methods of most meetings, the finger-wagging and blatant cross-talk from someone 'sharing' to us recalcitrants [this happened to me only a few weeks ago and the chair did nothing, so I up rose from my seat and chastised this B2B bully, a big loutish true believer Harley Rider]. Quel horreur! Of course, in the usual course of things / the Steps / AA as it is now, I'm the one who's considered 'sick'.

No thanks.

If I lived in a few parts of the States, where there are civilized agnostic style meetings (yes, even with re-written, updated steps and so forth), maybe I'd cope a lot better.

There are so few other f2f daily or weekly alternatives, like SMART, LifeRing, Women for Sobriety, etc etc on the ground for a recovering or still suffering drunk to go to. In most places there are none. AA is IT. It's most beneficial aspect - somewhere to go for an hour or two, just for some allegedly like-minded company and to get out of one's own head - has become over the decades severely corrupted. And even in the more even-minded meetings, one can NEVER be heard or engage in a thoughtful and open-minded chat about all the other more MODERN ways of approaching or treating alcoholism / addiction.

I just despair.

I am going to have to lay down some ground rules here.

we don't allow links to a certain orange site.

Whatever your opinion of the site and its content, it's covered in rule 2:

therefore that site is off topic.

This is a long standing position, it works well here for the community at large, and it's not open for discussion.

thanks

Dee
Moderator
SR

With all due respect, I go to AA and I also have attended Women For Sobriety (which is also a good program just conflicting schedules). When in AA, I would not talk about the new life acceptance program any more than I would talk about the 12 steps at a WFS meeting.
The same way I would not start kicking a soccer ball on a baseball field or read the new testament in a synagogue. That's just common sense.

Not all Harley riders are big, loutish true believers bemyself.

Well....

AA says "Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety." In which case, shouldn't open talk about successes of programs and treatments other than AA be encouraged? But my experience, which I don't devalue, has been quite the opposite.

When in Rome - I do as the Romans do.

I have tried several so-called more modern approaches to recovery and found that they all have fly's in the ointment.

Been around AA for over two decades and I don't think it's a cult. As the OP mentions, the old timers can be a pain though. My experience is that many of them are just lonely people who want attention. Like it or not, years of sobriety matter in the fellowship, so even a loopy old geezer might be taken seriously if he claims many years sobriety.

I go to steps oriented meetings not general discussion ones so the chit chat does not come up until after the meeting when we hang out.
I have bought the RR book for a friend of mine who kept saying he did not like AA. It is now collecting dust right alongside his big book :(
I also have no problem suggesting an alternative to AA to an individual (done there quite a few times including on SR) if I feel it would click with them better.
That being said, when I am at an AA meeting, I am here to hear and talk about the AA program which are the steps.
As far as the fundamentalist big book/bible thumping meetings go, I have yet to encounter one but I might go out of my way and check one out one of these days to see what is going on there. Not sure where they are at in my area though. Probably in the countryside.

Good to know, Dee. I haven't the first idea about what the 'Orange Papers' are, but I have seen it mentioned on AAAA. I will also report to you any posts I see that refer/link to another popular recovery route, in which the message is highly inflammatory towards AA, and would invoke rule 2. Among other things, the site I refer to states that AA is evangelical social cultism.

You can just PM me, Shamal. Talking about the thing I asked people not to talk about gets silly.

Dee
Moderator
SR

Haha, or as my Hindu friend is often saying to me in levity... "oh my gods"

I am trying, Dee ! That's why I mentioned no names :) I will PM you when I spot a perpetrator in the future.

Are you, like, a narc? :censored: :)

i think you said it all right here Endlesspatience. People need to belong no matter where you are in the hierarch (pecking order) of life.

haha, no. Simply one who believes that all things must be balanced.

Anyway, we have been asked not to continue down that path. Moving right along........

Hey!!!! What's with judging us country folk. Not all of us are fundamentalists. JK Carlotta. I can take a little criticism and I promise not to get defensive unless you say something a bit to close to the truth. You know what I will do then.

OMG I see where this is going -- AA is a pseudo-Christian fundamentalist cult peopled by the cannon fodder/dupes of the rural backwaters whose strings are secretly pulled by manipulative urbanites no doubt of a certain semitic persuasion for their own inscrutable but undoubtedly nefarious possibly even satanic purposes.

Why are conspiracy theories so tawdry?

Its taken 10 pages to see where this topic was headed? :)

I was going to go with the Illuminati.

The trifecta is that the Illuminati, the Jews & the Freemasons are all part of the same conspiracy. Backed ultimately by The Greys.

(sigh)

Jeez, has any AA conspiracy theorist ever watched people actually try to conspire? Especially when mind-altering substances are involved? It's laughable.