I was Brought Up in a Cult

Yes indeed, I could not get to a place of recognizing how serious this is, until recently.

I was raised in a cult, I was raised in AA, I was raised to take my inventory, to work the Twelve Steps, I was told by mother, who was an AA aficionada with a capital A (or capital AA).

Everything was about the Twelve Steps. She even introduced me to a calender drawn with child-like stick figures, which outlined the Twelve Steps. Imagine that -- indoctrinating little children to see themselves through the distorted prism of the Twelve Steps.

Everyone was either an Alcoholic or in Denial, according to my mother. For all the pretenses of working a program, she became one of the most resentful, bitter, frustrated, and empty people I had ever known. As a child, I never thought good or bad about AA, since it was my mother who was sharing this program with me. I assumed, as do many abused children, that my mother would never force on me anything that was bad, evil, negative, or destructive. I do not believe that she had ever intended to harm me, but forcing the Twelve Steps, and using the Bible to justify such a terrible cult, all created more problems in my life.

Such is the evil that is AA.

For so long, I never quite understood why my life was not advancing, why things were not improving in my life. I had grown older, yet not grown  up. The very promises about fear and anger, about overcoming character defects and all the rest, these promises never seemed to materialize in my life. For all the talk about resentment being the Number One Offender, I found myself easily resentful. For all the talk about "Outgrowing Fear", I found that fear was all-overgrown in my life.

My mother taught from youth to work the Twelve Steps, to run everything through that silly, willy-nilly set of rules.

I have forborne sharing about my mother, and how deeply she was involved in the program. Yet following all the reading and all the research, all the stories which I have shared, and which others have shared with me, and the dire consequences of this program should anyone insist on working it, I have see no further reason to hold back.

AA is a cult, one which the state has legitimized because courts order people to go to the Twelve Step meetings as part of achieving sobriety.

With a growing understanding of economics, and the dangers posed by state power, I have less reason to respect the claims of legitimacy which the government, which the state gives to anything. Just because a judge tells someone to go to AA, does not make the program legitimate. How many other social programs initiated, or instigated by state, create or foster the very ills they claim that they can eradicate or reduce?

I was brought up in a cult, and that cult was AA, yet like many people who lived in the meetings, who visited the rooms, they believe that the program is a mere alternative form of recovery.

The facts borne out by research, the statistics which expose the high recidivism of the program, the alarming rate of suicide and abuse in meetings, plus the fact that a mere five percent get and stay sober, often with the crucial assistance of medication, should be enough for anyone to run from an AA meeting, and not look back.