The Ancestry of Substance Abuse Counseling
©2007, Jack Trimpey, LCSW, all rights reserved.
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) was conceived by two intelligent, well-educated men, Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, both of whom were severely addicted to alcohol, and neither of whom finally defeated their own addictions. Behind closed doors, they admitted their ghastly sense of powerlessness over addictive desire, and shared stories of personal failure and degeneracy.
They were a rare combination of character and talent. Bill Wilson was a raising-the-dead necromancer (a channeler, like John Edward), and Dr. Bob was a physician-drunk. Their combined input produced a magnificent compromise between the rigors of moral decency, which they loathed and feared, the prestige of religion and science, which they both understood very well, and the call of the wild, which we may deduce from their actions, was closest to their hearts.
Shortly before they met and founded Alcoholics Anonymous, Mr. Wilson had been through a number of spa-like addiction treatment programs without success, medical programs remarkably similar in methods and outcomes to today’s addiction treatment centers. Following intense, emotional turmoil and apparent psychotic episode at a hospital that treated addiction with hallucinogenic drugs, Bill Wilson remained extremely restless, desperately running away from addictive desire. He became obsessed with saving other drunkards from themselves, possibly as his own wish-fulfillment to be rescued from himself. In other words, he did not recognize his messianic mission as part of an underlying, immutable plan to get drunk. His chaotic outreach, however, resulted in a chance enounter with his future cohort, Dr. Smith.
Dr. Smith was on the verge of professional and personal suicide, drinking during surgical procedures in the operating room as well as in his professional office. Mr. Wilson was convinced he’d resume drinking unless he was actively persuading other drunks to become like him — sober, but also compelled to help other drunks become sober. It began as a simple, pyramid scheme to build a network of drunks policing, comforting, and redeeming other drunks, but it soon took on grand dimensions with enormous political and social significance. Dr. Bob, similiarly infatuated with addictive pleasures, found Mr. Wilson’s proposal curiously attractive. Before long, he became the first substance abuse counselor, as the medical director of a 12-step addiction treatment program he initiated at St. Thomas Hospital in Akron. He was the original “two-hatter,” engaged in a dual relationship with his addicted patients, recruiting them into his own nascent religious cult.
At the time they conceived of AA, Bill W and Dr. Bob were fully in the grip of the desire to drink, i.e., the Beast, and they were capable only of thought that complied with the mandate of addiction, i.e., the Addictive Voice (AV). Naturally, they founded a pious fellowship based upon the beliefs and values of addicted people, not of recovered people.
A good moniker for addictive desire is the Beast, addressing both the moral and biological manifestations of addiction. Thoughts arising from addictive desire, the Addictive Voice (AV), carry astonishing, God-like, authority. The AV organizes human thought into its willing slave, and the Beast automatically moves in to become the god-as-you-understand-him common to addiction and to the 12-step program. Addictive desire is obviously the natural, common deity of all addicted people.
The deity of AA was purposely left vacant by Mr. Wilson, a failed Christian who knew all too well that the full-fledged God Almighty of Christianity would not tolerate the willful sin of addiction. The god of the alcoholic is necessarily a construct of the Addictive Voice, one-dimensional, a one-trick pony capable only of love, love, love, but who might, in the simplified realm of addiction, take credit for good fortune such as the materialization of convenient, vacant parking spaces at the shopping mall.
The Beast of addiction, which is a perverted, pleasure-driven, survival drive, loathes and fears moral injunction against self-intoxication. It is inconceivable that irresolute drunks such as these men were could arrive at a correct, final, or even a constructive solution to the very problem they could not solve themselves. Alas, they did not.
They created a fellowship that would shield them from moral injunctions against drunkenness while allowing them a veneer of dignity consisting of self-conscious piety and moral posturing. Using a “spiritual” disease metaphor to explain the preposterous behavior of drunks creates an awkward illusion of victimhood, redemption and salvation which is justified primarily by the “safety in numbers,” survival principle of the herd. Could all those groupers, substance abuse counselors, and Hollywood stars be wrong?
By creating a personal deity drawing from their own sodden imaginations, the AA founders and their following could attribute their tentatively good behavior to that entity rather than to their own moral judgment and good character. They intuitively knew that by taking personal responsibility for abstinence, they would prove that they had been perfectly capable of abstaining all along. Of course, that would have placed an enormous burden of wretched guilt upon them, requiring abject apologies for the willful act of self-intoxication rather than making amends for their drunken behavior. They both understood that independent recovery is quite unforgiving, because, without the redemptive disease concept of addiction, “relapses” turn out to be nothing more nor less than personal parties.
AA has become a wonderful new home for the nation’s substance abusers, a place where moral standards and rules of common decency are inverted to accommodate each member’s incipient plan to continue drinking/using under certain, undefined conditions, i.e., “relapse.” By exploiting humanity’s better nature, AA evokes massive social and political support, and fully intends to convert the United States of America into a socialist collective state that glorifies dependency upon society’s productive sector. The mental health parity legislation is a perfect example of how the contageous, progressive dependency of addiction can create social policies that aggravate rather than ameliorate mass, runaway addiction to alcohol and other drugs.
By their own proclamation, Bill and Bob and their following were no longer common drunks, but worthy victims of disease. In recognition of their common failing, Bill and Bob agreed to provide each other mutual supervision, so that they would not have to rely upon their own moral judgment to refrain from the immoral act of self-intoxication. Such an awkward, and frankly weird, arrangement could not long survive without convincing endorsement, and what better endorsement could there be than other drunks seeking something better than the life of active addiction, something more dignified than skid row? The imperative of recruitment existed from the start, if only to legitimize the eccentric core of the fledgling Fellowship of the Beast.
However, the best endorsements came from the religious and medical fields, both of which were eager to rid themselves of a chronic problem upon which their professional skills seemed to have little beneficial effect. In addition to Dr. Bob, early AA recruited other physicians and clergy as members who took the message of 12-step recovery into their seminaries, universities, and professional guilds.
In those days it was very well known that the continued use of alcohol by problem drinkers is stupid, immmoral conduct, and that there is no “treatment” for hidebound stupidity, nor for immorality. Nonetheless, here was a tiny band of eccentrics led by a pie-eyed piper from Akron claiming to offer salvation for all drunks, so it wasn’t long before big names such as William James, Carl Jung, the Roman Catholic Church, and others eagerly withdrew from the practice of trying to help drunks. Nobody likes drunks; they are terribly annoying and can’t really be helped. On this matter, James, Jung, and the rest were spot-on. Had the gravy train of the addiction treatment industry already materialized, I am certain they would have discovered great hope for victims of addictive disease though highly skilled substance abuse counseling services, which they would have heartily endorsed.
Resulting from the discovery of addictive disease, the families of addicted people were suddenly delivered from their very correct perception of their drunken family members as ugly, stinky, disgusting, and often dangerous animals. The arrogance of Mr. Wilson should not be underestimated. With his excuse of addictive disease, now endorsed by his physician-drunk friend, Mr. Wilson made his wife, Lois, into the first spouse in history expected to accommodate the tentative abstinence required of an imaginary disease. Prone to gullibility, she swallowed his story whole and graciously opened her home to a procession of low-life, one of whom committed suicide on her carpet. Her tolerance for the implausible was quite high, as seen in her enthusiasm for conducting seances to contact dead people.
I tried Mr. Wilson’s line of addictive disease on my wife, Lois, and it seemed to work for a while. When that experiment failed to bring peace to the family, she reverted to her own native beliefs and values, and forced me to choose between addiction and family membership. I quit drinking. Case closed. AVRT® had been born.
AA is the Fellowship of the Beast. The Addictive Voice was the mother tongue of AA founders, Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith. Every word spoken at meetings and in official literature fits the definition of the Addictive Voice, “Any thinking that supports or suggests the possible future use of alcohol or other drugs.“ In one-day-at-a-time sobriety, hope springs eternal for the Beast, as members in the state of grace called “sobriety” await with awe to witness the cyclical miracle of relapse, forgiveness, and redemption.
As AA progressed toward a substantial membership, a second publication, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, was published. It was a sponsor’s manual, setting forth the principles of recruitment, indoctrination, and the grandiosity that inspired Bill Wilson to predict,
“…we could take what we had into the factories and cause laborers and capitalists to love each other. Our uncompromising honesty might soon clean up politics. With one arm around the shoulder of religion and the other around the shoulder of medicine, we’d resolve their differences. Having learned to live so happily, we’d show everybody else how. Why, we thought, our Society of Alcoholics Anonymous might prove to be the spearhead of a new spiritual advance! We might transform the world.”
At heart, sociopaths are always aware of their own connivance. The conversion of our social service system to the inverted disease/treatment paradigm was not accidental, and AA is not a victim of evil mercenaries who besmirch AA with the corrosive profit motive. The radical changes in American society in the last few decades, whereby social policies are changed to accommodate bodily desires, were intended from the start, as part of a grand plan to make American society infinitely tolerant of base, antisocial behavior.
Although AA’s official literature bans members from professional 12-stepping, there is no compliance at all in our social service system. Substance abuse counselors abound in every community, in practically all traffic and family courts where they use the desperation before the court to lever their clients into their own religious organization. By implicating the family as part of the cause of problem drinking (the family disease of alcoholism), substance abuse counselors forcefully invade the family with contradictions of their ancestral heritage, starting with the family’s gene pool, the indictment of the long-deceased, and replacing the family’s religious beliefs and traditions with heretical recovery doctrines. Family bonds are replaced with cult ties, e.g., “My recovery comes first!” and the obligation of adapting to life under the cloud of one-day-at-a-time sobriety by attending Al-Anon and submitting to substance abuse counseling.
Training in substance abuse counseling began during World War II at the Rutgers University as an unrecognized, unfunded, maverick coalition of 12-steppers who held meetings in empty classrooms and storerooms. The movement slowly grew in size and finally exploded during the 1970’s when addiction treatment was funded by government fiat requiring health insurance companies to pay for 12th-stepping in hospitals.
Rivers of cash created an instant industry where none existed before, and many thousands of 12-steppers in every community came forward, eager to help themselves stay sober by inflicting their own recovery program on others for a living. A new, 12-rung career ladder leading from skid row to the seats of social authority had been devised, and the bureaucratic Beast was born. AA activists approached state legislatures with laws intended to provide qualified help for addicted people, laws that would require certification for substance abuse counselors, certification that superficially seemed to align with traditional standards of health care, but which essentially contradicts the foundation of family values, and runs exactly counter to the traditions of the learned professions.
The purpose of certifying substance abuse counselors is not to help addicted people defeat their addictions. Certification is a trade barrier to limit the information available to addicted people to the 12-step doctrines of AA. In other words, certification is an elaborate design to suppress informed consent to recovery group participation and addiction treatment services. Certification allows employers to discriminate by requiring them to eliminate persons who have not turned their lives over to the extended family of Bill “The Incapable” Wilson.
The substance abuse counseling guild is a bridge from the drug culture directly into the social service system. For example, the spread of certain drugs from national borders into the American heartland is partly the result of substance abuse counselors in recovery (“two-hatters”) imported to work in publicly funded, heartland agencies. Under the terrible stress of relocation, these carriers of addictive disease and drugs have little “relapses,” and just happen to have easy access to otherwise hard-to-get drugs. The addiction treatment industry has become a powerful engine of social change, a bureaucratic Beast that is directly challenging the fundamental beliefs, family values, and social policies of Western Civilization.
(In the next blog entry, I will do some much-needed dirty work, exposing the infrastructure of the 12-step syndicate, with the spotlight on the deceptions and abuses of substance abuse counseling.)
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May 20th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
I was in Recovery for a few years in the AA program and did find some relief and it was about the best thing going. As time went on, I did not feel like it was helping me anymore and was actually becoming a little draining. As I dropped down to about 1 meeting a week I was getting questioned a lot as if my Sobriety was in question. This made me feel worse and rather than going back to 2 or 3 meetings a week, I quit going. Much to my relief, I started feeling better immediately. It has been well over a year now and I’m still sober and feeling great. I still am open with others about my past and enjoy the company of people in my church who are also recovered. AA is not the only way, but I will give it credit for giving me a good start and a good foundation. The only problem is that AA is not a very good catch and release program. Most people that have been around for awhile in the program have the philosophy that “once in, always in”. And if you leave AA, you are just destined for failure. Well let me tell you that may be true for some people, but for a lot of people it is not. I know quite a few people that have left AA or similar programs to go on and lead healthy, productive and happy lives.
Anonymous
www.RecoveryTalk.org
May 24th, 2007 at 8:23 am
True. AA can be useful for some; for a short period. Note, a short period, if only to assuage loneliness. However, AA has nothing to do with actually quitting. One quits drinking by doing exactly that: by quitting. With AA; or, without AA, one quits by quitting.
May 25th, 2007 at 8:08 am
I’m looking forward to the much needed “dirty work” - hopefully you won’t keep me hanging TOO long.
June 3rd, 2007 at 6:07 am
I am Chris W. of the G.O.G in Athens, Ga. I am a recovering addict and a house parent at a recovery residence. If you really think that the steps and the fellowship is about perpetuating addiction then you were probably never addicted to begin with. I invite you to join us at the 6:30 meeting at the biscayne and we could show you how you may be harming other people who are addicts. However, on a side note, if you don’t take the calls at 3am, or go to the funerals, or work with the families of true addicts, if you have never worked the steps and totally released your will to god, then you have no right to lessen the work that he has done in my life. You should try giving all the info on AA and NA instead of just your distorted and selfish views that ultimately fatten your pocketbook. While you may help some problem drinkers or weekend warrior recreational users, your message would be a death sentance to me and anyone else that is an ADDICT. How much is your little seminar? We don’t have any dues or fees. 4 days and you’re cured? I used from 8 yrs old to 24 . 16 yrs of drug abuse and you think your seminar will cure me in 4 days? Where does God figure into your moneymaking scheme? Or, do you just prey on people too beaten down by life and willing to do anything to put a quick bandaid on their pain. I hope you enjoy your money and your ego. I’ll enjoy my sleep and a sense of serenity only available from a clean conscience and a knowledge/practice of god in my life.
With love and tolerance,
Christopher W. 12-25-05
June 17th, 2007 at 7:34 am
Hi Jack,
I started drugging in 1967 and drinking in 1996. Never a day went by that I didn’t do some kind of substance, . 40 yrs! Last Tuesday, still in AA, still relapsing, I was looking for medication for alcoholism on line so I could get it from my Dr. I ran across the site of RR. Today is Sunday. Not only will I never drink again, I will never ever go to a 12 step program or seek professional help for an addiction! And I mean it! It’s been 6 days! I made my Big Plan right in front of my husband(what a wonderful man) out loud. I have ordered my book and will continue on this site for my 3 mos. But it is over. I am all fixed, I am happy and healthy. It was easy and simple , unlike that stupid AA. (I always knew there was something squirrely going on). What did MLuther King say? Free at last — thank ME! I’m free at last!
Love ya Jack. Sherrie
June 19th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
I have been to Brentwood in 1989 3 ms IT was all about inventory,honesty,submissions,the grosser the story the more respect you received.I went to 3 other rehabs and no straight answers.THank-you Mr Trimpey for outing them for what it is.
Luc Bourassa
Toronto,ontario,canada.
June 23rd, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Hi Jack:
Thanks for all you do in exposing the 12 step heresy for what it is.
I remember in my AA days, there was this one poor chap in the meeting who was miserable, who was telling who I think was his sponsor that he just didn’t see how this 12 step thing could help him. What could his sponsor offer him besides let go let God and a bunch of other vacuous bullshit? Poor fellow! If only he’d known about RR, if only I’d known about RR back then. AA causes a lot of needless grief and sorrow for people who still haven’t been brainwashed by their malignant cult. Keep going after them, Jack!
July 9th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
I don’t really understand why someone who works with addicts and alcoholics would bash a program that is successful for thousands of people. I do not know if your program works or not but I do know that AA is working for me. I have NEVER been told that I had to do anything working my 12 step program but given suggestions on how other people have handle similar situtations. The 12 step program is a Spiritual program (there is a 12 step bible) and works if you work it. This web site is not about recovery if it was you would not put down a program that was developed by more than 100 people (yes Bill and Bob are the main ones but if you read the book it says that 100 people helped it perfecting it) and I know many people who have been in recovery for 20 to 30 years by working the program you are calling a cult!!! I firmly believe that a person who wanted to help could help people without putting down other means of recovery!! I am very sadded by your approach at SELLING your recovery ideas!!! As my program teaches me I will pray for you and anyone who would walk away from a GOD given program and follow you. It is important that we recovering 12 steppers stick together we all share a common bond and need to be reminded when our mind turns on us who we are. I am just wondering how many of your followers are still in recovery today, you success rate, how much $$$$$ you have earned, what your program will be doing in 50 years and of course how many people DIE from following you!!!!May GOD be with you and your followers and I WILL pray that each of you live find your own PROMISES
July 9th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
I have tried “Self-Recovery” on all levels….Trust me!!!! It never worked. AA is not a cult it is not for everyone and is not always the best place to recover but it is not a cult. Unfortunately, the true nature of AA has been scrambled by too many other addictions and opinions. Even the founders saw that coming. There are a lot of people who are forced to go to AA which leaves a lot of room for error. It was designed for those who were so far gone there was no other way out or for people who wanted it.
Your program is no farther away from being a cult than from anyone elses and I am sure your program will work for lots of people just like AA has but to vindicate AA or other recovery groups for self promotion seems a shame. AA saved my life and it will save thousands of others who are able to sift through the BS.
July 14th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
RR,
I have been around AA for 15 years,having been sent by the courts
twice to sign papers.I just got worse. Many times I went to my meetings
not feeling like drinking, but after an hour of listening to “war stories” of
partying, I really wanted to drink and would then go get drunk.
Also, I never knew what a resentment was until I heard one explained in a meeting and I started thinking about ones I should have
against certain family members. From that point on this resentment
manifested itself and grew like a cancer and I was totally unable to shake
it. AA’s sayings like “singleness of purpose”, “unity”,”principles before
personalities”, “our common welfare comes first” and the 12 traditions are very cult like.I have heard advice to dump one’s spouse if they were a bad influence or objected to the program.Thanks RR,your the solution!
July 19th, 2007 at 4:20 am
BILL WILSON - FALSE PROPHET
It is important to note that Bill Wilson’s faith system was not based on Jesus Christ and Him crucified; nor is there any mention of Jesus Christ being the Savior from his sin. Both he and Bob Smith (co-founder of AA) embraced and promoted a variety of spiritual experiences, which included practicing spiritualism and conversing with the dead (which the Bible forbids) and being heavily involved in séances. Wilson also acted as a medium or channeler. It was while involved in these types of religious experiences, not Biblical Christianity, that Wilson developed his Twelve Steps (Pass It On, pp 156, 198, 275, 278).
PEACE BE WITH YOU
MICKY
October 8th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Dear Jack
Regarding your “Vitriolic A.A. bashing”
…More power to you!
As I see it, what you are doing is nothing less than the vital work of deprogramming victims of a dangerous, brain-washing cult.
I note with sadness some of the previous objections to your comments from current A.A. infectees. “Poor, suggestible, deluded buggers” I say.
They evidently beleve that their quasi-religious indoctrination is a good thing to infect others with.
My response to this is: Really? Tell that to the former A.A member (a vulnerable bipolar sufferer) that I know who was so successfully indoctrinated with all this Big Book occultism that he was detained in an acute mental health treatment ward because of a bout of feverous, A.A induced religious mania!
Wait a minute… I have another one for you… how about the (former) very good friend of mine whose loving wife took her kids and dumped him because (due to the consequences of the proselytism that A.A inevitably coerces) she and her kids could understandably no longer tolerate the strain of having to listen to his morbid, (frankly David Koresh/Jim Jones reminiscent) evangelical A.A. monologues on a daily basis?
Folks, speaking for myself, all I know is this:
I will NEVER EVER have anything more to do with recovery groups. I’m now sensible enough to know that they could only do me harm.
And besides, I’M NEVER GOING TO DRINK AGAIN AND I’M NEVER GOING TO CHANGE MY MIND - so why the hell do I need a bunch of Moonies trying to undermine that committment by telling me that if I stick with them I have the dubious pleasure of remaining sober “one day at a time?”
All I can say is, Jack, thank you for heping me to recognize my Beast and allowing me to start acting like a man and not an animal. I’m sure I would have done this sooner if not for the near-fatal mistake of entering the Cult of Akron.
Peace,
Gary