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Cults In Alcoholics Anonymous

I have been sober long enough in AA to be aware of the phenomenon of sub-groups in AA. They tend to have a firm sense of special identity, to have one or more strong, charismatic leadership figures, to hold their own special meetings that are billed as regular AA meetings and to claim to have some special slant on the "spirituality" of the program which they state that the regular old humdrum AA sorely lacks. They often appeal to some earlier version of the Big Book, are possessed of an intense evangelical zeal and are keen on recruiting newcomers into their special-flavor version of AA. I have a built- in aversion when it comes to the naïve self-congratulation and pep rally atmosphere of such groups. It is only recently that I have come to see the deep damage they often do to their members.

I attended one such local group for 8 months. What immediately struck me was the "group laugh", the manic intensity of most of the shares and the seemingly scripted similarity of thought line and vocabulary they contained. Most of the sharing seemed to be about how wonderful the group, its leaders and techniques are, especially as compared to mainstream AA and how "only this group conscience has saved my life".

I did a 5th step with a member of the group and later read her several "daily inventories". I was sternly informed that I could only use certain words and phrases, that nothing could deviate from the literal text of the Big Book, and that I "should really" sign up for a $300 meditation course that all the group members experienced "so that we're all on the same page". I watched what I had once known as the complex, imaginative and poetic personalities of friends who got involved in the group melt and be recast as drones of the cult doing the regular, programmed, rah-rah shares, celebrating the group laugh and cutting off the rest of their lives to bury themselves in the cult social life.

I have seen the AA process heal and restore hundreds of persons. We come in uniformly crazy and miserable and as we heal we become dizzyingly individual, diverse and original. That's part of what makes AA both miraculous and fun. People become healthy editions of themselves and you never know what's going to pop up. The cult phenomenon may make people "feel good" but it is at the price of their authentic humanity. Mainstream AA may have less addictive "highs" and more pain of real life, but it gives me a radical meeting of life on life's terms and thus with the Higher Power as opposed to a swallowing up of my pains and my personality in the glow of Big Brotherhood.

Cory L.

Originally published in The Point Copyright ©, Intercounty Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous serving San Francisco and Marin Counties.