I really like this article by Lance Dodes. It is a direct attack on two-hatter therapists. Dos and Donts in Psychotherapy for People with Addictions

Full blog post: “Help”

“We sacrificed our financial well being and enjoyment for the sake of speaking the truth to others about the malpractice and fraud of the 12 step cult and its business arm, the 12 step rehab industry. We discovered that the cult had tinkered with regulatory policy, the media, and law, to secure its dominance over substance abuse treatment and absolve any liability for its errancy. We found an evil that we never knew existed.”

“…we were not powerless over alcohol but that we had become powerless over our tormentors and quite by their design.”

“We asked our government: why was this was allowed to persist, unregulated and opaque, devoid of meaningful opposition and scrutiny? We contacted attorneys and the media, only to have the door slammed in our faces. Only then, we realized that the power to overcome our substance abuse was within us always, and that it was our tormentors who had attempted to take this away for the service of their own ideologies and for their own financial beneficence.

We told our tormentors that: mental servitude to a system of irrational and logically circuitous beliefs was not ‘help’, that this exacerbated our recovery, and was grossly and medically inappropriate.

Having had this ‘awakening’ we left Alcoholics Anonymous. We chewed our limbs off to free ourselves from the 12 step cult and the well designed, insidious, psychological steel trap in which we had become ensnared.

We told our tormentors: “you did nothing to help us” and…

we left AA”

This kind of ‘treatment’ should be illegal. I created this movie after a couple of months of wondering what to do if Samaritan Counseling Center of the Capital Region was not willing to acknowledge the content of my complaint about AA coercion. (They acknowledged the letter and said nothing about its content, only that I had sent one copy without a stamp and therefore ‘under no circumstances’ was I to have any further personal contact with anyone at Samaritan Counseling, as if delivering a complaint incorrectly was breaking some kind of boundary I was unaware of.)

I spent $300 to subscribe to this cartoon making service, and sat down with my records, writing down a transcript of critical experiences in therapy (much of it is verbatim from records or memory). It was somewhat cathartic, because I didn’t know how to explain my experience to other people. Then I was afraid to show it to people; but when I did finally start sharing it, I was happy to see comments from many people who related to what I was trying to express. My view of the situation hasn’t changed much since then, but I have seen that this is not an isolated incident; it’s a pattern of mistreatment by addiction professionals and other professionals who feel afraid or incompetent to question them.

I originally intended this to be an abstract expression of the experience of AA coercion. But after having multiple Yelp reviews removed and Yelp accounts deleted, I decided to put their name on it, so that it shows up in search results for Samaritan Counseling in general. It’s one thing to have gone through something like this; it’s another thing to not get a reasonable response; it’s yet another thing to not have any way to tell other consumers about it because you are being censored by people who feel they need to hide the truth. That’s what’s great about the internet!

This is more proof that Samaritan Counseling or Recovery Resource Center of Albany were trying to paint me as insane as I tried to speak out about 12-step coercion and their merry-go-round mind-fuck. Claiming that AA did not save your life is considered a personality disorder.

“Axis II – A classification dimension used with Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), which includes personality disorders—paranoid, schizoid, schizotypal, antisocial, borderline, histrionic, narcissistic, dependent, obsessive-compulsive, personality and NOS (not otherwise specified)—and intellectual disorders, including mental retardation.”

Here is the letter that was so offensive (mainly because it didn’t have a stamp on it? The office was closer than the post office) and Axis II to them. I was being kind to Jim Garrett (a 12-step facilitator) at the time, because I thought he would actually allow me to escape his nonsense and he would adhere to his agreement and let me speak to my therapist about the experience. In fact, in my last session with him, he told me to not send my complaint and to ‘trust my higher power':

AA coercion at samaritan

Jim Garrett’s records say such things as:

“recounted AA relationship and how abusive it felt to him because he would not have sex with her” – 3/11/14

“Case discussion with Oona Edmands: agreed that Tom will need to have two months of sobriety and weekly sessions with me before he could see Oona.” – 3/17/14

“Tom Gleason called – ‘I was only doing this so I could get back to see Oona'” – 3/20/14

“See me once a month for ‘trust building’ sessions and get approval to have appointment with Oona Edmands after two months” – 3/26/14

“Sober. Debriefing the ‘betrayal’ from Oona Edmands and his emotional response to not being able to meet with her. wrote complaint to David Olsen; has meeting on Monday with Dr. Olsen and clinical supervisor [NOTE: David Olsen did not attend]; looking at how his drinking damaged the relationship with Oona and how he may never get the opportunity to resolve/bring closure to that relationship; angry that he feels like Oona Edmands is pushing ‘religion’ on him by ‘making’ [NOTE: scare quotes] him go to AA meeetings instead of allowing other alternatives” – 5/30/14

This was shortly before I checked myself into a psychiatric ward for the second time.