How AA Works (Against Us)

For a long time, I wondered why I was so fearful about life.

A lingering need to run my life by other people never quite left me.

One summer, after my first year at college, I came home struggling with a sense of what was I supposed to be doing with my spare time.

I did not realize it at the time, but my life had become quite reactive and reactionary, in which I was often waiting for someone to tell me what to do, tell me what to think, how to act, and how to responds to difficult circumstances in my life.

After awakening to righteousness in Christ (1 Corinthians 15: 34), I began to see that Alcoholics Anonymous teaches people to keep identifying with their failings.

When we see ourselves, we see how we do not measure up to any standard, even the ones that we lay out for ourselves.

"The physician who, at our request, gave us this letter, has been kind enough to enlarge upon his views in another statement which follows. In this statement he confirms what we who have suffered alcoholic torture must believe-that the body of the alcoholic is quite as abnormal as his mind." (The Doctor's Opinion)

The Alcoholic has an abnormal mind.

The further dehumanization of those who suffer from alcohol addiction receives greater scrutiny with the book:

Most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows. (AA. pg 30)

In reality, how different are people who drink too much from other people who do not abuse alcohol, regarding the mind?

Not much really. A man's drinking problem, or any other abuse, stems not from a mental deficiency, but a sense of reproach, of guilt, of condemnation. This sick sense of self is all the more pervasive for those who see themselves as alcoholics, men and women who are forever consigned with a label which limits them.

Psychiatrists and social workers have studied the pernicious effects of labeling people. Men and women in their adult years still carry within themselves the painful stigmas inflicted on them from their parents, from their formative years.

The solution to any perversion cannot rest on blasting people as "mentally different", but rather afflicted with a lie about who they are.

However, because members of AA are indoctrinated to believe that they are "bodily and mentally different" from other people, they also  learn that they cannot trust their own thinking, they begin relying on other people to think for them.

They learn to be dependent on the thoughts and directions of sponsors and other people in the meetings.

I was taught, because of the AA cult, that how I felt could block from "the sunlight of the Spirit."

I have since learned that this lie, among many others, created this emotional dependence in my life, that I could not make my own decisions, since I was bound with "stinking thinking".

Our thinking oftentimes rests in our perceptions of ourselves and others. What basic truth of ourselves are we resting in?

Do we see ourselves alive in Christ or dead in Adam? We have two choices as far as identity is concerned, and the choice ends up being even simpler than that:

Either Jesus Christ is Lord, and He died on the Cross for our sins to give us His life, or He is a fraud whom we must reject and thus look to ourselves for all things.

When the matter of identity has been resolved, then our thinking rests on the truth which sets us free:

"31So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine;32and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” (John 8: 31-32)


Then

"36“So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed." (John 8: 36)

And finally:

"Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." (2 Corinthians 3: 17)

What do you do when you cannot trust your own thinking? You believe on Him whom the Father hath sent!