The FORCED Speak Out
This is a forum for people who have been forced to participate
in the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous. We call
forced addiciton treatment and recovery group participation
the Belly of the Bureaucratic Beast.
Therein, recovery is impossible, participants become permanently
marked for lifelong discrimination, the majority acquire
new problems directly caused by the coerced indoctrination.
The addiction treatment industry is operated by the12-step
syndicate, present in every community and in all of our
social institutions, and now uses the force of law to funnel
citizens into its programs. But some coerced treatment,
particularly in prisons, where inmates are increasingly
resistant to the religiosity of AA, is along the lines of
cognitive psychology. Both are equally inappropriate, ineffective,
and harmful, and both violate freedom of conscience guaranteed
under our Constitution.
We want to hear from you! The only
reason AA has gained such power over your life is because
those who were forced before you failed to speak out against
AA. The letters on the page below are from people whose
Constitutional rights have been violated by the 12-step
syndicate.
Send your own story of forced recovery group participation
or coerced addiction treatment to:
I
Was Coerced
For some background on coerced addiction treatment, see
this link:
Have You Been
Coerced?
Hello,
My husband is a physician who has recently
been "incarcerated" in a treatment center based
on AA. I have been told that I am in denial, that I will
hinder my husband's recovery, and that I would rather have
him home ill than to recover. I do not want to go to Alanon,
as suggested by the staff at the center. My husband will
lose his license if he does not comply, which means mandatory
AA meetings years after the treatment center.
As far as I can see, AA has ruined my family.
I am at home with an 8 year old, a 4 year old and 11 month
old twins. Bankruptcy is a possibility. We were a very close
family and I loved my husband very much. However, the man
that comes out of the center may no longer be the man I
married. I cannot tell you how painful it is to me to see
the treatment methods. I am allowed to visit my husband
on Sunday and talk with him 10 minutes a day. The rest of
the time he is theirs to pound 12-step garbage into his
head.
I don't have a problem with religion, as
I am a Roman Catholic, but I certainly have a problem with
forced religion. How can anyone force such a personal
thing? I guess that is why they have to isolate the inmates.
My heart is breaking. I know that I cannot
be certain that my husband will come out a zealous AAer,
but with a minimum of 8 weeks treatment I believe my fear
is well founded.
I certainly support your efforts to allow
alternative treatments. If there are any wives that were
able debrief their 12 step husbands, I would appreciate
the encouragement.
I remain responsible for myself (my own
actions) and my children's welfare.
Tina
Dear Tina,
It is truly astonishing
that the medical profession has not only succumbed to the
quackery of addiction treatment, but has also embraced AA
as an approved method. An interesting footnote is that AMA
does not claim to have evidence of addictive disease, but
allows its stepchild, the American Society for Addiction
Medicine (ASAM) to propagandize the public with disease/treatment
hogwash. ASAM is composed of members of AA who saved their
careers by copping a disease and claiming they were successfully
treated, essentially submitting an insanity plea for themselves
when they were caught drinking or drugging.
We have heard from hundreds
of physicians and other "impaired professionals"
who have been subjected to incredible abuses in the name
of addiction treatment. Many are shipped to funny farms
on the East and West Coasts, where they are stripped of
their fundamental rights, their dignity, their identities,
and their assets. There, the treatment specialists spout
scientific nonsense that is interpreted as authoritative
knowledge, and make ridiculous claims like, "Doctors
are the most difficult kind to treat; they are so well-defended
with their intellectual armor that it may take many months
to break through their denial."
Here's the greatest irony.
Professionals are the easiest people to persuade to quit
drinking/using. They have more to lose, catch on quickly,
understand the nature of authority, and have little difficulty
with self-discipline since they have usually prevailed after
years of effort to obtain their qualifications. Because
of this, the treatment centers can take credit for what
their participants finally accomplish, which is to refrain
from the use of alcohol and other drugs. When individuals
"relapse," it is always attributed to the seriousness
of the (fictitious) disease, or to the recalcitrance of
the participant or his family.
The reason they want you
to become involved in your husband's treatment are (1) to
charge extra fees, (2) to find another scapegoat should
he continue drinking, and (3) to convert your family to
the 12-step cult, replacing family bonds with ties to the
cult. I strongly advise you to refuse to get involved in
his addiction problems, since they are entirely of his own
making, and entirely up to him to resolve.
He is being exploited at
a time of special vulnerability, but he may submit to his
captors and view them as legitimate authorities in his life,
i.e., his higher power. If so, the prognosis for your marriage
isn't good; religion can break up families when there is
a demand by either party to accept the other's religion.
I must comment that the Roman Catholic Church has failed
you by accepting AA as a legitimate social institution.
I think if your family was being required to attend the
Baptist Church, your clergy might become at least a little
perturbed.
As a spouse violated by
12-steppers, you have fewer options than your husband does.
He has the U.S. Constitution and your state Constitution
as first line defenses against the tyranny of forced AA.
If he converts to 12-steppism, the 12-step cult will alienate
his affection for you, regarding you as a "codependent,"
or "enabler," much in the same way that some religions
regard nonmembers as "heathen," or "pagan."
They will intimidate you by making you appear responsible
for sanctions they impose against him, such as a longer
stay at the treatment center, subsequent relapses, and the
loss of his professional license. Already, they have attacked
your character, as one who is selfish and wants him home
without regard for his illness or survival. There is no
practical limit to the insults they will hurl at you, because
they cannot tolerate rejection, and will attempt to destroy
anyone who attempts to elude them.
On a positive note, he may
be playing his cards close to his vest, recognizing the
insanity of his colleagues who are running the asylum. He
may, as AA oldtimers winkingly suggest, "Fake it 'til
you make it." If so, his agony while in treatment will
be enormous, and he will have a desperate need for understanding
and vindication when he is released. The treatment specialists
will insulate him from all contact with the outside world,
allowing him access only the cult doctrine of AA. However,
you might smuggle in some materials on Rational Recovery,
with the understanding that if he is caught with such materials,
he will be punished, and you will be implicated as a very
sick person. On many occasions, when people in addiction
treatment programs obtain a copy of Rational Recovery: The
New Cure for Substance Addiction, they simply pass the book
along to another patient, walk out of the facility and hail
a taxi.
Do not hesitate to urge
him to leave the facility, even though doing so may result
in reprisals from the center. If he is healthy and sane
enough to walk out, then he is also in condition to take
legal action against the conspiracy against him.
If he returns home weirded
out by AA, expect that he will at least study AVRT and investigate
RR-PLAN at this website. That is a reasonable expectation
by any spouse under the influence of a cult. Be prepared
to assert your beliefs and refuse to be sucked into the
enabler/codependent role. Let him know that from here on
in, the use of alcohol and other drugs is intolerable, and
he must make a personal commitment to have no "relapses,"
even though his monitor program may find relapses permissible.
In the same way that drunkenness
can be cause for divorce, so can irresponsibility from a
recovery group disorder. Unreasonable absence from the home,
preoccupation with God and stepwork, estrangement of family
loyalty from 12-step group pressures, and the betrayal of
family confidentiality to the recovery group are conditions
of marital infidelity just as serious and damaging as addiction
or adultery. When you married, you made vows of loyalty
that still exist, and which still exclude unwholesome, competing
relationships outside the marriage relationship. You are
on firm ground in expecting him to be the man you originally
married, so hold your ground from the start.
You can print our letters
and sneak him a copy. Put them, folded, into a copy of Rational
Recovery. Tell him he can call me here if he is interested
in bucking the system and retaining his dignity and career.
Jack Trimpey
