Cult Culture and the 12 Steps

A small but significant rate of 12-step programs—from AA to rehabs—turn into dangerous cults. What makes working the program go so wrong?


By Maia Szalavitz

08/27/12

12-step programs—with their clichéd language, frequent meetings and religious mien—are cults. So say many critics. But in fact, the traditions of AA, NA and the other As are intentionally structured to prevent their members from crossing that line. Nonetheless, there is a reliable way to use the steps to create a full-fledged destructive cult.

Cults are not simply weird or dangerous religious groups, according to those who study groups that have had disastrous outcomes, like Jim Jones’ People’s Temple, which ended in mass member suicide, and the Branch Davidians, which ended in a fiery siege by federal agents. Instead, cults are self-enclosed organizations that use a well-defined set of coercive persuasion tactics.

These typically include isolating people physically and emotionally from friends and family, breaking them down emotionally and taking total control over their environment, movement and finances. Because these procedures can also characterize rehab, residential treatment itself without proper oversight carries a risk for creating cultlike behavior.

However, since 12-step programs in the community aren’t residential, can’t physically isolate people or take their life savings—and because they are formally leaderless—they have little risk of becoming the next Jonestown, Guyana, or Waco, Texas.

But the repeated development of cults or near-cults—from Synanon toStraight Inc. to today’s Washington, DC, Midtown Group—based on the steps is not coincidental. The reason is a toxic compound created when AA’s voluntary steps are twisted so that they can be imposed by force, especially in settings where people cannot escape. Chuck Dederich, the founder of Synanon, was the first to recognize the power of this recipe for subjugating people and creating followers. Indeed, Synanon was the model for every “therapeutic community” (TC) in the US, including mainstream leaders like Phoenix House and Daytop.

Originally hailed in the 1950s as a tough, peer-pressure-based cure for heroin addiction, by the late 1970s it was stockpiling weapons, forcing couples to get sterilized and swap partners and, perhaps most notoriously, had placed a de-rattled rattlesnake in the mailbox of a lawyer who had begun winning cases against it on behalf of former members who had been abducted and abused. When Dederich was arrested for conspiracy to commit murder in the snake incident in 1980, the charismatic leader was dead drunk.


A toxic compound is created when AA’s voluntary steps are imposed by force.

By then, however, the Synanon model had already spread across America and around the world. In addition to Phoenix House and Daytop, the best known include Delancey Street, Walden House, Gaudenzia, Gateway House, Marathon House, Odyssey House, Samaritan Village, Amity, CEDU, the Seed and Straight Inc.

Following Synanon, these TC programs are or were residential, typically lasting from 90 days to 18 months. Originally, the idea was to break initiates through strict rules and daily humiliation and confrontation, and then rebuild them as they work their way up a structured hierarchy.

To rise through the levels toward graduation, participants have to demonstrate compliance by imposing the rules on others and emotionally attacking their fellows to help break them. These days, many TCs have abandoned the marathon attack therapy sessions and tried to reduce or eliminate the use of humiliation—but they retain the strict rules and hierarchical systems.

So how do the use of attack therapy and forcing the steps on people inspire cult formation?

Step 1: It starts with the first step. Voluntarily admitting you are powerless is relatively harmless (although there’s some evidence that this belief as part of the disease model of addiction is linked with worsening relapse). By contrast, however, being forced into a position of absolute powerlessness is what defines a traumatic experience, and so it can cause post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and related psychological problems, like depression. And traumatizing people is an excellent way to break their will and turn them into compliant followers.

Research into PTSD repeatedly confirms that at the heart of all trauma is the feeling of being completely vulnerable and out-of-control in a frightening situation, in a word, powerless. Whether well-intentioned or not, any program with the capacity to disempower participants by blocking their contact with the outside world and controlling their access to food, sleep and social support is potentially dangerous. This dynamic—in connection with the way power itself corrupts staff—explains why institutions ranging from orphanages to hospitals to prisons, where vulnerable people are subject to total control by others, constantly have abuse scandals and why they need to be subject to intense oversight.

Steps 2 and 3: When imposed coercively, these principles make matters worse. Again, voluntarily surrendering to a “higher power” can feel healing for many—but being forced to submit to human beings who make themselves and their program into your higher power is far less benign. Believing that surrendering your will and even your life to the leadership is the only path to recovery results in overwhelming vulnerability.

Not only is this dangerous for the victims, but it is also risky for leaders who are convinced that they “know best” and their program is so effective that they are justified in using any means necessary to “help” people. Once staff embrace the belief that breaking people to fix them is acceptable, once they “know” that they are absolutely righteous even when being emotionally cruel, the corrupting nature of this total power is intensified.

This elevation of staff and dehumanization of patients is the opposite of treating people with dignity and respect: the word of the “healers” is law and those in need of healing are powerless.

At rehabs, for example, when staff believe that they have all the answers, including which patients are “in denial” or “faking” or lying or, for that matter, telling the truth, there is a great potential for serious health and psychiatric complaints to be ignored. This can have—and has had, in dozens of cases—fatal consequences for those who are physically detained in programs. It also allows power to run amuck.

Steps 4, 5 and 10: Now, add in the demands for the confession of sins and for an ongoing moral inventory and you have an additional method of controlling people. Most religious cults focus on confession because knowing members’ darkest desires and most shameful secrets increases the power of the leaders. Not only can frequent confessions enable the blackmail dissenters, but they can also train participants to focus so relentlessly on their own failings that they have no energy left for criticism or resistance of the group itself.

Romney's Big Drug Problem

What drug policy would Romney issue from the Oval Office? He's not saying. But his financial ties to the owners of teen rehabs infamous for abuse speak volumes of trouble.


Romney, Sembler and Adelson photo

By Jed Bickman

08/07/12
Mitt Romney's Great American Rehab Rollup


With the future of America’s response to drug use and addiction at stake in this presidential election, many are wondering how a Mitt Romney administration would take up the mantle of the War on Drugs. Beyond his opposition to medical marijuana and his occasional hawkishness on foreign drug-war interventions, the candidate himself has, characteristically, kept his positions strategically nonspecific. This week's Republican National Convention in Tampa, at which the Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan ticket will be officially ratified, is unlikely to clarify the matter, as it is being scripted entirely around the goal of portraying a kinder, gentler Romney, a common man devoted to family, faith and country. Drugs are assuredly not part of that picture. However, the records of those around hims speak loudly.

Taking a page from Nancy “Just say no” Reagan, Ann Romney has said that as first lady, her pet issue (Michelle Obama has obesity) would be to work with “at risk” teens, code for drug-using teens. (The wife of Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Paul Ryan, Janna, has a different potential drug problem: she was a lobbyist for PhRMA, the pharmaceutical industry's trade group.)

This is not surprising, given that Romney has a long history of being involved with in “rehab” schools [OK?] for teens—not just any institutions but “tough love” ones with disturbing reputations for abuse. And not just one or two tangential connections, either. Mitt Romney’s entanglements with abusive schools for troubled teens are anything but tenuous.

First of all, as The Fix reported in April, he still makes money off of them. In 2006, after Romney’s tenure as CEO, Bain Capital bought CRC Health, which owns Aspen Education Group, a large chain that includes boarding schools for “troubled teens” that use “behavior modification” techniques. Although Romney left Bain before they bought CRC Health, he still shares in Bain’s profits.

Moreover, of the three Bain managing partners that sit on the CRC board, two gave the Romney super PAC, Restoring our Future, a half million dollars, on top of the maximum $2,500 dollars they each gave directly to the Romney campaign.

As a recent Salon investigation revealed, Aspen Education has an impressive rap sheet of wrongful deaths and abuse at its institutions. Children have died of neglect under their care as the pressure that Bain exerts on the company to make a profit filters down to their patients. Among the most serious abusers is Mount Bachelor Academy in Oregon, where staff members forced residents to wear provocative clothing and do lap dances. At a clinic called Turn-About Ranch in Utah, a girl was duct-taped to a chair after filing a complaint about the sexual abuse she had suffered at the hands of CRC staff. In addition, the quest for larger profit margins routinely leads to people being kept in these institutions longer than is therapeutic so that the institution can reap the revenue.


Bain Capital's Aspen Education has an impressive rap sheet of wrongful deaths and abuse at its rehabs.

Mitt Romney has even closer—and more explosive—ties to other abusive rehabs. One of the chief fundraisers for his 2008 presidential campaign, Robert Lichfield, who raised $300,000 at one Romney fundraiser, was the founder and a board member of the World Wide Association for Specialty Programs and Schools (WWASPS). This network of 20 schools nationwide and in Costa Rica, Jamaica, Mexico, Samoa and the Czech Republic has faced charges of fraud and other crimes in several states and numerous federal civil suits alleging child abuse, including one by 350 former students. Many have been raided by officials and closed. Staff routinely locked teens in dog cages, sexually and physically abused them, starved them, and emotionally brutalized them.

Like Romney, Lichfield is a Mormon, and some ex-students have reported being sent to the schools by their parents after questioning or rejecting Mormonism in order to be “re-educated” in Mormonism—to the exclusion of other (or no) religions. The WWASPS scandal got so hot that the Romney camp had to break its lucrative ties to Lichfield when the indicted Utah millionaire “resigned” as one of six co-chairmen of Romney’s Utah finance committee.

But the real icon of drug policy in Romney’s campaign, deeply involved to this day, is Melvin Sembler, a Florida strip-mall magnate who was a national fundraising chair for Romney in 2008 and is again a Florida State Co-Chair for Romney’s finance committee. Sembler, whose office is across Tampa Bay from where the Republican National Convention is taking place, held the first GOP fundraiser for Paul Ryan after Romney tapped him as his VP. (Florida, of course, is one of three crucial swing states in presidential elections.)

He gained the post as a reward for his financial loyalty to George W. Bush. But Sembler has raised money for and, in turn, won favors from Republican Party leaders going for decades. He served on President Reagan's White House Conference for a Drug-Free America. More recently, he was a drug-policy advisor to both President Bush and Bob Martinez, Florida's former governor, according to a 2005 in-depth investigation by John Gorenfeld on Alternet.com.

Sembler is militant in his support not only of the drug war but of foreign wars in general, cofounding, along with Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino owner and Romney backer to the tune of $100 million, “Freedom’s Watch,” a group that spent millions to advocate intensifying the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Both Sembler and Adelson accompanied Romney on his July trip to Israel. Adelson's extravagant bankrolling of Romney's campaign will be rewarded at the Convention with the naming of its "Woman Up!" pavilion after his wife, Dr. Miriam Adelson, who runs the Adelson Clinic, which treats patients with opiate addiction, specializing—curiously enough—in teens on oxy, in Las Vegas and Tel Aviv. (The Fix found no record of charges of abuse at the Adelson Clinic.)

But Mel Sembler’s name is most likely to strike fear into the hearts of anyone involved in teen drug rehabs. Sembler and his wife, Betty, founded a chain of such institutions under the name Straight, Inc., which at its peak in the ‘80s had 12 clinics in nine states and a track record of extreme abuse. Straight’s “rehabilitation” approach was adopted from an earlier program called The Seed, which was suspended by the US Senate for practices similar to Communist POW camps. As in the Scientology’s Narconon rehabs, Straight developed the cultlike feature of turning former students into counselors who embraced and enforced the institution’s brutal regime.


A student at Straight, Inc.—one of Bush's "thousand points of light"—was beaten, raped and locked in a janitor’s closet.

In one of many stories from Straight that have been exposed, a teenage girl testified to being compelled into the program after being caught with an airline bottle of liquor given to her by a friend, and then beaten, raped, locked in a janitor’s closet in pants soiled by urine, feces, and menstrual blood, forced into a false and bizarre confession to being a “druggie whore” who went down on truckers for a fix. Monroe’s story is extreme but in no way unique. Similar accounts from Straight survivors have been collected en masse online atTheStraights.com.

In one Pennsylvania death row case of a homophobic hate-murder, evidence of the perpetrator’s abuse at the hands of Straight counselors—which included beating boys while calling them “faggots” and spitting on them—was an admissible mitigating factor.

“My best guess is that at least half of the kids were abused,” Dr. Arnold Trebach, a professor emeritus at American University and founder of the Drug Policy Foundation (now the Drug Policy Alliance), which supports ending the drug war, told Gorenfeld.

Lance Armstrong Stripped of Tour de France Titles

By Valerie Tejeda


BAD SPORTS

8/24/12 11:08am




Armstrong's seven Tour de France wins will
be cancelled out.


Cyclist Lance Armstrong has officially given up his fight against the longstanding doping charges brought against him by the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). He claims it's so he can focus on working for Livestrong, the foundation he started for cancer patients. And while Armstrong has not and will not make any admission of guilt, claiming to the end that "I played by the rules," the decision will result in the USADA stripping all of his results since 1998—including his seven Tour de France titles. "I will no longer address this issue, regardless of the circumstances…" announced Armstrong in a two-page statement. "We have a lot of work to do and I'm looking forward to an end to this pointless distraction. I have a responsibility to all those who have stepped forward to devote their time and energy to the cancer cause."

Armstrong will also be banned for life from competing in any sport or event sanctioned by a sporting body that is a signatory to the World Anti-Doping Agency code—including the World Triathlon Corporation, which Lance has signed a $1 million deal to compete for, with the money going to his foundation. However he doesn't accept the USADA's sanctions and threatens a lawsuit if the organization proceeds with them, calling the process "unfair and one-sided" and the claims against him "outlandish and heinous" with "zero physical evidence." US District Judge Sam Sparks rejected Armstrong's suit challenging the USADA's authority last Monday. "It is a sad day for all of us who love sport and our athletic heroes," says USADA CEO Travis Tygart. "This is a heartbreaking example of how the win-at-all-costs culture of sport, if left unchecked, will overtake fair, safe and honest competition." Despite reportedly completing over 100 doping tests, Armstrong has yet to test positive for any illicit performance-enhancing substance.

Rhode Island Rally for Recovery

Rhode Island Rally for Recovery

RIR Unplugged Set ….

Richie Supa,Ricky Byrd, and Kasim Sulton 

Sponsored by Treatment Solutions 

The Rally for Recovery is an annual festival organized by people in long term recovery from addiction to alcohol and other drugs. It is primarily a community building effort; we seek to strengthen the bonds between people in recovery. We are also engaged in building an attractive culture of recovery in Rhode Island, with the belief that everyone has a right to, and is capable of, recovery from addiction to drugs and alcohol.

Our goals are to reduce the negative perceptions associated with addiction recovery. It has been our experience, based on our own recoveries, that this road is filled with obstacles that hinder reintegration into society. We feel it is important that people who have chosen the recovery path be able to obtain housing,employment, and other necessities without prejudice.

Our festival is focused on families and is a child-friendly event. We feel it is important that, as children of people in recovery grow older, they have fond memories of our drug and alcohol free festival. We hope this knowledge will deter them from experimenting with alcohol and other drugs in the future. Last year we had a vast array of activities for young people including crafts, face-painting, a reptile show, a rock climbing wall provided by the Rhode Island National Guard, an “orbitron,” a giant inflatable obstacle course, and a pink fire engine from Pink Heals.

The Rally for Recovery began in 2002 with a gathering of a few hundred people. Last year we had almost 5,000 people in long term recovery attend the rally. In 2012 we expect a crowd in excess of 7,000, and in 2013, because Providence was awarded the hub event for the national Recovery Month celebration, we expect over 10,000. We are also a co-sponsor of WaterFire and include a memorial luminaria procession at the end of each rally.

This year we seek to broaden our base of support by reaching out to the business community. We offer several contribution levels. Sponsoring our festival puts your company name in front of people who are likely to patronize your business. It also bolsters your business’s reputation, sending a clear message that you support the community building efforts of those who seek not to use alcohol and other drugs.

This Year’s Rally Performances

This year we’ll have musical entertainment by the 88th Army Band, BMor7, Rockers In Recovery Unplugged, and Music One.  Our speakers include basketball star and author Chris Herren, founder of Learn to Cope Joanne Peterson, Jim Silva and more.

Recovery Month Kickoff and Quilt Unveiling will take place on Thursday, August 31st at 10 am in front of the Women’s minimum security prison in Cranston.

On September 28th we will hold the first annual Aquidnick Island Recovery Celebration at Newport Hospital atrium.

Our contact information:

Mr. Ian Knowles
RICARES
200 Metro Center Blvd. Unit 10
Warwick, RI 02886

You may also contact Ian Knowles via telephone at  401-521-5759 extension 114, or via email, iknowles@dataofri.org.

Life After

Thanks for visiting Life After! The Partnership at Drugfree.org recently launched You Are Not Alone, a transformative new campaign calling on all those affected by addiction – individuals, families, communities and organizations – to come forward and help our kids in need. You Are Not Alone comes to life in a collection of stories, each one a message to families of the 11 million teens or young adults who are struggling withsubstance abuse. This public storytelling brings together the millions who have been directly impacted by addiction with those families who currently have a teen who needs help.

We encourage you to check out You Are Not Alone and share your story there. Join the movement and share your story to help let others know that they aren't alone when facing substance abuse.

The Different Types You Find in AA

Go to enough meetings and you’ll start to notice that many of the least appealing people you encounter can be divided into one of several different types. Behold our guide to eight of them.


It takes all kinds. Danny Jock

By JD Kaye

08/13/12
We are people who normally would not mix, says the Big Book. What it doesn’t add is that many of these people start to mesh together through a few common identifying characteristics. While, let’s be honest, all of us can do things at times that might make us resemble one of these types, many others have pulled up a more permanent seat at a particular table. So who do you recognize from your home group?

THE COURT CARDER

These are those folks who have gotten a nudge from the judge—that is, they’re required to attend AA because of an alcohol-related offense. Most easily recognizable by their late entrance and loud yawns coming from their back row seat, the Court Carder loves to watch the clock and skedaddle out the door as soon as they’ve gotten someone—anyone!—to autograph their slip of paper. This type is most common in LA, where DUIs are seen as an AA rite of passage. You will, in all likelihood, not find the Court Carder nibbling on a sugar cookie and fellowshipping at the back of the room post-meeting, telling another meeting attendee that he really related to his share. While encouraging these folks is never a bad idea, keep in mind that they may consider you just south of a Scientologist. So remember that it's attraction, not promotion. Unless he asks otherwise, a handshake and a meeting directory is the best starter kit you can offer.


THE DOUBLE WINNER

The fact of the matter is that a fat chunk of AA members could probably benefit from a few Alanon meetings, but the ones to avoid are those who seem to enjoy boasting about their various afflictions. When it’s just Alanon we’re talking about, this isn’t a problem: plenty of alcoholics grew up with addicted or at least dysfunctional parents who robbed them of the ability to put their needs first. But the Double Winner is always in danger of becoming a Triple, Quadruple or even Centuple Winner. Got issues with food, gambling, sex, money or hoarding? Well, Triple and higher winners have problems with everything and happily tout their membership of 12-step programs that you probably haven’t even imagined existed. These people tend to regale you, when they run into you at the grocery store with your in-laws, with stories about how working a fourth step in their sex addiction program helped them to surrender their hooker habit. Double, Triple and Quadruple Winners might do best to calm down and remember that recovery isn't a pyramid business scheme, and that they don't climb higher up the chain by working 24, 48, or 96 steps.

THE SEX ADDICT

While addiction to other 12-step programs is a concern, that doesn’t mean that the seriously sick aren’t lurking around AA. The infamous 13th-Stepper and sexual predator can come in male or female form and are most easily identifiable by their proximity to the newest and most attractive members of the program. We're not talking about your average AA-er, unwittingly acting out the usual grab bag of sexual dysfunctions with others, but those who repeatedly try to get those not yet on their feet onto their backs, oftentimes leaving them in psychological and emotional turmoil. Don't expect roses on your doorstep (or even a text message) after the Sex Addict is done with you. In fact, you might want to think about attending some new meetings so you don’t have to see this guy or gal saving seats for their next victim. Be forewarned that you might be a Sex Addict if others look at you with "Don't even think about it" disdain every time a doe-eyed newcomer walks in.

THE DRUNKALOGUER

If AA says that members share “what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now,” then Drunkaloguers are those who skip out on the “what it’s like now” part in order to regale rooms with tales of drug deals gone bad, police chases and gunshot wounds that sometimes sound dangerously close to Bullshit City. Or just those who, when asked to speak for 30 minutes, spend 27 rambling about their disastrous childhood and multiple karaoke contests while in tequila-induced blackouts, the next two on how their life went completely downhill, and the final minute on finding AA and giving up booze—and oops, now they’re out of time and oh, don't forget to work the steps. Problem is, if you stick around in AA long enough, the drunkalogues can start to get boring—and spending too much time on the old days can somehow twist memories of self-destruction into just some crazy times. The Drunkaloguer can have much crossover with the Sick Old-Timer; in other words, the reason they’re not sharing their recovery is that they don’t have any.

THE PINK CLOUDER

Sobriety can be challenging for many AAers, but for the Pink Clouders (otherwise known as the Tony the Tigers of the program), everything's grrrrrrrrrrreat! The euphoric condition is characteristic of early sobriety, when the mind and body are free of drugs and alcohol but the harshness of real life has yet to set in. Pink Clouds exist because, for some people, simply not getting drunk or high is a high in itself. Pink Clouders often don’t seem to realize that just putting the plug in the jug doesn’t mean their every last concern has flitted away—but why tell ‘em when they’ll find out soon enough anyway? The cause of inappropriate smiling and naturally dilated pupils, the ignorant bliss these people float around in is enough to make a struggling AA member want to turn a Pink Clouder into a Black-and-Blue Clouder. But have no fear, Sick Old-Timer, because when a Pink Clouder naturally descends from that dreamy state where sobriety suddenly feels like a brick rather than a feather, it can get pretty darn unpink. So enjoy it while you can, Pink Clouders (and hang in there long enough to work the steps).

THE SICK OLD-TIMER

When sympathy's what you're after, for God's sake don't call the Sick Old-Timer——because if water boarding was allowed in meetings, this guy or gal would be the one administering it. This type-A military breed gives advice in the form of Big Book page and paragraph numbers without any further explanation, and will cut you off in a second if he catches you cross-talking, going over your time limit or violating any other specific group rules. Known to greet newcomers with recommendations that they take the cotton out of their ears and stuff it in their mouths—while thinking nothing of updating Facebook posts while sitting in meetings—the Sick Old-Timer is very much who you don’t want to be. Find yourself constantly judging everyone around you, even though their lives appear to be moving forward while yours remains stuck in one place? You may well be one of these yourself. Of course, since one of the primary characteristics is a lack of self-awareness, you’re probably going to be the last to realize it. If you worry you’re in danger, shake things up, find some new AA pals, get a new sponsor, try tackling those steps and for God’s sake, stay away from the newcomers.

THE SLOGANEER



If you're in need of generic responses for complicated problems in the form ofdepersonalized clichés, call a Sloganeer! For better or worse, this type is here to remind you, like a mockingbird with a myriad of overwrought AA slogans, that it's all been said and done. Not all Sloganeers are bad—while being told that you should have an “attitude of gratitude” by a snaggle-toothed homeless-looking row-mate may make you want to throw a punch, it can also be exactly what you need to hear. Just beware of those whose entire vocabulary seems to be culled from the Unwritten Encyclopedia of Sober Banalities ("Keep it Simple, Stupid!"). Hardcore sloganeers sport different keychain attachments for every day of the week, each featuring a hopeful inspirational quote, and have been known to speak for hours without uttering a single adage-free sentence—which let's face it, can come off as a little robotic and cultish to newcomers. Meeting makers may make it but that doesn’t mean we all need to hear that every second..
Hardcore sloganeers sport different keychain attachments for every day of the week, each featuring a hopeful inspirational quot 

THE RELAPSE ADDICT

While the Sloganeer would say, "You're either moving towards a drink or away from one" the Relapse Addict appears to do both. Also known as the Shame Junkie, this person stays completely immersed in the drama of constant falls from grace and subsequent treks towards redemption. Each return to the program is followed at some point thereafter by a petering out. In short, once the pink cloud's gone, it's sayonara to the program for these temporary teetotalers who are always caught in the middle—either reading the Big Book or setting a drink on one. It can be an excruciating place to be but when a Relapse Addict gets real, their story can be the most helpful to others. After all, some get sober after their first meeting, some after their 13th trip to rehab. It takes what it takes, and Relapse Addicts would surely like to not be Relapse Addicts. So take the cotton from your ears and shove it in your mouth, Sick Old-Timer!

THE FELLOWSHIPPER

Being in recovery might mean no more throwing up and getting concerned looks from your liquor store cashier 10 times a day. But what the hell are you supposed to do with all your new free time? Plenty choose to become Fellowshippers, in which they transfer their previous obsessions of hanging out in dimly lit bars and crack dens to spending free time with other alcoholics outside of meetings. Fellowshippers are the social butterflies of the program and can usually be found at both "the meeting before the meeting" (translation: coffee) and "the meeting after the meeting" (translation: more coffee). But really, it's about more than the joe, and the only Fellowshippers to be wary of are the Getting-Sicker-By-The-Minute ones, who use their relatively high profiles in AA to avoid doing any work on themselves (see also: Sick Old-Timer above). Or Fellowshipping Extremists, who can border on annoying when they turn every life activity into a SOBER EVENT. Want to go bowling? For a Fellowshipping Extremist, it's "Sober Bowling!" Need to go grocery shopping and pick up your dry cleaning? Take a hardcore Fellowshipper along and it's "Sober Errands!”

JD Kaye is the pseudonym for a sober alcoholic who lives in the South.