Rational Recovery

Periodically some of us who are in this deal get asked what we think about alternative recovery methods like “Rational Recovery” — “SMART Recovery®” — Stanton Peele’s “Resisting 12 step Coercion” – and other self-help “solutions for sale” promulgated by entrepreneurs who market their methods primarily at the “still sick and suffering” markets that include atheist/agnostic segments as well as those jaded by Middle-of-the-road solutionsists within the AA fellowship.

This is a communication I recently had with Jack Trimpey founder and President of “Rational Recovery”, a self help system which invented and sells as alternative recovery method to Alcoholics Anonymous AND narcotics Anonymous. The discourse originally began with me asking Mr. Trimpey about a statement I had heard him make a few years ago about his goal to “destroy Alcoholics Anonymous.“

Despite the obvious conflicting of ideologies between Jack and myself (I have experienced and believe what is in the Big Book – and he absolutely despises AA and all Twelve Step recovery) he was nice enough to put my a article on his website and so I am reciprocating here – but only because I think it is interesting. I think you will find it interesting too. You can get to Jack’s site here: http://www.rational.org/ Of course Jack believes that I am a brainwashed AA lunatic – but I don’t think even he appreciates how much recognized truth is threaded in his own resentment based, non-spiritual approach.
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Jack, AA is a mess. That much is true. Unfortunately people are forced into AA by ignorance and a generalized mis-characterization of the Fellowship – and despite a great lack of much evidence that they even qualify to become members.

The vast majority of these are non-alcoholic drug addicts – the rest are heavy drinking fools for whom counseling or some other less drastic means other than a spiritual awakening would suffice. Remember Jack, “spiritual awakening” is the sought after result of the Twelve Steps. Sobriety is just one of the consequences.

If folks could become more knowledgeable about the Fellowship and its Program they would see and admit that the “addicted” (No one is “addicted” to ETOH past the normal seventy hours of detoxification) would benefit and need to find a solution for “addicts” – a solution which AA cannot supply.

Jack, perhaps you will destroy aa – but my hope is that it is not AA but the “aa“ that resides inside of “AA”. If you are successful you will have helped “AA” in ways unimaginable.

AA is for alcoholics not “addicts“- they are NOT the same. The mainstream “Addictions” treatment industry would like us to think they are the same and has tried very hard to convince us of it – but it isn’t so. It just doesn’t jive with the experience of a real alcoholic. But POP-AA and the public at large has fallen for the scam. Make no mistake Jack, a large part of the “recovery business” is a scam, save for a small portion.

As far as evangelizing goes – in the sense that AAs are supposed to seek out other alcoholics to help, then yes, I would have to agree with that too. What is so horrible about that? I race thoroughbred pigeons. We LOVE to get more people involved. So do the Boy Scouts, Free Masons and Model Rocketeers.

If the juggernaut to which you refer is the cultish, subgroup of non-Twelve Step AA that has infiltrated and developed as the result of ignorant judges, doctors and even media that doesn’t know that AA isn’t for every Tom Dick or Harry with a drinking problem but for true alcoholics only – and has flooded the fellowship with impressionable, suggestive and successfully hypnotized AA zombies who didn’t ever need to go there in the first place -and who are to comfortable to leave in the second – well then we are in full agreement.

All of this further justifies your comment that “AA is a fellowship of addicted people who know nothing about recovery because none of them, including their founders, defeated their own addictions. “ – that is, all EXCEPT for the “founders” comment.

Sadly, most AAs cannot tell you how to recover from alcoholism. How could they? They never have recovered themselves. No one has ever recovered from an affliction they didn’t actually HAVE in the first place.

The founders did achieve victory over alcoholism, (not “addiction”, Jack) and this has been the experience of those who have followed exactly their procedures for doing so. It happened to me! – - and my experiences with AA are so far removed from the AA characterization – the POP-AA – that you detest so vehemently, it is not funny. It is so far removed that not only do many AAs themselves do not identify with my recovery but they cannot even match my drinking experiences as an active alcoholic with their own.

How could they? They are not really alcoholics.

I have heard the “Relapse is part of recovery” kind of talk in treatment centers and unfortunately also out of the mouths of those 27 ½ day wonders who graduate from such facilities – and bring that Rehab-speak into AA – but people such as myself who have recovered from alcoholism don’t generally relapse much, and if it does occur it is certainly not looked upon as “part of recovery”. It is looked upon as the result of absence of spiritual growth.

“One day at a time”? Look, I know there are folks running around the AA fellowship saying crapola like that, Jack. But “One day at a time” sobriety is simply another one of those perverted POP-AA concepts that has nothing to do with AAs Program. An objective of receiving is permanent sobriety – FOREVER. That is repeated over and over in “Alcoholics Anonymous”.

We may LIVE a day at a time – but this idea of living with one foot on a banana peel and the other in front of a saloon is just not AA.

BUT! BUT! It is an idea which is ubiquitous throughout the POP-AA fellowship and THAT brings us back to item one above: Why are non-alcoholics being taken into AA? It is our own ignorance, Jack. Too many generations of non-alcoholic infiltration has been going on and the new cult of aa interlopers is what has become most viable and prolific – probably the type of “aa” fellowship to which you have been exposed – I am sorry to say.

Jack, perhaps you will destroy aa - but my hope is that it is not AA but the aa that resides inside of AA. If you are successful you will have helped AA in ways unimaginable.

You might even unwittingly go down in history as one of the co-founders of a new AA because you will have earned a spot as a true AA hero! I know you would be one of mine – because the Fellowship has become top-heavy with those whom you yourself see as hypocrites, liars and misinformed.

Unfortunately I fear that AA will collapse under its own weight. But maybe that’s good. Maybe it needs a shakeup. Because AA will never really die, you know. It is likely that it will just cleanse and reform – hopefully stronger, having learned from its errors.

Cheers right back atcha,

Danny S