Rational Recovery Center - The Internet Center for Self-Recovery

This sheet contains information of a highly personal and confidential nature intended to inspire inmates to accept personal responsibility for lifetime abstinence from alcohol and other drugs. As such, it is protected under all laws pertaining to matters of conscience and access to public information. I, Jack Trimpey, am fully responsible for the content below, for using indirect means to distribute this sheet, and for encouraging inmates to possess it, read it, and to act upon it.

If you are in prison, it is probably related to your use of alcohol or drugs. If this is so, read on. You do not have to participate in the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous because it is a religious organization with a religious program, and a false religion at that! If you already suspect this, you are right. Federal and state supreme courts are ruling in your favor, and I believe forced AA participation will eventually be outlawed everywhere in America. I hope prison-based AA will be outlawed because it doesn't work. If you have suspected this, all research proves you are right.

In fact, AA is not about addiction recovery; AA is about AA and nothing else. The steps have no suggestion on how to quit drinking/using, and AA members are forbidden to quit their addictions once and for all. Abstinence is always an indirect spin-off of working the 12-step program, one-day-at-a-time, for the rest of your life.

Addiction treatment doesn't work. The abstinent outcome of addiction treatment is so low, approaching zero, that abstinence outcome statistics aren't even collected. All that is measured is program compliance and indirect outcomes like feeling better or keeping out of trouble. There is no treatment for addiction because addiction is not a disease. But you probably already suspect this is so. Addiction treatment benefits those giving the treatment far more than those receiving it.

Forced AA participation can be very harmful to you. You are taught that your original family values and your own beliefs about life are unworthy, and must be replaced with the religious 12 steps. You are required to surrender your life, your independence, your judgment, your time, your critical judgment, and your autonomy to the group. In other words, you are prohibited from thinking for yourself, exactly as in any cult. For most people, addiction appears more attractive than AA's design for living.

Anyone can quit an addiction. It's not hard, if you know what you are doing. Of all who actually get better, 80% do it on their own, without groups, counseling, or treatment. You probably know some of us yourself. We made a plan to quit, not one day at a time, but once for all time, and we found within ourselves the human ability to stick to that decision under all conditions. Abstinence soon became second nature, and we now live as normal, healthy people who simply never drink or use.

The worst possible way to quit something you love to do is one day at a time. Tentative abstinence is a recipe for relapse! Quitting an addiction is not difficult, if that is what you want to do. You probably have good reasons to quit, but believing a disease causes your drinking or using is of no help, and feeds directly into the addiction.

The fact is, you drink or use drugs simply because you like to get drunk or get high. Your desire for pleasure is no disease; it's what makes you a man or a woman. The desire for pleasure can overtake better judgment, but there is nothing to stop you from overcoming any physical desire. This is called maturity. The sole cause of your addiction is the Voice in your head that says, "Do it!" in a thousand seductive and convincing ways. The Addictive Voice (AV) is an expression of the bodily desire for the physical pleasure of alcohol/drugs, which we call "the Beast." When you learn to recognize your AV as your enemy, it cannot control you.

By naming your inner enemy the Beast, and understanding that "it" is not you, you can gain perfect control and remain perfectly abstinent for the rest of your life. Think to yourself the Big Plan of Rational Recovery, "I will never drink/use again." Now, listen to your AV. It will talk back to you, and you can feel it get upset. It will say, "Yeah, sure." Or, "Bullshit." Or, it will say, "Never say never." The purpose of the AV is to allow your Beast to survive, even if you have to suffer or die.

As you think this over, your Beast will start to cringe with fear. It is afraid of dying, and it knows you are capable of "killing" it. Your Beast is afraid of you, because it knows that it is powerless before you. Do this right now. Wiggle your index finger. That is you wiggling your finger. Now, challenge your Beast to do it. Notice that your Beast desperately wants to move your finger, but it doesn't move at all. That's because you are in total control over your voluntary muscles, and can resist any bodily desire. "It" can't do a damned thing. By teaching yourself more about AVRT you can make a Big Plan and know (not just hope!) that you are completely recovered.

Isn't it interesting that the 12-step program requires you to admit you are powerless before the Beast of addiction? I think they have it dead backwards. That's right. I believe that AA is actually pure AV, preventing people from taking responsibility for quitting for good. It's scary that prison employees who are members of AA force their own 12-step program on prison inmates. Remember, the only requirement for AA membership is the desire to quit drinking/using. As long as one only desires to quit, it's not over. Recovered people have no desire to quit. This is why you cannot ever get better in AA/NA.

Your prison is not overcrowded, as much as it is being misused. AVRT is so much superior to the 12-step program that the prisons would become half-empty it were available to all inmates and parolees. The recovery group movement sows the seeds of addiction by removing your personal control over your behavior and undermining your confidence to lead an independent, abstinent life. I hope you are released soon, and have a Big Plan in effect by the time you leave. That way, you will never see the inside of a prison again. You can guarantee it.

If you are required to attend AA, you have an absolute right to refuse, and you will probably do much better staying clean and sober all on your own. Some inmates are accepting longer sentences in order to reclaim their lives from the grip of 12-step recovery, which nurtures lifelong addiction.

Rational Recovery is a society of self-recovered people who support AVRT-based recovery in the corrections field. We are not presently accepted by social institutions because of great misunderstandings about the nature of addiction and recovery, and because of the political power of the AA syndicate in government. If you resist forced 12-step participation, the prison may retaliate against you.

In Concord Prison, New Hampshire, Bill Yates challenged the 12-step system. He was denied parole for years only because of refusing AA, and when he finally filed a federal lawsuit, he was transferred to maximum security with no explanation and placed in solitary. Yates follows other inmates who have won big cases.

Inmates are discovering that the real prison is 12-step recovery, which pulls people down each time they try to stand up. Many men and women return to prison again and again, because they cannot shake the monkey off their backs. AA/NA has become a network of informers for tracking inmates beyond prison walls. As a way to secure abstinence and a better life, AA/NA is a colossal failure.

Word is traveling fast inside the prisons of America that AVRT is the way to go. Corrections officials and the public are slowly waking up to the fact that AVRT represents the highest ideals of our Constitutional democracy, and offers the greatest hope for inmates and for law and order. If you want to fight against forced 12-step participation, be sure you learn all you can about Addictive Voice Recognition Technique®. AVRT is the lore of self-recovery in simple terms. It is old-fashioned, and really gets the job done. We are the ones who actually defeated our addictions through free will and moral action, so we are the true experts on recovery. The best book on AVRT is Rational Recovery: The New Cure for Substance Addiction (by Jack Trimpey, Pocket Books, 1996, $12 + $4 p/h.), which your prison library is obliged to keep available. You can order it from Rational Recovery, Box 800, Lotus CA 95651. I will include an example of a federal lawsuit devised by Bill Yates. All you do is fill in the blanks. If you need expert testimony in court, I will attempt to testify on your behalf.

You don't have to fight against AA to recover on your own. I don't know what I would do if I were in your shoes. I hope I would have the courage to stick to my beliefs and defend my rights. But 12-steppers are quite aggressive, and will make your life difficult if you don't do things their way. There is nothing wrong with faking it until you get out of prison. If you go with the flow, remember the following: Don't say bad things about yourself. The moral inventories may violate your Fifth Amendment rights. It is perfectly moral and ethical to give false answers to inquisitors who are violating your Constitutional rights. Never admit to having blackouts. You can be accused of things you can't defend against. If you label yourself an alcoholic or addict, don't believe it yourself. The practice of self-labeling is not original AA; it is an insanity plea which results in discrimination before the law. Never admit to drinking or using; make others prove it. Everything you say to a 12-step counselor will be used against you, to prove something negative about you, and make you submit to their religious beliefs.

Write to me, and tell me about your AA experiences. Maybe we can change the system.

Rational Recovery ®