Leaving the cult

“I FEEL COMPELLED TO SHARE MY EXPERIENCE AND POINTERS THAT I THINK MIGHT BE HELPFUL TO MEMBERS WHO ARE IN JOYS OR ANOTHER CULT-LIKE GROUP TO SHARE MY EXPERIENCE AS WELL AS WHAT I WISH I WOULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY UPON LEAVING THE CULT.

I didn’t quite realize how traumatic and painful it would be leaving a recovery cult. I reached out to former Joys [Joys of Recovery] members for support and guidance. I was in school at the time when all this drama began with the cult and unfortunately I decided to drop out of school. It was difficult to study and concentrate after all that was going on but still I wish that I would have continued showing up in class because in hindsight I could have used the human interaction. I realized that when leaving a cult it's very isolating so I would suggest to put yourself in structured environments such as a job or thing where you can be around people. I had to learn to socialize again. Also leaving a cult leaves a significant void in one's social life. Also when I was first having problems with Joys I felt very ashamed. I thought and believed everything that was going on was my fault and I was the bad one. So I was much too ashamed to reach out to others in mainstream AA at first. I was being shunned by the group and I got pretty isolated and I wanted to self destruct as a result. I was having intense thoughts of relapsing. It was truly thanks to a merciful higher power that I didn’t relapse; although many must have thought I did. I was behaving very alcoholic and even having problems at work. I rationalized instead of picking up booze I would eat. I weighed 130 lbs and wore size 2-4 clothes. Within 6 months I weighed 220 and wore size 18 because all I did was binge on doughnuts from the corner store and sleep and in between that I started educating myself about cults. I was still attending the meeting at this point.

In hindsight I wish that as soon as I realized I was no longer in good standing with the cult I wish I would have stopped attending the meetings and dropped service positions. The reason I think that would have been best is because the cult meetings tend to have this very subtle way of tearing up any one who disagrees with them in their shares as well as treating them very poorly. Quite naturally this creates a lot of resentment in the alcoholic who is being used as the scapegoat by the cult and resentments are deadly. As a matter of fact while all this was going on I was still doing my daily’s and writing my 10th step and taking a half hour to meditate, but there were more resentments coming at me ( I had an entire group of people abusing me) than I could handle and process even with all the tools, which is another reason while I believe it's best to get as far away from these nut jobs as possible. After a couple of months of all this abuse I did quit all the tools. I could barely get out of bed. I believe this could have been avoided had I just gotten away and not let myself get so damn isolated and asked for help and opened up to people about what was going on. I used what little thinking capability and judgement ability I had to survive this experience. My perceptions and judgement calls as well as my world view had all been altered by the cult and without them TELLING ME HOW TO THINK about stuff I was quite a mess. However I did know enough at that point to stay the hell away from my family who are all active alcoholics and drug users. It really upset me that my cult sponsor was telling me to go around my family esp. my mom (who drinks) who is the person least supportive of my recovery. I felt like she was trying to cause me to relapse (and so was the rest of the cult) to make an example. This particular suggestion could have been deadly because I was extremely used to and very much in the habit of following any order my sponsor dished out on me without questioning or thinking about it. That’s frightening because some of her suggestions were dangerous. THANK GOD I didn’t listen. I think it is very critical and important who you put yourself around after leaving the cult for more reasons than I have time to list.

I still didn’t tell my family what was going on I had a lot of fears programmed in to me by the cult about the outside world. In hindsight I wish I wouldn’t have started bingeing on food because it's been pure hell, I developed a bad food compulsion and it's very difficult to get back to good food habits again. Instead I wish I would have just swallowed my damn pride and opened up to mainstream AA members for help.”

(our thanks to this US member for their insightful contribution)

The Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)