as for meetins, regular meetins are coffee, decafe and hot water with a variety of teas and a candy dish and maybe someone brings cookies or dognuts.

anniversary meetins are quality foods and a bevy of high fructose corn syrup concoctions and the typical diet varietals. The veggie trays are where it's at! No ranch dip or anything - just plain ole raw veggies! And water! You can keep the cookies and cake.

OMG! We seem to be closer to actually practicing? Where is Kensho, Jennie, and the other sitters? Let's get this Sober Sangha party started!

Who let in stealth buddha? And which one of us is he?

We have seen The Buddha, and he is us.

aa is like a microcosm of society......

some good, some bad, some downright mad......

best use ones discretion and be discerning

take what you want and leave the rest

v

AA is a cult

really I miss all the good stuff where's the orange toga and bald heads.. ekkeek or garden areas... or music playing.. pfffttt

for me just for me this little group of sillies is the best in open minded hold you tight friends I have ever had.. and we will probably never lay eyes on each other ever.. but know what it does not matter .. cause I can come to all of you with my worst fears my bucket of tears and tell all and have you all give me the best in what friends are realy made of so if AA is a cult... iam in who's up for a walk in the woods and a campfire and sleeping out in the wild.. hand waving hahahaha no kiddng some people just can't see the tree through the forest.. love ardy

It's ok to say us'm--It's much like yun's but more personal. just sayin' , southern dialect has some real meaning--like Pali vs. Sanskrit.

Party :ring Party :a122:

sorry if it seems like we are having fun with this . cause it's
a great Cult to be part of and sober... no one is sick the next day. hahahhah:wild

Or asking what is the best oil on any motorcycle forum. Or asking if it's safe to use race compound tires on the street. :run

I have soooo many reasons to thank the AA fellowship for "helping" to guide a major part of my unique recovery.

Yeah, I too do not agree with everything...but it's not my job to change it either.

Sure, I can take and leave behind...which I do.

However, my recovery grew exponentially when I stopped looking for reasons why it didn't work for me, and really focused and WORKED the aspects that do work.

I'm only 20 months in AA and I have never felt like I was being drawn into something that was messing with my free will and thinking....cultism (lol).

My advise, for what it's worth...stop trying to fix what doesn't work for you and enjoy and grow what does.

annataboy, besides still getting a chuckle from your smiling buddha avatar,
I am reminded every time about a MID-MO (Mid-Missouri) mandolin. I was looking at one last night online, I'm getting ahead of myself but I still shop for a second and third... can't justify it right now, but I still look.

ardy, I'm all up for camping and cooking over an open fire. I don't do kumbaya tho...

There are lots and lots of people who hate AA and look at it as a cult. You won't find them in AA meetings, but you'll find them elsewhere. I was one of them so I can relate, for reasons illuminated in a post here that was mysteriously deleted. A great example is Mr. Orange, of orange-papers.org fame, which is a wonderful counterpoint site that was invaluable in my early recovery, yet inflames AA followers to this day. I mean, look at the energy he put into all that, that person is absolutely driven. Just as driven as most obsessive 12-step followers.

From what I've seen and experienced, I think a lot comes down to emotional upheavals in early recovery. Just as it's helpful for some to buy into the whole 12-step program and live it every day, and become irrationally defensive about it, it's helpful for others to tear it to shreds and promote an alternative worldview. At some level both types of people are substituting to make up for a hole created by the absence of their drug of choice, and putting newfound energy and time into something that helps keep them sober.

Which is all well and good, whatever works, but I also think at some point one must re-center and move on. If the only thing keeping you sober long-term is steps and sponsoring and meetings, you haven't grown very much since the earliest scary days of sobriety and maybe are living on fear. Same is true on the other side, if the only thing keeping you sober is a systematic effort to tear down AA, maybe you're living on anger.

People in early recovery sometimes need these crutches, so it's great that there are 12-step evangelists as well as people like Mr. Orange - they help different kinds of people, they really do. But personally I don't spend much energy on it anymore. There are many paths to happy long-term sobriety, and if each path only helps a fraction of addicts, then the sum can be large because each fraction might not have gotten sober following any of the other paths, and might have died drunk instead. :)

Late to this party, thank goodness, but unable to not participate. I admit I am powerless over certain controversial issues. Happy to see I'm not alone :).

My opinion on this subject is the same as it was last time it came up and I participated. AA, not a cult. Fundamentalist AA (Atlantic, Pacific groups and those who model themselves after those groups), cult.

A part of me really doesn't care anymore what people think of AA. Some people get sober in the cult like meetings, some get sober in meetings where the words "steps" and "bigbook" are never heard, and some get sober in meetings where people take the steps and traditions to heart, and truly live them as opposed to memorize and speak them. Some people never get sober.

The part of me that does care about this issue, is the part that feels those who learn to parrot the bigbook, Clancy, and others in the rooms and on recordings, lend themselves to threads like this, and valid arguments that AA IS in fact a cult. And that bothers me because I feel it's a misrepresentation of AA. A misrepresentation that endangers people lives.

AVRT isn't/wasn't the path for me. Same with RR. I did years of study and therapy with mindfulness and CBT, but it didn't do me much good. I guess my brain isn't wired to reap the benefits of those tools. The spiritual guidelines I learned in AA saved my life, and gave me a very different life worth living. They DO work for me. I don't however go around attacking those other methods. Why? Because I know they work. For other people. I'll leave it at that, though there's lots more I could and would like to say :).

My dial is permanently set to sarcasm, and that doesn't often fly with terminally unique addicts.

ah, bimini, it often doesn't fly with a lot of people.
i used to be fairly sarcastic a fair amount of the time. and then one day someone threw an off-hand comment my way that my sarcasm really only hurts me. this infuriated me! how dare he!. and anyway, he was wrong, of course!

but he wasn't.
sarcasm had me stuck in accompanying disdain. i guess that doesn't happen to everyone, but i found it was so for me. and it kept me apart, always separate. which is how i thought i liked it.
but i don't.
i don't like it.

a lot happens when i attempt to let go of a sarcastic reaction/response.

not all of it pleasant :)

but when we see the buddha, we're supposed to kill him.
or does that only hold when we see him on the road??

Some people I need to stay separate. YMMV. I have limited energy, and well-tuned spidey sense :)

Endless,

I am right there with you......For me the fellowship has a level of tacit knowledge transference that I could not find elsewhere. At least in the small town area I reside in. Learning directly from other HOW they stayed sober is important to me. The most important message I get from AA is regardless of how good/bad life gets, we don't have to drink over it.

AA meetings shorten the day for me - what happens down the road I have no idea. I attend 3 different groups and each one is unique.

I will say that I have a level of faith (spiritual or not) that in sobriety things will work out. Even if they don't I won't be that old drunk pitiful dude......I hate thinking about the image.

Maybe we both need to keep coming back and just see how it works out.

Thanks for your original post.

I dunno, I think they ask for your name/contact information in a cult, but not in AA. They probably want more than $1, although AA says it's fine if you don't even pay that. Don't cults have leaders? The folks leading the meetings are elected every six months. AA says: "the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking." That's it.
Most important sentence in the Big Book I think.

All I know is I wouldn't be alive if a bunch of drunks didn't carry me along when I first stopped drinking. Now, 23 years later, I help carry along other alcoholics who need the support. I think it was Bill Wilson who said, "all you need for a meeting is two drunks and a coffee pot." I think there's more to a cult than that.

I'm a smartass too Bimi. If they had a SA group I would soooo go to that. Unless someone tried to pour a bucket of water on me then I'd walk out.

die while alive. (thanks Redmayne)