1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
My criticism here is that NO ONE is powerless over alcohol. Ever. Does alcohol sneak into your house and force you to drink it? No, no it doesn't.
I have a HUGE problem with this teaching that a person addicted to a substance is powerless. Teaching people that they are powerless is obviously incorrect ... but it IS a great way to keep people coming back to your meetings!
Anyone's life can become unmanageable. You know what you do about that? Figure out a way to manage it! You don't go looking for a group of people to tell you that you're powerless to change your situation.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
I grouped these together because they pretty much say the same thing.
A power greater than ones self? Like gravity? Oh wait, I don't think that's what they mean at all. This is clearly a religious message from a group that claims it doesn't push religion. Attend an AA meeting and find this out for yourself if you don't believe me.
An interesting side to this is that people who are already religious may not notice this fact. Especially in the U.S., religion is SO entrenched in the culture that religious messages are 'tuned out' because they are so pervasive. I hear and see them all the time and they bother the hell out of me.
These steps also feed into the helpless/powerless theme of AA. "You are helpless. You cannot fix yourself." If you hear a message like that enough times, you start to believe it to be true! This is how abusive husbands keep their wives - by repeating a statement like this over and over until she believes she really is worthless or stupid. AA's message of "you can't do it on your own/you are powerless/you have a disease" is not as forthright in its destructiveness but it's equally as effective.
AA uses a combination of love bombing and guilt to keep people coming back so they keep hearing these messages. Alcoholics are selfish people and AA groupers love the combination of love and group-thinking. It feeds their ego while they pretend it doesn't.
If you don't go to meetings, they call you! If you are sober on your own, they will shun you and say things behind your back about how you're going to relapse any day. I know this because I have heard it first hand from groupers who have a friend who is staying sober without AA.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
People who don't make searching and fearless moral inventories of themselves from time to time freak me out. The fact that alcoholics need a group to tell them to do this freaks me out even more. The problem with alcoholics is not the alcohol - it is the underlying selfish personality. I have never met an alcoholic, in AA or otherwise, who wasn't completely self-absorbed.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Confession can be very cathartic but see again how self-absorbed this program is. A person is told they are "sick" and that they can't fix themselves. So they should go talk about themselves to other people and to themselves (twice, because god isn't real). I'll say it again - alcoholics are all inherently selfish people at their core and I don't know ANY alcoholics (and boy do I seem to know a lot of them) who don't talk about themselves more than any other subject.
Also see the religious message? How can AA claim not to be pushing religion when it mentions g0d in every other step? "Oh ANYTHING can be your higher power" they say. I dare you to put that to the test. Go to an AA meeting and sincerely hold up a picture of the FSM (while wearing full pirate regalia of course) and proclaim your Pastafarian beliefs. People will get mad.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
More religion. AA is a freaking cult.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
...because you can't fix yourself. See? It's all the same message restated several different ways to reinforce the belief that the individual is helpless and needs some outside force to fix them. Teaching people that they are powerless is wrong both morally and in a very objective way.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
This is what any normal, decent person should DO when they harm someone! Once again this highlights just how selfish alcoholics really are! Their problem is not drinking, it's not drugs, it's not simply ineffective coping - it's a deficit in the ability to socialize with others in a healthy way.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
This goes right along with #4.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
More g0d-talk.
Oh - but it's not religious, it's SPIRITUAL. I dare you. I TRIPLE DOG DARE YOU to test this out by going to a meeting and proclaiming that you were touched by His Noodly Appendage and are now in constant contact with the FSMonster. Again: People will get pissed.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Ohhh, now we move on to the evangelism part! It is interesting to note here that when you go to AA meetings you will hear them say things like, "AA works through attraction, not through recruitment" but it's a bald-faced lie. Go to a few meetings and say you're an alcoholic, exchange numbers with a few prominent group members and just let the phone ring right off the hook when you miss a meeting.
Oh yes, and then when you talk to them tell them that you're sober without AA and it's not for you. They might not say it to your face but they will totally be snarking about you behind your back. They might say, "come back when you're sick and tired of being sick and tired" or some other lamesauce cliche.
Of course all of this is only based on my experience with Alcoholics Anonymous, with alcoholics who have worked and others who have not worked these steps. Take it or leave it, but I totally dare you to go perform some of my tests and make your own observations.
~Tak~ |
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You have an interesting perspective on AA... I'm not an alcoholic and never will be.... but my parents are... but I can certainly understand your views on the subject. Certainly. I had a therapist once... that did this therapy called "The Work" I believe (http://www.thework.com/thework.php) and the problem I had with it was that you eventually came back around to making the issue all about you and placing the blame on yourself.
Hmmm I've never heard of an AA meeting being like that. I know several people who've been in AA and all of them describe it very differently...I suppose the atmosphere in the meeting depends on the people attending/running it. Maybe you could look into going some where else for a meeting?