Happy 21st Birthday to Caitlin!❤ 🧡❤🧡

 

These are images I created (my first experience with photoshop) for Caitlin's 10th birthday. She already seemed pretty grown-up to me then. Now she is an independent young woman who has no idea how beautiful she is.

It's Chop-a-nose Day (again!)

 

This was one of those accidental finds. For some reason a line from a nursery rhyme popped into my head - no, wait, it was something I read on Facebook about an author who wrote about nursery rhymes! Then I remembered an odd little Mother Goose book I had as a kid, with a bizarre rhyme in it about "chop-a-nose day". I remember my brother and I making terrible fun of it, but no one else believed such a rhyme even existed. Then. . .

This is the grand day of the Internet, that most splendid of times, when information is forever tickling your fingertips. All you have to do is grab. I'm still finding out what "chop-a-nose day" is, and I suspect it's a corruption or mispronunciation of something else. Until then. . . these are excerpts from the Gutenberg version (so it's OK to reproduce them) of a gorgeous little book by Kate Greenaway, who is responsible for these exquisite drawings. They would appear to be from the Edwardian era. 

I have excluded Little Miss Muffet, Humpty Dumpty, Jack and Jill, and all the others we already know about, leaving only the oddball ones. Many of them refer to social status in some way (not unlike the pop songs I wrote about recently), with beggars and kings appearing in the same verse. The rhythms here are irresistible, and if they haven't already been set to music, music just bursts out of them. One can hear these as skipping rhymes, or hopscotching, or perhaps even clapping. "The cat ran up the plum tree" is obviously meant to be chanted while bouncing a fat baby on your knee.

And how far back do these go? No doubt, like folk songs, they evolved over centuries. Ring Around a Rosy, which I didn't include here, is apparently medieval and was originally a chant to ward off the plague.

Hark! hark! the dogs bark,

The beggars are coming to town;

Some in rags and some in tags,

And some in a silken gown.

Some gave them white bread,

And some gave them brown,

And some gave them a good horse-whip, 

And sent them out of the town.

Diddlty, diddlty, dumpty,

The cat ran up the plum tree,

Give her a plum, and down she’ll come,

Diddlty, diddlty, dumpty.

We’re all jolly boys, and we're coming with a noise,

Our stockings shall be made

Of the finest silk,

And our tails shall trail the ground.

Elsie Marley has grown so fine,

She won’t get up to serve the swine;

But lies in bed till eight or nine,

And surely she does take her time.

There was a little boy and a little girl

Lived in an alley;

Says the little boy to the little girl,

“Shall I, oh, shall I?”

Says the little girl to the little boy,

“What shall we do?” 

Says the little boy to the little girl, 

“I will kiss you!”

 

Tell Tale Tit,

Your tongue shall be slit;

And all the dogs in the town

Shall have a little bit.

A dillar, a dollar,

A ten o’clock scholar;

What makes you come so soon?

You used to come at ten o’clock, 

But now you come at noon!

Rock-a-bye baby,

Thy cradle is green;

Father’s a nobleman,

Mother’s a queen.

And Betty’s a lady,

And wears a gold ring;

And Johnny’s a drummer,

And drums for the king.

See-Saw-Jack in the hedge,

Which is the way to London Bridge?

Little lad, little lad,

Where wast thou born?

Far off in Lancashire,

Under a thorn;

Where they sup sour milk

From a ram’s horn.

As I was going up Pippin Hill,

Pippin Hill was dirty;

There I met a sweet pretty lass,

And she dropped me a curtsey.

My mother, and your mother,

Went over the way;

Said my mother, to your mother,

“It’s chop-a-nose day.”

NEWS FLASH: yes, I did find some information about chop-a-nose day. According to the rhyme below, it's a sort of game you play wherein you pretend to chop off a child's nose.

Come to think of it, though we never called it chop-nose or chop-a-nose, my Dad used to pretend to pull off my nose, then stick his thumb through his fingers and say, "I've got your nose." Very funny.

Margery Mutton-Pie and Johnny Bo-Peep

Margery Mutton-pie and Johnny Bopeep,
They met together in Gracechurch-Street;
In and out, in and out, over the way,
Oh! says Johnny, 'tis chop-nose day.

This rhyme is very similar to My Mother and Your Mother, and I believe you play it the same way:

You play it with a child by reciting the rhyme while gently sliding your hand down his/her face. When you get to the last line, you hold the child's nose between your thumb and forefinger, with your other hand you pretend to "chop off" the nose! 

Below is a link to a long scholarly article about the socio-political significance of nose amputation. It just goes on and on. Not surprisingly, it was a particularly painful and vicious, not to mention humiliating punishment for various infractions, including adultery. It would be hard to hide the horrible wound from the world without going about constantly veiled, or not going about at all. I won't dwell on all this, because I can't, but I do wonder if this harmless child's game is an echo of something really horrendous. Well, we still have Ring Around a Rosy, its origins shrouded in the time of the Black Death, with thousands of bodies stacked up and ready to be burned or buried in mass graves. So could chop-a-nose day be a lot more literal than it first appears?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2689568/

Why is YouTube doing this to me (AGAIN)??

Something happened to me last night, and it was only this morning that I realized how bizarre and ludicrous it was.

The above gif is a small sample of a video I posted where I examined (and filmed in detail) a mushroom I found in the yard. For this, my video was removed, with a warning that I had "violated community standards" regarding "sale of regulated goods policy".

It could only mean one thing. They were accusing me of selling psychedelic mushrooms on my channel.

No, really! However else can I interpret it?

There wasn't much point in going through the same routine I've gone through umpteen times already, trying to get a human being at YouTube to pay attention, but I did it as an outlet for my anger and - yes, fear that I will be terminated. I KEEP GETTING these bizarre notices of "violation", when I have done absolutely nothing to deserve it.

The video is of an elderly lady (me!) looking at a mushroom. Just looking at it, examining it, filming it up close. No drug references. Nothing. Just a mushroom. I did say "I won't eat it", so maybe THAT was considered proof that I'm actually a drug dealer in disguise? 

Below is the totally useless and pointless letter I sent to Google through the mail (to be sure no one reads it) and to YouTube "feedback", which is equally useless. I don't know why I do these things. And WHY do they accuse me of drug dealing when all I want to do is film a mushroom?

I am once again in the unenviable position of trying to get some answers re: a YouTube issue that totally baffles me. Yesterday I posted a two-minute video in which I talked about a large wild mushroom I found in the front yard. I took closeups of it from every angle, and talked about how I found it. The thumbnail was meant to be whimsical - me holding a huge mushroom, saying, "Look what I found!" Obviously, meaning I just found it growing outside. Within hours, I received a message that it had been taken down for violating community standards. I did try to appeal, and got the message just now that my content had been "carefully reviewed" and it was deemed unacceptable:

"We have reviewed your appeal for the following:

Video: "Look what I found!" HUGE Magic Mushroom (or: a fungus among us)

We reviewed your content carefully, and have confirmed that it violates our sale of regulated goods policy. We know this is probably disappointing news, but it's our job to make sure that YouTube is a safe place for all."

An elderly woman holding a mushroom and talking about how interesting it is, is not the "sale" of anything at all, nor was there ANY  reference whatsoever to ANY illicit substance. Yet, after "careful review", the video was removed. I must conclude nobody watched it, as they could not possibly come to that conclusion if they had.

The ONLY thing that might even begin to prompt this action is my ill-advised use in the title of the word "magic", which of course was meant to be a reference to how "magical" it can be to find these phenomena of nature. THAT IS ALL. To me, a senior citizen who is unfamiliar with drug terminology, this so-called  subtext is completely absurd. The word "magic" obviously has more than one meaning. I was showing my viewers an interesting thing I found in the yard. If anyone actually did watch this two-minute video, they could not possibly have seen any content whatsoever that had anything to do with any drug, let alone the sale of these non-existent drugs!  It just wasn't there.

So did anyone  actually review it, or were their minds made up before they even checked it out?  Far from making YouTube "safer for all", it has made me feel terribly UNSAFE, a senior citizen who loves nature, to go on posting about things she loves, including a harmless mushroom I found in the yard. YouTube keeps saying my channel will be terminated if I step outside the rules. But what sort of rule is this? What sort of restriction will I face next? 

I am convinced no actual person evaluates these videos, or they would immediately see how incomprehensible this warning is. Can I not post things on flowers, dolls, music, anything at all? If it's the "wrong" music that supposedly has a mysterious subtext, something that applies to literally millions of videos which are allowed to stand, will I be punished for posting ANY music at all? Please, please, PLEASE explain this to me before I lose a channel I value as a source of creativity and social contact. I'm a 70-year-old grandma who loves nature and wants to share  my love of it. I realize it's probably too late for this, and I was unable to send a note explaining what the specific issues were.

I did take the "training" and was told the warning would be lifted in 90 days, so I hope that is true. It should be obvious I am not out to hurt, exploit, or do anything but entertain and enlighten my subscribers. The fact that I have been accused of something like this is devastating to me personally. and I would ask that YouTube PLEASE watch the video again and evaluate it appropriately. If YouTube is a constant source of anxiety over something I have not done, it will ruin the pleasure of it after 13 years of creativity and joy.

If there is an actual human being reading this, PLEASE don't just discard it, as it is potentially an opportunity to learn what actually goes on with your creators and the unfair conditions they must accept. I would greatly appreciate it if you would send me a followup email to explain why this happened, and what I can do to prevent it happening again. If there are certain words I am not allowed to use, such as "magic", please spell out for me what those words are so I can avoid any penalties in the future. Thank you.

magunning@telus.net

Channel name  ferociousgumby

Handle  @ferocious

💗💗💗Alan Arkin Moments ('scuse me while I kiss this guy . . .)💗💗💗

 

I made this GORGEOUS compilation from a website called FYEAHMOVIES or something like that. I mucked around with clips from The Russians are Coming (ditto), then found this trove of eight fleeting moments, and strung them together. Very high quality for mere gifs. Russians aged even more poorly than the '80s movies I wrote about, with a long string of very unfunny sight gags that went on and on. It actually became dull. Arkin was his usual devastatingly charming self, and his Russian accent was to die for. The thing had a great cast, Eva Marie Saint, Carl Reiner, Jonathan Winters, even Theodore Bikel (the only cast member who actually spoke Russian, though Arkin was pretty convincing), but even at that, it was so over the top I just couldn't enjoy it. Jokes don't have to be pounded into your skull, we get it the first time. Everyone remembers this as a classic and a screamingly funny comedy that transcends its era, but it isn't. Cute and cuddly Russians who were really nice guys under the surface. . . OK then! This was a kind of Cold War panacea, I guess, a way to reduce the fear that the Russians were going to nuke us into oblivion. Hell, Arkin could nuke ME into oblivion, and I'd love every minute of it. I find him sexy in a way I can't even describe. It just jumps out at you from the screen.  I couldn't find a clip of this, but there's a moment when Arkin kisses Eva Marie's hand, and she almost gasps, completely taken aback and taken over by his personal charm. I mean, who kisses a woman's hand, these days?  He could kiss any part of me he wanted. I mean it, he could.

Did the movie change, or did I? Thoughts on films I used to love

It’s a no-brainer, of course. The movie DOESN’T change, because it can't, but everything around it does. When I watch something out of the 1920s or ‘30s or ‘40s, the surrounding culture is so unfamiliar it’s like the Twilight Zone. But what about movies made in my own living memory, that I remember seeing in the theatres or maybe on a VHS tape?

I’m talking about the ‘80s. I’ve been seeing a lot of stuff about the ‘80s lately, and people wax so nostalgic about the decade that it makes me wonder if I lived on the same planet. Of course there were sweet times, going to the Blockbuster to rent a movie, then sitting around the TV with the family, eating popcorn, laughing and crying together – when these days, most families don’t even sit down to dinner together. Everyone cobbles together a semblance of a meal, and eats it alone in their bedroom while watching something streaming on their phone. Even DVDs are considered outdated dinosaurs that no one buys.

It WAS different. There was no internet, and high-tech meant having a VCR and maybe more than one TV in the house. Computers were the villains in science fiction movies, just warm-ups for the ultimate evil computer, HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

They were foreign and mechanical and not to be trusted. They weren’t human, so to put them in charge of things was foolhardy at best. Now, you can’t get away from them. Your refrigerator talks to you, even if your mother doesn’t. But this isn’t about that. It’s about three movies  from the ‘80s that I just watched over the past 3 nights.

 

The first one was a Sherlock Holmes movie called The Seven Per Cent Solution. Right off the top, the casting immediately made me miss Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. THIS Holmes was a drug addict going through agonizing cocaine withdrawal, supervised by no less a figure than Sigmund Freud. Really, it was a completely absurd premise that didn’t quite come off (though Alan Arkin made an interesting, if highly improbable Freud. I’ll watch anything with Alan Arkin in it, he had such a knowing look and the sexiest eyes of any man born).

I guess we just kind of suspended our disbelief in these things, as the plot got more and more absurd. Back then it was seen as a sophisticated thriller. But Nicol Williamson sweating and thrashing and raving seemed almost comical, way over the top, and Robert Duvall as Watson – wait, ROBERT DUVALL as Watson?? It was ridiculous casting, and Duvall could scarcely disguise his Texan accent as he strained to look and sound like an English gentleman.

But back in the ‘80s, cocaine abuse was just coming out of the closet as a really evil thing, rather than the harmless fun it seemed to be in the ‘70s. Drug addiction in a classic literary figure was seen as something really novel and original, even daring. We were more willing to buy this far-fetched stuff due to a kind of – what, innocence? It seems like it, in retrospect. Maybe just ignorance. But even more formally-presented dramas are now kind of hard to swallow, for reasons I can’t quite comprehend.

With great anticipation, I watched  A Room with a View, a movie I absolutely adored when it first came out, loving it just as much when I saw it several more times on VHS tape. This time, well – I WAS charmed by the first half-hour or so, maybe just due to nostalgia. But the best moment in it – dashing George Emerson sweeping up prim Miss Lucy Honeychurch and giving her a ferocious kiss in a field of barley – came in the first twenty minutes or so. It was all downhill from there. Maggie Smith as Lucy’s chaperone made me want to SCREAM, her character was so over-the-top and gratingly annoying. Judi Dench as the “lady novelist” was even worse, just ridiculously overstated, a stereotype I was willing to buy before, but this time - .

And it was LONG. That was the biggest difference of all. When I first watched it an astonishing forty years ago, I didn’t want it to end. This time I kept looking at my watch. It just sort of lumbered along, and it felt stuffy, like the atmosphere in all those ornate parlours it took place in. Denholm Elliot was almost worse than the prissy, twittering ladies we were supposed to find funny. His “yes, and yes, and YES” line embarrassed me. Of course we knew the whole thing was careening towards a highly-unlikely happy ending, but this time I was kind of grateful for that last scene of George and Lucy making out  like bandits in their magical pensione in Florence.

All in all, the best part by far was Kiri te Kanawa singing a glorious aria by Puccini while the lovers kissed in the field of barley.  But even at that, Renee Fleming did it better. 

But the third one. Oh, God, the third one. It was called Lovesick, and I do remember seeing it on TV, feeling it was amusing at least. It had the then-wildly-popular Dudley Moore in it (playing a psychiatrist who was, of course, far more disturbed than his patients), and like a lot of women I found him appealing in a bringing-out-the-maternal-urge way. Speaking of Sigmund Freud, this time he was played by Alec Guinness, and he was just awful, stiff, boring, contrived, spewing horribly dated psychoanalytic cliches.

Like Humphrey Bogart materializing to Woody Allan in Play it Again, Sam, Siggy kept appearing to the Dudley Moore character, who was of course called an “analyst” (and whatever happened to analysts? Now they’re called therapists, I guess). This ersatz Freud spouted intellectual theories about why Dr. Dudley had sexually engulfed a vulnerable young patient, treating it more as an amusing mid-life crisis than something that should rightly be against the law.

 And all this was supposed to be funny.

It was the creepiest thing I’d ever seen. Why didn’t it occur to me before how disgusting and even disturbing his behaviour was, skulking around behind the scenes at the theatre where she worked, following her home, breaking into her apartment when she was out so he could read her diary, and generally acting like a disgusting creep. And, of course, she fell for him. Hard.

The first time I saw it, I remember loving Elizabeth McGovern for some reason. I found her sweet and appealing and had a little girl crush on her, thinking she was adorable. This time I could not even imagine how I ever reacted that way. She just wasn’t any good. Her gawkiness fell flat, and her innocent routine didn’t hold up at all. She had strange eyes that looked almost feral. When the two of them were walking together, McGovern TOWERED over Dudley in a way that was disturbingly like watching a mother and child.

The thing just did not play. Is it because we’re far less tolerant of creepiness in men, in trying to find comedy in a situation like hiding in the woman’s shower while she made out with another man in the next room? (Ewwwwwwww!)

Then, of course, she turns on the shower, and he turns it off, and she turns it on. . . then she discovers him crouching like a criminal in her bathtub, and goes all smiles and gooey affection. Then, of course, they immediately have sex. I barely got through this one, nearly shut it off several times, but had the thought that this was the third ‘80s film I had watched in 3 nights, and that this might Mean Something. Not sure what, except that what was charming and romantic then was just kind of offensive, weak, even dull. 

The eighties just don’t play well for so many reasons. Maybe acting has changed. I don’t know, because acting doesn’t exist any more – it’s all superhero garbage, Lord of the Rings 9 and stuff like that. In the 1990s, I actually went to the movies once a week, and most of them were watchable, enough, if not always worth the price. I have to confess I can’t think of too many examples. It was just something I did, usually alone, part of my weekly routine. Sometimes the popcorn was the best part.

So the options are: the films changed; the culture changed; I changed. The latter two are pretty obvious. I’m no longer entertained by caricatures and people woodenly trying to bring historic figures to life. Alan Arkin was cute and appealing, as always, but bore no resemblance whatsoever to Sigmund Freud. Nicol Williamson shouldn’t have bothered, and Robert Duvall. . . But it seems that movies in the’80s were trying to sell us something, something that now seems so unpalatable that I can’t even imagine why I loved them to begin with. What was it? Caricature over character? Cliché over reality? Contrivance that we can’t get past?

 I just wasn’t buying it. All three of them were disappointing, and oddly confusing. Was I watching the same movie?  It’s funny, because I can watch something from literally 100 years ago (Harold Lloyd, anyone?) and love it every bit as much as the first time. But I didn’t live through those times.

Simpler times, or just more blinkered times? Why did people think an emotionally screwed-up psychiatrist having steamy sex with a vulnerable young patient was charming and fun? I’m beginning to think of the ‘80s as a cultural Dark Ages rather than the warm and cozy time people keep talking about. We seem to be missing something we never had in the first place.

More on the Myths of AA: did I leave just in time?

Getting deeper into the thorny haunted woods of the anti-AA literature which seems to abound these days, I found a thousands-of-words-long manifesto online ripping into just about every aspect of 12-step programs. For some reason this document is called The Orange Papers, though I don't think it has anything to do with the NDP.

Looking back, I was both helped and hurt by AA and, almost in tandem, by the Christian church, both of whom claimed acceptance and broadmindedness while practicing the exact opposite. My life revolved around both of those religious institutions, and while I felt constant underlying stress and tension about aspects of the program that I was not allowed to criticize, I kept on. And on. And on.

Recently, in one of my mini-binges of rearrangement (of my trolls and shelves and all that stuff), I discovered a bagful of AA medallions and chips. There were just so MANY of them! I decided to display them on my bookshelf with a Buddha, and the little basket of multicolored coins looks quite attractive. But it's hard to believe what I went through, and for how long, to get them. 

Now they're claiming I was indoctrinated, and that AA's success rate is only 5% - 10% on a good day. They're also saying I can probably drink safely if I put my mind to it. The fact I'm terrified to do so just means I drank the alcohol-free Kool-aid (or was it Flavor-aid?) and now can't get away from 15 years of brainwashing.

But what might it cost me if I decided to find out?

I found this list of what looks like live links, and wondered: if I posted them, would they link me to something else? More diatribes, perhaps? I have to admit I find the angry tirades fascinating, if a bit extreme. I have ordered a copy of The Sober Truth, in which an addictions specialist analyzes the death-grip 12-step groups have not just on individuals, but on the rehab industry and the courts system, which sentences violent criminals to attend meetings as part of their punishment. Many of them have found that a little sexual predation sweetens the penalty. 

When I posted Why I Quit AA on Salon.com back in about 2006, I was deluged with mean-spirited, nasty and even threatening comments, none of which even attempted to pay heed to what I was actually saying. Most of them were from men.  I had broken an entrenched taboo: I had dared to publicly criticize the Mob, and this was my punishment. I wanted to scream: don't you see you're PROVING the points I am trying to make, that AA is a closed system and you dare not speak out or deviate from the rules? The irony of the fact did not cross their minds because their minds were already closed to anything but pure AA doctrine.

I just realized that if I click on the links listed below, it takes me directly to that Orange Papers thing with its rantings and tirades, which makes for some entertaining if exhausting reading.  Proceed with caution!

The A.A. founder Bill Wilson declared that alcoholism is a "spiritual disease" that is caused by

1. sins,
2. moral shortcomings,
3. wrongs,
4. defects of character,
5. resentments,
6. instincts run wild,
7. character defects, representing instincts gone astray,
8. self,
9. self-will run riot,
10. desires that have far exceeded their intended purpose,
11. The Seven Deadly Sins
12. a willful and irresponsible ego,
13. failure to practice religious precepts properly,
14. failure to practice Step Five properly,
15. selfishness,
16. self-seeking,
17. self-centeredness,
18. more selfishness
19. defective relations,
20. nagging wives,
21. nagging wives again, "throwing her husband into a fit of anger"
22. serious character flaws,
23. faith that isn't accompanied by "self-sacrifice and unselfish, constructive action",
24. personal secrets that we have not confessed,
25. inherited genes or inherited sins,
26. conditions that we couldn't correct to our entire satisfaction, and
27. another unconfessed personal secret... 

ADDENDUM: This is another interesting chunk from the Orange Papers. Whoever wrote it REALLY doesn't like AA! But I must admit, one of the more popular of the thousands of AA slogans is, "Check your brain at the door." 

"Quit your stinkin' thinkin'."
"Don't drink, don't think, and go to meetings.
"You have a thinking problem, not a drinking problem."
"Your best thinking got you here."
"The three most dangerous words for an alcoholic — 'I've been thinking'"
"Don't go into your mind alone; it's not a safe neighborhood."
"Don't go in your head alone. It's a dangerous neighborhood."
"Just do things the tried and true way."
"Look for the similarities, not the differences."
"People who think they know it all are very irritating to those of us who do."
"You can act yourself into thinking right easier than you can think yourself into acting right."
"I know I'm in trouble when I start thinking I can run my own life."

THE GODFATHER CONTEST: Who can sound MOST like Don Corleone?😳

This one is even more hilarous than the troll unboxing! We haven't played  this Godfather game in years and years. It's just a delight for me to have this in my life again. If no one watches it, it breaks my heart, and it has nothing to do with me or my subs or anything but GRB and her minions getting me shadowbanned. I am trying to salvage what I can of the joy of this, but I can't pretend it doesn't bother me. It does. It's completely baffling and unfair, except I do know who is doing it and "why" (for no good reason). 

BUT, I broke the ice after several weeks of hanging back. There's that. I will continue on, but even posting links elsewhere does no good, as the views of it don't show up in my view count. So it doesn't matter if a million people watch it. I cannot send any more feedback, as it only seems to make matters worse.

After 13 years and 21,000 subscribers, it's heartbreaking. BUT, this is a hilarious video and I have it and I posted it, and it means much more than just "a video". I have a few hundred of those. I can at least send it around to people and share it here and on Facebook. But that's all.

The TrollDoll Channel: HALLOWEEN IS HERE! Fun Family Unboxing of White W...

This is the most delicious video, combining goofy family times with gorgeous trolls. Predictably, my views are near-zero now, but I have concluded I've been shadowbanned, and it's permanent (subs not getting notifications, etc.) But I have to carry on. It dismays me no end that these highly enjoyable videos are being ignored, while that stupid Daisy one gets gazillions of views and comments, most of them stupid. I've tried to include links to other stuff, but nothing works. They've cut me off for no reason at all, and there's no way out of it - banned is banned, forever. Breaks my heart. BUT, I at least got back in the saddle yesterday and posted two so far, and will continue. I love both of them, but it breaks my heart that YouTube won't let even my most loyal subscribers see them.

Is AA a Cult? . . . . .Well, IS it?

I found this excellent article on AA recovery when googling the age-old question: is AA a cult? I obviously wouldn't have asked unless I had a lot of suspicions about it. I've been away from the "cult" for longer than I was in it, have stayed sober all that time, and never did go stomping off, but drifted away from meetings when I began to feel disaffected by what I saw as the rigid fundamentalism of the program.

As outlined in this article, there are many cultlike dynamics in 12-step groups. I remember hearing things like, "AA is all you need","never say no to an AA request", and "no mind-altering substances" (with a cigarette in one hand and a coffee in the other). Sexual predation, which is finally coming out of the closet, was never spoken of - it was just one of the many taboos you found out about the hard way. And, yes, I was a victim of it, and never told anyone, largely because I had been conditioned not to "tell" by being sexually assaulted as a child.

You learn to keep quiet to survive. But why weren't we allowed to talk about the root cause of so much addictive behaviour? Why is it therapeutic to tell victims of assault that they were responsible for what happened, and that they had to let go of their "resentment" of the people who had assaulted them?

I found no help for this dilemma at meetings, but I did find a competent therapist and spent years untangling the threads. It was painful but necessary, but I found no support for this process  at meetings, where if I even mentioned being in therapy, I'd get a sort of sideways glance, almost an eye-roll. Why wasn't AA all I needed?

It's thick and thorny stuff. The last time I seriously thought about going to a meeting was during the depths of the pandemic, when nobody could go anywhere or do anything. I wasn't too concerned that I would drink. I just wanted to sit in a room with like-minded people who were there to support each other. It didn't happen, because all meetings were now on-line, and I could not see myself doing AA on a Zoom call.

I was shocked but not surprised to learn that a lot of these Zoom meetings were invaded by "Zoombombers" (sounds like an awful wartime thing, but there it is). The meetings were basically hacked by people who obviously were able to listen in to every word, and even intruded with abusive or pornographic messages. Not exactly the way I first came in, just walking through the door, knees shaking or not. It's yet more proof that there really is no such thing as online safety: it's practically an oxymoron.

But just as you could have your boundaries breached with a suffocating hug (one guy would run his hands up and down my body while moaning about how good it felt), baring your soul online is just a very bad idea in general.

But one must ask: is anywhere safe? I realize now that I tolerated a lot of behaviour which at least bordered on abusive, and tried desperately to stay within rules that often did not make a lot of sense to me. A similar thing happened with the United Church, which for all its boasts of inclusivity is just about the most narrow and dogmatic organization I've ever been a part of. Outside of AA.

Deprogramming From AA—When a Fellowship Resembles a Cult

by April Wilson Smith   May 2, 2019

Katherine was on the subway home from a meeting with her Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor when it hit. They had just gone over the worksheet she was supposed to complete for her Fourth Step: “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”

“What if I was too sexy? I knew men looked at me even back then when I was 12. Was I seductive? I liked the attention. I sat on his lap. I hugged him. I didn’t leave when he started talking about those things.”

Suddenly, Katherine* recalled, the pieces seemed to fall into place. The sexual abuse from her stepfather, of which she had been too ashamed to even tell her mother until years after her mother left the marriage. The long-term relationship with a sociopath who had alternated between worshipping her and berating her. The three rapes. It was all her fault.

She looked at the worksheets her sponsor had given her for her Fourth Step. Each one had three columns: for the “resentment;” for the person the resentment was against; and for “my part” in the resentment. It was a given that every resentment, every bad thing that had caused anger, was at some level caused by the “alcoholic”—by Katherine herself.

She felt a sense of peace coming over her, she recalled of that night five years ago, like a great mystery had been solved. She was an alcoholic. The rapes, all three, she had invited them. Like her counselors said, they never would have happened if she hadn’t been drinking. Even the childhood abuse. She must have wanted it, sought it out. That was alcoholic behavior: self-centered and seeking attention.

As she waited on the platform for the next subway to transfer home, she briefly thought about letting herself fall onto the tracks.

A Desire to Deprogram

Rachel Bernstein, MA, LMFT, is a therapist who specializes in helping people who have left cults of all kinds to recover from the damage. “In an organization for people who have dealt with shame and looking down on themselves, as well as having other people look down on them, that shame shouldn’t be recreated within the organization that is supposed to heal them,” she told Filter. “They should have a place to go where they feel only supported and empowered and safe. If people come feeling broken and then the finger is pointed at them, it just takes them farther into a spiral of poor self-esteem and shame.”

Without condemning AA itself, Bernstein acknowledges the dangers of this kind that AA’s program can pose for some people. “While I think that there is some merit to some of the Steps, there needs to be flexibility to take away the Steps that are getting in the way of some people’s recovery.”

Katherine met Bernstein through Monica Richardson, the founder of an international Facebook group called “Deprogramming From AA or Any 12 Step Group.” It has over 1,000 members, all of whom are at some point in the process of leaving a 12-step group.

Richardson has led a crusade to spotlight how unregulated 12-step groups can form a happy hunting ground for sexual predators.

Katherine found the group through a friend from an online AA support group who was also dissatisfied with the pat answers she said fellow members gave to everything: You got raped? “Go to a meeting, call your sponsor! Find your part in what happened!”

The members of “Deprogramming” were in 12-step groups for anywhere from a few months to 20-plus years. It is not only the content of the program that they found problematic: Some have been raped, sexually abused or assaulted through their associations with AA or Narcotics Anonymous.

Richardson, who joined AA at 18 and had spent 36 years abstinent from alcohol in the program by the time she left, has led a crusade to spotlight how unregulated 12-step groups can form a happy hunting ground for sexual predators. She is the creator of the award-winning 2015 film The 13th Step—an expose of sexual harassment and abuse within The Rooms (“13th stepping” is the practice of old-timers hitting on newcomers).

Her work on the film involved researching the tragic 2011 murder of Karla Brada Mendez, a young woman who was introduced to AA by the rehab she attended for problematic prescription drug use. She met a man at those meetings who had been in AA for years (often court-ordered). He never stopped drinking, but used the meetings as a way to meet vulnerable women. The man, Eric Allan Earle, was convicted in 2014 of beating and choking Karla Brada Mendez to death.

The members of “Deprogramming” have many other grievances. Some report having been coerced into going off their psychiatric medications, against their doctors’ advice. Others became frustrated with the lack of scientific evidence behind AA’s program. Others still are angry that any inquiry into other options is not only discouraged, but sometimes actively punished—by exclusion from social events, public humiliation at meetings, and constant reminders of the AA saying that to leave the program can only result in “jails, institutions and death.”

All found that AA’s promises did not come true: They may have stopped drinking or using drugs—often defined by 12-step groups and the treatment industry to include prescription psychiatric medications such as benzodiazepines or MAT drugs like buprenorphine—but they did not become “happy, joyous and free.”

Many feel that they replaced their addiction to a substance with an addiction to the program.

Why It Can Be Frightening to Leave a 12-Step Group

However, many members of “Deprogramming” report feeling afraid about leaving 12-step circles.

They fear not being able to stay “sober”—a fear instilled by 12-step teaching that as an “alcoholic” or “addict,” you can’t take so much as one sip of alcohol without complete reversion to dangerous patterns (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary).

Fear of social isolation is another important common factor. Twelve-step groups typically encourage members to build their lives around the program, to attend meetings every day for the first 90 days and many more ever after.

Many who leave the program therefore fear that they will no longer have friends once they do.

Many sponsors require their sponsees to call a certain number of people in the program every day, no matter what. Phone numbers are given out at meetings. Katherine’s sponsor made it mandatory that she call seven AA women daily.

“Service,” is also pushed, with new members strongly encouraged to commit to at least weekly duties—ranging from making coffee to chairing meetings, going to detox facilities to speak at patients’ mandatory AA meetings, and serving on committees.

If a member complains that daily meeting attendance and other demands are interfering with work or family life, the AA mantra, “Anything you put before your recovery, you will lose,” is typically repeated. So members often reduce their other social connections, actively encouraged to change the “people, places and things” in their lives. Many who leave the program therefore fear that they will no longer have friends once they do.

Another issue that departing 12-step members report as concerning is suddenly dealing with all the issues that drove them to substance use in the first place, but weren’t adequately addressed in the program. People with a history of trauma, in particular, can find that the onslaught of pain and memories—repressed while they were told in AA that “alcoholism,” was the root of all their problems—can be almost unbearable.

“I would venture to say three-quarters, if not more, of the people in AA are suffering from depression or anxiety or survivors of trauma, and were using alcohol to self-medicate,” said Rachel Bernstein. “So then you have people who are derailed from a more direct and relevant path to dealing with their particular issues, and instead they are told that alcohol is the only source of their problem.”

“Deprogramming from AA and Other 12 Step Groups” provides a community to share experiences, advice and validation for a perspective that the treatment industry and mainstream America deny: AA doesn’t work for most people. And for many, it does tremendous harm.

Cult-Like Characteristics

But do all of these program- and community-related problems within 12-step fellowships mean we can accurately describe them as cults?

I asked Bernstein about the extent to which AA and the rest resemble the bona fide cults in which many of her patients have been involved. Part of her answer depicted an environment in which unregulated autonomy—from group to group and from sponsor to sponsor—sees abuses go unchecked.

“People who came to see me got involved in 12-step programs wanting to turn their lives around, but then had a sponsor who became a controller, an abuser and a boundary violator, and there was nobody to talk to about it,” she said. “There are no safeguards within these groups. There’s no governing body to go to and say, ‘My sponsor followed me home and went into my apartment.’”

“That is cult behavior: Cults will give you an identity.”

“The other issue,” she added, “is that unlike a lot of the other anonymous groups, within AA, you have to call yourself an ‘alcoholic.’ That is cult behavior: Cults will give you an identity. Then you build not only your life but your self-esteem around that identity.”

Regarding the nature of “sharing” in meetings, Bernstein said, “Within 12-step groups, there are people who can defend against the social pressures, and others who can’t. They don’t want anyone to be unhappy with them so they’ll say what they need to say, they’ll make commitments, they’ll ‘admit’ things about themselves even if they aren’t true.”

“They’ll do that in a room full of people who are not mental health professionals and do not know how to hold onto that information in a safe way or help you heal,” she continued. “Other times people will feel the need to share information because they have someone else they know in the organization who brought them in, so they don’t want to disappoint that person.”

Katherine’s Path Out

Katherine, now in her 40s, didn’t throw herself onto the subway tracks that fateful night. Despite fear that her parents—who had sent her to a tremendously expensive 12-step rehab and were very invested in her AA participation—would be horrified, she called her sponsor the next day and said she was going to take a break from doing the Steps.

Before long, people at the meetings she attended daily began to shun her. They would talk about how, since she was pursuing a graduate degree, she thought she was too smart for the program. “We’ve buried a lot of smart people,” a familiar AA saying goes. “You have to get stupid to get the program.”

Gradually, Katherine cut back on her meeting attendance. She found other support in SMART Recovery and Refuge Recovery, and eventually left AA all together. But the pain didn’t stop.

She would find her days interrupted by intrusive thoughts of AA. She alternated between terror that she would drink again and lose everything she had gained since leaving rehab, and bursts of anger at the program that had told her that she was nothing but an “alcoholic.” That none of her accomplishments or good qualities mattered.

Katherine’s rehab counselor had recommended that instead of returning to graduate school, she spend $4,000 a month to live in a “sober living” home. In this facility, she would have been isolated from the general population and made to go to daily meetings and group therapy with non-professional counselors, while working a minimum-wage job. However, her family didn’t have the money to throw at this, so she returned to graduate school, where she could live on student loans, and attended AA in the community instead.

And it was then that Katherine’s fear of being raped again turned into full-blown agoraphobia. She would walk home from meetings at night terrified. But the strange thing, she recalled, was that she wasn’t so frightened of the physical violation and pain of rape itself. She was afraid that she would be blamed. Because she was an “alcoholic”—and now everyone knew it because she had been to rehab, even though she hadn’t had a drink in months.

Seeking help, Katherine reached out to Monica Richardson, who recommended Rachel Bernstein, the cult deprogramming therapist. Katherine worked with Bernstein for nine months to recover from her AA experience.

As the stories of “Deprogramming” members attest, many others have had comparable experiences. Alice,* for example, was raped at a graduate school party. Though she had no history of alcohol-related problems, her parents insisted she get an alcohol evaluation because she had been drinking at the time of the assault. It was a classic case of victim-blaming.

Alice was assessed as an “alcoholic,” as is almost anyone who is referred for an assessment to a treatment provider. She went to an Intensive outpatient program and then immersed herself in AA. Within AA, she experienced sexual abuse from her sponsor and men her sponsor insisted she date. She was told that the sexual abuse she endured as a child and the rape she experienced as an adult were her fault.

Even more frightening, Alice said, is that she looked and even believed she was happy during this time. “Upon hearing that I had a negative experience in AA, people that knew me during that 10-year period might be shocked. ‘But she seemed so happy,’ they might say… ‘How could she say that?’”

“My answer to this,” she continued, “is that yes, I was very happy–in fact, I was euphoric at times when I went to AA. This was because I was suppressing all of the emotions and things that AA told me would lead me to drink: anger, sadness, grief, critical thinking, negative thoughts, my intelligence. This led me to have a kind of false gratefulness, happiness and peace that only lasted for so long.”

Finally, Alice related, “at nine-and-a-half years of sobriety I could repress and suppress all of these things no longer” Dealing with all these feelings led to what she calls “the hardest period of my life.”

“I was hospitalized two times,” she said, “and was also suicidal for about two-and-a-half years. Over time, though, I have gotten more accustomed to having thoughts and feelings like I did before I went to AA, and have found that they pose no risk to my sobriety.”
Guidance on How to Deprogram

Both Rachel Bernstein and Monica Richardson give concrete advice on how a person thinking of leaving AA or any 12-step program, and wishing to deprogram, should proceed.

Bernstein advises:

1. Learn about methods of control and manipulative tactics. Bring a checklist to your next meeting and check off the techniques as you see them. You’ll be able to see for yourself if this group is treating you respectfully and being open about its intentions, or if it’s using manipulation to not only keep you there but make you feel like you have no choice but to stay. Here is a checklist of tactics to look out for:

* You are taught that the teachings and techniques are perfect. So if they are not working as intended, it’s because you are not following them the right way, or trying hard enough.

* The organization defines you, tells you what you are, who you are, and how to see yourself.

* Questioning or doubting the teachings is wrong and seen as an issue/problem of yours instead of your fundamental right.

* The organization is a closed system, and any issues you have with it have to stay in-house; there is no outside and/or objective governing body to bring your concerns to.

* Dependency is built into the system by making you feel that you cannot trust yourself on your own, and left to your own devices you would always make the wrong decision and your life would spiral downward.

* You never graduate. You are never done. Your participation and adherence to the teachings are expected to be lifelong.

* You are made to feel these are the only people you can trust in your life, and those outside the group are not able to support and ensure the path you should be on.

* The influence technique of “scarcity” is used by conveying the message that this group is the only group in the world that can give you what you need.

* It has its own social norms and lingo that are different from those in the outside community, so you feel more understood by those in the group and more a part of the world of the group, and this can separate you from those in the outside community.

* The group has one system it provides. No other systems or philosophies are integrated. So, whatever the system is designed to address is the only thing that’s addressed, and other potentially primary issues are ignored. Part of the “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” idea, this can cause people to be misdiagnosed and to be derailed from getting help they may need with their true underlying issues.

2. Address the things that 12-step groups have taught you about yourself, such as that you are powerless or can’t control your life. Write them down, show them to somebody not involved in the group and ask, “Is this how you see me?” Some people in 12-step groups feel that they are reduced to the kind of person who can not trust themself. So if you can find people in your life who see the good in you and see your strengths and can remind you of them, you start to rebuild your sense of self and then you won’t tolerate the messages about how, left to your own devices, your life would be awful.

3. Talk to people who were involved in 12-step groups, then left and are doing okay. The more you see that there are people who are okay without AA, the more you see that you don’t need to go to keep yourself alive.