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?

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

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

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,

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

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

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

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