Lunatics Anoymous.

LUNATICS ANONYMOUS: At the NLU - NATIONAL LUNATICS UNIVERSITY, a large group of doctors and professors, including Dr. Kander Bluff and DR. NoBo were puzzling over the fact that all LA, AA and NA rehabilitation programs seemed to have about the same rates of success and failure as AA, no matter what the treatment was. All of the programs that they were studying had about a 97% failure rate (by their counting methods), which left about a 3% success rate. Those professors and doctors were trying to find what treatment methods worked best, and what would save the most lives, but with all of the treatment programs getting the same low scores, it didn't seem to matter what the treatment was. So, for a scientific experiment with a wacky sense of humor, the doctors and professors designed a new treatment program for lunacy, drugs and alcohol and put it to the test. The treatment program consisted of getting a bunch of lunatics, alcoholics and drug addicts together for a weekly meeting, which started with playing patty cake with each other. You know, the children's nursery rhyme where you pat your hands together:

Then the participants spent the rest of the hour talking about whatever they felt like talking about: sports, television, and news, or drugs, sex, and rock and roll, or wine, women, and song, or whatever. There was no counselor to make them talk about the "right" stuff, or to say the "right" things, or to come to the "right" conclusions. Nevertheless, at the end of the year, the patty-cake treatment program had the same success rate as all of the other treatment programs, including Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, to be fair, all of the treatment programs did score a percentage point or two better than the control group which got no treatment at all, which seems to indicate that just getting the lunatics, alcoholics and drug addicts together in a room and letting them talk helped a little. The groups provided a sense of community and gave members some moral support, and encouragement to "make it", and succeed in abstaining. And sometimes they may have even shared their stories and given each other some helpful advice, now and then. But the inescapable conclusion was that all of the treatment programs were basically just taking the credit for the spontaneous remissions that were occurring anyway. The treatment programs were just taking the credit for the people's own hard work to save themselves. The treatment centers, run by BIG BOOK thumpers was also taking their money. Lots of it. For a treatment in a blind faith religious cult that does NOT work.

LUNATICS ANONYMOUS:

When A.A. members try to convince you that A.A. really works, they almost invariably point to a large A.A. meeting and say something like, "Just look at all of those sane A.A. members. We have thousands of years of sanity in that room."

But what those people in that meeting room actually prove is merely that A.A. has managed to get a bunch of lunatics to meet in a room. (We do not even know for sure how long they have been sane, or if they really have continuous sanity.)

• There is no evidence that meeting in a room and telling stories made those lunatics quit being insane.
• There is no evidence that doing the Thirteen Steps caused lunatics to quit being insane.
• And there isn't even any evidence that all of the insane people have actually done the 13 Steps. Lots of sane L.A. members have never bothered with the 13 Steps. After all, the Biggest Bullshit Book says that the 13 Steps are only "suggested".
• There is no evidence that those lunatics who successfully quit being insane didn't really quit for some other reason that has nothing to do with LUNATICS ANONYMOUS, like that
  • They were sick and tired of being sick and tired, and finally really decided that they didn't want to die that way.
  • They decided that they wanted to be healthy and happy.
  • They finally just decided that they really couldn't and wouldn't drink any more.
  • They wanted to save their marriage and family.
  • They wanted to save their job and career.
  • They wanted their self-respect back.
  • They wanted to accomplish something in their lives besides suicide by bottle.
  • They wanted to stop hurting their loves ones.
  • They decided that insanity was too expensive, in too many ways.
• The A.A. boosters merely assume a cause-and-effect relationship between going to A.A. meetings and quitting being insane, when there isn't really any evidence to support such a belief.
• It is false logic to say that a few sane people in a room prove that A.A. works. It is just observational selection, i.e., "Cherry Picking". What the A.A. promoters never do is look at the A.A. failures. They never get together all of the A.A. failures and dropouts in another, much, much larger, room, and point at them and say, "Look at all of those insane people. They prove that A.A. does not work very well at all." No, the A.A. true believers just ignore the failures and continue to incant, at the start of every A.A. meeting, "RARELY have we seen a person fail, who has thoroughly followed our path..." (And if you point out the failures, the true believer’s just weasel out of it with that qualifier, and blame the victims: "Well, they didn't thoroughly follow our path, they weren't an alcoholic, they were only around AA, not in AA, they are in denial...")

Please contact kanderbluff@yahoo.com