Why You Should Stay Away From Recovery
Groups
Jack Trimpey
If you are addicted to alcohol or other drugs, there truly
is no help for you. In order to have a better life than
your addiction affords, you will have to discontinue - yes,
quit! - your use of those substances entirely, and you will
have to accomplish this on your own. Otherwise, your present
problems caused by drinking or using will very likely worsen,
and new problems will probably arise. You may have suspected
for quite a while that you will inevitably have to completely
quit drinking/using if you are to have a better life, but
that decision is elusive, and making it is quite difficult.
However, quitting an addiction is difficult only at first,
when your memory of the pleasure is fresh, and when the
idea of lifetime abstinence seems a horrible prospect. During
this time, you will think up many reasons to revert to or
continue drinking or using. Still, this is no reason to
abandon your better judgment.
Inside the drunk or the junkie you seem
to be, is the original, authentic person who hit this planet
a few decades ago when you were full of wonder and excitement
about the possibilities that lay ahead. But somewhere along
the line, you fell deeply in love with a stranger among
human passions, the exquisite embrace of intoxicated pleasure.
Like an awakened romantic, you instinctively decided that
the greatest pleasures that life affords would come from
or along with the use of alcohol and other drugs, and you
reordered your life to accommodate your new lover. You wedded
to the pleasure of self-intoxication, pledging your loyalty
to it, forsaking all other loves, until death would you
part. Now, you see that your lover is a ruthless Beast,
willing to kill you for the next drink or fix, that is destroying
you. You must therefore turn against your lover and engage
it in mortal combat in order for you to survive. Rational
Recovery is your guide to victory, which comes quickly and
easily.
There are a number of pitfalls common to
self-recovery from addiction. Those who want to help you
but were never addicted themselves have little wisdom to
share on the subject, for their beliefs were shaped by reading
books and listening to experts equally misinformed. Your
addiction is a powerful survival drive run amok, and it
doesn't want to die. You can call your addiction the Beast,
so that you know better what you are contending with. It
will exploit every opportunity to protect itself from the
only thing it fears, which is your commitment to lifetime
abstinence from alcohol and other drugs. It is perfectly
at home in America, a society that worships addiction as
a noble affliction, and denies that recovery by human effort
is possible. Ours is a society that does not reward, and
sometimes punishes, people who accept personal responsibility
for abstinence. It loves the popular wisdom it has manufactured,
that in order to avoid the pain of florid addiction, or
to simply abstain from alcohol or drugs, you cannot "go
it alone" - you need help, social support, and yes,
moral guidance from other drunkards and junkies.
When you were a child, your parents warned
you to stay away from certain kids who were prone to trouble,
"bad company." They knew that groups of people
will have their way with newcomers. Recovery groups of all
kinds are bad company, for their members plainly are the
drinking and drug cultures of America. They define themselves
by the substance they once adored, and structure their lives
around the desire to drink or use. They have far more than
their share of personal problems, and they share the belief
that they cannot independently behave themselves as normal
people do. Their confessions of immorality are fearless
because they squarely deny that their past and future drinking
is immoral, even after they proved beyond a doubt many years
ago that their self-indulgence caused misery and grief to
all, including themselves. They stubbornly refuse to accept
moral responsibility for their use of alcohol and other
drugs. They dignify their drunkenness by saying it is caused
by a disease, and by forgiving each other for what family
and society will not. Thus forgiven by their peers, they
preen their moral feathers by confessing every sin but the
most reprehensible act of all, the single act from which
all of their well-earned shame flows forth - the act of
self-intoxication. Moral cowards all, they squirm free from
the burden of complete, permanent abstinence. One-day-at-a-time,
they evade the painful decision to quit drinking/using for
the rest of their days. Instead, they try to please the
eyes of their families and society with pious and humble
attitudes, while they drink, drink, drink between meetings,
any time they really want to, calling their binges "slips,"
or "relapses."
When you make your Big Plan, using the
concepts of Addictive Voice Recognition Technique®,
you will notice very quickly, probably within a few days,
that you are firmly in control and feel more and more comfortable
with total abstinence. Once you are free from mind-altering
substances, some of your problems will begin to fade, and
you will be better able to solve other problems. Gradually,
you will forget the great unhappiness that brings you now
to quit drinking or using drugs, but because of your irreversible
Big Plan, total abstinence will be second nature. In time,
you will not remember clearly why you quit, but you will
always understand that hope and happiness depend entirely
on total abstinence from alcohol and drugs. Life after recovery
is a great adventure, and you are a pioneer in your own
life.
Watch out for people who want to help you;
avoid them like the plague. It makes no difference if they
are members of a recovery group or sport many letters after
their names. Those who get stuck in their addictions by
acting like recovery missionaries have not really gotten
better, and they have only their own insecurity and handed-down
misguidance to offer you. Look where they are, and see how
they live their lives, and decide if you really want to
be like them. Recovery groups are bad company; they will
pull you down to make sure your shadow does not eclipse
their tiny accomplishments of refusing to drink for just
one day, or confessing to every sin but drinking. If you
want a better life than recovery groups have to offer, and
I hope you do, you will have to define it yourself, and
find it on your own.
Addiction recovery is a private struggle
and not a group project. You live in a society that does
not believe in you or in your ability to quit drinking or
using. America is the birthplace of the 12-step recovery
group movement, and its lucrative business arm, the addiction
treatment industry. Recovery groups are big business, for
they feed treatment centers with hapless members who are
disoriented and vulnerable from the use of alcohol and other
drugs, as well as by the crippling 12-step program of Alcoholics
Anonymous.
Recovery groups are a cause of social decay,
family conflict, and a prime cause of mass, runaway addiction
to alcohol and other drugs. Very few recovery group participants
abstain for long; 95% drop out within a year, 50% in the
first month. They leave with the grim prediction that they
will drink again, and are told, "We will always be
here for you."
Dissenters are told they have not yet "hit
bottom," as if each of us has a built-in barrier against
self-destruction that must be hit before the final truth
of recovery group doctrine is revealed. Groupers are obsessed
with the time since the last drink, which is only counting
time until the next drink. Time is worn as a status symbol,
all in awe of old-timers whose abstinence is seen as a miracle,
a superhuman feat akin to firewalking. People who don't
drink, however, have no purpose in counting time since the
last drink, since they would only be measuring their longevity
since they quit.
All recovery groups are public meetings
where confidentiality is impossible. Even "closed"
meetings are filled with people who value the group's interests
more than yours. The group is glad to inform on you by playing
the slip-signing game, in which people are forced to go
to meetings where members will tell the court you were really
there. When confronted with this duplicity, groupers claim
they are innocent of what the courts do, victims of outside
forces in the same way they view their own addictions.
The medical disease model of addiction
is so silly that no one believes it at first, but millions
have been taken in by this seductive idea. Addiction is
ugly, and so are addicted people. The disease concept of
addiction is medical absolution of immorality. A disease
victim's behavior can be tolerated; how can we blame someone
for having a symptom of a disease? Calling a common drunk
a disease victim may seem ludicrous, but if your drunken
family member now lies in the cemetery, it may be easier
to put flowers on the grave of a disease victim than someone
who drank himself to death after many years of preposterous
drunken behavior.
The psychological disease concept of addiction
is more believable than the medical model, and is also supported
by learned professionals. Addiction is not only ugly, but
unbelievable. Even addicted people sometimes wonder how
they can behave so self-destructively, considering their
upbringing and native intelligence. To everyone else, it
is hard to believe that people will often trade very happy
lives for the cheap thrills of getting drunk. So, it is
very easy to read between the lines and find hidden reasons
for addiction. After all, a skid row drunk who used to be
a corporate executive wouldn't be in that condition simply
because he loves to get drunk! Surely, he must be severely
disturbed with mental conflicts stemming from childhood
deprivations, right? And the barfly who drunkenly stumbles
to the taxi every night must have low self-esteem, and she
must be deficient in certain coping skills, right?
Wrong. Whatever personal problems you have
are either caused or aggravated by your drinking/using,
and not the other way around. Problems don't cause addiction;
addiction causes problems! An addicted person finds many,
many reasons to continue drinking/using, among them the
many problems he/she is beset with. That connection in his/her
thinking is what we call the Addictive Voice, arguing endlessly,
arguing both sides of every argument, to continue the use
of alcohol and other drugs.
There is no psychological problem that
an immediate commitment to permanent abstinence will not
help. Accordingly, resolving any problem you may have will
not make it any easier for you to quit drinking/using. And,
as long as you continue your addiction, the more pronounced
will your problems be. Therefore, don't waste time and money
by taking your addiction to a counseling professional. Solve
that problem first, and then see if you still have any problems
for which you need counseling. I would bet not.
If you are a religious person, stay away
from the 12-step syndicate. AA is a false religion, a bad
religion that won't even admit it is religious. AA's founders,
both clergy, are rarely mentioned, for Frank Buchman and
Samuel Shoemaker appear as mere footnotes in AA history.
Rev. Buchman was a theocratic evangelist whose infamous
admiration of Hitler destroyed his self-made cult, the Oxford
Group. AA co-founder, Rev. Sam Shoemaker, was an Episcopal
priest who ignored the rulings of all Christian churches
of his time, which warned that the Oxford Group was a heresy,
unworthy of assistance or endorsement. Rev. Shoemaker wrote
the 12-step program, allowing Bill Wilson to edit his work
to make it attractive to drunks. Bill later explained that
the 12-step program was revealed to him by God, during a
trance, through automatic handwriting. Bill's alleged 12-step
epiphany is the core doctrine of the recovery group movement,
and today, the medical and counseling professions administer
the 12-steps to millions of people.
Ignoring authentic religious leadership,
Bill and Bob endorsed Rev. Shoemaker's 12-step program and
Rev. Buchman's theocratic evangelism, thereby creating an
ersatz religion of their own founded upon the disease theory
of misbehavior. No longer was the act of self-intoxication
a moral offense against society and God, but a symptom of
a mysterious disease that only the Great Physician could
treat, with human doctors as His humble assistants. This
religious salad was appealing to drunken priests and other
clergy who abandoned their churches' moral doctrines in
favor of the user-friendly doctrines of AA. Thus absolved,
these clergy returned to their church hierarchies to plead
the case of AA as a beneficial remedy for addiction that
complemented Christian doctrine. Using very skilled language
acquired in the 12-step cult, they were successful in silencing
the warnings of the ecclesiastical sentinels who had earlier
warned of the destructive potentials of "groupism."
Another AA co-founder, Bob Smith, was a
drunken physician who bonded with Bill W. in a juvenile,
dependent relationship in which they would both look over
the other's shoulder to discourage drunkenness. They refused
to discipline themselves and sought in each other the discipline
they would not require of themselves. Neither could imagine
a satisfactory life beyond their addictions, and so they
sought fellowship in a social ghetto of their own creation,
made up of the same people they drank or used with at the
bar or the crack house - the recovery group movement.
There is little wonder that 95% of newcomers
drop out of AA within a year, 50% in the first month. They
are making the right move, but unaware that most AA dropouts
will experience recovery group disorders, even years after
the last meeting. The symptoms include increased drinking,
depression, relapse anxiety, and feeling stigmatized by
addictive disease.
AA denies free will, and substitutes the
disease concept for sin. "We are all sinners,"
becomes, "We are all disease victims." The latter
is quite a twist of meaning, and hardly in the spirit of
the original. There is no mention of behavioral disease
in the scriptures of any legitimate religion, for in religion
as in nature, the wages of sin is death. All legitimate
religions expect moral conduct of their members, and all
legitimate religions regard drunkenness as a moral failing.
The disease theory of misbehavior is a greater heresy against
human decency than racism and Nazism, for the genetic mark
of social discrimination is invisible and not worn on one's
skin. Wearing the "A" of alcoholism marks you
as one who does not know right conduct from wrong, and who
cannot learn from past mistakes. You appear to all as a
walking time bomb, an irresolute fool one drink from the
gutter, one day at a time.
Don't do this to yourself! The stigma of
addictive disease is far more damaging than the shame of
drunkenness. Act responsibly, and put your use of alcohol
and other drugs behind you. Follow the example of others
who found within themselves the ability to quit drinking/using.
AVRT is the collected wisdom of self-recovered people who
have lived down their past mistakes in their families and
communities.
You have everything you need inside of
you to quit your addiction for life. We in Rational Recovery
know something that is more important than all of the research
ever done on the subject of addiction - how to quit drinking/using,
right now, for life. We know we are the foremost experts
on addiction, because we recovered on our own, and we know
how to teach the ability to quit to others who want to recover.
We do not pose as experts on how you should live your life
once recovered, and we won't show you how to solve your
problems or be a happy person. These are the challenges
of all free people, to seek whatever meaning and happiness
there is in life. They are your responsibilities, and you
are endowed with ample wisdom and ability to rise above
the messes you have created for yourself and others. All
the opportunity and support you need to live a happy life
will come from your family and society at large, provided
you steer clear of the bad company found in recovery groups.
If you are now alone, your former partners
fled, be at peace with yourself in the knowledge you are
at least free from the addiction that bound you, and enjoy
the private dignity and decency of abstinence. Certainly,
you will become known as a more dependable and authentic
person than you were, and with that recognition will come
new acceptance into the human family.
