Notorious Inversions of Truth

I know a woman twice convicted of drunk driving who finally quit drinking altogether, but is now mandated to addiction treatment. She knew after her first arrest she’d better quit drinking altogether, as other teetotalers in her family had done. However, she was sentenced to AA, where groupers warned her against quitting her addiction. Only one-day-at-a-time sobriety, while learning the stepwise piety of recoveryism, would suffice. Thus, was her problem drinking converted to chronic addiction. She had her obligatory “relapses,” and two years later she received her second DUI.

This time, in an unyielding act of moral judgment, she quit drinking for life. She has since abstained effortlessly without support, based on moral principle alone. However, during clinical interrogation, her probation officer (an AA member) discovered that she denies addictive disease, and considers self-intoxication by problem drinkers immoral. Noting her “deep denial,” he ordered her into 28-day rehab, where, under color of treatment, physicians and counselors certified as 12-steppers will wrench her from her original family values, impregnate her with addict-identity, stain her ancestry with congenital disease, and, upon discharge, require proof of AA immersion to retain custody of her children. When she tells her counselors she will never drink again, she is told, “This is not about abstinence; this is about surrender of control.” This true anecdote is standard operating procedure everywhere.

The public interest is that she abstain from alcohol, not in how she becomes abstinent. Addiction treatment is an economic black hole. A travesty of pseudoscience. An iatrogenic nightmare. An ethical catastrophe. A public danger. A violation of common sense and traditional American values. The 12-step program and group recoveryism make sense only to addicted people who deny the immorality of their own self-intoxication, and whose beliefs and values are comprehensively inverted. Addiction treatment does not work and aggravates addiction.

There can be no sanity nor success in the addictions field until independent recovery through abstinence alone is a viable option for all addicted people. Independent recovery is commonplace, costs nothing, is easily learned, and brings out the best in addicted people and government. Because the states will not revoke the drinking licenses they grant to citizens of age, we should therefore grant addicted people the privilege of doing so themselves, and accord them whatever leniencies and respect permanent abstinence suggests. Public funding for addiction treatment, especially when sponsored by 12-steppers in elected office, must not pass.

EMail This Post

Bookmark:

This entry was posted on Monday, February 19th, 2007 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Rational Recovery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

12 Responses to “Notorious Inversions of Truth”

John McCready, RAS Says:
February 20th, 2007 at 8:44 am
WHile I know RR is not in any way, a “political” organization, it may have to do some “dabbling” in the mud of politics, if this proposed “Paul Wellstone Mental Health Parity Act” is to be stopped! it is beyond patethic what the “disease model” advocates, and myopic 12-Steppers will do to circumvent their responsibility for their own induced addictions (and worse yet, expect an HMO to cover it!). I never thought I would be on the same side of an HMO, but it looks like I will be when this issue is introduced! If HMO’s were smart, they would terminate ALL “substance abuse” related coverage NOW, and put the money they save into defeating this onerous legislation! I hope RR will track it very closely, so that the deluge of opposition it generates (RR based, and from others), will prevent this “idea” from ever getting voted upon. Jack, you are dead on the money with your commentary! A debate between RR, and the Congressmen (Rep.Kennedy, et. al) would clearly show who is on the right side of this issue!
Jeff Says:
February 20th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Outstanding article. I’m starting to understand this now. AA and the 12 step programs are cults. The people in them are kinda nuts.

Jeff,

Crazy like a Beast. There is a method to their madness, in that they are hell bent on creating a world that his highly tolerant of substance abuse and the unbridled expression of bodily desires. In fact, their 12-step doctrines and their thought processes are organized around the central principle that self-intoxication by problem drinkers is not immoral conduct in itself, and that “alcoholics” have a lifetime prescription for alcohol, taken as really needed (desired!). Under many “slippery” circumstances, alcoholics may indulge the sacrament of AA, the “relapse,” which is a personal party whenever one really feels like it, such as when hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. For AA newcomers on the brink of total recovery through planned, permanent abstinence, one-day-at-a-time sobriety comes as a last-minute reprieve, thus the “grateful, recovering alcoholic.”

Like I said, 12-steppers are crazy like a Beast, and they are very good at taking their tales of slavish victimhood to traffic court, to their jobs in pubic service, and very disturbingly, to elected offices such as the Fellowship of the Beast in both houses of Congress, e.g., James Ramstad, Patrick Kennedy, and so on. With their success in Mental Health Parity legislation, will come a dash to the finish line of American socialism, which in comparison will make European socialism appear like post-World War II USA. America doesn’t have a substance abuse or addiction problem; she has an AA problem from which she may very well die.

Jack Trimpey
David B. Says:
February 20th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
As much as I liked the excerpt I feel this is one of those times that Jack Trimpey has pulled some punches.

If one is to really get to the heart of what is wrong with 12-Step and mandatory indoctrination into the cult of xA, why not quite some very revealing passages of the book Alcoholics Anonymous?

Some choice passages from the book (I’m getting my references from the Third Edition) are:

* How AA talked a man named Fred out of quitting (pp. 39-40)

* Encouraging problem drinkers to drink again if they don’t agree with the dogma (pp. 31-32)

Or, the biggest one of them all:

* “If anyone who is showing inability to control his drinking can do the right- about-face and drink like a gentleman, our hats are off to him.” (pp. 31)

I could go on. But isn’t it just plain EVIL (I was going to say “sick” but that would just sugarcoat it all) that this so-called “abstinence” organization called AA tells people to drink and celebrates a return to drinking accordingly?

And problem drinkers who get into trouble are sentenced to this? And in God’s name, no less (”Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people about us.” pp. 77)?

If Trimpey is going to go armed to the teeth against the cult then these quotes out of Wilson’s Wasted Writings should be the choice ammo to start with. What are they going to say? That it’s out of context or just isn’t true?

David,I’m glad visitors will see your comments added to mine, because you are quite correct: I pulled punches big time. The whole truth will choke if suddenly swallowed whole. It just won’t go down in the political arena, where anything slightly different from politically correct thought is suspected of extremism.

I found that 400 words are insufficient to convey a broadly based criticism of social policies based upon 12-step recoveryism. By using one tragic, bizarre example, I hope to alert Congress to the American addiction tragedy. In other words, America doesn’t have a substance abuse problem; she has an AA problem. AA is the vast fellowship of addiction that has risen to power in our social service system, an invisible parasite that forms policies that weaken and kill the human spirit that once kindled the American Revolution.

Jack Trimpey
Michael Says:
February 20th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Thank you for saying what needs said. I’ve trying to explain to well meaning, ethical people how much damage AA has done to me personally and to our perception of right and wrong as a society. Let me tell you, it is usually received with bewilderment and disbelief. I had one friend tell me that “we all have some ‘disease’ that we need help with.” The 12-step mentality has infiltrated many people that don’t have a chronic desire to self intoxicate or whatever the disease theory du jour is at the moment.

We are much better off as a society to not pull punches. Immoral behavior is immoral and the person engaging in it needs to be given the tools to stop now and permanently or suffer the consequences.

We do have an AA problem. I fear that our fellow citizens will awaken from the 12-step stupor and find that they have lost everything that this country was founded on.

Mike
Kimbo Says:
February 21st, 2007 at 2:04 pm
How do you guys think mental health disorders - ie schizophrenia, depression, manic depression etc figure in this Mental Health Parity plan?

Or do you not believe a mental illness is an illness - obviously separate from addiction?

anyone know? Many thanks

I Agree totally with the totality of AA cult & its control - the control & ‘religion slammed on me was unbelievable & the reality of RR helped moved so much of the anger at myself for allowing my - self to be so controlled by another human!

Thanks RR - do you ever have annual conventions - get-togethers? Take care Kimbo

Kimbo,

There really are mental illnesses, several of which you have named. There’s no such thing, however, as “dual-diagnosis,” or the co-existence of mental illness and addictive disease. Mental illness can and often does co-exist with alcohol or drug-enhanced stupidity, but that doesn’t make addiction a disease.

We don’t have get-togethers because all we have in common is a history of very bad judgment, and that’s not enough to warrant getting together. We do have a following of persons interested in social change, but they are more interested than motivated.

Jack Trimpey
Steve Peckman Says:
February 21st, 2007 at 8:24 pm
Mr. Trimpey, I first and foremost I would like to thank you for shedding some light on the cult that is AA. I am giving a major presentation to students and faculty at my university in which I am going to quote directly from Congressional Quarterly, especially your comment regarding the fact that there is an upside to responsibility. I want the biggest project of my college career so far to detail the harms of AA and the benefits of indiviudual responsibility and abstinence. If you have any comments or suggestions that might help to get the point across, I would be very grateful.

Steve

Steve,

I get quite a number of requests for telephone interviews by grad students, undergrads, and even high schoolers who are writing papers for classes. There is widespread understanding that AA is worthless as a remedy for addiction, and that AVRT® represents the addict’s greatest hope, the family’s deliverance from addiction, and the greatest taxpayer’s bonanza since the end of the Cold War. When our social service system finally gets legislated out of the Dark Ages, addicted people will once again have the right to quit using alcohol and other illegal drugs. For now, they must agree to explicitly leave open the possibility of resuming their self-intoxication under certain, undefined conditions called, “relapse.” Refusal to do this, such as by announcing, “I will never drink again,” can land you in jail, out of a job, without housing, without general assistance, and result in loss of child custody, refusal of vital medical servics (organ transplant), and dishonorable discharge. All that, for missing recovery group meetings.

Everyone should get it very clear in their heads: AA is deadly serious in conscripting every single “addict” (formerly called “sinner”) into its ranks, using whatever means it must, including the armed force of law enforcement. AA would rather see a substance abuser suffer and die rather than do well without its blessings. Its priesthood are in every traffic court, family court, impaired professional review board, newsroom, state legislature, and in both houses of Congress.

The harm done by AA is to the individual, the family, and to the nation. Addiction is a home invasion, allowing the intrusion of fellowships of addiction, including the recovery groups, and finally the grand entrance of the priesthoods of addiction — the medical doctors, the psychologists, the nurses, the social workers, and the substance abuse counselors, all of whom have abandoned their native beliefs and original values and now practice stepcraft using their professions as disguises.

I’ll be glad to help you with your paper, and of course, i will look forward to receiving a copy of it.

Jack Trimpey
Shannon Champion Says:
February 22nd, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Sounds like being “recovered” through RR sucks & makes you very mean spirited. NA saved my life !!

Shannon,

Your drive-by attack suggests quite the opposite. Now nice you were spared the moral responsibility of abstinence, while expecting others to live under the cloud of your one-day-at-a-time sobriety.

No one is “recovered through RR.” People most often quit their addictions based upon their native beliefs and original family values, which would have been very kind for you to also do.
Jack Trimpey
Howard Says:
March 1st, 2007 at 10:10 am
Jack — true, on all points.
AA requires, for survival, mandated attendance. Therefore, it must lobby to ensure continued mandates. Tradition 1 and Step12, working in concert, provide the doctrinal justification for such conduct.

The doctrine of AA is, beyond all doubt, iatrogenic.
The Courts, the medical profession, EAPs, etc, are a party to it. As an act of charity, I may ascribe to the principle of ‘ignorance is bliss’.

If I were uncharitable, I may ascribe other motives.

Bethat as it may, AA should be given the mushroon treatment: Put in a dark room; on occasion, open the door and throw manure on it.
Shannon Says:
March 5th, 2007 at 10:05 am
Jack - your 2 paragragh reply to my 2 sentences seems to be overly defensive, why with all of the attacks regarding 12 step recovery a random drive-by every once in a while should come as no surprise here. Being open minded to different things is a quality I enjoy & was the reason I ventured to this website. Although being open to checking out the website I found it hard to be open to the negativity. If the way you have found to quit drinking /drugging truly works for you & others that’s great.

Shannon,

The “negativity” you sense is an affirmation of everyone’s first impressions of AA, including your own. Newcomers are oriented to AA by attacking their “negativity” as symptoms of addictive disease, i.e., “denial.” AVRT® is profoundly negative in that it exposes the Addictive Voice, without regard for its sources, including AA, counselors, doctors, politicians, and clergy. Illuminating the Addictive Voice allows us to see through the darkness of addiction and make our way to the daylight of freedom.

Jack Trimpey
m3rlin Says:
July 14th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Cool website! Good work. Good resources here. Best regards!
imagae Says:
February 10th, 2008 at 10:16 am
OK…. but… why is it necessary to snuff out one path in order to pave your own? Can you not live your RR principals without first discrediting a set of principals that many find to be equally valid? The point is that an addict doesn’t have to die using… right?

The “set of principles” you refer to, the 12-step program of AA/NA, is the doctrinal form of the Addictive Voice. In other words, the 12-step program is simple a statement describing conditions under which you will continue drinking/using, and therefore has nothing to do with recovery. The point is that no one has to be “an addict,” as you call yourself, and that your addict-identity is the central tragedy we properly call recoveryism.
Yep, I am a recovering addict with close to 5 years of freedom. It really is hard for me to absorb the written condemnation of something that has helped me save my life, but I work to keep and open mind. To me, it seems that there could be many paths out of an addictive lifestyle, including RR. Can we not coexist? Why does AA/NA need to be a cult/fraud in order for RR to succeed?

imagae,

I’m afraid you are blind to the fact that AA/NA is a fellowship of addiction that attacks the idea of recovery, and condemns newcomers like you to life in the tiny prison you call, “in recovery.” You once knew that your self-intoxication was immoral conduct, and that to recover you’d have to summarily quit for life, but under relentless attack by stepcraft, you have sold out to your addiction. In other words, you are now a grateful, recovering addict, under the illusion that you are protected from “active addiction” by remaining in your addict-identity, one-day-at-a-time.

There is nothing holding me to NA, except myself. It is a choice I make daily. No one forces me to stay… or perform actions against my will…. or pray to any certain God. I am an intelligent person with a strong mind of her own, and have found much solace in NA. Nope, I don’t always agree with NA. Sometimes I just take what resonates on a soul level, and leave the rest.

I’m afraid it is your addiction that holds you in your place. You are taught that if you deny being an addict, you will go straight to hell right here on earth. You are told that even if you do abstain independently, you can’t be happy, and will eventually implode. If you get the idea that you can succeed without meetings or addict-identity, you are flooded with relapse anxiety, the real cement that glues you to your folding chair.
It feels true to me that the world is full of people who are all wired differently, you know? What works for some, may not work for others. If RR has been a positive way of life for you, well that is fantastic. I would never work to discredit something that honestly helps a person find freedom from active addiction, never.

We are all the same. One addiction, regardless of the drug or other circumstances is exactly the same as all others. You have a perverted survival drive that has inverted your moral compass to point south, to death, rather than to the north which points to your personal guiding star. AA/NA is the dark star of addiction itself, biological desire run rampant, organizing your thoughts in AA’s 12 sectors of powerlessness and addict-identity.
Please ask yourself, why do you feel the need to do that? Why do you angrily rip AA apart? Why is it your life’s purpose to prove that the fellowships of AA and NA are… cults? Again, ca we not coexist? Why does YOUR way, have to be the ONLY way?

AA and RR have always co-existed, although I have named independent recovery AVRT®. Rational Recovery is simply the much larger population of independent recovered people who accommodate the human family’s reasonable demand that we immediately cease and forever desist form self-intoxication. AA is the fellowship of addiction which foists the uncertainty of one-day-at-a-time sobriety upon their families, adding insult to injuries we already caused, taking advantage of the family’s loving nature by fronting the innocence of a pretend disease.

Now, get ready for this. There is only one way to quit anything you love, and it certainly isn’t by reserving the privilege of resuming your indulgence in it. Anyone can decide to never drink/use again and stick to that decision without getting weird about it. One-day-at-a-time sobriety, while worshipping a made-up deity that absolves the moral burden of addiction, is absolutely grotesque.
You know, I started by commenting in an angry voice. After re-reading what I had typed, I deleted and started over. This article does piss me off, but I really want to honor the hope that seeing the world a different way, shouldn’t make us enemies. Shit, that right there is the heart of war…

I understand your pissed-off-edness. I am calling out the best in you, the original family values you had as a little girl when you knew that indulging pleasure at the expense of others is immoral conduct. That was before AA taught you to lie about your disease of powerlessness, the disease of relapse that has replaced your maiden name with “Imanaddict.” Your Beast of addiction may rage at me, convinced I’m an angry, raging maniac, but that’s your problem, not mine. The fact is, addicts are traitors to the human family, in recovery or not. Deal with it.

Jack Trimpey
mreynolds Says:
February 29th, 2008 at 6:43 am
Wow, I am so glad to have found this blog and especially this particular thread. Yesterday, quite by accident I came across the Rational Recovery book and read a fourth of it in the bookstore.

This particular thread is meaningful to me because I have resisted any kind of treatment for fear of being forced into AA. I totally object to their theories and see it as just another addiction. Powerless, my foot! If I thought I was powerless, I would just keep drinking and forget trying to quit. How easy is that?

Rational Recovery ®

Notorious Inversions of Truth

12 Responses to “Notorious Inversions of Truth”

Leave a Reply

Subscribe to our Feed

Subscribe via Email

Search the Blog

Categories

Pages

Archives