Subject : Is Alcoholics Anonymous a Cult?, An Old Question Revisited
From : DON PHILLIPS
Date : 1/19/07 7:29 a.m.


All,

Here is an Epost that I received on another listserv:

"Since the author just rejoined Addict-L, I thought this might be a good time to post his work....

http://www.freedomofmind.com/resourcecenter/groups/a/aa/is_aa_cult.htm "

After a lively back and forth most of us agreed that AA was not a cult. But I thought the referenced article had a far more interesting discussion around the twelve step alcoholism movement (TSAM). I posted this response:

Don's Epost More interesting than the old chestnut about AA -- Cult or Cure? (Yawn) is the portion of the paper on the twelve step alcoholism movement (TSAM). Particularly:


Excerpt

"The Twelve Step Alcoholism Movement "

In 1979, sociologist Robert Tournier raised a ruckus in professional circles when he noted that “Alcoholics Anonymous has come to dominate alcoholism both as ideology and as method. . . . So successful have AA members been in proselytizing their ideas that their assumptions about the nature of alcohol dependence have virtually been accepted as fact by most of those in the field.” In making this assertion, Tournier touched on an important point. AA cannot be viewed as existing in a vacuum. It is not now, and never has been, an independent standalone organization. It has always covertly supported, and been supported by, a powerful cartel of organizations that make up what historians and sociologists call the Alcoholism Movement. The original triumvirate leading this movement was AA, the National Council on Alcoholism, and the Yale Center for Alcohol Studies. Like all successful social movements, it has expanded to include many additional organizations. For greater clarification, the Alcoholism Movement could be called the Twelve Step Alcoholism Movement, after the fact that its basic philosophy is closely aligned with, and in many cases openly expressed by AA’s recovery program, the venerated Twelve Steps.

"To speak of AA outside of the context of the Twelve Step Alcoholism Movement is almost certainly to invite confusion. It is not just a coincidence that many organizations adhere to the same view of alcoholism and the same Twelve Step creed. It is the result of a coordinated social movement.

"Viewed as the Twelve Step Alcoholism Movement, rather than as a single isolated organization, the Program actually looks more cult-like and sinister. For example, AA per se does not seem to exploit its members financially, but AA-styled treatment facilities sometimes do. Witness the case of a family faced with having to sell their home in order to pay for the mother’s long-term addiction treatment - after she had already been through nine expensive Twelve Step treatment regimens in just two years. In a similar vein, Twelve Step treatment units and professional addiction counselors may routinely advertise their wares without giving the slightest hint that the basic treatment they are offering is an indoctrination into AA.

"In 1991, Harper’s Magazine printed a modernistic article on the Twelve Step Movement by David Rieff, “Victims All? Recovery, Co-dependency, and the Art of Blaming Somebody Else.” By this time, the Movement had burgeoned to include scores of “anonymous” programs that recommended AA’s Twelve Steps for practically everyone, from compulsive workaholics to those who were told that they loved too much. As Rieff observed, “any conduct that can be engaged in enthusiastically, never mind compulsively - from stamp collecting to the missionary position - would be one around which a recovery group could be organized.”

"These other Twelve Step organizations are patterned after AA and share many of its characteristics. Innocuous alternatives to AA are not to be found in me-too programs such as Codependents Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, Adult Children of Alcoholics, Al-Anon, and so on through dozens of other anonymous/anon groups that adhere to the basic Twelve Step ethos. To the degree that they mimic AA, what is said regarding AA may be universalized to apply to other Twelve Step programs."

Don back. My take on TSAM draws a clearer distinction between TSAM and AA. But first my background -- includes having worked at NCA (now NCADD), been a member of AA (20 years), was in the Federal government at the birth of the Hughes Act (served on the Federal Interagency Advisory Committee to NIAAA), worked as a part time alcoholism counselor for 8 years at a private treatment program, served as a Board member to an NCA affiliate, was a Board member of the American Council on Alcoholism, managed a company that regularly coordinated with and referred to addiction treatment programs, on Faculty at the Rutgers Summer School for 10 years and, finally, participated in SOS and SMART Recovery. Not only has the Twelve Step Alcoholism Movement (TSAM) dominated the field in the past but it continues to dominate much of what goes on in the field of addictions. Note that I didn't say AA/NA. I think AA/NA, with forethought, sought to avoid this situation. Indeed it was intent on only providing the environment for the personal miracles that were taking place.

But these individual personal miracles, in some cases, became devoted 'true believers' bent on proselytizing about the process that lead to those miracles. Individually, they began to position themselves within the growing prevention and treatment industries that were developing publicly and privately. Marty Mann's NCA became a group ripe for those intent on spreading the gospel (through public education). The emergence of public treatment programs also began to enlist from the ranks of AA/NA. And, of course, the private for profit or non-profits began to employ the recipients of the miracle (so as to spread it). The reason that I'm certain about this is because I was one of those 'true believers' that eagerly sought ways to contribute beyond church basements and the club houses of AA/NA.

There is a kind of process that many true believers go through. The process of their miracle becomes THE WAY. Then it becomes THE BEST WAY. And finally when threats to the WAY begin to surface, many true believers turn it into THE ONLY WAY. The organizations within which they reside begin to reflect that opinion. As many of you are aware, NCADD (at the national level) is a prime example of this process as they have come to do battle with anything that seems to question the ONLY WAY. They besmear anything that goes against the catechism, i.e. return to social drinking, Moderation Management, alternative mutual support communities. And they become a force to be reckoned with -- and unfortunately -- an impediment to progress in the field.

Harm reduction strategies are a constant target of the 'twelve step alcoholism movement'. We all know what NCADD attempted to do to Moderation Management and the travesty they forced on the Smithers Center in NYC. NCA did their best to discredit the work of the Sobell's in the 70's and 80's.

Other organizations representing the treatment industry (both public and private) and also representing the professionals and paraprofessionals that are employed in it became allied with and part of the TSAM movement. The result is that anything that seems to be new and different may be subject to be discounted and/or discredited.

Again, let me repeat that this isn't the fault of AA/NA. That was not their intent. But it is the understandable result of a process that has taken place over the last 70 years. The result is a movement that can be anti-scientific at times and hugely devoted to the maintenance of the status quo.

An unfortunate corollary to the emergence of a 'true believer' group is the emergence of a 'true disbeliever' group. Whereas the former group devoutly believes that they are blessed with the only true way, the latter group believes that the way of the 'true believer' is misguided at best and evil at worst. From that, only senseless conflict about what is the real "truth" emerges and distracts us from the real task at hand. Ahhh the endless stupid rants! I believe Bill W. foresaw this when he made his comment about the Fellowship needing all the help 'we' can get.

An aside to demonstrate the potency of the 'twelve step alcoholism movement'. As SMART Recovery was planning their annual National Training get together this past year, I encouraged the SMART central office to get their training announcement placed as articles in the Enewsletters of the national organizations representing the addictions field as a regular news item. They dutifully began to do that as I fed them the Eaddresses. In one case, to an organization that publishes a daily Enewsletter that was home based in the very city where the SMART meeting took place, they offered the organization a free press pass to the meeting. Their training announcement was never printed as part of their regular newsletter stories and no one from that organization showed up to cover it. Nor was it covered as a regular story in any of the organizational newsletters in our field. I'm afraid that this slight was an example of the intent to subvert anything that might conflict with the dogma of the 'true believers'. Sad. Don