Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of 12-Step Programs: Part 2

Episode Date: July 26, 2022

A much-requested Part 2 to continue Cult Girl Summer. Our 12-Step Program episode sparked much debate, and we quickly determined we’d need to continue the conversation about how “culty” these addiction recovery groups can be. Inspired by our most engaged culties, here is our first-ever follow-up episode. Many thanks to the listeners who generously called in for this one! For further reading on this subject, check out the study, “Exiting Alcoholics Anonymous disappointed: A qualitative analysis of the experiences of ex-members of AA” (there’s a free PDF version on ResearchGate) and the 2018 Vox article, “Why some people swear by Alcoholics Anonymous — and others despise it.” Athletic Greens Is giving you a FREE 1-year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/CULT

The views expressed in this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. I want to start off by saying that I think they do a lot of good and can really help addicts and people who are struggling with addiction. However, there are some strange culty-like dynamics, especially when you are abroad. I was going to a 12-step program for sex and love addiction in New York and found it really

inclusive, warm, welcoming, and super helpful to me at the time. I then moved to Europe and I noticed that they followed a different kind of protocol, which I thought was also a bit strange to begin with. I had always thought that 12-step programs more or less followed the same regimen. However, SLA in Europe operates by the HAL system, honesty, openness, and willingness. When I joined the HAL 12-step program for sex and love addiction in Germany, I picked up a sponsor naturally. My sponsor then proceeded to tell me that I was not allowed to take my antidepressants.

First of all, it's incredibly dangerous to just stop taking any sort of medication. And second of all, I didn't see how it affected my issues surrounding codependency. She even pointed out in the handbook that people going through the first three steps should abstain from alcohol and any other drug. Well to me, taking a medication is not a drug, so I refused naturally. She begrudgingly obliged, but I know a lot of people in the program who actually stopped taking antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication. I am a clinical social worker.

And many years ago, I worked in a substance use treatment program and it was 12-step based. I cannot possibly express how unhealthy the environment was, yes, due to a lack of oversight on the part of the hospital system under which it was based, but also because of the guy that ran it. It was the most perfect and terrible mix of somebody with an insane personality disorder, a history of substance use himself, which does not preclude you from being a good therapist. But for this guy, absolutely did. It was just a disaster in this program, like all the time, laws were being broken, people

were being exploited. I mean, the field of substance use is kind of young and now we have really good treatment for it, but there are so many programs across the nation that are still left in this fifties kind of white man world. But suffice it to say that in this hospital system where we were located, we were the outliers. We were, you know, we were the substance use unit, don't question the substance use unit. So nobody questioned it and when I got there, I did and it did not go well.

This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm Amanda Montell, author of the book Cultish the Language of Fanaticism. I'm Issa Medina and I'm a comedian. Every week on our show, we discuss a different fanatical fringe group from the cultural zeitgeist, from CrossFit to the Kardashians, to try and answer the big question, this group sounds like a cult. But is it really? To join our cult and see culty memes and BTS pics, follow us on Instagram at SoundsLikeACultPod.

I'm on Instagram at Amanda underscore Montell and I'm on Instagram trying to grow. So I would appreciate your support at Issa Medina, I-S-A-A-M-E-D-I-N-A-A. And feel free to support our show on Patreon at patreon.com sounds like a cult where our episodes are available ad free and welcome to another installment of cult girl summer five weeks of bonus episodes where we share off the cuff convo's Q&A footage from the cutting room floor and much requested part twos a.k.a. this episode. We have been itching to dive back into this week's topic, the cult of 12 step programs, which is something we covered in season two, but we were only able to tackle it from the

perspective of our guest who has had a very positive experience in this group like AA and OA groups or people recovering from addiction. But there are also lots of folks who have had culty experiences in these 12 step program groups for the worse and a bunch of listeners let us know that they wanted to hear these stories too. And fair enough, because we do too. Totally, I mean, I came to that recording that day ready to roast groups like Alcoholics, Anonymous, et cetera, because there are a lot of culty aspects of these groups for the

better. You know, for some people, like our guest groups like AA and NA and OA really have saved their lives and that's 100% valid and we would never want to illegitimize their experience. And that's why we didn't on that day, you know, we just had an authentic conversation with someone from his perspective, but then we realized that there were other stories to tell about the cult of 12 step programs. And I already knew that. But in the conversation, I started to second guess myself, like, maybe I've been too critical

of these groups. Well, I also think, you know, we were approaching it from the perspective of one participant. So I don't think we didn't grill him. Like I remember we really did grill him, but he was really good at responding because it was really in a deescalating format. And that's what I ultimately convinced me that it wasn't that culty because he wasn't offended by the questions that we were asking and his answers weren't cagey. He was just really honest.

He was just like, if you feel that like certain way you can leave and you can walk out of the program, no one is like making you be in the program. It was a really sound argument to me, but it's important to look at like specific stories and other things that people have talked about. We're excited to do this part too, because I want to explore the other side of things. And it's really tricky because people who do believe that Alcoholics Anonymous and groups like that have saved their lives might be triggered by criticism of these groups. But also J.F.

Harris, who was the guest we had on the episode, told me that a bunch of people reached out to him, people who like didn't know that they needed help. And they were like, thank you so much for that episode. Like it made me go seek help because they had really bad perceptions of Alcoholics Anonymous or 12-step programs. They thought they were culty and so they didn't even want to go into them. And I do think that they are culty fundamentally and we'll walk through some reasons why, but I don't think that that is a reason not to try them.

Yeah. I don't think, like we talk about that all the time on the podcast, it's not necessarily a bad thing to be culty. There are Live Your Life cults and there are Watch Your Back cults. At least how we've defined a Watch Your Back is a group that you don't need to avoid at all costs. It's a group that might not be for everyone. In fact, it might be traumatizing for some people, but for some people it's great and

it's really up to the individual to determine what your limits are. So we really just are making this part two in the spirit of balance. Yeah, we love balance. Like we've said, I mean, we're literally taking this five week quote unquote break, but still doing an episode every week so that we can dive deeper because in this 12-step program, we didn't have that much time to do deep research. Yeah, we just, I mean, that's the long and the short of it is that we found this guest who was hard to find.

Because you can't approach people and be like, hey, heard you're an alcoholic, want to be our guest. And sure there are a lot of people who are public alcoholics, but a lot of those people are hard to access. Yeah. And here was someone who fell into our lap who was like, I'm willing and open to talk about it and I walked away from that interview being like, I think that was balanced, but we now realize that it wasn't as balanced as it possibly should be.

And because this is really sensitive subject matter, we just want to make sure that we're approaching it from as many sides as we're able to. Also reminding people to remember that this is an opinion entertainment podcast. This is not investigative journalism. We want to do these topics justice, but you know, we'll link some resources on our Instagram for those who want to take a more formal dive into the subject, so a lot of the info in this episode comes from a qualitative study of the efficacy of AA specifically, the study is titled exiting alcoholics anonymous disappointed, a qualitative analysis of the experiences

of X members of AA. This was published by some mental health experts at the University of Sydney. We'll share it on our Instagram for those interested in diving deeper. Even research about the efficacy of AA has honestly been a lot like our prior episode. It's really reflected the experiences of people who have had positive experiences in AA and that's great for them and it honestly feels validating to us like because even scientific qualitative studies conducted at universities have focused on people in AA. Yeah, that makes sense, especially because like I feel like their whole program functions

around not speaking about AA outside of AA. So if you're a person who left alcoholics anonymous, then you're not going to talk negatively about it because you don't want to affect other people's chance that it could work for them. Totally. And I think that naturally, if you haven't had an experience like this yourself, you wouldn't even realize that people have defected from this group and had negative experiences. So this study aimed to sort of like correct that by exploring the perspectives and experiences

of people who've left AA and weren't super happy with their experience. And the study conducted interviews with 11 XA members from the US, Australia and England. And what they found was basically that while participants enjoyed a lot of aspects of AA while they were in it, in retrospect, they realized that they probably stayed in AA for a long time because they felt, and I quote, indoctrinated into a particular way of understanding themselves. That's the part that I think makes it, and again, spoiler because we already did an episode on this.

I kind of think it's a watch your back still. Did we said watch your back, right? I think your final comment was that addicts need to watch their backs always in whatever they pursue, which is fair enough. Yeah, man, we talked about so many things, I literally forget what I said. It was kind of genius because it was an amazing way of like circumventing the question at hand. Yeah.

And that's the thing is like the way that this is said, it's been indoctrinated into a particular way of understanding themselves. I think that's the key. It's how they see themselves, not how they see the world. So that only affects you, but that's bad, I can still be bad. Yeah, definitely, no. So maybe in your mind, you think something would be a get the fuck out if you've ostracized a massive swath of the general population, but AA, according to the study, kind of does

that in the insular world of AA. Yeah, it's true. I think it's more so for me that traditional cults are a lot about how you see the world and it's about convincing other people to join you and there's never really that recruitment aspect to AA because they literally don't talk about it outside of it. Yes, but I think it's just subtler and they're not trying to recruit everybody because everybody isn't an addict. So their pool of recruits is a little bit smaller naturally.

It's important to go back to this study because I feel like it's kind of like our North Star in this episode. Yeah, for sure. And they said that their findings demonstrated a disparity between the idealistic principles in AA and the actual experience of participants. It's like the difference between what you thought AA was going to be and what it actually was. And I think it's so important that they mention that this was discussed in relation to a possibility

of a bunch of different experiences across varying AA groups. And I think that's what's so hard to analyze about AA is that it is these groups of people that all associate themselves with this one organization, but they're meeting in different places around the world. And so every single group is going to take in the culture of the place where it's meeting. Yeah, every group is going to have a slightly different culture because there is no centrally organized body, but I think there are through lines just by the nature of how AA presents itself.

And I think we can walk through some of what these culty aspects are. So I'm a therapist and I'm located in Denver, Colorado. And in my program at the University of Denver to get my master's in social work, we read this book in our trauma and substance abuse class. I remember in the book there were quite a few of these treatment centers that followed the 12 step process among some other things and were extremely re-traumatizing for the folks who were in treatment. I think it's really interesting to think about the idea of the 12 step program being

culty because clinically there's just a lot of stuff there about the danger of what that can do and the way that some of these programs are contributing to these sociological trends with substance use. Hi, this is Holly from BioMBase, Australia, a really culty place. My 12 step experience was with CODA, I did about 10 years ago for a few years. I went to a really beautiful women's group and then a few people from a big town came and they kind of started another CODA group and took it over and then had all these rules and they were very controlling with their sponsors and even in my own experience with

CODA I had real issues with sponsors and like all my co-dependent issues basically were playing out in the CODA group but I learnt so much and I'm so grateful for my years there and I did the 12 steps really thoroughly but I did leave because I felt my co-dependency issues were just digging deeper in that environment. I think the cultiest thing about 12 step programs is that they straight up ask you to just admit your powerlessness, that they ask you to admit that you're completely powerless and that the only thing that can help you is what they have. I've always thought about like what would I do if I developed an addiction because a

real turn off about 12 step programs for me is that they're fundamentally religious like baked into their literature and their big book is Talk of God. I think that like at this point in the United States like of course lots of organizations are gonna have Protestant roots that's just like reflective of our culture at large. But I do think it is a little bit problematic and I know they say that your higher power can be whatever it means to you but this was a group that stemmed from and was founded upon religious Christian ideology and as like you know the atheist daughter of scientist that just like does not work for me.

So I think devil's avocado time. They don't know what devil's avocado means yet. Oh right. Yeah I've just been recording. Explain devil's avocado for the people. So I have started to be like devil's advocate in the podcast but I hate the term devil's advocate because I feel like it's historically linked to people defending annoying things and like the devil doesn't need an advocate.

So I think of like male libertarians. Exactly. Exactly. But to keep the podcast interesting you know we have to look at both sides and I hate saying devil's advocate so I've started to say devil's avocado which I think is really fun. I like it too. I like it too.

Sorry. I can't wait to laugh. No but I actually think that the fact that it started out fundamentally religious and now they have transitioned into removing the word God and removing the religion out of it. They haven't removed God. They haven't removed God. No.

So I think that's the way that JF described it for us. You know he explained that they like changed the pronouns. They changed pronouns to they them and they've changed a lot of things to make it like more progressive and like more non-denominational I guess so. But like can't you easily see how a group could change the language to sound more inclusive but is still up to the same bullshit. It's like when the beauty industry all of a sudden decided it wasn't going to say anti-aging anymore but it was still selling you the same ingredients so you wouldn't age.

Yeah. So I get that but because it's like a non-central entity the only thing that they have is the book as the central entity so unfortunately it's true that it is up to the culture of each community. Like I feel like if you go to AA in Salt Lake City for example it's probably going to be a lot more religious than going to AA in like Silver Lake California. Oh that is 100% true but if you're in the middle of the country maybe you're just shit out of luck that sucks.

That does suck but I don't know if that necessarily makes it more culty because unless that AA in particular in the middle of the country that you're going to is like recruiting you to like move to that city and stay in that AA. Like you have the power as an individual to go back to your hometown and go to the AA that you feel comfortable at. But what if you already live in Salt Lake City and you don't want it to be religious? What if you're God forbid a Jew, a queer Jew in Salt Lake City you know what I mean? Yeah.

Then you're just like this religion is just baked into your recovery and you know this study is from 2020 and I'll just quote something that was said in it. Those participants in this study talked about their objections to the religiosity embedded in AA ideology and shared concerns about you know the primary text of AA, this big book that we keep referencing being considered divinely inspired. There's this notion that problematic drinking is caused by a problem with one's soul and there's this required belief in an intangible entity whether it's God or something else and meetings often end in the Lord's Prayer.

It is important to look at these situations where someone joined like at a younger age and then kind of like stayed for a while. True. How they changed as people before and after and of course in that time they're going sober. So they already are changing in more ways than one but it's like how did it change them fundamentally like their outlook? And you know it's interesting like getting sober is such a profound experience. I mean I've had people describe it to me as like going through a second puberty.

It's just like this transformation and I think AA really enhances that transformation with a profound conversion event like we've often talked on this podcast about how brainwashing is often the way that cult manipulation is talked about but really what's going on according to the religious scholar Rebecca Moore. Our conversion conditioning and coercion and AA is really good at conversion. Yeah, there was this specific story that stood out to me from this study about one of the subjects fake named Harry. He was 21 years old when he first attended AA and he was a member for three years.

So there's a stark difference about how he felt about it at the beginning and at the end when he was asked about his first impressions of AA he responded. My first impressions were wow this is great. I had found the answer to all my problems because I bought into it hook line sinker. So I thought this is really great. You know I really connected with this big book. I connected with everything that was being said in the meetings. I thought I had discovered the greatest thing to happen in my life and everything was going

to be okay from there on out. And Harry recalls how powerful his conversion experience was in positively impacting his mental well-being and sense of hope for the future. So while Harry connected intensely with the people and the ideology in AA in retrospect the conversion was kind of creepy or that's how he sees it. Like that term hook line sinker is really more of a metaphor to explain that there was a literal hook in AA that captivated him. Yeah and you see this a lot with classic cults.

I mean I remember interviewing people from my book who were talking about their experiences in cultish Pentecostal church atmospheres talking about how like the first time they spoke in tongues. There was almost exactly this verbiage. They were like this was the greatest thing that happened in my life. Everything was going to be okay from here on out. That's true but devil's avocado and I know this is a serious subject I'm like I am going to use that term.

My thing is like I don't think you can ever believe that everything is going to be perfect from here on out and no one in AA is telling these people that they are implying it because they want them to feel safe and they want them to be in a better space but it's like life is never going to be perfect. Oh that's a hundred percent true but I do think that the culture of AA implicitly claims that like this is the only group that can save you and that's clear in the fact that there is no exit strategy like remember when we first asked JF like what's the exit cost if you leave AA and his like visceral response was you die.

When we pressed him a little more like when we pressed like are there exit costs he was like nothing happens. No I know I know but I think that visceral response really says something about the level of passion that you have to have in AA and I know this is a bad comparison but like it really really reminds me of acting school. I spent one semester as a miserable theater student at NYU before I quickly left and went to a linguistics major I'm very happy about that but like they really do create this sense that like if you leave you will be no one and like sure you live or sure you can figure

it out if you leave but like if you quit NYU tish you will be no one that's never said but it is implied. Yeah it reminds me a lot of fraternities and sororities. Totally. Like if you leave you aren't really like welcome to the date functions or like to hang out with your friends but it's this unspoken rule. For sure. And like think about it it is so wild that AA is truly the only mainstream option for

alcoholics even though I totally see the cultiness in the fact that it's anonymous means that you can't really like create a community outside of it although actually JF Harris said that like he would start hanging out with his AA friend. Oh you only hang out with your AA friends a lot of the time. I don't think that's necessarily true it's just such a large program like everyone has like a unique experience. 100% But I think like you can stop going to the meetings and you can still hang out with your

AA friends. Uh-uh. What do you mean? This study said that many participants told the researchers that they developed such close tight bonds with members in AA that were then lost when they left and it was explained to them directly that if a person chooses to leave AA other members by and large consider that this choice renders them incompatible friends since they're then seen as having completely different beliefs or an unhealthy mentality and they can't hang out with them

anymore. Yeah I think like it's hard because it's like the exit costs are your newfound community, it's like your friends, your community, your support system but there aren't other like monetary exit costs you know what I mean? There's nothing like holding you down to stay in the group. Yeah there's nothing holding you down in so many of the groups that we talk about. I mean I'm going more into hard watch your back. I mean a lot of participants in this study not only said that they couldn't have relationships

with those people in AA anymore but they were like devastated about that. These are people who were like so unbelievably close to. Yeah and this is an example of the in-group out-group identity that the community experiences. Absolutely. So one of the closest things that happened to me during a 12 step program is we went out for fellowship, dinner after a meeting and I ordered a tiramisu believing that it was only a coffee based dessert and when they saw it on the table they like stopped the waitress and made a big deal and asked the kitchen to make sure there wasn't any alcohol

in it and like nobody knew. So they embarrassed me, took the tiramisu away and had me buy something else and I was just completely mortified. It was the biggest deal over a piece of cake. Hey there this is Riley, I'm in Colorado. My partner was involved in the AA program and so I started going to Al-Anon which is for you know the partners and the family of addicts or alcoholics and at first it was great and I made some friends and found some community and then some of the messages that

were being spread were kind of like it doesn't really matter if your partner drinks or goes off the rail or goes on a bender as long as you're solid and as long as you're okay and it really was focused on like rugged individualism and not really on like community centering and healing. Hi my name is Mae from Boston Mass and as an addiction researcher who has spent a lot of time in recovery homes that use science-backed and harm reduction methods I'd have to say that the cultiest thing about AA is the CHIPS system. So losing your CHIPS is a physical representation of the shame members face for not being on

a perfectly linear healing path. So if they have a bad day and end up relapsing for whatever reason instead of seeking support from the group they might feel inclined to keep it secret which means they end up using a loan which increases their chance of overdose significantly. For some people it becomes their family their entire personality and the only thing that people do in their free time other AA members become the only people they feel like they can trust and truly understand them which could be a good thing for sobriety but you could also maybe like lose yourself in that.

It does remind me a lot of like replacing one cult with another cult or replacing one addiction with another addiction because especially if you're going to these meetings on a weekly basis like that is that's a heavy commitment. Oh I know people in AA who go twice a day. Twice a day. They go to meetings twice a day or they zoom into meetings twice a day. I guess if you're comparing like drinking or doing drugs like heavy bad drugs for like your health I'm like not weed but if you're doing bad drugs or heavy drinking and it's

like ruining your life in like more intense ways I guess this is a lighter less bad addiction. Yeah because you're not going to die of an overdose of AA. I would say that being in AA is better than being an active addict like across the board and by the way like this is spoken from someone whose close friends and family have had great success in AA who are participating in the cultishness of it for the better with self awareness. I just know that like being an addict is such a vulnerable position to be in especially if you're a young addict.

Yeah I think it could be so much worse. You know I think it's such a cult. Like no I think it's definitely a hard watch your back but I don't think it's a get the fuck out it's like a medium watch your back because I think you think about like how vulnerable the people are. Oh I totally agree. And the structure they could have literally created like the worst fucking cult in the world.

Oh 100,000% I completely agree with you I mean this is cult girl summer so like the verdict is already out here this is a watch your back I completely agree it is a medium watch your back and there have been fringier more destructive get the fuck out level cults that have been based on addiction recovery in the past like Synanon the group that my dad was in that started out as an alternative drug rehabilitation center for so-called dope fiends that later grew to accommodate people who didn't even have addiction at all called lifestylers and all the same rules applied children had to live separate from their parents everybody had to shave their head and there are many many more rehab programs recovery programs

turned fucked up exploitative religious sexual like terrible terrible groups AA isn't that far no way that's why I'm just so honestly like impressed by AA because it has been around for so long I don't know I think it's a testament to the goodwill of people that like it hasn't gotten as bad as it could be I just think it's a testament to how grassroots community organization can like really do a lot of good and like it not everyone is inherently bad yeah no not at all I don't think that at all but I think that was expressed really well in our part one yeah now in a way I'm the biggest devil's avocado AA has become so central in our culture that it is often court ordered oh wait it can be court ordered it can be court

ordered each year the legal system coerces more than 150,000 people to join AA that's crazy that it hasn't become an MLM dude well I think there's not enough money being tossed around yeah you're absolutely right it could be so much worse and don't listen to this if you're in AA I don't it could be so lucrative as people really wanted to but so I think that's the thing it's like the culture of AA remains stable for better and for worse because it has such deep roots we've talked a lot about how it stayed stable for the better but I think what's a little troubling is that there's not a ton of modern science incorporated into the program there's so much left to study about addiction and really AA has remained

unchanged since the 1930s when it was first developed even though it could incorporate new science coming in about how to best treat addiction yeah I feel like my biggest critique of it would be the onboarding and offboarding of the program there really is none it's like for some people especially people who are coming from heavy addiction aren't necessarily in a good mental space they're not gonna have the emotional bandwidth to self learn the onboarding or read between the lines totally that may be the lines that JF Harris talked about in our first episode and because they aren't in a great mental space with the offboarding as well they might be you know perceiving social interactions a certain way and so like it's

important to have these like onboarding offboarding blanket statement things where like people can know that there are no exit costs like blankly say it you know yeah for sure although I think AA is pardon the crudeness so up its own ass it wouldn't actually make those statements known I mean one of the quotes from the study that really stuck out to me was several participants express the AA was not an appropriate environment to become mentally healthy in as it was comprised of a lot of unhealthy people that's actually so true and it's something that JF our guest on part one actually said so that's something that he obviously knows but a lot of people call it coming in JF has really high emotional intelligence so I feel like the way he answered

the questions he was like oh you can just leave or when you get there it's really nice to hear older people's stories and think oh it'll get better and then when you're there for a while you hear younger people's stories and you're like oh that's how bad it could have been so he's really good at perceiving in a good way in a way that benefits himself it's kind of like someone who's really really naturally good at a sport trying to give advice to someone who's bad at the sport being like just kick the ball yeah exactly I'm standing there with a soccer ball in front of my foot being like bitch I can't for some people who don't necessarily have that level of emotional intelligence like they really do need those

things laid out for them mm-hmm mm-hmm I also read in the study that a few ex members reported that they were directly advised against pursuing certain hobbies and career opportunities friendships and family commitments because they should be going to AA related events instead oh no when you gave that example of knowing people who go twice a day that's really intrusive I go open mics like a couple times a week and that's like a lot of time going to a meeting two times a day I don't even floss twice a day I mean so a definitely also offers a framework that people can use to shape their sense of self and understand themselves and I think that's great and there's a lot to learn from that but I think you need multiple

frameworks to help you understand yourself you can't just conceive of yourself using one framework and a lot of participants in this study reported struggling with how narrow the a framework was they reported varying degrees of social control in AA whereby conforming to a's ideology did have positive social ramifications but also if you ever tried to challenge anything in AA people might be aggressive towards you or ostracize you gossip about you and that was a concern that I think can come up in just any really high stakes tightly bound group yeah I think something that we did push J F on and he said oh I can totally believe that that would happen but he didn't have any specific examples because he has a positive experience

was like the power dynamic between older members and younger members or newer members for sure and there is this power dynamic between these members who have been around for a while and the newer more vulnerable members like many participants in the study described that they had highly damaging relationships with the domineering rigid intrusive or critical AA sponsors and some participants said that these kinds of behaviors were actually counter to AA principles like the primary text states that there is no leader but rather everyone is a trusted servant and that's so culty right to have a doctrine say something and then people go against it yeah and I think one of the biggest consequences of that can come

in the form of sexual exploitation we had a lot of comments from listeners who talked about how being an AA as a woman is very different from being an AA as a man and that there are a lot of like older sober members who will pursue sexual relationships with new members oftentimes women and that's sort of referred to with the slang phrase 13th stepping referring to the 12 steps aren't you not supposed to have a relationship within the first year yeah but then that also feels like it gives this like kind of immediate green light for like after a year God it kind of reminds me of like when you groom an underage person and then the second they turn 18 you swoop in yeah and they almost want you more because

they couldn't have you yeah ha ha another point that we found in the study was the idea that they kind of break you down to build you up I mean that kind of makes sense when you create such a general program they're going to be varying degrees of addicts in these groups exactly so if you're treating all addicts equally you know there might be people who are like in a better position and they're now comparing themselves to people who are like severe addicts and they're like maybe I'm just as damaged as these people there's this sense that you are like powerless against your alcoholism and because you talk about these traumas you're constantly remembering the worst versions of yourself you're constantly

being reminded this is who I was and this is who I could become again and so you're scared to leave you're like if I leave those are the traumas that are going to come immediately back totally and again like because there is this religious tie they often attribute their powerlessness to God like my higher power is the only one who can really control me and that can really affect a person's self-esteem and sense of personal agency when you feel like totally ashamed and helpless over yourself and it can also absolve you of taking responsibility for your past actions you know yeah totally I feel like because there are so many steps it's like before you take responsibility because you're not allowed to like apologize until

you get to like a certain step you're like well at least I'm going to remind me a little bit of when like people are in therapy but they're not really like doing the work they're like well I'm going to therapy yeah but are you doing the work because therapy is not fun I can tell who's therapist coddle them yeah yeah it's so funny and I feel like we keep switching off like who's devil's avocado in this episode or at least like in our minds because whenever you start to say something really critical of AA I start to feel defensive of it and I feel like when I start to say something really critical of AA you feel defensive of it and that just goes to show like how tricky and sensitive and nuanced this topic

really fucking is yeah I think the final thing that makes AA super culty is that it has a ton of celebrity spokespeople unofficially yeah like Ben Affleck has been in AA and Britney Spears has been in AA and I think those people almost like glamorize it and it is true that if you go to an AA meeting in LA you like might run into a famous person yeah which I never knew or else I would have started going earlier and I haven't gone but we should go yeah I'll go I'm like talking so much shit about it but like I do love going to an AA meeting yeah I mean I'll go I'll sit I'll listen like I really need to be like have an out-of-body experience every once in a while and I love human connection

listen yeah I fucking love it yeah but it does go to show how like idolized it is in pop culture because I again have never been to an AA meeting but because of like TV and film I actually know how it goes down I know everything that happens in it and I know the culture of it the roots run deep the roots run so deep so I think this is all to say that like AA can be wonderful for some people but studies are increasingly showing that it's not as effective as it seems and there should definitely be other more empirically informed options for people and I think it would be nice if more of the science on addiction could be incorporated into AA but I think part of the cultishness of the program is that it does play such a

central role in our society that maybe some scientists are like afraid to step on AA's toes you know I don't see that they would be I just think that more so because everything is controlled by like pharmaceutical companies the people who like make money want people to be addicted to things they don't want people to improve so like the best possible option we have is like a low budget option because billionaires want people in a place where they can control them and so if we were to do more research on how to solve addiction we could potentially solve homelessness and therefore we would solve the problem of oh my god but now this is devolved into like conspiracy theories about the elites like they all want to keep us sick they always want to keep us alive

I feel like they don't want to fix the problem because that's how they like have control over society and if we fix addiction we fix a lot of mental health problems which means we fix a lot of homelessness it's like if we wanted to we could you know what I mean this all feels a little conspiratorial but I know what you're saying I know what you're saying I was reading a piece in the york post not a particularly prestigious publication but that was saying that because of AA's dominance many doctors and scientists wouldn't even consider studying alternatives to AA yeah because they just don't see the value in it I think it's partially AA's fault that they don't see the value in it yeah because they think that it works really well because enough studies

have not been done I think these studies should have been done long long ago and they're only starting to be done now it's like why wouldn't we all want to solve addiction even if AA didn't become like the star in our society that it is like wouldn't it we all be better for it I don't know yeah I think we would I just think even if we do a bunch of research there will never be just one solution because everyone is so for sure individual and so like it's just so costly for scientist and then ultimately society to create various options I think it's sad I know I agree I think it's really sad because that just doubles down on the idea that addiction is a moral failing and it's a problem with your soul and if you can just find God then you'll be fine no I agree I don't

think it's okay that it's like our main option right now I think there should be more options for different kinds of people and hopefully there will be yeah and we're really grateful for our listeners who encouraged us to do a part two we hope that this created more of a balanced view on the topic it's obviously an incredibly complex one and it is above our pay grade but thank you again yeah thanks for listening I feel like this should be a case study like that we refer back to for all of our future episodes because it does fall on such a thin line yeah you know we're fans of spectrums here and I think addiction is a spectrum just like cults are a spectrum yeah and um yeah that's our show thanks so much for listening we'll be back with a new cult next week but in the meantime

stay culty but not too culty sounds like a cult is created hosted and produced by Amanda Montell and Issa Medina Kate Elizabeth is our editor our podcast studio is all things comedy and our theme music is by Casey Colb thank you to our intern slash production assistant noemi griffin subscribe to sounds like a cult wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode and if you like our show feel free to give us a rating and review on Spotify or Apple podcasts and check us out on patreon at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult