Does
this all sound a bit familiar to you? Sure does to us!
Source:
An article (reproduced in full) by Benjamin Aldo (pseudonym)
appearing in The Fix (online magazine)
"AA Cults I Have Known
Alcoholics Anonymous has
long been vulnerable to a creeping fundamentalism with cult-like
tendencies. One longtime member recounts his brushes with some
pernicious corruptions of the fellowship.
A
couple of years ago I went to the Atlantic Group in New York. It was
springtime, and the moneyed Upper East Side was in full bloom. The AA
meeting, known as AG, was holding its anniversary party. The large
Christ Church on Park Avenue had members milling about in its
courtyard, sipping the Starbucks coffee the group serves, a few
smoking on the sidewalk. The men wore suits and ties. Inside, a
beaming young woman offered me a name tag, and wished me luck in
finding a seat. I knew the meeting was well attended, but the church
was overflowing with members.
AG is well known in New
York AA. Depending on who’s talking, it either represents
“Real Recovery” or an off-putting, overly rigid interpretation of
AA doctrine. AG members have strongly worded suggestions about
sobriety: You should have a sponsor who has a sponsor who has gone
through the 12 Steps with another AG member; when you speak at any AA
meeting you should wear a suit and tie or the female equivalent; the
use of anti-depressants is discouraged; and the use of profanity is
not allowed during qualifications.
"It’s the
difference between rape and sex. It’s technically the same, but the
spirit of it is the difference between hell and heaven."
This
big Tuesday night meeting is the social centerpiece of the AG way of
life. It is structured with several minutes of introductory comments
and news about the group from enthusiastic members standing at the
altar, before the hundreds of members in pews. Then two newer members
get up and share their stories of recovery for 15 minutes. And then
comes the keynote speaker—vetted before the event—most usually a
member practiced in entertaining large crowds. Afterwards there is a
prayer, and a formal line-up to thank the three speakers for their
service. Recordings of the speakers are available for purchase.
AG began in 1992 as an
offshoot of the Pacific Group in Brentwood, California, which was founded by AA legend
Clancy I., who got sober in 1958. Members of the Pacific Group often
refer to PG as “the single biggest weekly AA meeting in the
world”—a tellingly dubious claim, given that there are over
114,000 AA meetings worldwide.
PG
has a reputation like that of AG, only more so. Adherents insist
theirs is the only true path of recovery, and demean “AA
lite”—groups that focus merely on drinking stories and
complaints. Those who are uncomfortable with PG point to the
insularity of the group, the rejection of AA members lacking
enthusiasm for PG rules, and the notion of “better than”
sobriety. As one regular AA member said, “If sobriety is grace, and
grace is an undeserved gift, how can I be arrogant about this gift of
sobriety?”
Another
member had a harsher take. “It’s the difference between rape and
sex. It’s technically the same, but the spirit of it is the
difference between hell and heaven.”
Every
year, to celebrate their anniversary, AG invites Clancy to speak at
their meeting, hence the enormous crowd. On this evening, he told a
story very familiar to AAs from the many tapes and conventions he has
spoken at over the decades. He was entertaining, pausing for laughs
and dramatic punctuation.
Midway,
he used the word “goddamit.” A young man piped up from the
balcony to say, “Excuse me Sir, we have no profanity at this
meeting.” It was clear he was attempting a teasing tone. It was
also clear he had misjudged the room. The enormous hall froze, not
unlike in an abusive household when a child calls out their cruel
father.
At
that moment, as I fiddled with my name tag, I thought it would be a
great chance to see long-term, revered sobriety in action. How would
the man whose AA tapes had helped me stay sober 20 years earlier
gracefully handle this interruption.
In
the event, there was no empathy for the psychology of the newly sober
young man. Instead, Clancy played to the crowd. He expertly waited a
few beats of pin-dropping silence, then leaned in to the microphone
and said, “Shut up Bitch.”
And
then, hundreds of sober men and women burst into laughter. Some
applauded, as if they were watching Louis CK take down a heckler. The
young man turned bright red, and awkwardly raced out of the church.
Of the several hundred attendees—many of whom claim to be
“recovered” from alcoholism, and that their most important action
each day is to “carry the message to the alcoholic who still
suffers”—not one followed the young man outside. Instead, they
turned their attention to Clancy and lapped up the rest of his honed
speech, in which he assured the room that their brand of sobriety was
more solid, more real and more lasting than any other.
Cults have leaders,
deprive you of worldly goods, cut you off from family and friends,
and demand an absolute devotion to their precepts. AG and PG only
have the first and last of these attributes. But both the cult of
personality—the near deification of Clancy and a handful of
pretenders to the throne—and the insistence on one "true path"
of sobriety are 12th-Step work at its worst, causing vulnerable men
and women to be forever turned off the low-key, profoundly helpful AA
meetings in the majority.
The Atlantic Group did
not exist when I first got sober, but Clancy's moment of righteous
wrongness reminded me of the beginning of my first AA meeting,
which was held in the same district courtroom where I had been
arraigned for attempted murder.
The banners with the
Steps and Traditions were hanging on either side of the judge’s
chair, which was occupied by my new probation officer. He was also
the PO for the 30 other men scattered about the courtroom. Some of us
were leaving the state prison system and transitioning back to
society, while others were avoiding time in the county jail.
The
PO, William Nagle, did most of the talking, speaking in the second person. He
talked a little about his own drinking, and how he figured out a way
to stop, and was now sober 20 years. He introduced a speaker who had
been through his program; the man talked about his drug use, his jail
time and how Nagle had saved his life. Despite it being called an AA
meeting, there was no mention of AA, of the Steps or of recovery. The
message was, “Once we were tough guys, doing bad things, now we are
tough guys doing good things.”
We
attended this meeting four times a week. On the judge’s bench,
where the gavel had come down sentencing us to this program, was a
sign that said, “The Honor Court is a privilege, not a punishment.”
Aside
from the four meetings, we lived on the top floor of a flophouse on
Main Street, and on my first day, after I signed my welfare check
over, I was given $20 and told to buy some work clothes at the
Salvation Army. We slept in a large room with a dozen bunk beds, and
the days started at 5am, sweeping the streets or shoveling snow in
winter, hauling trash, cleaning parks and delivering meals to
shut-ins. On Sundays, we held a car wash in the parking lot of the
same courthouse.
I raised my hand and
shared that the meetings outside seemed different. I was immediately
cut off: “That’s because those people are all faggots who never
drank for real!"
Though
Bill would scream at me every day, calling me an “ingrate”
because of my scowl and lack of street-sweeping abilities, I quickly
got used to the routine. It was summertime, and being outside doing
manual labor with a bunch of thugs was a good distraction. We could
all chain-smoke while we worked. Bill massaged the system so that an
old DUI I had from Boston was thrown out, and the DMV arranged for a
new driver’s license—my first in two years—so that I could be
one of his drivers.
When
anyone was defiant, they would be reminded that they could be sent
directly to jail to serve out their sentences. A couple of members
chose to return to jail, saying it was a better life inside, but I
felt pretty lucky. Soon, 30 days had gone by, and for the first time
in a decade I was a month clean and sober—at least physically.
I
was 22 at the time, and the most depressing part of the program,
other than being screamed at and having 1,000 hours of community
service to work off, was the “AA” meetings. I assumed this was
the way all AA and NA meetings were—a man who knew better than
everyone raving about our transgressions, insisting that we become
better and repeating that the only way to stop was to do what he
said.
One
day, a newer member invited me to a local AA meeting. We sat in a
musty, smoky old basement, surrounded by people laughing and joking,
smoking and hugging. Then everyone quieted down and a man stood up at
a podium. He was very light in his delivery, and the room laughed
easily. Then a young woman told her long, involved drinking story.
As
we left early, to meet our house curfew, a man said he hoped we’d
come back again. The difference from what I was used to was like
night and day. Nobody yelled—and sobriety looked like it might be
enjoyable.
At
the next courtroom meeting, I raised my hand and shared that the
meetings outside seemed different. I was immediately cut off by Bill,
who screamed, “That’s because those people are all faggots who
never drank for real! Next.”
The
next day, between sweeping the streets and loading up the trucks to
clear out the park, I sat smoking with two of the older members. One
of them had the tattoo on his inner arm from a concentration camp,
the other, in his 50s, was clearly mentally ill. I asked them how
long they had been with Honor Court. Neither could quite remember.
They said they had been homeless, and that Bill had saved their life.
I asked when they would be leaving. They asked me, "Where would
we go?"
I
asked my lawyer how many of my thousand hours of community service
had been paid off in the last month. I was called into Bill’s
office (another sign on his desk said, “When I want your opinion
I’ll give it to you”) and screamed at again.
“You
think you’re better than anyone here, you’re not, you’re worse.
By our count you’ve worked nine hours in the last four weeks.
You’re not going anywhere.” I called my lawyer again, and after
some negotiations, during which I was threatened with both serving my
suspended sentence and extra time for a host of offenses, I was
assigned a new PO and allowed to do the balance of my community
service elsewhere.
It was
clearly a shady operation—the welfare checks cashed right over to
Nagle, the convenience of the town having clean streets and parks
without paying salaries, the direct transfer of prisoners into the
program, the institution of trusties and newbies, the casual threats
of violence and jail time for non compliance and mainly the fact that
the program was run by a very serious dry drunk who never let a day pass without screaming obscenities to
at least one member of the crew.
The
organization had nothing to do with AA beyond the use of the name to
justify its existence to the court system (a parallel to the practice
of court-mandated AA attendance). The entire entity rested on the
character quirks of a man who had very real power over all of us. If
that wasn’t a cult, it was certainly a cult of personality. This
was borne out when Nagle died, and the organization crumbled very
quickly, steeped in corruption and scandal, his legacy an office full of
dodgy paperwork, court house connections without his pushy spirit,
city contracts lacking his aggression and 30 men who were both
disturbing and intimidating, on a good day, strolling the town’s
streets with heavy brooms.
The
creep element of Honor Court was out for all the town to see:
scowling convicts pushing brooms and pulling weeds. But later cults
of personality I experienced were more pernicious still, thanks to
their veneer of civility.
In
1990, I found a meeting on the King's Road in West London. I sat in
the front row, and listened to a young man who announced there was no
point in talking about his drinking because it was the program of
recovery that mattered. It was essentially a lecture about the Steps,
but the room lapped it up, and the shares all confirmed that his talk
had been “brilliant.” I wondered about the efficiency of
spirituality without context, but I was glad to be at a meeting.
Afterwards,
an older man approached and introduced himself as David.
He asked why I looked so miserable, appointed himself my sponsor
and told me that I should stick with his AA group: The Joys of Recovery. He then told me if I did six things every day for 30 days—prayed, called him, read
the Big Book etc.—he guaranteed
me perfect happiness. He gave me a meeting list, circling some
recommended meetings, and starring a few others that I should “avoid
like the plague.”
There
was an appeal in the smug superiority, the thought that I had gained
access to AA's VIP room.
I
followed his lead. At first the meetings seemed upbeat, friendly and
very clear. They were also repetitive—the same people were
repeatedly called on to share, who said that their drinking and early
AA experience had been hopeless, but then they found The Joys of
Recovery and life was wonderful. There was not a hint of
struggle or complaint, and the occasional adversity was always framed
with gratitude for the challenge. David and his acolytes uttered the
same phrases at every meeting: “I never had a bad day since I
stopped drinking,” and “Misery is optional.”
Soon,
I noticed a focus on how the message was not being carried correctly
away from Joys, how there was “light sobriety” and “real
sobriety,” and how we needed to go out to regular AA meetings to
"carry the message" to those in mainstream AA.
Another
strongly worded suggestion was to avoid psychiatry and
anti-depressants—“alcohol in solid form,” as David intoned.
I was
still relatively new at the time, so there was an appeal in the smug
superiority, the thought that I'd gained access to AA's VIP room, the
shared certainty that this was the true path. I felt included and
better-than—if not everyone else—then at least my former self. I
couldn’t wait to go home and tell my sponsor how the program really
worked.
David,
I was soon impressed to learn, had founded Joys. He remained its
genial godfather. He sponsored many members, who sponsored many
others, and so on. His method of sponsoring consisted of
sponsees calling him every day, and being told to pray and call him
the next day. He insisted that life was "marvelous."
One
evening, after yet another joyous Joys meeting, I sat at the coffee
shop with David and half a dozen acolytes, and asked David,
innocently, who his
sponsor was. The table went very quiet. David explained that he'd had
a very capable sponsor who had died—and that he had been set on the
path and had all of us, his sponsees, to guide him. I didn’t have
the presence of mind to point out that David himself always insisted
that not having a sponsor meant that you were not really sober in AA.
I was struck, though, at how all of us accepted his quickly-made
point.
That
evening David took me aside and told me it was time to work the Steps
with him. I had known him for three weeks at this point. I had been
taken through the Steps already, but he insisted that he could tell I
needed more extensive step-work. He urged me to attend to it
immediately, handing me an addendum he'd written on how to do the work properly. He
suggested that I concentrate on the third part of the Fourth-Step
inventory, where we examine our sex lives.
We met
in David’s small flat, and he had me read a few pages, stopping me
with pointed questions. He wanted to know mechanics: what I was most
excited by, what my girlfriend liked, how often we had sex. I
answered some of his questions, wondering why he was so interested.
Then I suddenly realized that I was a 22-year-old man, being asked
intrusive questions about my sex life by a 60-something-year-old
stranger. In his home.
He may
as well have been licking his lips and rubbing his palms together, as
he interrupted me to offer more questions—not advice or suggestions
or even, God forbid, his own experience, which it dawned on me
extended to masturbatory voyeurism with the newly sober. I told him I
was uncomfortable and that his motives were disturbing. He smiled a
smile I'd seen before, and told me that my sobriety was in jeopardy
if I didn’t marry my girlfriend and proceed to have children.
I
started to object and he raised his hand. “I’ve forgotten more
about AA than you will ever know,” he started to scream. “You
know how lucky you are that I’m even talking to you! Your
relationship with this girl is not sober.” And that was the end of
that.
Later,
at more reasonable meetings around London, it transpired that David
and the Joys were well known. I went directly to all of the meetings
David had told me were “sick.” Many stories were told: One member
was cautioned to never share about her attempted suicide; another was
told to put the equivalent of $20 in the basket; sponsees were urged
to “vote with their sponsor,” at business meetings about AA
policy.
One
meeting in particular, the Monday night Pont Street Group (tucked
behind Harrods), was filled with glamor and beauty all united by
powerlessness. The meeting was also infested with Joys
people—including David in his customary back-row chair. The Joys
people would be called on to express their opinion of how AA should
be, condemning the majority of the room for their failings.
I
asked one non-Joys regular why their behavior was tolerated: He told
me they were harmless and needed help—and that in AA desperation
gets us sober, but tolerance keeps us sober. “We might not be
allowed to share in their meetings, but they are free to share in
ours," he said. "You can tell they’re in pain, and if
they ever want help, we can provide it.” So that was what being
sober looked like.
David
died, and The Joys of Recovery became so shrouded in controversy that
they changed their name (A Vision For You, The Big Book Study Group),
and have migrated into Detroit and Ireland, though the Irish General
Service Office of AA considered that off-shoot to be outside the structure of AA.
When I
moved to New York 20 years ago, I knew just enough to stick to
regular meetings. I heard about local versions of Joys, but they
conveniently stayed in their own cocoons of
self-congratulation—occasionally venturing out to speak in the
second person and distribute complex step-work charts, amid curious
claims of doing all 12 Steps every morning. As the years went
by, most people in AA seemed to treat them like an anomaly—a
cult-lite, if you will.
One
day, I happened upon a meeting called The Big Book Study Group. The
meeting calls for a moderator—rather than a speaker—who
shares their specific experience of going through the book with their
sponsor. Three highlighter pens are used to denote sections that
confuse, are agreeable and are disagreeable.
The meeting begins with
the reading of a prayer, taped into the first page of the book. It is
not an AA conference-approved prayer, and it calls for the suspension of
judgment for the process of the group. The moderator then goes
through each line in the book, offering explanations of the hidden
meanings. If you ask one of these devotees to sponsor you, they will
say they are "not a coffee-shop sponsor,” and that unless you
are serious about your recovery, they will not be able to help you. I
asked someone what the hell was going on, and they told me this was
the Atlantic Group. They had migrated.
As
well as the Pacific Group, AG is linked to the abusive Midtown Group. Members now sit among us at more regular AA
meetings. They have many tell-tale signs. One is that they call
themselves “recovered alcoholics,” referring to the first hundred
members of AA who described themselves as such, and forgetting that
of those hundred at least 70 died drunk. When they speak at a meeting
they always say, “My sponsor has a sponsor who has a sponsor who
took him through the Steps as laid out in the Big Book.” They speak
of being “God-powered,” of being “an alcoholic of the hopeless
and doomed variety,” as if there were any other kind. They openly
sneer at the oldest of AA notions—"Just don't drink and go to
meetings,"—though for many alcoholics, myself included, that
is often all that a newcomer can focus on. They use the phrase,
“You’re not really sober if...“ and talk of being
“transformed.” (Cue their nickname: “The Transformers.")
The
ironies of these groups are legion. I’ve noticed one
larger-than-usual cluster of members who came in after a season of
drinking, at the age of 13 or 14. Nothing wrong with that, but being
now “oldtimers” in their early 30s, they tend to lack empathy or experience for people who drank for years, missing the
sense of fellowship that founded and informs all of AA. This false
sense of a hierarchy lends itself to a patronizing charity on the part
of sponsors, rather than the very spirit of the 12th Step—to keep
our sobriety, we have to give
it (our experience, strength and hope) away. In their faux-tough-guy,
undeserved harshness "recovered" mentality there is a lack
of the very kindness that first attracted me to AA.
But
there’s not a single person I’ve met in AA in 35 years who has
the right to tell anyone what to do
Then
there is that underlined, quoted and revered Big Book containing
dozens of AA stories, the first qualifications in AA. Every story
maintains a similar blueprint: an extensive history of drinking,
followed by a brief happy ending. Not a single story in the four
editions of the Big Book begins with the oft-expressed sentiment that
"a drunkalogue is not worth your time, so let's just get on with
the recovery." Neither do the stories laboriously recount
step-work. So it follows that not one of those first hundred
“recovered” members—nor any other Big Book contributor—would
be vetted to speak at AG. The book contradicts the Transformers'
central point.
Then
there's the methodology—a repetition of homilies, a close reading
of that book, and a strong suggestion, at times insistence, not to
seek outside counsel, especially involving psychiatry or medications.
One of Clancy's well-worn anecdotes is: "Yeah, I saw a shrink
for a while. Every Wednesday night for years. He came to our meeting.
Boy was he a mess." Cue laugh track.
More
chronic alcoholics I have known have been attracted to AG's certainty, only to be disappointed by the robotic mantras and
sponsors who offer assignments, rather than listen. One friend
suggested it was because his sponsor lacked the ability to empathize
with his experience as an alcoholic. How many alcoholics in need have
turned up at these meetings, assumed this was the way AA meetings are
really held, and walked away only to drink again? How much
anti-12th-Step
work has the Atlantic Group managed in the last two decades? For all
the shock-tactic provenance-lacking statistics about AA (one in nine
members stay sober, etc.), that's a number we can never know.
In
sum, the Atlantic Group is as close to actual AA as the Honor
Court or the Joys of Recovery. Indeed, it's referred to so much as
"AG," that it seems divorced from the acronym it insists it
has perfected.
But
what position does AA's General Service Office take? Like a timid
wife in an abusive household, the GSO invoke the Fourth Tradition
whenever a complaint reaches them: "Each group is autonomous,"
they intone—not addressing the second clause of the tradition:
"...except in matters affecting AA as a whole."
It may
seem innocuous, especially to those who don’t rely on AA. But the
real problem with these groups is that while they claim a monopoly on
an excellence of sobriety—my powerlessness is better than
yours—they are not technically AA meetings. They break most of the traditions (One, Two, Five, Eight, 10, 11 and 12—another
article unto itself). They convolute the Steps. They make up their
own prayers and they shred three of the AA Concepts (One, Five and 12).
I
asked one AA member, who contributed a story to the most recent
edition of the Big Book, why he always recounts his extensive
drinking history when he speaks. He reminded me of what Bill wrote
about our dynamic: “When one alcoholic has planted in the mind of
another the true nature of his malady, he will never be the same
again.”
He
also reminded me of the reason that real AA worked for me—after
antabuse, rehab, psychiatric hospital, jail, counselors and DUI class
all failed. “I tell you what I do to stay sober. I suggest you do
the same. But there’s not a single person I’ve met in AA in 35
years who has the right to tell anyone what to do. All we can do is
tell you what we do.”
And
that’s the difference. The better-than, slicked up, professional AA
practice reminds me of all those professionals whose job it was to
try to help me when I was desperate, with their clip-boards and
quotas, legal threats and health warnings, their superficial concerns
and patronizing smugness.
The
creepiness of this approach came to an inevitable point in 2007, when
the Washington
Post
and Newsweek
reported on the Midtown Group—the Washington DC AA group led by
Michael Quinones. According to police reports and press interviews,
Quinones was a grand-sponsor who strongly discouraged members from
seeking psychiatric help or taking anti-depressants. They did,
however, encourage underage female members to sleep with middle-aged
male members, including Quinones. The group was also known as The Q
Group, after their leader. After the allegations came to light,
several of the churches hosting their meetings ended their
arrangements. It was a shocking story of sexual predation.
A remark from the man who
sponsored Quinones was telling. According to the Washington
Post,
Clancy Imislund, managing director of Midnight Mission in LA, spoke
directly about the situation. “There probably have been some
excesses,” he said, “but they have helped more sober alcoholics
in Washington than any other group by far.” Note that last jab
at other AA meetings, and the shrug about what, in his state, would
be legally considered statutory rape.
He continued, “It had
been an issue [the sexual exploitation of teenage girls] but wherever
you have a lot of young, neurotic people, they’re going to cling to
each other.” Note the fault of those “young, neurotic
people,” also known as newcomers seeking experience, strength and
hope.
That
Clancy,
of course, is the same man who told a trembling newcomer at that
packed AG meeting to “Shut up, Bitch.”
Amid
all this ugliness, superiority and ego gratification, it’s helpful
to return to AA’s history, the implementation of the traditions and
concepts to ward off such aberrations of AA and to bear in mind that
the founders, while very much human, knew what they were doing.
The
last time Bill Wilson visited Dr. Bob, before he died, Bob’s final
words to him were, “Let’s not louse this thing up. Let’s keep
it simple.””
Related articles:
Comment:
None needed!
Cheers
The
Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)
PS Our thanks to the member who helpfully pointed us in the direction of this article
