Alcoholism is a dangerous condition affecting millions across the United States each and every year, from the poorest among us to even very powerful government officials. It's important to know when you have a problem so you can seek the help you need. Here are nine signs to look for when determining if you are an alcoholic:
Your sentences often don't make sense. - If you find yourself saying things like "the significance of the passage of time" or "space connects us all," you might want to seek help.
You sometimes wake up in the morning to find you posted embarrassing videos on the internet. - Drunk-posting is a sign your life is out of control.
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You wake up from alcohol-induced blackouts with fragmented memories of having run for president. - If you're having vague flashes of Beyonce, Lizzo, and Mark Hamill all endorsing you for president and calling you "brat," you need help.
You make poor decisions like picking Tim Walz as your VP. - Alcoholism can inhibit our decision-making, and this can affect our lives and careers in negative ways.
You find yourself drinking during stressful times such as difficult work days, cabinet meetings, and presidential debates. - Being drunk during big career moments is a sign you are a slave to alcohol.
Your head hurts a lot in the mornings, as though you just fell out of a coconut tree. - If you find yourself saying, "Doug, get the ibuprofen" every morning, take a good, long look in the mirror.
You drink in unsafe situations such as while you're in control of a motor vehicle or while you're in control of an entire country. - Driving a car, or a country, under the influence is illegal and dangerous.
Have you exhibited any of these signs, or can you think of anyone who displays any of these red flags? Make sure you get your loved one help today.
I will rail against this most perverse aspect of Alcoholics Anonymous until the cult is dismantled for good.
The wretched "Blue Book" (because in no way is is a BIG BOOK) tells us that if we get resentful, bitter, angry, that it shuts us off from "the sunlight of the Spirit."
That is a total lie.
God is not a fiction or a creation of our minds. He is not something that we conceive of, and then hope that He will be there for us when times are tough.
For the longest time, I felt that God was thousands of miles away when I felt bad. For years, I was convinced that I had to "feel love" or "feel warmth" in order to know that God was present.
If I felt bad, felt weird, or I was not focused on Him for whatever reason, I believed that God would go away and I would have to struggle to bring Him back.
That is a total lie.
In fact, when we are hurting, when we feel sad, we sense deep hurt or rejection, we can trust and know that He is near to us!
"The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and
saveth such as be of a contrite spirit." (Psalm 34:18)
God does not disappear or go away when you feel bad, mad, or sad.
That is a total lie. In fact, you can know that He hears you and cares for you in your most dire straits, no matter what is happening around you.
I grappled with a very painful conflict a few days ago, and I had this sense that the pain was too great to bear, and that there was no way that I could resolve this problem. I grieved from a sense of betrayal which I had suffered, and I felt that I was all alone.
"I felt ..."
And that is the operative word, and the operative problem.
It's always that we feel abandoned, or that God is far away, but our feelings, our thoughts, our sentiments on the matter have nothing to do with God's nearness in our lives.
He is CLOSE to the brokenhearted. When you feel the most abandoned, that is the point when we must know and believe (not feel) in His love for us (1 John 4:16).
When Elijah wanted to kill himself, the Lord Himself came to Him:
"5And as he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then
an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat. 6And he looked, and,
behold, there was a cake baken on the coals, and a cruse of water at his head.
And he did eat and drink, and laid him down again." (1 KIngs 19:5-6)
Shame on AA for teaching hurting souls this horrible lie, that God goes away when we feel bad, that He is not near, taking care of us through all things!
One of the most disturbing habits in AA is the act of automatic writing.
Bill W. would literally sit down at his desk, break out the pen and paper, and he would just write whatever came to his mind.
And he believed that this was a way for God to speak to him.
This is really creepy, dangerous stuff.
My mother engaged in this nonsense frequently, too.
She believed that God was "talking to her" directly, and she would order my sister and me around based on "The Lord said ..."
When I was a kid, I had no idea how to deal with such abuse.
Now that I am an adult, now that I have heard and received the full Gospel of Grace, I know that I can reject all this madness.
"Automatic writing" is a fraud. Such a foolish practice opens people up to oppression and misdirection from the devil, one's flesh, or the world's foolish thinking.
The last thing that I want to do is trust in my own thinking, lean on my own understanding (Proverbs 3:5)
For years, I struggled with how to walk in wisdom. I tried to figure out what to do, where to go.
I never realized how simple the Gospel is, and how simple are the directions of the Holy Spirit. When we are established in His righteousness, and we receive His peace, He can work in our lives, and give us direction (Colossians 3:15).
We don't need to give into our thinking, or the foolish, demonic ramblings of cult leaders, in order to get to the truth!
I cannot stress this most despicable aspect of the AA cult.
Bill W. thought it was a brilliant idea to "Choose your own conception of God."
Right away, that puts the Creator of the Universe in your head. It makes you yourself God, if you really think about it.
I have written so many times, and I will stress this again: I do not want my conception of God.
I want the truth.
I want to know a real Savior, a Redeemer, a Full-On Creator and Consumate Ruler who cares for me, for us, for everything.
For God to be God, He cannot be within the realm of our understanding.
It is that basic.
God is a Person, not some figment of our imagination.
Jesus, our Savior, is the very image of the Invisible God (Colossians 1:15)
It has taken me such a long time to divorce, to separate how I feel, what I am thinking, from the true Presence of the Living God.
Yet that growing reassurance has helped me in so many ways.
I may feel bad, I may feel good, but Daddy God does not stop loving me.
Jesus does not stop being my Savior, my Healer, my Redeemer just because I feel bad.
In stark and disturbing contrast, the AA cult teaches you that God comes and goes depending on how you feel.
That is a serious problem. That is bondage of the worst kind, and we need to resist this lie with as much courage as we can.
"Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be
content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee,
nor forsake thee." (Hebrews 13:5)
It's easy for me to make fun of people are trapped in weird systems of belief, absolute corruptions of the Gospel and God's Word.
I am really stunned at Mormons, Quakers, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc. who believe all these wrong things about Christ Jesus. How can they miss the grace of God so easily?
How could they be so easily mislead? Don't they own Bibles, and haven't they bothered to read the Bible.
And then there's me.
I was in a cult, buying into the lies of AA.
Of course, I was never an alcoholic. I never drank!
It was my mother who was obsessed with AA, who had gone into AA following the recommendations of a social worker in the late 1970s.
What a terrible thing that was.
Yes, she got sober. She often shared the story that during a champagne breakfast in 1978, she was drinking an orange juice sangria, and she felt with her spirit God say: "You don't have to drink this anymore."
Yes, I do believe that God spoke to her. I do believe that His grace was working in His life, as He works in all our lives.
However, the AA cult corrupted a true understanding of who God is.
That is what I grew up with. I grew up thinking that if I take care of my part, God will take care of everything else.
The Gospel is that He is taking care of everything! He is a living Savior who is caring for us!
But, if you go with AA, you are stuck with yours, in reality Bill W.'s, conception of God, and you are stuck on a constant merry-go-round of despair and fear, wondering if you have done enough from day to day, constantly looking at yourself, taking your inventory, trying to fix yourself, when you could not get yourself out of your drinking problem to begin with!
Jesus sets us free. He is THE living Savior. He does indeed transform us, as we behold Him (2 Corinthians 3:18)
We must not allow anyone to give us another picture of God, or delude into thinking that we can come up with our own.
I was just as caught as many others are.
Why?
I was taught this way. I had the Bible in front of me, and I was told to keep trying to be a good boy, to work the program, to follow the steps, to "try harder."
Because it's a religious program which threatens its members with a recurrence of drinking and death if they do not strictly adhere here to the Twelve Steps or the "Twelve Suggestions."
Most people get caught, and caught up in, one of their biggest lies:
"Why don't you choose your own conception of God?"
There's a huge problem with this.
Most people have no idea how to conceive of God, and most of the time, they draw their inspiration, or lack thereof, from their parents or their experience.
However, worst of all, with AA, the conception of God which reigns supreme in the meeting is Bill W.'s own conception of God.
Whatever deity you believe in, you have to force him through the Twelve Steps.
The Twelve Steps must have pre-eminence over everything else. They are more important than whatever God you conceive of, because you have to relate to him through those steps!
You are not really choosing your own coception of God, ultimately.
You are believing in Bill W.'s false God.
And this relevation must not be ignored, because churches and other Christian groups have incorporated the Twelve Steps, as if they are a blessed addition or a practical program to implement the steps.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
AA is a cult, a devious, deceptive, dangerous, yet dazzling cult which has grabbed, hooked, and pulled in too many people.
There are better ways to break free of AA and other addictions. AA is not the way.
The Blue Book of AA tells us that we can be cut off from the sunlight of the spirit.
What spirit was Bill W. talking about?
He was not talking about the God of the Bible, that's for sure. He was not talking about Christ Jesus, who lives in, not just with, every believer in Him.
"Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive,
because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth
with you, and shall be in you." (John 14:17)
God's Word could not be clearer:
"Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be
content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee,
nor forsake thee." (Hebrews 13:5)
It does not matter how you feel. It does not matter what I think.
God's Word is the blessed assurance that we need for this shiftly, quaking, unsure world:
"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not
pass away." (Matthew 24:35)
Daddy God has made it clear that we have complete nearness with Him. We can trust that He is always with us, and we never have to worry about Him leaving us, or walking away from us, or abandoning us.
Where did I stumble in so much of my walk?
I confused faith and feelings. Why? Because I bought into so much of the AA cult, the mixed mixture madness that I could believe in Jesus, and that "Program of Alcoholics Anonymous" would make the Bible practical in my life.
All of that is a lie.
I confused faith with facts, with the stuff in my mind.
God is real. He is spirit, not some figment or filament of our minds or our imagination.
Faith is easy, and because of that ease, man insists on making it all so difficult.
We do not have to give into the bad advice, the counsel of this ungodly world (Psalm 1:1)
We can know and believe in His love for us! (1 John 4:16)
Forget you, Bill W.! I am going with the real W--the Winner--and His name if Jesus!
He is a real Savior, seated at the right hand of the Father.
But AA tells you to "choose your own conception of God," as if that will solve all the religion problems.
Of course, the fundamental problem with this folly is "What forms or animates your conception of anything?"
Most people are going to project their parents or guardians into who God is.
Worse yet, they are going to look to the AA rewmz, including many of the creepy people in those meetings, and ask them or look to them for guidance on who God is.
I will never forget one long-time stepper in the program, who in turn related to me what some monk had shared with him years before:
"I walked up to this Catholic monk, thinking that he's the expert. I asked him 'Who is God?'"
"This Catholic monk said to me, 'I don't know!'"
This welcomed ignorance, this learned helplessnessis accepted, even celebrated in AA circles!
This is outrageous!
I don't want to trust some God who may or may not be there for me. I don't want to trust some "Higher Power" who comes or goes depending on how I feel. I do want to turn my will and my life over to ... myself!
Let's call AA what it ultimately becomes: self-worship. We have our projected, deluded, false notions of who God is at the outset, and then we interact with this notion of who, or what, God is. This is really crazy!
Has anyone in AA ever bothered to take a step back and ask themselves what the heck they are doing?
No, and the reason is simple: for the 3 to 5% that manage to stay sober for longer than 90 days, they really do chalk up their sobriety to the crappy, campy cult of AA. They really believe that working all those stupid steps, talking to sponsors, going to those goddawful meetings turned their lives around.
Of course, one study after another has affirmed that the people who do get sober in AA would have gotten sober anyway, without AA.
We don't need to run to a bunch of steps to set us free. We need to see Jesus, the Author and Finisher of Faith (Hebrews 12:2), who took all the steps to set us free.
We have a living Savior, and therefore we have a living faith. We do not, nor should we, run to the old deadness of the letter, not just of the Old Covenant, but of all man-made inventions to make man good in God's eyes.
It's taken me a long time to understand why Alcoholics Anonymous has commanded, and continues to command, such a following even among Christians and in many churches.
I look back on all the abuse and trauma in my life, and I still cannot believe that my parents, especially my mother, fell all in for this cult.
Then I realize that the larger issue has been addressed in the Bible already, in Paul's Epistle to the Galatians.
The Galatian church was not wild and deviant like the Corinthian church. They had not been warmed up with God's love, only to get caught up in busyness like the Ephesian church. They also didn't struggle with the primary and supremacy of Christ, as Paul would address with the Colossians.
The Galatians were mixing Law and Grace. In fact, following the infiltration of Judaizers shaming and provoking the Galatians that their faith in Christ was not enough, the Galatians were going back under law, thinking that adherence to the Mosaic Law, to self-effort, would make them better Christians!
"Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now
made perfect by the flesh?" (Galatians 3:3)
AA steals much of its verbiage from the Bible. Yes, the operative word is "Steal."
The AA cult's Blue Book talks about being reborn, talks about seeing God as our Father, and we are His children.
But then it adds in that same reference that we see God as our principal, and we are his agent. God goes from being our Father, who loves us no matter what, to someone whom we work for, who can fire us if we don't get the job done.
The Tenth Step madness, the whole thing about taking one's inventory all the time, every day, all of the busyness about "working with other alcoholics" to spread the AA Cult pyramid scheme, all of it is just bringing people back into works, under law, into this treadmill of "never good enough."
It's no wonder that so many people do not get sober in AA meetings, or if they do, they often have to take other medications to deal with the trauma, strain, and mental anguish.
AA corrupts Christianity and displaces the Gospel by removing the grace of God, and turning God's goodness in our lives into something conditional, based on how "hard" we work the steps.
If self-help could save us, then people wouldn't need to read all those self-help books in the first place, and we would not see such a broad, costly, growing industry in the first place!
When Paul scolded, even insulted, the Galatians, he was calling out every form of manmade religion that would work its way into the church:
"O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should
not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set
forth, crucified among you?" (Galatians 3:1)
And this is the crux of the matter: AA displaces Christ Jesus. His sacrifice means nothing. His Finished Work means nothing. The works that do matter, according to vile cult guru Bill W., is working that Twelve Step program, a cycle of self-centeredness and self-abegnation all rolled into one, a program in which flawed human beings look at their never-ending flaws, wondering why their lives never get better, but rather, with all their might working that program, they never seem to see their lives get better.
Reject AA. Go for the Way, the Truth, and the Life!
In Minnesota, Alcoholics Anonymous has become very woke thanks to Amy Klobuchar. She's been a partisan keynote speaker at many MN liberal treatment centers, & now the alphabet people lead meetings. It's almost as if being woke or gay is an unspoken requirement for AA membership. pic.twitter.com/UFCJOD4cXw
It's an empty cult which was based on lies from the outset.
It is no surprise that these programs are just giving into the surrounding pressures and demands of current society.
No longer does AA deceive in secret.
This cult is operating out in the open for all to see.
"14For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, 15Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, 16That
he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened
with might by his Spirit in the inner man; 17That Christ may dwell in your
hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, 18May be able to
comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and
height; 19And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye
might be filled with all the fulness of God." (Ephesians 3:14-19)
I have often written about one of the most pernicious aspects of the AA Cult. Not only does this destructive, deceptive program teach people to "choose their own conception of God," but it also teaches people that this "loving God" can be cut off from us if we feel bad, if we harbor resentment.
This is one of the most devious cults, in that it induces people into this lie of absolute freedom, but in fact grabs, hooks, and pulls people into a long-term cult bound by a bunch of strict rules, put together by a creep with a falsehood Messiah complex: Bill Wilson.
To a degee, I guess, by the grace of God, I am still getting deprogrammed from this awful cult. As I have written many times, I was convinced that I had to watch, and watch out for, every thought and feeling so that I would not be cut off from God. That is the worst kind of torture that you can impose on someone, since our feelings go all over the map all the time!
Our feelings come and go! God's love for us, His favor for us does not!
"Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be
content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee,
nor forsake thee." (Hebrews 13:5)
This stumbling block to God's grace in my life has been ebbing away more and more every day. As I have prayed Paul's prayers in Ephesians 1 and Ephesians 3, Daddy God has really come through for me! He has shown me more of Himself, and what His Son has done for me.
For the longest time, I did not feel that I was "rooted and grounded" in His love. I thought I had to do my part in some fashion to ensure that I would not get uprooted or cut off from Daddy God. Today, I realize more and more that I am rooted and grounded in Him, that He has always surrounded me with a shield of His favor (Psalm 5:12). It has taken time to really understand these revelations, but Paul literally got down on his knees praying that all of us in the Body of Christ would understand how broad, great, and wonderful is God's love for us!
No, we cannot be cut off from God's Spirit, even when we sin, fall, or fail. The Blood of Jesus did a perfect work at the Cross, fulfilling the law and instituting the New Covenant of Grace! We are rooted and grounded in His love, and we cannot be uprooted or shaken from this foundation. It's just a matter of believing and resting in this truth.
Dr. Beverly Crusher with Dr. Dalen Quaice (from "Remember Me")
When I was younger, I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation ... on an actual television, when people still owned and watched news, tv shows, etc. on television.
One of the episodes that I have never forgotten, that made the strongest impact on me was "Remember Me," in which Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) reconnects with an old medical professional and friend Dr. Dalen Quaice (played by veteran character Bill Erwin).
Shortly after meeting Dr. Quaice, Beverly cannot find him. He disappears! When she starts asking other people about him, other people tell her that there is no record of Dr. Quaice boarding the starship ... or that he even exists!
A few minutes later, all the staff in the sickbay just disappear! When she speaks to the leadership of USS Enterprise to find out what is going on, they inform her that she has always--yes, always--worked along in the sick bay!
Periodically throughout the episode, a vortex of bright light breaks out along the walls or in the hallway, trying to suck her in. Dr. Crusher resists the pull of each vortex, all while trying to figure out what is going on around her.
Pretty soon, the entire crew of the Enterprise disappears down to herself and Captain Jean-Luc Picard. When the two of them are sitting next to each other on the main bridge of the ship, Picard shares the same point which previous staff and crew had shared throughout the episode: all the other people whom she was looking for, who end up disappearing, never actually existed!
It's pretty tense! What is going on here?
From Dr. Crusher's point of view, there is clearly something wrong with the ship, the crew, the universe at large?
When even Captain Picard disappears, and she tries to look him up on the ship's computer, she gets the same answer: he does not exist. She then learns that the universe is no bigger than the ship itself (?!), and then the ship itself begins to shrink/disappear. At that point, she realizes that she is the one who is trapped, out of place in a so-called "warp bubble." Here's the scene with that stunning epiphany:
Then the light blue vortex sparks out again on the bridge, she finally jumps through, and then ...
Dr. Crusher jumps into the vortex and gets back to reality
She is returned to the real world of the starship, the crew, the staff, and even her friend Dr. Dalen Quaice.
So, what happened?
Here's the summary from Wikipedia:
At this point, the viewer is shown the actual Enterprise, where Wesley had successfully created the warp bubble, accidentally trapping his mother within it. With the warp bubble collapsing rapidly, Wesley's fears lead the Traveler (Eric Menyuk) to appear and help Wesley attempt to stabilize the bubble. The Traveler recommends the Enterprise return to the Starbase, where the warp bubble was formed and may be more stable.
The whole time, Dr. Crusher had ended up in a warp bubble, and she was trapped in an alternate universe. The world had not been changing. She had changed, and thus her perception of the world around her at that time began changing so dramatically, with all her friends and colleagues disappearing.
But what precipitated her ending up in the warp bubble, and the tense trial that she went through in that bubble? At the beginning of the episode, she shared with Dr. Quaice her fear of losing loved ones as time passed.
She had a wrong belief, living in fear of the future. It is inevitable that we will lose loved ones in our lives, since time passes, and people pass away in turn. That sorrow turned into a fear, and the warp bubble accident, started by her son Wesley Crusher, put Beverly Crusher into a false universe.
Why does this episode resonate with me today?
For the longest time, as long as I have been a believer, I have operated under some wrong believing, some false beliefs about God, Jesus, the truth of Gospel, the true reality of His Power in my life.
From the moment I first believed the Gospel, I was also introduced to God as someone who works through the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. At the time, it didn't seem like there was anything wrong with reading the Bible, beliving in Jesus, and also working "The Program" of AA in order to make God's Word applicable and practical in my life.
Starting in 2011, though, when I learned the fullness of the Gospel of Grace (Galatians 1:6) did I begin to realize that so much of what I was taught about God the Father, Jesus Christ my Savior and Lord, who He really is, how powerful He is in my life, and how gracious He has always been to me.
There were so many bad habits, wrong ideas that I had about Him!
Like Dr. Crusher, it seemed like the world was scary, unfair, overwhelming. And in the last six months, it has also seemed as though my world was getting smaller and smaller. So many of the people whom I used to interact and engage with on many issues were just leaving my life. I found that I had less of an interest in discussing whatever issues we had been pursuing or shared concern for in the past.
But more than that, for the last two years, I have made it a consistent practice to pray to Daddy God the following:
"That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: 18The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, 19And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power," (Ephesians 1:17-19)
For too long, I saw Christ Jesus, God in general as someone who would come or go in my life depending on how I felt. It was up to me to do something, to say something, to think something or feel some way in order for God to be present and active in my life.
I did not have the revelation of how active, alive, real He is in my life!
Like Dr. Crusher toward the end of that specific episode, I felt that for all intents and purposes, I was alone in the world, and I had to strive in some way to ensure that God was with me, for me, and working in me.
The effort was on me, life depended on me.
That was all wrong. It's shocking how I was seeing the world in this gray haze of a question mark, not sure what was going to happen, not sure that things were ever going to go well, constantly doubting if I was doing the right thing or in the right place at the right time, or anything close to that.
I was trapped in wrong believing, starting every day from the wrong premise: I am on my own, and I need to do whatever I can to bring God into my life, into my day, and I must ensure that I do and say the right things so that He does not walk away from me or abandon me when I need Him most.
Yes, I actually thought and lived like this, and I lived like this for so long a time!
And like a blue vortex piercing through the gray haze of confusion, God's grace was reaching out to me over and over again, trying to get me to see How has been, had been, on the job caring for me the whole time! He was always at work around me, even when I was not believing in Him!
"Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations." (Jeremiah 1:5)
and
"For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb." (Psalm 139:13)
and
"But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace," (Galatians 1:15)
I did not realize who He is, and how present He has always been!
I kept thinking that I had to situate myself, for lack of a better word, with the right mindset or feelings or thoughts. If I did wrong, thought wrong, said wrong, felt wrong, I wrongly believed that God's presence and favor would somehow disappear, and needed to strive and struggle to "get it back."
But then I reread this powerful verse just this week:
"For thou, LORD, wilt bless the righteous; with favour wilt thou compass him as with a shield." (Psalm 5:12)
The shield of God's grace, His Son Jesus, has been surrounding me from the outset! I didn't have to say, do, or think anything to make that happen! The right posture is rest, grace, assurance forever that He is with me!
"Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein." (Hebrews 13:9)
I don't have to fight with my head. He is taking care of me all the time. I don't have to strive and fight out of the "warp bubble" of wrong beliefs about God, His life, His gracious assurances in my life. This has been an amazing set of revelations for me!
