Here is a case of sexual harassment by an OASAS counselor where the AA curriculum of admitting ‘honesty’ problems was used to completely undermine the complaint.
“At the conclusion of that hearing, the arbitrator dismissed all four charges and specifications against petitioner finding, among other things, that the testimony offered by client A and the intern was not credible. Specifically, the arbitrator noted that client A admitted that she had “feelings” for petitioner and that she had acknowledged – on a self-assessment form completed in connection with her treatment – that she was only sometimes honest with herself and others.”
(Client C was also found to have admitted she was ‘honest with herself and others only some of the time’). The intern was also found to be ‘not credible’.
So, after being told to depend on a sober person for her very life, and then being told that the reason she doesn’t recover is because she has problems with being honest, her complaint is thrown out because she had ‘feelings’ for her counselor and had admitted as part of her 12-step ‘work’ that anything she says might be a lie.
This is How it Works. New York State doesn’t look into the ‘AA thing’. But actually, my whole blog is about this exact dynamic: client develops feelings for the person supposedly saving his/her life, counselor gets off on it, client gets confused by being constantly described as powerless, insane, defective, selfish and dishonest, then counselor denies everything and says addicts just make shit up out of nowhere for no comprehensible reason.
So, I guess it’s only OK to fool around with clients if the client has admitted on paper that s/he is “constitutionally incapable of being honest”, according to New York State Supreme Court. Doing the mandatory AA homework is equivalent to signing all your rights away. In AA, ‘honesty’ is directly correlated to ‘sobriety’, and people who are not helped by the program (or the ‘treatment’ providers) are encouraged to admit problems with ‘honesty’ and confess their thoughts and feelings, which are then inevitably used against them.
‘Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates.’
Here is the former Drug Czar Robert DuPont. At 6:30 you can hear about the ‘between the eyes repeatedly with a 2×4′ method of getting professionals into ‘Recovery’, which got Talbott sued (successfully) for false imprisonment and medical malpractice in 1999. DuPont was also a consultant for the Straight, Inc. program that was shut down by multiple lawsuits alleging abuse and malpractice, several of which were successful. He is part of a long history of this abusive industry.
The ARISE method misrepresents itself. It IS about coercion. It is an extended Johnson intervention that ‘gradually escalates’ with ‘serious consequences’ for not entering 12-step treatment. The contracts in the book Invitational Intervention involve immediate inpatient rehab if any drug is used, mandatory drug tests, and ‘natural consequences’ (which are not actually natural consequences, because it is not natural to face consequences for not wanting intensive 12-step facilitation.
Here are articles I’ve written on my experience of the ARISE intervention, which involved using my family and trusted therapists to continually re-leverage me into meetings and treatment that I was already very familiar with and had rejected.
Here is something interesting: AA and rehab often say that you have to WANT it for it to work. The ARISE method is, like EAPs, PHPs and Drug Courts, coercive. If you read the book, you will find that they are lying when they say it is not coercive, because the method actually says that self-referrals don’t work — that coercion is part of the process. Also, their success rates (the 83% quoted) involve measuring success at getting people INTO treatment, a fact that is easily lost on people who assume the treatment will actually be helpful. Also note that they will try to bring your whole family into the 12-step cult and treatment because it’s a so-called ‘family disease’.
Summary: false advertisement, easily verified bait-and-switch. It is more a system for addiction specialists to make money off of rehab referrals.
Investigator Patrick Flynn told me on the phone when he was closing out my case that 1. My therapist denied everything so it was “he said she said” and 2. ‘We don’t look into the AA thing’. So, after three attempts at getting New York State to acknowledge a very serious problem with two-hatting therapists over the course of two years, this has always been and is still their official position, regardless of how it is clearly willful negligence.
New York State should, of course, acknowledge facts like:
– Treatment coercion is illegal. When networks of people are coached to impose ‘consequences’ for not entering treatment, it’s still coercion even if you say it’s not. It may even be a form of insurance fraud.
– Religious indoctrination into AA is a First Amendment violation, as well as a bad treatment for most conditions. It is ineffective and should not be protected from malpractice and fraud complaints.
– The 12-step treatment industry is psychologically abusive and extortionist in its approach. This is verifiable and not up for debate. ‘Treatment’ is life-and-death necessity until it fails or it’s questioned, and then suddenly “AA isn’t treatment”.
Finally, other abuses are easily hidden under the guise of ‘help’ in a 12-step organization, and also often arise out of the confusion that 12-step programs create. It is not necessary to lie to your clients, seduce them, or punish them to ‘motivate change’. The ‘unforced forces’ of better arguments have their own power.
In my opinion, it should be standard practice for New York State Education Department to inform therapists accused of 12-step coercion that this is not acceptable for a variety of reasons and they are being warned and will face consequences to their license status if new complaints arise. It’s the f*cking EDUCATION department; they need to be setting some standards for basic knowledge about treatment options.
The last complaint to New York State Department of Education Office of Professions (the licensing board). The investigator told me that he called my therapist and she just denied everything, so he said it’s a ‘he said she said’ thing. He also told me ‘We don’t look into the AA thing”.
So, there are two letters explaining just how much has gone ignored by Samaritan Counseling, Samaritan Institute, New York State Licensing Board (which is staffed by the Clinical Director of Samaritan Counseling at the time), and the Justice Center. For anybody who thinks this is an isolated incident, like I initially thought it must be, please consider the following comments found on a FaceBook post about two Hope House employees getting arrested within the same week for having sex with rehab clients:
The pattern is clear and should not be ignored. It is a product of 12-step culture. Invoking high-school-level “addicts are con artists” or “only sometimes honest with themselves and others” after having some fun with them doesn’t fly when you’re supposed to be a treatment provider. People have basic human rights and deserve to be taken seriously, and Medicaid and insurance shouldn’t be paying for the “Spiritual Recovery” Dating Game.
There are a couple of recent documentaries on the culture of Alcoholics Anonymous (see The 13th Step the film which documents systemic psychologically damaging dynamics), and the $35 billion dollar business arm called the ‘rehab’ industry (thebusinessofrecovery.com which documents deceptive business practices). Those films have only started being distributed in the last year, and not widely. A book called The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science behind AA and the Rehab Industry by Lance Dodes also takes a good critical look at evidence.
While these are newer attempts to inform the public about real problems with AA, complaints are not new and have been increasing. Rehabilitation programs like Straight, Inc. in the eighties were controversial and faced lawsuits for false imprisonment and abusive practices. In 1999 a doctor won a case against a rehab program for false imprisonment, fraud and medical malpractice. In 2001 the Department of Justice issued a statement that any use of DoJ funds to indoctrinate religion (specifically 12-step programs) was a violation of the 1st Amendment, yet my own investigation found that state programs are still very actively involved in spreading the AA message.
Several cases have set precedent that it is illegal for judges to order people to AA, and yet they still do it. Many doctors who have heard about getting help with an addiction problem entered into Physicians’ Health Programs only to find that they will lose their licenses if they don’t attend a 90-day rehab (at their own expense), 3 AA meetings a week (for years) or try to dispute mandatory, random drug tests (paid for by them). These programs establish behavioral contracts with the license as leverage and any violation adds YEARS to the contract and severe consequences (such as loss of license, with no ability to dispute or argue). (see disruptedphysician.com ) Doctors, nurses, pilots who have lost their livelihood, when they don’t kill themselves, sometimes realize they have nothing to lose anymore and decide to speak out. Many of them straightforwardly identify the system as a racket, unfair, and ‘kafkaesque’.
Sober living environments are presented as a treatment option, and often turn out to be not much more than slumlording as a non-profit — no actual treatment, no medical oversight, but maybe a pee testing scheme to make money for each ‘head’ from insurance companies. These places are often even considered ‘rehabs’ or halfway houses but often are nothing but houses with AA members in them.
AA through its pamphlets teaches members how to promote these professional systems and rehabs through the media, and yet denies any involvement or responsibility. What is called the New Recovery Advocacy Movement is the cultural cooption of AA alternatives (like MM and SMART) and tries to gather them all under the umbrella of ‘spiritual recovery’ and the rehab and sober living industry. One example of this is a movie called The Anonymous People which found some data about 20 million people in America being considered ‘in recovery’ because they had a substance use issue and resolved it, and used that to enhance the image of ‘Recovery Culture. In reality there are only about 2 million people in AA and the majority recover without treatment or religious conversion, and there is even evidence that treatment is counterproductive. I could go on and on.
This is all to say that someone approaching AA with a methodological atheist standpoint will be tempted to reinterpret AA in secular terms assuming that the interpretation will explain ‘how it works’, when it actually doesn’t (as treatment). The assumption that it works in the first place is only an assumption. Even the concept of needing a support group is mostly an invention of AA, and prematurely assumed to be an important aspect of any secular approach.
A closer look at evidence, even the positive evidence such as experts claiming it works or that “they don’t force people into AA anymore” doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, and these dynamics (such as the fact that critics may never be allowed to BE professionals in the recovery industry and may in fact not want a piece of it) does more to explain how racketeering, censorship and misinformation works than how a treatment for ‘alcoholism’ works.
I found this site about “Ethics” by an “ethics training and consultant firm” in Alexandria, VA. There was a glowing article about what a wonderful organization AA is. I thought I’d set him straight because his “About” page says we don’t have to agree. He shut me down pretty quick though without seeming to have considered any of the points I raised. Much like the NYS Education Department and Samaritan Institute. I write this blog to try to explain how people can become so personally invested in ideology that it becomes impossible to even consider arguments to the contrary.
I post my whole interaction with him below, but here’s a summary of his conclusion:
I’m full of shit,12 Step programs are a godsend for millions with an incurable disease. I obviously have issues with AA. AA doesn’t lie. Don’t post here again. Good day, sir!
An ethicist should be aware that when a party has been presented with facts and chooses to disregard them, that can amount to negligence. I hope he would not advise his clients to delete and ignore important information required for ethical choice, especially since he “has led non-profit organizations devoted to education, public policy research, legal services and health.”
So, here’s how it went. Maybe I didn’t have tact. I didn’t think I needed to because he’s not a member; he just LOVES AA and how ethical it is and doesn’t know about its problems yet, right? After this exchange, I’m pretty sure he’s not swayed by facts.
Tom
Most people that end up in AA are either sent there by judges or rehab programs unethically. It’s a first amendment violation as well as usually a scam, since rehabs have the appearance of medical treatment, charge a lot of money to medicaid and then mostly just ship people to free AA meetings and don’t even manage detox. The whole industry is plagued by the very fundamental ethical breach which is pretending that 12 religious ideas is ‘treatment’ for a ‘spiritual disease’ which can only be arrested by the 12-steps.
Jack
September 3, 2016 at 6:35 pm
MOST people aho go to AA are ordered there? Absolute and complete nonsense. Not even close to true. Where did you get such a silly idea?
Tom
September 3, 2016 at 7:15 pm
For many people it is the way to stay out of jail, keep their family, keep their job, or not end up in jails, in institutions, or dead. In many cases this is only because those families or courts have been told that forcing people into regular AA meetings or else ‘lovingly detaching’ is the only ethical thing to do and the only way that person will ever get better or stay better — By AA members who are following the 12-step tradition proselytizing to professionals and patients. Thus the rehab industry has a constant source of free word-of-mouth advertising, because AA meetings are training sessions for formulating a personal story of debauchery, disaster/miracle, and redemption.
The 12-step rehab industry and the AA 501(c)3 are some of the most unethical organizations in the world. You can see ‘How it Works’ in a documentary called The Business of Recovery and The 13th Step. What is wrong? Well, AA seems to give its members the sense that if they don’t participate in and proselytize for and defend their little religious program, most ‘alcoholics’ will die; for one. There are many such simple flat out lies, such as the “rarely have we seen a person fail” lie. They also refuse to provide members with new scientific information about alcohol use or empirical data about what is normal. They do not have a sexual harassment policy and instead have unspoken traditions not only of “13th stepping” but also of blaming the victim for being upset. This blaming the victim dynamic is also very apparent in the rehab industry where when treatment fails (and it nearly always does, or worse) the client is told to either come back for another round or shut up because they obviously didn’t put enough into it.
I could go on but I don’t need to.
Jack
September 3, 2016 at 8:25 pm
Yeah, don’t, because you’re full of shit, to be blunt, as you showed in your initial post. 12 Step programs give hope, support and assistance in dealing with an incurable disease. I have a lot of experience with AA (though I have never personally been a member). It’s not for everyone, but it is still a godsend for millions, and your characterization is false. I don’t know if you had a bad experience or are a flack for a competitor. There is no “rarely have we seen a person fail” lie—AA and ALANON make it very clear that anyone can relapse any time. The point is that doing so isn’t “failure.” It’s the disease.
I don’t know your motives, but this is the last anti-AA rant you get to post here. Got it: you have some issues with AA. Your characterization is absurd, however.
I’m talking about not just one therapist, not just her supervisor and the clinical director, but a whole network of over 300 ‘faith-based’ (and state licensed) centers accredited by one organization that seems to have no interest in addressing this.
“Declaration of any particular religious belief is not a requirement for treatment, however, and counselors do not impose personal theological beliefs upon counselees, but instead work within a spiritual context when appropriate.”
(I sent this letter to over 60 Samaritan Counseling Centers that I found listed on the Samaritan Institute website. I got only one response:
update Jan 20 2020: Samaritan Institute is now called Solihten Institute.
“Mr. Gleason,
This is an intake referral email for a different organization.
Please cease sending these emails to this address. Thank you!”)
this was from ppi-online.org which is a Samaritan Institute accredited center in Pittsburgh PA. The tagline on the front page of this website is “People start to heal the moment they feel heard.”
A more proper response would have been to assure me that they forwarded my complaint to a relevant party, because all Samaritan Counseling Centers are part of the organization of Samaritan Institute.
Dear Samaritan Counseling,
I am writing today in good faith to inform as many Samaritan Counseling Centers as possible of a very serious problem that needs to be addressed but has not been in any way shape or form by Samaritan Counseling Center of the Capital Region, the state licensing board, or Samaritan’s accrediting body, Samaritan Institute.
– There is much evidence that 12-step programs are often ineffective in ‘treating’ addiction ( The Sober Truth by Lance Dodes ), often psychologically damaging when ineffective (“keep coming back” to hear that you are “constitutionally incapable”, which has often lead to suicide), illegal and unethical to coerce participation in (according to 1st Amendment legal precedents and all social work professional ethics codes), and that the organization of Alcoholics Anonymous itself seems completely uninterested in promoting safety information for its members or alternative views, scientific data, or health information regarding drug use (which would seem to be its fiduciary responsibility as the ‘hub’ of ‘addiction treatment’.)
– I was (and this is corroborated by records on my website), repeatedly ‘recommended’ to attend 12-step meetings after having attended AA daily on my own for a full year, and finally seeking professional help at Samaritan Counseling. My termination from Samaritan Counseling, based on my records, seems to have been based on my not following these ‘recommendations’ well enough during a full year of therapy.
I understand that some people feel at home in a 12-step environment. My intention is to bring awareness to the fact that not everybody is, and that state-licensed therapists have a responsibility to acknowledge social and public health problems rather than pretend they don’t exist as part of a ‘faith-based’ approach.
It may also seem that I am complaining about nothing, since I did finally decide AA was not for me, and Samaritan is no longer ‘treating’ me. I want to explain, though, why I feel that this has not been addressed, and why it is still a big deal and a serious public health problem.
1. The very real option of leaving AA and thinking of alcohol dependence as a phase in my life (a very common life event backed up by NIAAA’s 2002 epidemiological survey of over 40,000 people representative of the US population) was never presented to me. Even after I had lost all faith in AA, I was still compelled to pay AA members and somehow ‘make it work’.
2. I was discouraged from exploring alternatives. I started SMART Recovery, and was then referred to 12-step rehab. I was terminated for refusing any more 12-step treatment. There may have been other factors in my termination, but the official position of Samaritan was that I had been properly referred to a 12-step interventionist, that they could not help me and refused to try because I hadn’t ‘followed the recommendations’.
3. Therefore, I was cut off from my therapist, which was one of the most meaningful relationships in my journey. Records show that 12-step ‘boundaries’ and ‘tough love’ strategies imposed by 12-step ‘experts’ were involved in preventing me from discussing the situation directly with her.
4. There are several indications that my own therapist was not particularly fond of repeatedly referring me to AA. Her own frustration could have been another factor in my termination. The Clinical Director also indicated frustration with the ‘program’.
5. What this means is that the whole culture/environment of not being allowed or able to openly discuss the failures of AA (which is nothing more than a set of religious ideas that assume they are perfect treatment for just about anything, and deny any role in confusion) shifted blame to actual people: my therapist was being considered unsuccessful in transferring me happily into 12-step treatment, and I was failing to ‘work the program’, which is clearly a Christian or heretical Christian program, while I’m a Buddhist. Faith-sensitive therapy should be able to understand that these views aren’t necessarily compatible.
6. Even more importantly than the fact that referring and re-referring to the same failed treatment is not a very reasonable method, I believe that the dynamics of coercion, dependence, shunning (or ‘blocking’ which is used to protect members from outside information and is supposedly a ‘natural consequence’ of ‘disturbing the recovery community’), invalidating thoughts and experiences, and ‘leverage and consequences’ led to strong transference and countertransference reactions between me and my therapist.
7. It is my contention that trying to ‘treat’ a ‘transference issue’ largely caused BY the 12-step treatment WITH the same treatment can do nothing but compound the problems, and is itself a primary form of mishandled transference.
Those are the reasons I think it is important to address the issue directly. Here is why I feel that Samaritan Counseling of the Capital Region has done the opposite:
1. My simple complaint was never addressed. I was terminate-referred to the same 12-step interventionist. I was told that a therapist has the right to her ‘preferred mode of treatment’. To me, it didn’t seem to be her preference; it seemed to be her job.
2. My extended complaint detailing the problem based on records was never addressed. I was instead told ‘under no circumstances’ was I to have any further contact with Samaritan. This not only cut me off from resolving the relationship issues with my therapist, but felt to me as if I was being told that my experience did not matter to them at all, and they would continue doing this to others as if they just could do nothing about it.
3. My Yelp review was removed by ‘community request’.
4. My complaint to the licensing board was seen as not ‘making any sense’, and I was not allowed to see who was involved in the investigation or what the investigation involved.
5. My second complaint to the licensing board was met with ‘this case is closed’.
6. The first set of records I requested (before filing a complaint to the licensing board) included my complaint correspondences. The second copy of records I requested (after) were missing those documents. (Meaning that much contextual information that might have been sent to a new provider or investigator would simply not be there.) I have asked for a Request for Amendment under HIPAA laws (to make sure that my complaint is in my official records), and have received no response from the HIPAA compliance officer.
7. I was told by the licensing board that this is a ‘personal issue’ between therapist and client, but I don’t think that is correct, because it was a systems issue very much related to the business of therapy and the ‘recovery’ industry. Either way, my therapist is not willing to discuss this with me on the personal or the professional level, even though I think it is a resolvable issue (but not to be resolved by me simply shutting up and disappearing into a psychiatric hospital).
Satisfying my concerns would seemingly be a simple thing to do: acknowledge facts about my case dynamics, acknowledge evidence of problems with 12-step culture and treatment, assure me that more options and less coercion will be involved in similar client interactions in the future. Unfortunately, I see zero evidence that any of these reasonable requests have been taken seriously, and this applies mainly to Samaritan Counseling Center of the Capital Region (my experience being anecdotal with evidence that it is a broad policy failure across healthcare systems in America) I want to do my best to raise awareness system-wide so that human and constitutional rights are honored and people can get the care they need without having to convert to or shoehorn certain religious ideas; I hope you appreciate these efforts and do not see this as another offense.
For anyone interested in this topic, I encourage you to look at my blog notpowerless.com (there is a lot of good information there; please excuse and understand that I am indeed very frustrated with my therapist and her supervisors’ handling of this on many levels. It has been my concern for future Samaritan clients seeking help upstairs from the AA meeting, and my refusal to write these therapists off as people that has allowed me to find patterns that go far beyond any of the individuals involved in my case).
Please see my cartoon about 12-step coercion in therapy:
and please consider what Samaritan Institute might be able to do policy-wise to prevent this kind of situation in the future. If this issue can be addressed at the organizational level, it will be a much better resolution than messy termination or attempting to scapegoat any particular therapist (or client).
I have heard that there is a growing number of therapists who find 12-step treatment problematic, and I’m sure there are more than a few in Samaritan Counseling Centers. Please do not hesitate to ‘friend’ me if you would like to continue the conversation or just to show me some good will. There is a lot of interesting information out there beyond the AA conference-approved literature.
