Member-only story
Is Alcoholics Anonymous a cult?
About those 12 steps
Content note: This article mentions suicidal ideation and abuse
I decided to give the 12 steps a try in the spring of 2021, right after the guy I was living with asked me to move out.
I’d been sober for one year and 29 days. I was surviving. But that day, I did not know what to do with all the feelings—humiliation, indignation, fear, fury—crashing down on me. I felt crazed, couldn’t breathe. After I vomited, I just started running. There was only one place I knew to go.
The downside of 12 step fellowships
Note: 12 step club members are expected to maintain personal anonymity, so I‘ll discuss the steps and skirt around naming the specific group I belong to.
The first time I got involved with a 12 step group, in the mid aughts behind a painkiller addiction, a veteran member who was a religious fanatic kept talking to me about my “sins” and recommended I switch my car radio to the religious station.
Since she had been clean in the program for a long time, I figured she was espousing the group’s collective beliefs, so I bolted. I wish I’d inquired further, but we don’t typically show up here at the top of our mental game.
