Greetings from Northern California

“The description of …...... seems to 'highlight' a couple more red flags to watch for. Your site already mentions the 'Joe&Charlie' Big Book dog and pony show, these lectures are often to be encountered. The warning is that the 'study' is held in a private location, or a space not used by any AA group. These classes indoctrinate newcomers into a false understanding of AA's history and create flocks of disinformed 'AA history experts' who push their agendas in real AA groups business meetings and elsewhere.

We have one such 'leader' near me (El Cerrito, California across the bay from San Francisco) his 'Big Book Studies' held in his house, or in rented spaces, are carried on by followers now that he is getting old. They follow J&C, and include the Gresham's Law pamphlet, the draft version of 'How it Works,' and the false claims of AA's failure rate.

There is also a widespread mania for marching newcomers through the big book with highlighters in hand, often of coded colors for different 'themes.' I have found our fellowships supply of reading copies includes many that are heavily marked on almost every page--for the first two or three chapters; evidently their owners abandoned the books after their indoctrination failed.

I don't know if the two phenomena are directly linked, but I suspect that we will find the same individuals promoting both.

Thanks”

and:

“Of course studying the Big Book is not a Bad Thing, nor are 'beginner's meetings' or sponsorship. I think the 3rd and 4th traditions are compatible with holding any sort of Big Book study as an AA meeting. For that matter, even as a 'non-meeting.'

The problem comes with the intrusion of outside influence. The 'studies' I am thinking were intellectual dead-ends; they repeated Joe&Charlie-isms with no curiosity or inquiry. Every mistake, falsehood, and inaccuracy repeated as holy writ.

In this manner 'Big Book' studies, beginner's mtgs. and sponsorship easily glide into tools for cult recruiting, enforced conformity, and the training of 'experts' who tour from meeting to meeting, group to group, carrying what they believe to be the real AA.

I gather that your troubles in the Home Counties really do represent 'a' cult, with the same individuals and the same agendas surfacing again and again. Here it seems that there are a snowballing accumulation of cultish influences: Joe&Charlie, Clancy/Pacific Group, 'Back to Basics,' Mel B's AA 'History,' Primary Purpose in Texas etc. While these do overlap a great deal, I feel that the general effect is a sort of gravitational pull into cultishness, with American Right-Wing Xianity casting a pall over all.

Last week I talked with a fellow who had gotten sober in Los Angeles around '81. He had drifted away from meetings and was returning now that he had retired and moved to Marin County (across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco). He was shocked by the uniformity, excessive reading, and pushy sponsorship he saw there. When he got sober, the meetings he saw showed none of this, even reading 'How it Works' (which originated in LA) was not typical. Evidently the Pacific Group's version of 'old time' AA is false even for Los Angeles.”

(our thanks to this contributor)

Cheerio

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)