How the 12 Step Cult Religion Ruined My Life Part 1

AA ruined my life for 32 years. It left me broke and homeless. Ever hear that at a meeting? Funny thing is I’m the rule not the exception

to the rule. Let that sink in. Don't go back it doesn't work it breaks up relationships, jobs disappear, and harms the lives of blameless children. AA did that through cult indoctrination and leaving me blind to the real issue, thus I never looked for anything that would really help with my incest issues. Things began to change when I borrowed a book from my then sponsors wife a family law attorney. The book, Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman MD, would that I had walked away then. Its hard to leave a cult. Just don't go no matter what. My dream was to go to Law School Myself, maybe I can salvage that.

I don't have a problem with God just theirs’s. Their non-differentiated god. Their higher power.  Nobody's really honest there even though honesty is supposed to be an important principle. I've heard people say all this positive stuff, then I've seen them at home and it just doesn't match up. They use god as an excuse a lot, and acceptance is an excuse to harm others even their family members. The rooms are one thing and then they only hang with each other and spout the lingo which is indoctrinational.

I am coming to grips with the fact that I had and have no real friends, just AA hucksters. One way or another they want me back in. No they know I'll come crawling back in vulnerable asking for help.   and because everything was supposed to be positive. AA always works. I'll be back.

Except I've looked head on and in the light of reality. My life has steadily gone downhill ever since I was badgered by a CADC to go to AA. I didn't know what a CADC was nor why I was there.

My cry for help was not about drinking/using, it was about something completely different. I must have looked in the wrong place.  In my diocese, in Santa Clara, I thought maybe I could talk to a priest or counselor who had dealt with someone who had cheated on his wife, couldn't stop, even though he wanted to.

But it was the 1980s and it was all about how good the 12 steps were and how they were the remedy for everything. This when I came in at a time when the 12 steps were at their pinnacle they were considered in self-help books to be a panacea for any aliment or disruptive behavior.  Go to Any Fuckking Thin Anonmous (AFTA), just go.

  One just naturally thinks that if so many people are saying such positive things that there must be empirical data to back it up what they say so assuredly. This is the first cult indicator the the assurance that the meetings work but you've got to go to a lot of them.

Being sent to AA and having meetings brought into a hospital setting -- a REHAB --  brought AFTA even more legitimacy.

 But for me even after rehab I had a hard time getting 30 days. I always had 27 days so I continuously humiliated myself by announcing as a newcomer. Would that I had just walked out of that CADCs door and looked up a psychologist. I could realize that though I was so desperate and ashamed not about drinking or using but just in general, and being an incest survivor compliant I just went along with it.

Bur problem drinking/using  is not why I made the appointment at all. I ended up in a CADAC's office I don't know why. I almost left right there, I should have it would have saved a lot of harm humiliation, financial loss and mostly loss of me, myself not knowwing who I was and what had been done to me, I was thrown to a bunch of wolves. A concentrated pod of dysfunction, as Gabrelle Glasser calls it. And in order to fit in, I had to become dysfunctional. This was just exactly the opposite of what I was seeking, but I got sucked into the cult.

I lost all those things they say you lose not from drinking or using but from that harmful abuse treatment that I was used to from my family that was reproduced in AFTA.. It's like I was driven into the exact opposite treatment that I needed. And since I was always a "newcomer" I had the shame of announcing that at every meeting.

Than that cult principle that isn't talked about never the less is there -- the urge to confess took hold. , I began telling people at my job I was alcoholic. I began to believe that my problem was alcohol and drugs. I told friends I was an addict, without even knowing what it meant. What is an addict?

I Began telling family and friends that I was different, I had a disease.

By doing this, by coming out so to speak I only harmed myself and set the stage for a downward spiral from middle class to homelessness. But you couldn't tell me that at the time, one man did , but I wouldn't listen  I ended up harming myself, instead taking a harm reduction approach, the AAers around me told me to tell them the truth my boss, coworkers. How idiotic. And that's not even what it was about I wasn't having trouble with substances, I was having trouble with sexual acting out or re-enacting my childhood sexual abuse experiences. It just so happened that sometimes re-enactment involved drugs and alcohol sometimes it didn't.

I got nowhere except I started losing things because of AA. I couldn't just summon the autonomy to leave.

The first things I lost were my friends, the people I worked with and socialized with, yeah we had a drink once in a while so what. But there was no time for real friends anymore on "AA friends"  cult members who thought the same spoke the same and acted the same in an abusive self-harming manner. I had not thought at all what was happening. I was stating the AFTA downward spiral, and I had no idea. I was just fitting in complying trying to "work" the program.

Slowly it's sinking in AA did this to me, once I completely absorb that truth I will be free. the 12 step cult religions and there's even one for incest made my life a living hell. I had one good year I didn't talk at meetings, I was in a different town so nobody knew me, I never told anybody how much time I had, I went but did not participate and it worked my life got better. But I wasn't dealing with the core issue because hey I was a success in AA.

How could this happen, Part 2.