A victim of a Synanon “Tough Love”/
12-step rehab in the UK shares his experience, strength and hope...
“I had just
been on a prodigious alcoholic bender…
…I decided that some form of treatment might help.
Not having twenty-thousand-or-so pounds lying around for an inpatient stay, I
decided to try a local “community-rehab” which offers a cost-free programme. I
was treated for a total of four weeks as an outpatient before I left the
programme in disgust. My rehab practised a version of what is termed variously
“attack therapy”, “confrontation therapy”, “reality therapy” or the “Minnesota
model”. The underlying premise of the method is to take the group participants
through the first five steps of the twelve steps found in the Big Book of
Alcoholics Anonymous…
…The rehab facility I attended
is part of an organisation that offers a wide range of different services to
addicts and alcoholics in my local area. I believe it is partly funded by the
local health authority, and partly by charitable sources. They treat service
users on an outpatient basis, in one-on-one, group-therapy and family sessions.
As a group, we were only expected to come in for one full day a week. During
that day we were required to spend all our time with the group and to
participate in two two-hour group therapy sessions. We also had a weekly
one-to-one with our designated counselor.
I’m not sure exactly what it
was, but something about the group didn’t sit right with me from the outset.
Maybe it was the way that we were required to mercilessly interrogate and
belittle the other group members. It may have had something to do with the fact
that the group was trying to get me to accept that I was “powerless” and
broken, and that only unconditionally accepting a bunch of crazy-sounding,
guilt-inducing religious dogmas could possibly save me from the intangible
demonic force of “alcoholism”. Anyway, something about this group made me want
to go out and ask some serious questions about it…
...Synanon members would sit around and
verbally lay into each other, no holds barred, in what was claimed to be a
treatment for alcoholism/addiction. “The game” also seems to have involved public
confession of sins. The leader of the group, Dederich, eventually seems to have
used the sessions to pressurise people into carrying out his will. The practice
of verbally attacking a Synanon member was also known as giving her/him a
“haircut”.
The sessions at my rehab match this
description perfectly, minus the “improvisational comedy”. (They were humorous,
but only in a “laugh at them” kind of way.) The group sessions were extremely
confrontational. We were initially a group of six, although that number halved
very quickly. From the outset, we were told that holding back or refusing to
join in the confrontational process actually displayed a lack of concern for
our fellow group members. Compassion kills, people! We needed to give them
“tough-love” or they would surely meet with a grim alcoholic demise. In case we
still found it difficult to lay into the other members, we were assured that we
were “challenging the addiction, not the person”…
We invite you to read on - an intelligent and thought provoking article:
– And
ask some serious questions, not only about misuse of the book "Alcoholics Anonymous" as an addiction treatment by the rehab, but also the A.A.
members this person encountered. Both of the rehab's lead counselors are described as "group elders" of "local twelve-step meetings." Based on this experience this person now believes that either A.A. is a cult, or he's a banana.
The meaning
and intent of the book “Alcoholics Anonymous” together with the Alcoholics Anonymous
Twelve Steps, and indeed the minds of some A.A. members themselves, are being
psychologically twisted by the addiction treatment industry in a manner only cults and
corporations can.
With Government implementation of the Synanon Cult based Therapeutic
Communities Movement’s Recovery Orientated Integration System (ROIS) (also
known as Recovery Oriented Systems of Care) into British drug addiction
and alcoholism treatment systems. A.A. groups and intergroups in England,
Scotland and Wales can expect to see the establishment of an increasing number of
this type of hybrid Synanon/12-step rehab. For more details see AA Minority Report 2017
