Prescription drugs
As we have briefly indicated in the overview section one of the distinctive features of cult groups is that their members frequently insist that those AA members who are on prescribed medication are “unsponsorable”. It is of course the case that each member is free to choose to sponsor or not to sponsor another member and that the criteria that they may employ in making that decision may vary considerably. However it is not within the remit of an individual to decide whether those who fall into that category are beyond the pale insofar as sponsorship is concerned or indeed whether they should be totally excluded from participation in the recovery programme.
It is part of the cult ethos that they transmit a more fundamental and truer message than that conveyed by mainstream AA; a significant part of that message is reflected in their stance on medication. This view is espoused on the basis that in their “experience” members on medication cannot recover unless they abandon the use of this treatment. We quote from a copy of a letter we have received in which a member gives an account of a conversation he had with an attendee at one of the Visions groups. He reports that their perspective can be encapsulated in the following way: “If you stop taking medication God will look after you and we can ‘sponsor’ you. You will not get sober or complete the 12 steps of recovery unless you do stop”.
Their assumption seems to be that where a member has been prescribed a regime involving the use of medication that they are automatically deemed to be avoiding the alcohol issue and replacing one addiction with another. What these individuals forget is that AA as such does not get involved in outside issues (drug use etc); our Fellowship and programme deal only with problems relating to alcohol use. We do not have the experience or the qualifications to offer any kind of diagnosis on the use of medications of this kind and certainly not of their impact on recovery.
Nevertheless according to these self-appointed “professionals” depression has been re-diagnosed as self pity (in one instance that we know of this masterly insight was presented not by a psychiatrist or psychoanalyst, nor by a general practitioner or consultant – no, this profound conclusion was arrived at via the services of a plumber).
So we have arrived at the situation where newcomers to AA are being advised and, in some cases, being directed to discontinue their use of medication prior to being taken on as a sponsee, and this without reference to an intervention by a health professional. In some circumstances where local pressure has been placed upon the cult groups to abandon this policy they have publicly recanted but we believe so central is this perspective to their fundamentalist approach that it is still the case that privately they hold to this dangerous view.
The AA guidelines on the matter are very clear and are frequently communicated to the extent that most members and groups cannot fail to be aware of them. Yet the cult groups and their followers continue to ignore wider AA “experience” and uphold this position. It would require a completely blinkered perception or arrogance of the highest degree to persist to give out advice that is quite obviously dangerous and yet this they do.
This has undoubtedly contributed to a great deal of entirely unnecessary suffering and in some extreme cases to suicide. This we regard as both unacceptable and unforgivable.