Customer Reviews

Alcoholics Anonymous Unmasked: Deception and Deliverance

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(25)

 

 

The author of this book (Cathy Burns) is a self-styled Bible scholar. She has no background in addiction studies, medicine, or psychology, but she purports to have found the secret to alcoholism and successful recovery therefrom. Her finding is that AA is an occult group and therefore a tool of Satan.

Ms. Burns' solution is to call alcoholism a sin and to trust in the Lord for deliverance, etc. Needless to say, this view is rejected by all mainstream churches, and anyone else with an ounce of common sense. If Ms. Burns were treating alcoholics professionally, she could be sued for malpractice.

If you're into conspiracy theories and extreme fundamentalism, this book is for you. If you're looking for good information on addiction and recovery, don't waste your time.

I am the co-author of a book on alcoholism intervention, and I have many years of experience in this field. I don't know of any professional person who would agree with Ms. Burns' views, not to mention the millions who have found hope and recovery in AA. Ms. Burns' book is a shameless example of self-promotion at the expense of others, all cloaked in the veil of righteousness.

I can't believe a book like this has been written or even published for that matter. Alcoholics Anonymous is one of the few programs that work for Alcoholics on a long term basis and people who can't get sober in AA are most likely 'constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves'.

Alcoholics in AA meetings are not 'lewd sinners' as one person wrote, and if that happens to be someones perception then perhaps they should go to different meetings, or maybe they're just afraid of real sobriety.

Do yourself a favor if you are an alcoholic don't cheat yourself of AA go to many different meetings and find one that's right for you. AA is not all one thing or the other, they're not all bible stomping christians, or sinning heathens they are spirtual people who are trying to be honest about their problems and become more mature.

As a 17-year sober member of AA and a Christian, I would ask Cathy to explain the Lord's question "Is it easier to say your sins are forgiven or to heal his disease?" Bill W did become involved in the occult long after AA was established. Cathy focuses on researching false Christian religions (Mormons, etc.). How many churches invite false religions to use their facilities (Many AA meetings are held in church basements)? How many courts order people to go to church to receive help (This is common with AA)? For reasons easily understood by any alcoholic, AA does not specify that we must accept Christ as God. The principles of Recovery were pulled from the Sermon on the Mount and the Book of James. The AA Big Book encourages involvement with the individuals' local church. As far as what can be found within the meeting rooms, as a friend once told me, "We don't really need all kinds, we've just got all kinds!" AA has done more to relieve individual suffering in the past 64 years than organized religion has done in 2 thousand years. It has also sent millions back to church who would not have gone otherwise. Implying that AA should be avoided makes as much sense as avoiding hospitals and prisons.

If you want to know about Christianity, ask a Christian. If you want to know about alcoholism, ask an alcoholic. Please do not get information from self appointed experts who write hatefull books, and apparently have no clue about either. Faith, like recovery, is a personal endeaver between a person and the God of his understanding, and is not subject to anyone elses approval. To the God I have come to know, my being sober and happy is far more important than being religiously correct.

Cathy Burns attacks Alcoholics Anonymous using pieces of a very complex puzzle. The short sighted presentation assembles a picture that lacks the most important piece... a point entirely overlooked. Burns has found some research that connects occultic activity by individuals of the time, however, there is incriminating guilt placed on the founders who, by their associations to the Rockefellers and past organizations and their organizers, unwittingly partook in activities they wouldn't have done had they known.

From a vantage point seen from the surface, "Alcoholics Anonymous Unmasked" perspective views the area of the occult from the outside. The impact of the occult and the secrecy in which occultic influences were introduced happened from within the organizations inner circle. The alcoholics had no idea this was occurring. Incredible as it may seem, and Cathy Burns writes many volumes on how "hidden" symbols and doctrines are installed in our society, AA had these influences subtly served to them. Alcoholics Anonymous ultimately would become the father of all recovery programs with these principles molded into the organizations system of suggested "rules of thumb" in the form of traditions. Today, most all of the recovery programs use the 12 step model as a backbone focused on the spiritual reliance on a power greater than oneself, namely a God of one's understanding, that is monitored by what is known as the 12 Traditions.

What Cathy Burns didn't convey in her book is that the Rockefellers had one goal in mind. This goal was to diffuse a potentially dangerous competitor to the allopathic model of medicine being constructed by the Rockefeller dynasty. The Rockefellers didn't want any organization to ever become too wealthy, too powerful, or commercially strong. They absolutely didn't want AA to enter into a corporation. In this bottom line case, they didn't want AA to compete with medicine. Bill Wilson, in his un-infinite wisdom, sought financial assistance from the very entity that ultimately stopped Alcoholics Anonymous from becoming what it should... a full featured recovery program for alcoholics. Or more.

In truth, Bill Wilson and the members who were just recovering from alcohol abuse of the time did not realize that Frank Amos, Willard Richardson, and LeRoy Chipman were sent by John D. Rockefeller to not only keep watch over the newly forming organization, but steer it. LeRoy Chipman looked after Rockefeller's personal affairs. Frank Amos was an advertising consultant. Willard Richardson was the associate who introduced Bill to Rockefeller. All of these men expressed their eagerness to help Bill with legal matters, thus defining a direction for what was to become Alcoholics Anonymous. These members later became the board of trustees of the new foundation, which was created on August 11, 1938. Some of these members happened to be 33 degree Freemasons who shared extremely close ties with John D. Rockefeller. The five members of the board comprised three non-alcoholics, namely, Frank Amos, Willard Richardson, who was the manager of John D. Rockefeller philanthropies and who proposed the foundation, and John E.F. Wood. Drunkenness warranted immediate replacement of the two alcoholics. Of the five, these three Rockefeller men formed the voting advantage needed to establish "direction". An advisory committee to the board consisting of LeRoy Chipman and Albert L. Scott, also Rockefeller's advisers, and the A.A. members who were medical doctors and influenced by the Rockefeller doctrines (mind control that exists to this day) through medical schooling were also established in the psyche of existing members who were doctors, but had become alcoholics.

Alcoholics Anonymous did not pay these men for their services. Why would they do this work for no pay? They were paid of course, but only because this was a job they had to perform for an agenda far more important than helping alcoholics recover from alcohol.

In 1960, Bill Wilson discovered that a vitamin deficiency was to blame for the low percentage of men and women remaining sober for longer periods of time. He realized that there should be a nutritive component to the 12 step paradigm and was noted, by Abram Hoffer, for wanting to establish an additional step to cover this principle. Bill W. was denied introducing Niacin therapy three consecutive times between the periods of 1960 and finally on the month of his death, January 24,1971. It was in January of that same month that Bill tried to launch this idea with a communication to physicians known as THE VITAMIN B-3 THERAPY: A THIRD COMMUNICATION TO A.A.'s PHYSICIANS. This was Bill's last effort to introduce a concept that would have opened the door to nutrition that remains closed today. They effectively kept nutrition away from practicing members of Alcoholics Anonymous and the information from being included with the "Conference Approved Literature" eating dissorders Anonymous groups, and all the rest of the 12 step programs modeled after AA who suffer from this lack of "suggestion".

This happened because of the one primary installment needed by Rockefeller to discourage true recovery and the success of the program -- THE TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS. These twelve suggestions were the very thing that crippled a program that today boasts lower than 10 percent success rate, but is still considered a successful recovery venue simply because of it's worldwide following.

This is the true color of the occult and part of the eugenics agenda that the author of Alcoholics Anonymous Unmasked, Cathy Burns, attempts, but fails to expose. Instead, she unduly blames the people for being involved occultically in a way that seems intentional. If Bill Wilson and the rest knew what was happening, they would not have involved themselves in it because it goes completely against the principle of spirituality that drives the program. Today, the Alcoholics Anonymous is so immersed with belief in the deception that there is no way to undo it... this is why Twelve Step programs are viewed as occultic by people seeking a reason to place blame without the true facts. If one day more members spontaneously awaken to the truth behind the "crippling", they would revolt by clamoring for Bill Wilson's dream to embed nutritional steps within the existing steps. Bill may not have known that allopathy (western medicine) was subtly encouraged as the source for outside help, but had it not been for the Rockefeller influence, perhaps the better natural healing methodology would be implemented and written into the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

We know that the Rockefellers built the industry of disease and in so successfully doing, would have to thoroughly understand the cures of disease in order to promote the disease to treat it. The general public has little access to know that there are actual cures. With chronic alcoholism, there is no realistic cure, but there is a nutritional approach that the industry of medicine at the highest level intimately understands. This means allopathy and the source, Rockefellers, is a part of the mechanism for information suppression and propaganda. Therefore, without addressing the disease in full context of a spiritual AND a nutritional approach, they perpetuated it to the 90% people that don't make it in the program and to those that do remain sober, but suffer for lack of nutritional ideas pertinent to recovery. It should be obvious to the reader of this review to understand the occultic connection was subtle and stealth, but not expressed anywhere in "Alcoholics Anonymous Unmasked".

For a better understanding of how the Rockefeller deception influenced Alcoholics Anonymous, read Sobriety's Secret Step or High Frequency Food ([...])

The program of Alcoholics Anonymous has helped me stop drinking and start to lead a spiritual life. Ms. Burns must have had a negative experience with people close to her and felt it necessary to write a book to help sooth her mind. For my fellow AA's, read the 5th Tradition-the primary purpose of the program is to be sober and help other still suffering alcoholics, and the 10th Tradition-we don't get involved in outside issues. Dwelling on trashy books doesn't keep us sober. Go out and help a fresh drunk. God bless those of you with decades of sobriety. I'm 15 months sober and absolutely love the new way of life and so do all of those close to me. "Let's Keep the Main Thing, the Main Thing!"

If you are a fundamentalist Christian looking for more reasons why the rest of the world is just plain wrong and scary, add this to your shelf: there is nothing here with which you will disagree. If you are an individual with a drinking problem, read this only if you have no intention of getting well. While God and the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous continue to salvage the lives of individuals long since forsaken by friends and family, people like this still, in the words of St. Augustine, "Sit in their ponds and croak, 'We're the only Christians.'" Take the six dollars you would spend on this invective and give it to the poor. This is one of those rare books that is too obvious to work even as a foil. It will benefit no one--right, left or center. A true shame that the lowest rating permitted is one star: this is truly worthy of zero.

It's no wonder I was so eager to get out of the churches! I went until I was 13 years old and it never made sense. Just flipping through the pages of this book reminds me why being involved in a church was such a repulsive ordeal. PARANOIA! FEAR! FALSE PRIDE! IGNORANCE! BLIND JUDGEMENT! FALSE WITNESS! EGO! EGO! EGO!

Thank God there are other ways to find God than in a church. It may work for some but not for many! AA saved my life and freed me from a life of misery. I'm no longer a member of AA (I joined a different 12 Step Fellowship more suited to my disease - hint hint), but I will forever remain thankful to the founders and members of AA for helping me get off the streets and back into society. Been clean for nine years! I am free!

Funny! All the 5 star reviews seem to be from Christians(?) that want to cut down a program that works simply because it does not mention Jesus Christ but "God as we understand him". As a Christian who goes to AA, I just want to say that AA is not a religion or cult but simply a new way to live your life without alcohol. We don't pray to Bill W. or to Dr. Bob. We light no candles on an AA altar. There are no seances or conjuring of spirits. We do start each meeting with the "Serenity Prayer" and end each meeting with "The Lord's Prayer". Yeah, that sure sounds anti-Christian!

AA is open to anyone. You may worship God, Jesus, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha, Mother Earth or a tree. We don't care what your personal beliefs are. You can come to a meeting everyday or once a year. You will still be welcome.
Compare that to many beliefs in the U.S. and around the world. How many preach that if you don't believe their way you are doomed to the fires of hell? How many talk about "the people in that other church across town"?

Many people find peace and serenity in their lives by going to AA and doing their best to follow the "Twelve Steps". Its true that some people treat their AA group as some would a church. If that is what keeps them sober, who am I to tell them they are wrong? All AA groups follow the "Twelve Steps". I challenge anyone to tell me which of these steps Jesus would find offensive. Taken as a whole, the steps show us that we are imperfect. That our imperfections have hurt others. And we ask God to help us remove these imperfections and to ask for forgiveness from those we have hurt and then to help others who have problems drinking.

If you think drinking is not a disease, but just a sin, you are obviously not an alcoholic. People don't lose everything they love and hold dear becuase its a sin. Its because they can't stop. Go to a meeting and listen to some of the stories of before and after before you make a decision. And remember judge not lest you be judged. I think the author forgot about that part of Christianity!

WWJD?

I am horrified that anyone calling themselves a christian would dismiss or attack anothers faith, especially one that has brought that person recovery. To take a successful program like AA, and selfishly apply ones own religious standards, is the ultimate sin. When ms. burns has gotton 7 million people sober, i will liston to ms. burns opinion. please do not accept this book as anything but the religious based opinions that it is, and find out for yourself what alcoholics anonymous is about.