Suicide in Gerrards Cross

A recent email: 

“Hi love your site - don’t suppose you can tell me who runs it? Does it originate in Beaconsfield? I don’t like the cult meetings. Never been to Ealing but I've experienced Harefield Friday. I've met that Richard. He scares the shit out of me. He came to Uxbridge and told everyone they were sick. Said he wanted to take me through the book and help me recover. I'm sober in AA 34 years. What does he think I did in 79! I want to go to Bayham Road Ealing but I don’t know what to expect. Never met Happy Dennis. So I got the message you do the steps in 6 weeks then you have recovered - people like me are sick. Some lady involved with the idiots at Harefield committed suicide - jumped in front of a train at Gerrards Cross. I was sat next to her on Friday. She was dead on Saturday. That was 2 years ago. They where turning up at her house taking her to AA. She didn’t want to go. Was a good friend of mine. Someone tried all that with me in 77. It didn’t work. The cult took over South Harrow. Everyone left and it closed down. They had a look at Pinner but we are too strong for them. Thanks for the site. I read it every few days. Will you e mail me back. I don’t care you can print my e mail online if you want. Too many groups using the AA programme. Too many different interpretations of it. Thanks again. Keep up the good work ….....”

Our response: 

“Hi …...,

Thanks for the mail. We're glad you find the site useful. As for us we prefer to remain anonymous – there are far too many 'personalities' floating around AA as it is! But the site was started off by a few members in …... and then expanded from there. We've even gone international with contributions coming in from the US and Australia amongst others! But we're not exclusive - as far as we're concerned anyone is a member of the aacultwatch team who understands what we're about and supports us. Obviously some people are more active than others but we depend solely on information supplied by AAs to keep us up to date with what is going on in different areas (and countries). As for Happy Dennis not all the Bayham Rd meetings apparently are run by him. There have been a number of defections and some of the meetings have reverted to standard AA ie. relatively sane. But if you really want to see a show apparently the Sunday Bayham Rd meeting is where they all “jump for joy” …. rather you than us!

We don't believe we've heard about the suicide you mentioned but that's precisely the thing we're trying to ensure doesn't happen in the future. Certainly we'd be interested in any details that you are able to supply about that.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Cheerio

The Fellas”

(our edits)