These groups are present in the UK as well, most recently going by the name of 'Roads to Recovery' and 'Vision for You'. However, in AA as an entire unit, it encourages thought-terminating language, phobic tendencies ["you can leave any time you want, although you may die"..etc] and an enforced religiosity manifesting itself as a 'spiritual' path. So although the wider sphere of AA is concerned about such groups as Midtown, it is AA as a whole that has specifically identifiable cult qualities that should be worrying to anyone being 'encouraged' to join.
In AA, people are immediately 'diagnosed' when they walk through the door as 'alcoholics', without any concern for their past, them as individuals or the complexities of people's lives. They are offered a blanket 'solution' to a problem, which involves making people feel bad about themselves by saying they are 'defective' and in need of a 'higher power' and by subsuming oneself in the group, only then can they feel better about themselves. AA does not allow any self-criticism whatsoever, with the neat get-out clause of 'group autonomy' and any logical criticisms are dismissed as 'resentments'. This thought terminating process makes people think that it is AA that has stopped the individual from drinking, instead of it being the individual themselves that has achieved sobriety. Dangerous stuff. No-one is 'powerless over people, places or things' and to believe so creates an army of automatons that really believe a group of people repeating the same stories every week has helped them stop drinking.
AA also disallows intellectual enquiry into the nature of addiction. It uses appeals to people's emotions, which is unbalanced. Fear is the watchword of the day in AA meetings. Fear of drinking, fear of other people and fear of the world. These things are not caused by drinking, but by being in the meetings of AA and by being surrounded by people who think in a similar way. It is such a powerful meme that within a couple of months of being love-bombed by the group and made to feel one of them, members start to see the world through these very strange AA tinted spectacles of 'sickness', fear and constantly self-checking for resentments.
The Midtown AA group is really no different from any other AA group, it just has the volume turned up. In the UK, people pay lots of money to see Clancy speak and he is treated as a sober super-hero, which is bizarre at its very least. Although they completely deny that they are in any way cult like, I am glad they exist because maybe at last AA as a whole is put under the microscope as a result of the Newsweek story and people can start to question whether this 1940's cult of Bill W is actually saving peoples lives or actually causing more harm than good. Enquiring, logical minds want to know.
A Struggle Inside AA
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It is a fight that has been largely waged in private. Some of Midtown's most driven critics organized a committee, dubbed the Concerned Friends Group, and created an anonymous MySpace page for ex-members to share stories. They have, unsuccessfully, tried to have Midtown expelled from churches where its meetings are held and have made numerous complaints to the police. (Law-enforcement officials say they have investigated the group but have not found evidence of criminal wrongdoing.) Many of the people involved in the dispute are recovering alcoholics and have been reluctant to go public with their allegations—both because it is a violation of AA's "anonymous" credo, and because they do not want it known that they are alcoholics. But in dozens of interviews with NEWSWEEK, recovering alcoholics and mental-health professionals describe a group that exerts an unusual amount of control and sometimes seems to put the social desires of some members above the recovery of others.
Despite repeated requests for comment, no current Midtown members agreed to be interviewed on the record, citing AA's tradition of anonymity in the press and their belief that negative publicity scares on-the-fence alcoholics from getting the help they need. But those who spoke or e-mailed without giving their names for publication say that Midtown is a flourishing group that has saved their lives, and that those who criticize it resent their success, have scores to settle or are simply making it all up.
Lauren Dougherty says that doesn't describe her at all. Now 29, she loved all the attention she got when she decided to sober up and join Midtown 11 years ago. A member of her family was an alcoholic, and Dougherty had sat in the back during AA meetings before. But Midtown was different from the meetings she remembered. Her first night, she was introduced to another member of the group and told, "She's your sponsor." Dougherty thought that was odd. AA sponsors are chosen, not assigned. But everyone was so friendly she let it pass. They gave her specific instructions about which Midtown meeting she should attend each day, and told her to cut off friends from her old life, even the ones who didn't drink. Soon her new circle of friends insisted she get an "AA boyfriend." Like May, Dougherty says there was pressure to sleep with older group members, which she refused to do. ("They live off of sex," says Meredith, a 19-year-old former member who, like several others, did not want her full name used to avoid being outed as an alcoholic. "I feel like their way of dealing with alcohol addiction is just by having sex with each other. Being in that group made me want to drink more.")
Disgusted, Dougherty tried to quit the group. She says her sponsor was furious. "You can't trust any of your own thoughts," she said. "You can't go into your own head unsupervised." At first, Dougherty didn't know what to believe, until a rehab counselor told her in no uncertain terms to get out.
Some former members say they too were made to believe that leaving Midtown would doom their recovery. Twenty-six-year-old Kristen spent eight years with the group, shunning family and outside friends. When she applied to go to art school in Richmond, Va., her sponsor, an older man, cursed her out. "You will drink," he told her. "You will fail. You will die." The reaction of her sponsor persuaded her to leave the group once and for all. She began secretly attending other AA meetings in the area. "I was so tired of being afraid all the time," she says. "I'd rather die than be in Midtown again."
Former members claim that Midtown makes it difficult to leave in other ways. About half the group's approximately 300 members rent houses with each other across the D.C. area. Many find work through contacts in the group. For them, exiting Midtown is not just a matter of walking out the door—it means getting evicted, breaking up with a boyfriend or girlfriend, and starting a social life from scratch.
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