One Day At A Time

We've been slowly making our way through the Penn & Teller Bullshit! series. Last night, we watched the one about 12 step programs (Season 2, Disc 3), which focused primarily on the Alcoholic Anonymous program. I had already determined that these 12 step programs are bullshit, but until last night, I had never bothered to actually look closely at what the 12 steps actually say.

I will share them with you in a moment. But first, let's cut straight to the bottom line, which is that these programs have absolutely no effect on whether or not a person gets sober and stays sober. The research shows that the AA success rate is around 5% and the success rate of someone who just decides for himself to stop drinking is around 5%. What it comes down to is if a person is ready to quit, they're going to quit, with or without AA.

The main difference is that the person who decides for himself only has to go through one step, change the behavior. The person who goes through AA has to admit that they are powerless losers and the only way they can be saved is if they submit entirely to an invisible deity, who will then magically cure you. But only after you have completed all of the steps.

I had heard that religious groups use these meetings to prey on new members while they're at their lowest and most vulnerable but I never realized just how over the top the 12 steps are in their religious mumbo-jumbo. This is nothing short of a cult.

Take a look at all 12 steps and tell me which one's you couldn't do by yourself, without a make believe higher power, and which one's you really need to do at all in order to change a behavior. I'll go first.

AA Steps

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.
--- You're not powerless over alcohol. You just have bad habits and bad self discipline. Decide you don't want to be that person anymore and then fix it. And don't give me that lame "disease" argument. Cancer is a disease. Alcohol is a beverage.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
--- How? I mean this one is just insane. You're all there is and even if you go pretending or actually believing that there is a higher power guiding you, in the end you did it all by yourself. Yes you did.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
--- No, you made a decision to change your behavior. That's all.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
--- Good. Everyone should do this from time to time. But it's not going to have any bearing on whether or not you stop drinking.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
--- If it makes you feel better, go for it. But it's not going to have any bearing on whether or not you stop drinking.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
--- If God made you (in his image) didn't he put those defects of character there on purpose? Why would your God want to remove them? And if the "defects of character" actually means "drinking", then again, all you're doing is changing a behavior.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
--- Ummm...see my answer to #6.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
--- Go for it but again, it's not going to have any bearing on whether or not you stop drinking.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
--- See answer to #8.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
--- See answer to #8.

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.
--- This has absolutely nothing to do with drinking or changing a bad behavior. This is nothing more than pimping their religion.

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.
--- Spiritual awakening? Hardly. All you did was change a habit. And in the process, you were tricked into becoming members of a religious cult and now the next step is they want you to go out and start recruiting new members.

So when you break it down, very few of these 12 steps actually have anything to do with actually changing a behavior. Instead, it's all geared toward conditioning you to start buying into their religion, which is what they are really selling you...one day at a time.