AA's Fatal Logic, When Belief Cancels Evidence

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:01]Okay, back again from another episode of Quackaholics Anonymous. Uh the last video uh was me apologizing to someone that I inadvertently attacked and I did talk about the fact that in the future I am going to do a video about sex inventory, the outdated and archaic views that AA has about sex.

[00:00:23]why I support dstigmatization and decriminalization of sex workers, but also why you can do those things and you can still be diametrically opposed to shielding predators in meetings and be against the structure of Quackaholics Anonymous uh because of what it does with shielding predators. Those are not two mutually exclusive things. But I don't have actually the notes uh for that video compiled yet because I'm going to have to do a whole lot uh to prevent what I to not prevent to present a pretty solid uh case on my behalf for those who are interested. But it's also not me going political, but it's me actually showing why AA is harmful in that aspect as well. There is something else uh that I had wanted to talk about because after a long time of arguing with these people and by the way there was someone on my channel that said I don't see any major comments going on on your channel so you're just lying about the whole thing.

[00:01:25]It's wasn't on my channel that this discussion happened genius. It was on Facebook and it was not even on my thread of my private wall. who was on uh someone else's who was speaking out against AA. But uh and my camera just glitched and for a second I lost my train of thought. But I got requests because I had said in my last video I go really hard with steppers. Uh in the comments and someone asked me what that meant. They asked me for clarification. But then a couple other people wanted to know what I how I go hard. We're going to be kind of covering the topic for that today.

[00:02:04]But also, quick shout out to all my uh other subscriber. I mean, sorry, you could tell this is being on the fly.

[00:02:12]Quick shout out to all the other content creators who are blowing the lid on this entire diabolical organization.

[00:02:19]Diabolical might not be the right word because that indicates an actual evil entity. this is just a manipulative, toxic, vile organization that deserves to be called out for what it is. Uh, and I see other people on Facebook. Uh, there's a few who don't know me to my knowledge and they don't subscribe to this channel, but but they're harm reduction advocates and they get the same comments. Uh, it's not just people who speak out against Quackahholics Anonymous that get these level of hateful comments. It's it's harm reduction people as well which actually refutes the position of many people in the program who say see AA doesn't condemn any other ways of life. You know it's you who's bashing the program. AA does it a lot. They say harm reduction kills people. They say medical assisted uh recovery is is just swapping one substance for another. So, if you're going to give your outdated, unscientific uh program, uh if you're going to default to that as being the gold standard of everything while demeaning and insulting everyone else's, you don't get uh you don't deserve any anything uh from my end. Now, everybody's going to argue with these people differently. But what do I mean when I say I go hard against people in comments? I remind them of a case that I'm going to build in this video because I'm actually going to teach you a class today. Yeah, an actual class. I'm not a good teacher and I'm not accredited. So, this is going to be free, but it's going to help you tremendously. And for those of you who already know what it is, this is this you can skip.

[00:03:54]But the one thing I remind them of is the entire position of AA is steeped in fantasy. There's no evidence that the steps actually do anything. There's no evidence that there's some invisible spirit floating around the universe that alters people's brain chemistry because they humbly beg it to do so.

[00:04:15]Even uh I I've seen other people say, "Well, it it does work though for some people." Yeah, but we got to really define our term as to what we mean by the word work because it's not a spirit of the universe that's working for them.

[00:04:28]It's not a bunch of steps written by a con artist in the 1930s that's working for them. They may get something out of the social connection and following the script. And if AA ever becomes intolerable to them, they will be told that it's because they're not honest, not willing, not capable, and all the other [ __ ] But the one thing that I keep coming back to in comments is your position is steeped in fantasy. Your position is steeped in delusional ramblings. They have no scientific basis or merit whatsoever.

[00:05:02]Uh, and I remind them of that when they're coming at me because all the arguments that I get online boil down to about the same 10 arguments. Save millions. I can dispute that really easily. The cockridge study, which only did a control study measuring abstinence and did not actually measure outcomes and things like that easily refuted. Uh, it saved my life. The usual line of [ __ ] But what I'm going to be teaching today and yeah, I said teaching because uh I kind of feel it's really important because I I used the word in a comment online not too long ago and the first thing I got was you don't even know what that word would mean. Stop using big words or some [ __ ] like that. I had an old sponsor that would do the same thing to me. He would say I hate it when you use big words. Well, yeah, I know you hate it when I use big words. Although they're not really big words, I might add, because you're a [ __ ] [ __ ] and a [ __ ] idiot, uh, who's too busy pining in AA meetings and and telling everybody that you got sent there by God to grace us with your presence. Yeah, I know you you don't like big words because it requires actual thinking to learn big words, but these are not big words. It's going to sound like a big word, but it's really not. It's very, really simple. And I'm going to teach you all about it today. It's called epistemology. How to formulate a valid epistemology. Not a $10 word. Really, really very simple. I got a few notes to help us along here. And you don't even have to get out your pencils and papers because there's no exam. But there is one other thing I want to dive into before I get started on here.

[00:06:42]Somebody reached out not too long ago. I was a little bit floored and a little bit shocked uh that they did this uh because the last time I had heard anything about them was probably in 2011. I'm not going to tell you the story of what happened.

[00:06:58]Uh and I'm not here to convince you that my version of the story is correct even though there was independent witnesses later on who got kind of tangled up in the whole thing. But I'll just put it like this and keep it really simple.

[00:07:12]someone when I was really vulnerable, still an indoctrinated cult member, had pretty much lost my personality, by the way, in the last three or four years of AA at that point. I was not normally a guy that like to roll over and take it in people please and suck up and all that other kind of [ __ ] But I was really, really struggling with the whole AA thing. And I was already slipping back into some serious drinking habits.

[00:07:36]And I wasn't in my top form. As a matter of fact, I had recently gotten out of drug court and I was on a drunken bender and I wasn't in the best place at all.

[00:07:44]But I wound up in another state with no wallet and uh got abandoned on the streets.

[00:07:52]Literally abandoned on the streets by someone that knew I was abandoned on the streets and didn't really just seem to give a [ __ ] and vanished. Now they want to reach out and apologize. And my question to them was, "How did you find me on here?" Not because I'm scared or worried. I'm just kind of genuinely curious how you found me on here and why you feel it necessary to reach out to me after uh 15 years.

[00:08:17]That was the only thing I had to ask the person. And since they're not going to respond, I'm just going to answer it right here, right now before I get started. I don't I'm not interested in your [ __ ] apology. I almost died out there partially by my own hand because I was boozing myself to death. But that didn't warrant being left uh wandering homeless and sleeping outdoors for several days because somebody decided that it was kind of uh beneficial to liberate someone. Well, it was very liberating. I have to admit, AA in itself was very liberating because when you see people as the utter pieces of dishonest, backstabbing, two-faced [ __ ] that they are, the pieces of [ __ ] they are, it it is a big dose of reality. It it kind of alters your opinions about things. When you have people that make fun of you for slitting your wrist uh and actually laugh at the fact that some of your fingers don't function quite the way they used to, that tells you all you need to know about these pieces of [ __ ] And it tells you you owe them nothing and you don't have to accept nothing. So if you're still watching this, uh you can tell me how you found me. Uh if you want to, which you probably are not going to before I I ban and block your ass completely out of my life altogether. Your apology is not accepted. Go [ __ ] yourself. I wish you nothing but the worst that life has to offer you. And if you'd been there and been in my shoes, you would know probably why I have the reaction that I have about that. But no, [ __ ] you. And [ __ ] you reach out. And I don't consider you a friend. I never considers you a real friend. I consider you uh whatever sick, twisted, demented game you played with me and several other people in the deal. Well, they weren't all in the deal. One of them was an old childhood friend of yours that you did that to.

[00:10:02]Uh, I don't see you as doing anything but doing something shady for some weird [ __ ] reason to try to think that I would actually accept her an apology from you or call you a friend. [ __ ] you.

[00:10:12]I don't want I don't care what happens to you. Bus, you're dead to me. As far as I'm concerned. Now, enough of the drama.

[00:10:21]So, let's get back to the topic at hand now that I've cleared that all up.

[00:10:27]It again, don't need no pencils. You don't need no papers. You don't need anything. We're going to learn about epistemology.

[00:10:35]Sounds like a big word, but it's actually pretty simple. And we're going to use AA as the example because AA is where I attack on here the hardest. And I'm going to keep attacking because AA is one of the clearest, cleanest demonstrations of what happens when people build an entire worldview without ever asking the most basic question.

[00:10:55]How do we know what we know? Not whether it feels good, not whether it's comforting, not whether a regroup repeats it really loudly, but whether it's grounded in a method that reliably leads to truth.

[00:11:07]That's it. That's the whole [ __ ] thing. That's epistemology.

[00:11:11]Do you have justified reasons for believing what you believe? Do you have evidence-based reasons for believing what you believe? How do you know the things that you believe with 100% certainty are actually true?

[00:11:25]That's it. That's epistemology.

[00:11:28]And that's where AA collapses because AA is built on claims that have never been demonstrated to be true. They've never demonstrated to even be likely. And they've never even been demonstrated to be possible. Logic doesn't tell you necessarily what's true. It tells you whether your reasoning is holding it together. When you have conflicting ideas and conflicting statements, like people who say the program actively harms them, and you have people claiming that the program saved their life and gave them the life beyond their wildest dreams, you've got two conflicting statements. You can't 100% guarantee truth on any on any grand scale basis. Like when people say it's been proven, that's not exactly how it works. But what you do with conflicting ideas is you apply logic to both conflicting ideas. And it doesn't tell you necessarily what's 100% false or what's 100% true because that's not how the real world works. The real world is not a religion that uh promises you 100% certainty on any [ __ ] thing, including if the world will be here at tomorrow spinning around the sun on the current axis that it's on.

[00:12:36]It's built on. But what it does give us is is uh the one thing that the actual world functions on. It gives us probabilities. It gives us likelihoods.

[00:12:46]And when you're looking at something with a 95% failure rate that grossly exaggerates it success stories, that is dishonest about its origins, that is built on a premise with no evidence to back it up, and is got a foundational structure that shields predators and stupid old-timer [ __ ] pieces of [ __ ] that are there to feed their own [ __ ] insecure personas while they bully all the rest of us unfortunates. It's probably uh if you're looking at forming a valid epistemology, it's probably safe to dismiss that.

[00:13:23]You can't say necessarily when something like this is up that it's possible and you can't say it's reasonable and you can't even say it's likely because you haven't demonstrated there's anything to aa that's even true. Probability only applies when you have evidence to weigh in the probability itself.

[00:13:42]Like if you are trying to say understand electricity and electric currents and how they function and how they operate.

[00:13:49]If you were trying to understand that, you have real world examples of what happens to electricity when it's wired incorrectly or when it uh when an electric current hits the water or when uh any number of things happen because you have observations to say, well, under these conditions, the likelihood that electricity will do this in this particular environment is probably pretty good because we have this to measure it with and that to measure it with and these mathematical equations and all the other [ __ ] But you don't have any of that for Alcoholics Anonymous. Their entire structure is one unsupported assertion right after another.

[00:14:28]The idea that there's a supernatural force that's undefined, unmeasured, untestable, can alter your brain chemistry for 24 hours because you wrote down your resentments in a notebook is not just unproven. You haven't even demonstrated that something like that is even possible.

[00:14:48]Oh, I missed the note. Yeah, there it is. There's no mechanism to test that.

[00:14:53]There's no evidence. There's no demonstration.

[00:14:57]There's no way to falsify this.

[00:15:00]There's nothing. It has the same epistemic status as saying uh this vape relieved my addiction to tobacco because I wrote down uh when I got my heart broken in high school by this girl and I confessed it to her and I made amends to her because I was a loser back then or some [ __ ] like that. You see how the nonsequittor functions here? These things are not even related. You're resigning outcomes based on something that has no evidence to back it up. There's no evidence to say, "Oh, I confessed all my wrongdoings to a slimy old-timer that thinks sex predators in meetings are protected by the tent tradition.

[00:15:41]Therefore, God removed my desire to drink." You have no conclusion, no foundation for this. And here's the part that the AA defenders absolutely cannot handle. If you believe a higher power is removing your drinking while letting other people die drunk because they didn't want it badly enough, and if you believe some have to die so that others can live, and you believe it's by the grace of God that you're not drinking yourself to death, guess what? You don't really have uh even a spiritual uh system. What you've got is an epistemological failure.

[00:16:15]You're claiming that a supernatural agent out there is selectively intervening in human neurobiochemistry based on moral worth.

[00:16:25]There's no evidence to this. There's no logic to this. There's no probability to this. There's no calculations for this.

[00:16:31]This isn't even a [ __ ] method. It's a story. It's a myth. A story you were told in a meeting. A story repeated until you believed it. A story that collapses the moment you ask the question, "How do I know this stuff is even true?"

[00:16:46]The moment you ask that question, the entire AA worldview disintegrates because AA has no mechanism to tell the truth. It has no method for truth. It has no standard for truth. Has no way to distinguish what's real and what is comforting outside of the ramblings of Bill W. Has no way to separate evidence from emotion. It has no way to separate personal experience from objective reality. Has no way to separate group reinforcement from actual justifications for why it asserts what it does. It has no epistemology.

[00:17:20]And you can have no epistemology.

[00:17:23]When you have no epistemology, when you have no way of verifying, are the things I believe in justified because there's good evidence to support them, then you have no way of knowing whether anything you believe is even true. You have no way of knowing that you're not participating in some mass uh hallucination type thing going on.

[00:17:41]Although even that is a major stretch because anybody who spent any time in AA meetings knows about the shenanigans that goes on in there. They know about the creepy slimy pieces of [ __ ] that are elevated to trusted servants. They know about relapsers being told some have to die so that others can live. So there's no evidence that even the so-called spiritual solution, if you agreed in it as a placebo effect, which the big book doesn't call it a placebo effect, there's no evidence that it does anything for you. You you you only need to take a look around at the toxic environment that every alcoholics anonymous meeting has to show that whatever it is they're selling is obviously not working. Especially when the meetings are populated by a bunch of court-ordered people in treatment centers as well. And the crux of the meeting is about four or five people in their little slimy hierarchy that get to dominate and impress us all with their stories about what legendary badasses they were. Uh, and now they're claiming that they're not those badasses any longer because God chose them to get sober over the rest of us. That's incoherent and it's delusional with no measurable basis on reality. As a matter of fact, uh, I'm about to go off script for a second.

[00:18:58]I actually had one of these people telling me I was a liar, that AA doesn't want courts there, which I don't believe for a second. Then they said I was actively killing people. Right? Because apparently telling the truth on YouTube about a toxic cult environment that could be very harmful for unsuspecting people and individuals is the same thing as me going out and murdering people.

[00:19:19]This is coming. These judgments are coming from people who sit in meetings and say some have to die so that others can live. You don't get to [ __ ] lecture me about saving lives. You don't get to [ __ ] lecture me about lives at stake when you believe you were chosen by God and everybody else who dies just died because they didn't beg and suck up to God enough to get chosen. You know, you didn't lick g you didn't lick God's ass enough on your forep. So God just is going to let you die drunk. You don't get to lecture me about lives and saving lives and what works when you do that sort of thing. But I do want to talk about one more thing and I'm going to go off script for a minute because I had another AA member trying to do this and I think we all need this lesson in logic uh for this video because it's very important in my opinion important enough that I'm going to stop reading my notes and I'm going to go off script here.

[00:20:10]There are many competing theories in the field of science about consciousness.

[00:20:14]It's not what you think. It's not what a lot of people think. Uh so many people think you know well scientists just don't believe in God. They're all atheists and they're all just trying to disprove God. Now, there's a lot of scientists who work in the field of consciousness that will that will actually say the the stance of the skeptics, I guess, would be the term. I mean, it's one of the reasons why I don't call myself a skeptic or a member of the skeptic community because they engage in what I call reactive dismissal. So, now I'm going to piss some skeptics off, too.

[00:20:45]So, you know what? I'm just making enemies all over the place and I don't care because I really do care about truth. And if you care about truth, you don't care about wearing an identity in some [ __ ] subculture that's decided to tell you what to think. Be they religious nutcases or be they skeptic [ __ ] But the skeptic community is a little dishonest when they tell you there is absolutely zero ideas in science about consciousness outside of the default position of materialism. Now, when I say materialism, I'm not talking about wanting a fancy car and a lot of money and, you know, the ability uh to live uh extremely lavishly. I'm talking about a a specific position in science that says consciousness, and this is actually kind of where I believe and where I lean towards.

[00:21:37]So, I'm actually arguing against myself here because this is my position.

[00:21:41]Consciousness is an emergent property of biological evolution that over centuries from the time of the caveman to the time of today our brains have developed and our brains have done you know all these things but there's nothing to the brain or thoughts or reality outside of the perceptions that we get through our five senses and the brain because thoughts themselves even require material processes and biological processes.

[00:22:08]Therefore, the brain and consciousness just emerged. But that's actually not the popular that's popular is not the right word. That's actually not the main theory in people who study consciousness. There's a reason I went off script to tell you this because I think it's extremely important here. So important that I'm going to put down my notes and talk about this for a few minutes and then I'll get my notes again.

[00:22:34]There are many competing theories about where consciousness comes from.

[00:22:38]Pansychism, dual monism, dual aspect monism, many others. There's a whole field of people out there that you can look up on YouTube that talk about the hard problem. If you really want to piss off some people on Reddit, just go to the thread about consciousness and say, "You have solved the hard problem." And yeah, they'll all have a meltdown and they'll all type a bunch of [ __ ] that you don't even want to bother reading. Uh but we don't know exactly 100% how consciousness is here and why we have subjective experiences despite what the skeptic community will tell you. There's no there's evidence against all this that the other. They're actually not telling you the whole picture here. It is true that we can't demonstrate pansychism. We can't demonstrate monism.

[00:23:22]We can't demonstrate those things at this time. But the the deal breaker for me with the skeptics was that when you present the hard problem to them, you will get responses like, "I don't give a [ __ ] It doesn't matter." That's lazy. That's to that's [ __ ] lazy. And it's the kind of dishonesty that you expect from religious zealots, but not what you expect from people who who run their [ __ ] mouths about how logical they are and how they're so dedicated to evidence and things like that to just say, "Well, I don't care if if a particular problem arises." It would be like if I said uh we are able to walk without getting too weighted down and we're able to move and we're able to jump to a certain height uh due to gravity. And if someone asked me, well, why does gravity work? And I said, well, I don't give a [ __ ] That doesn't erase the fact that gravity is here. Gravity works. And unless we understand how it works, we don't have no room to talk about how it works. We It's all natural, you know, and if you don't like it, I don't give a [ __ ] That's lazy. That's gatekeeping. The same kind of gatekeeping that religious communities will do for certain irrational claims.

[00:24:33]And I'm leading to a point here, I promise you. Don't get too bored yet.

[00:24:37]Let's say that consciousness is like what the pan psychics say that it's and when I say pans psychic, we're not talking about some 800 number uh where you call someone up and they tell you, you know, yeah, you're going to you're going to meet the girl of your dreams and you're going to get that life-changing career and all that other [ __ ] I'm talking about consciousness itself.

[00:24:57]Uh might be outside of the mind itself.

[00:25:01]And yeah, I'm not I'm not arguing for it. I don't exactly accept it, but it would say this accounts for certain uh problems with consciousness. Like the materialist position, and it's a position I still hold, by the way, even though I'm going to piss off all the skeptics with this, it's still a position I hold.

[00:25:19]If I get a brain injury or a stroke or something happens to me, it changes my whole personality. It changes everything about me. There was the case of the mass shooting in Texas where the guy was uh later found to have brain tumors. There was the case in the early 2000s of the guy that was looking at child porn who had been a totally normal individual uh up to brain tumors and whatever else was wrong with his brain. There was a nun who by all accounts was a genuinely kind and good person until she had some kind of brain disease type thing that turned her into a murderer. In fact, you can look her up on Summer Sanchez's channel.

[00:25:54]The other people on the other side of the aisle that argue against consciousness would say, "Well, let's say you have a television that's broadcast in a screen and the television gets damaged and the screen is not clear." You wouldn't say the picture comes from inside the television. It's a whole fascinating topic that could go on for hours. And I'm bringing it up to tell you this. Let's say that we do realize that there is something to consciousness beyond the brain. Let's say we realize that maybe our thoughts are not just entirely biological processes. That does not change the fact that AA is a religious cult with no grounding or basis in reality whatsoever. None. And I can demonstrate this for you quite easily.

[00:26:37]Nobody who works in the field of consciousness, even if you get really far out with the guys like Rupert Sheldrake or Dean Raiden, they you may not agree with their findings, but they're not crackpots who are selling healing crystals or something like that.

[00:26:49]They actually do follow the scientific method. In fact, Dean Raiden even said skepticism is the default position for everything and should be always, particularly when we're doing what we're doing here, which is building a sound epistemology.

[00:27:04]But even if what they're saying is true, if we find out pansychism is true, AA is still a religious cult. If monism is actually what really is responsible for consciousness, AA is still a religious cult. In fact, I can demonstrate this really easily for you. Uh, let's say we do find out that consciousness is like some sort of electromagnetic radio wave that floats around the planet where we just sort of tune in depending on broadcast signals or whatever the [ __ ] Uh, does that prove Jim Jones was correct? Does that prove that David Caresh was correct? Does that change the fact that the Catholic Church shielded sex abuse uh from, you know, from the pedophile priest? Does it change the fact that people like Westboro Baptist Church are irrational?

[00:27:54]Uh there was a lady, in fact, if you really want to go down a bizarre rabbit hole, I found it out by accident quite literally when I was going through my History Channel World War II uh period a long time ago in the early 2000s before they created History International. You turn on the History Channel and it's World War II, World War II, World War II. And uh there was a lady who came along in the 1950s, Savitra Devi Devi. I don't know how to exactly say it. You can look up her book. It's called the lightning and the the lightning and the sun or something similar to that. But she said Hitler was a reincarnation of Vishnu and that his whole entire purpose served a great Hindu purpose. that he was here to purify the earth from its impurities.

[00:28:44]And this was one of his many incarnations. And he would come back again and again. And she had a whole entire Hindu-based religious system based on this idea that there were actual Aryan Nazis who were the chosen people come to reincarnate to do what they did. Now, if we proved that there was something to new to Monism, if we proved that there was something to pansychism, that doesn't mean she's correct. That doesn't mean that her theories about what she thinks uh Hitler was Vishnu is correct. And I believe it is called the lightning and the sun, but it could be some thing like that. Maybe I'll post the link if I can find it.

[00:29:23]It's totally kind of incoherent. So, you know, if you want to go down the rabbit hole of a a French Greek lady who decided to become an Indian, moved to India, adopt an Indian name and converted to Hinduism and even made pilgrimages into Hindu religion, but also believed that it ultimately was connected to the Nazis, then you can look it up. But that doesn't make her claims true. Even if we discovered pansychism is true, that doesn't make her claims real. It doesn't make AA's claims real. It doesn't make spirits floating around the universe [ __ ] with people's brain chemistry true because AA has a very specific dogma, a very specific uh take on things.

[00:30:05]And now that I've done that, to say, "Yeah, there are many mysteries to consciousness still doesn't change the fact that AA is a [ __ ] toxic religious cult." Okay, now we're back to building the epistemology because you need to know if you're going to build an epistemology, you need to know what the opposing sides say. You don't want to get your ass handed to you when you go out there and say there's nothing to consciousness other than the brain and somebody like Chammers or one of those guys comes along and says actually the materialist position poses some major problems, poses some serious problems. Then what are you going to do? What are you going to do then? You got to know all sides here. And that's how I know AA is full of [ __ ] because I was in it long enough to know their positions.

[00:30:52]But AA depends on you not building an epistemology. AA depends on you never asking one simple question. How do I know this is true? Aa depends on you confusing emotional relief with justification. When I go to a meeting and everybody claps when I talk and I know I get certain reactions with jokes and I feel good about myself that proves that God is real and AA is real is an incredibly flawed take on reality and trying to find out truth. See, I don't really care who I piss off on here. I care about trying to find out what's real.

[00:31:30]AA depends on you accepting claims without demonstration.

[00:31:36]AA depends upon you. Redefining truth is whatever the group says. It's true for me because Bill W said it. Aa depends on you never examining the foundations of the program itself. Because the moment you examine the foundation, you discover there is no foundation. There's nothing there. That's why AA collapse is under scrutiny. Not because it's spiritual, whatever the [ __ ] that means. Not because it's old, not because it's wrong for people to seek help with their predictions, but because its core claims cannot survive the most basic epistemological question. How do you know? And when the answer is because Bill Wilson said so in 1939 when he was doing LSD or whatever, that's not a foundation to epistemology. That's just a claim, a faith claim. And faith is not a reliable pathway to truth. The lady who wrote the lightning in the sun had a lot of faith that Hitler was Vishnu. The lady uh who traveled to India and who believed in that very myth that she concocted due to whatever her belief system was that she put together. Uh that was her faith. Jim Jones that was his faith. David Caresh that was his faith. Charlie Manson believed the Beatles album was talking to him. Were the Beatles talking to Charlie Manson because it was true for Charlie Manson?

[00:32:59]They just really pissed me off with this is true for me. You can't do that.

[00:33:04]If a claim has no evidence, no mechanism, no testability, no falsifiability and no demonstrated possibility, then guess what you got? You got a belief that you can't justify. It's not knowledge. It's not probability. It's not logic. It's a story, a myth. And stories can be comforting, but stories don't tell us anything about what's real and what's not real. And if your entire worldview collapses the moment someone asks, "How do you know?" Then guess what? You've never had a valid epistemology about anything that you believe in, you've had a script. A script handed to you by the cult that you've determined is just true for you and true for the people who get chosen by God to not drink any longer. But you don't have an epistemology. You don't have a good reason to believe the things you believe. You don't even have any evidence to back up your claims. You're literally claiming with a straight face that a magic being uh altered your brain chemistry because you did a fifth step.

[00:33:59]That's literally what you're claiming.

[00:34:01]And I don't let them get away with that when I'm going after them in comments.

[00:34:07]And I do want to add before I go a little bit further. If you do see me arguing with people on Facebook, you'll often times see me saying dishonest.

[00:34:16]You're being dishonest. I'm not talking about honesty like I'm some moral virtuous goody two shoes little lord fuckpants or whatever the hell I'm talking about honesty when you open up with a grand claim and then I call you out on the claim and then you try to backpedal and you try to say well I didn't say what you thought I said you're dishonest because you know that you can't that your argument doesn't stand on its own merit when someone comes in and says this thing has saved millions of people and people like you are angry and I refute that and then they try to do a duck and a dive and say, "Well, actually, I'm an atheist. I don't believe it's true either, but but I practice the spiritual principles.

[00:34:56]That's not what you opened up with when you made your initial [ __ ] claim. Now you're trying to backpedal and weasle your way out of it by changing terminology and semantics. It doesn't work and it's really highly annoying to people who want an honest conversation."

[00:35:11]But AA is a script. It's a script written in 1939 by a man who believed in seances. Ouija boards and talking to spirits.

[00:35:19]Did it on Nantucket. As a matter of fact, a script that's never been updated. It's never been tested, never been examined, never been justified.

[00:35:28]Nobody asked Bill W when he come up with this horseshit idea as he was ripping off the original art authors of the big book. How do you know these things are true? What evidence do you have? These things are true. They weren't looking for evidence. They weren't looking for truth. They were taking the Oxford group and ripping it off and repackaging it and claiming it was a spiritual solution to a madeup disease called alcoholism.

[00:35:52]I mean, Bill W himself is the perfect example of why an organization like Alcoholics Anonymous has no epistemology.

[00:36:00]Would you like to know why I can say that with 100% confidence? This is a guy who spent years experimenting with seances, Ouija boards, and automatic writing, claiming that spirits guided him. In Nantucket, he held what he called spook sessions where he believed he was communicating with the dead and receiving messages from beyond. You can look it up. He wrote that these entities gave him guidance, inspiration, and even instructions.

[00:36:24]Let's not be being dramatic either. This is Bill Wy's own account of how he believed the universe actually worked.

[00:36:29]And when the founder of your program is literally taking advice from invisible beings that he meets on Nantucket uh and believes that there are things floating around the living room doing things with coffee and kitchen tables, you don't get to pretend your system is built on reason, evidence, or anything resembling a method for determining truth.

[00:36:53]If the founder of the program couldn't distinguish revelation from imagination, why should the program be trusted, too?

[00:36:59]If the man who built the entire framework couldn't tell the difference between spiritual insight and a message he thought he received from a disembodied entity during a seance, then his epistemic foundation and the whole system is already compromised from the start because he himself had no real uh grounding to examine whether what he was experiencing was true or not.

[00:37:22]He just believed in the claim.

[00:37:26]You can't build a reliable method for truth on top of someone who's never demonstrated they have any [ __ ] truth to begin with. And if the origin point is that unstable, if the structure that grows out of it is not a method, then it's just made up things pretending and masquerading to be true. And it's going to get worse. Yeah, believe it or not.

[00:37:46]You thought so far what I'm talking about is bad. It's about to get worse because even when you look at the origins of the program itself, the epistemology completely falls apart. In the book Pass It On, Bill W claims he wrote the 12 steps in about 20 minutes.

[00:38:00]That's right, 20 minutes. As if the foundational spiritual technology for treating addiction just poured out of him in a single burst of divine inspiration.

[00:38:11]Then in the very same book, he claims no one really knows where the steps came from. There's actually in that very book he opens up the part where he talks about 20 minutes and he says nobody really knows where the steps came from.

[00:38:23]Well, I have quotes from the average papers where he said aa got his ideas from uh from the Oxford group and Sam Shoemaker, you know, he should have stuck to making shoes or whatever the [ __ ] but he got it from there and nowhere else. I've got plenty of quotes to back that up. In fact, it used to be on YouTube where he says he borrowed from the Oxford group heavily. So he's lying right there when he says nobody knows where these steps came from. And by the way, how can you say rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path when you invented the path in 20 minutes?

[00:38:56]If I invented a whole new method for quitting smoking, a whole radical new method that involved vapes and involved belief in invisible spirits and things of that nature, and I started that program tomorrow, and I and in 20 minutes tonight, I write, "By the way, I've never hardly ever seen anyone fail who followed this program." I'm lying because I haven't even uh had a program long enough to know whether people fail from thoroughly following the path.

[00:39:28]In the very same book, he's claiming that no one knows where the steps came from. In another account, the entire structure comes from the Oxford group.

[00:39:36]As a matter of fact, he even had a thing about the first original six steps of the Oxford group, which I didn't put in my notes today, but I'd be more than happy to post for you that shows that these are the same exact steps that we're using. And hey, hey, the only difference is is he kind of just added more by useless [ __ ] like you know were entirely ready. He humbly asked him and all that other stuff. He was just expanding it down to 12. Then he even whines that he couldn't write more than 12 because alcoholics are superstitious.

[00:40:06]Says the man who talks to spirits on Nantucket.

[00:40:11]And this is where epistemology becomes completely unavoidable.

[00:40:18]If the origin story of the steps kind of shift around depending on which book you're reading, which audience Bill was talking to, or which myth he found most convenient at the time, like the first 100 members when we never had our first 100 members, you can't claim divine inspiration if you have to lie about all of it. Would God want you to be dishonest about what he told you? If if uh the spirit of the universe was to take human form right now and he was to beam himself down uh in front of one of the major politicians is [ __ ] everything up out there and he was to do like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Raw Deal and say resign or be prosecuted.

[00:40:57]Your choice.

[00:40:59]What did he say? Lie, by the way. Lie about what I'm telling you. Not don't tell the truth. You know, if you have to pad the numbers, pad the books, do whatever you got to do to get your thing going. But why? I don't think God would need to do that, would he? Wouldn't Wouldn't God just be able to speak for himself? How come all these old-timer and and these slimy bastards that are all 13ststeppers and predators and abusers and all those things, how come they get to speak for God and God can't speak for himself?

[00:41:29]You can't claim divine inspiration one moment, historical uncertainty the next moments, and then quietly admit the whole thing was borrowed from a Christian evangelical movement like the Oxford group in the next breath. That's not how truth works, folks. That's not how facts and evidence work. That's why it irritates me like when I when when someone mentions competing theories of consciousness and the skeptic response is, "We don't give a fuck." Well, that tells me that you're lying to me when you tell me you care about what's true.

[00:41:57]That tells me you're lying to me when you claim to be operating on logic because logic doesn't say I ran into something I can't explain. So, I don't give a [ __ ] It's not how evidence works. It's not how justified belief works. It's not how epistemology works. If the founder can't provide a consistent coherent account of how the central doctrine was created, then the doctrine has no authority.

[00:42:20]It's not a revelation. It's not a discovery. It's not a method. It's a patchwork of borrowed ideas wrapped in a whole lot of religious clap trap horseshit and calling itself spiritual originality.

[00:42:35]Had to grab another note. If the foundation is incoherent, the structure built on top of it cannot be trusted to lead anyone to truth. So when people tell you AA worked for me, specifically ask them what worked because the steps don't do anything. Have never been demonstrated to do anything. Sponsors are a bunch of untrained, unqualified pieces of [ __ ] that will shield another predator because of the 10th tradition.

[00:42:56]Uh, sponsors will lie to you about how many people are court ordered into the program. Say, "That's not our fault. We ain't got nothing to do with that."

[00:43:02]Isn't it weird how AA is all about personal responsibility and looking at your part in things until the organization needs to face some accountability, then all of a sudden it's it's not our fault people get sexually assaulted in here and we don't say nothing about it. It's not our fault that uh people steal from their sponses and exploit them and then brush it off when they commit suicide as some have to die so that others can live. We can't do anything about any of that. You know, from an organization, it's all about personal responsibility. They don't have a [ __ ] ounce of it when they're faced with real world push back and why does all this matter? That's one thing that I get a lot and I'm gonna really attack that hard before I I get to my subscriber comment in the video for this goaround. What does it matter?

[00:43:48]It saved my life. What does it matter if it's not true? What does it matter if it's just not true? It's true for me.

[00:43:56]Well, I'm going to tell you why it matters. It matters because AA doesn't just make unsupported claims.

[00:44:04]It attaches those claims to life and death consequences.

[00:44:08]I told you I had a coworker who believed in pet astrology and would talk about her cats and the way that the pets behave just like the star signs. Nicest person I've ever met and I wasn't ever going to say anything hateful to them about it. You know why? Because they weren't going around insisting everybody believe in ped astrology or be killed.

[00:44:26]They weren't going around saying everybody must adopt to my silly little belief system or otherwise you'll die a horrible death for not uh obeying and conforming to my belief system. It doesn't matter to me if people uh have paths in life that may not uh stand up to rigorous scientific examination uh due to biases or due to escapism or due to whatever it is that causes you to do that. It doesn't bother me one bit. But when you worm your way into the treatment center industry and you dominate the entire conversation around how people should be treated with addictions and you're saying accept your absurd claims uh or face death, then there's a major [ __ ] problem because it's not only a violation of the constitution, but it's dangerous for people who might do like I did and almost drink themselves to death believing that it's just because they're not capable of being honest or accepting God or any of the or the stupid [ __ ] claims they make.

[00:45:26]We're not talking about some harmless person that maybe does tarot or something like that just to see how the weather forecast looks in their astrological calendar. I mean, I don't really care if people choose to do that.

[00:45:41]Not going to be like the [ __ ] skeptics that are going to go after everybody who believes in anything like that, but then turn around and say, "Well, now when it comes to consciousness, I just don't care." Uh, yeah, you can you can [ __ ] right off.

[00:45:50]You're not rational. you're not logical and you're not interested in truth.

[00:45:56]The book repeatedly frames relapse as fatal, alcoholism as progressive, and a deadly spiritual disease, and the 12 steps is the only path to survival. So, they're lying again in the comments when they say this is one of many ways, and we never claim to have a monopoly on the thing.

[00:46:13]Because AA doesn't just make unsupported claims, it attaches those claims to life and death experiences. AA absolutely implies death for those who don't adopt his spiritual program. The big book says in chapter 5 that resentment is the number one offender and that we must be rid of this selfishness if it kills us and later warns that anyone who failed to enlarge and perfect his spiritual life inevitably drank again. You know, the guy who supposedly went 25 years without a drink and got some slippers and some jazz records or whatever the [ __ ] they were listening to back then from Tinpan Aldi and died a little while later is told as a powerful warning for what happens to you if you even stay away from booze for 25 years. And we know that that's not true. We know that's not how brain chemistry and addiction works. And I personally believe that entire story is just something they made up. They're already dishonest lying pieces of [ __ ] anyway.

[00:47:04]Do you think they're not going to pull a story out of thin air when they need it to back up their [ __ ] Their god is a dishonest one. I wonder if AA can answer for that. Does the AA high power say it's okay to lie and manipulate and bully and intimidate people uh so long as AA is protected?

[00:47:21]Because that's a shitty god. You know, the threat is baked into theology. And when combine that with the fact that millions of people are court-ordered and mandated into AA every year, and the treatment centers funnel clients into it as the default option, and the judges, probation officers, and clinicians treat AA as if it were evidence-based medicine, the stakes become enormous because there are actual lives on the line. Unlike those [ __ ] that accuse me of killing people, I really do care about saving people's lives. I don't want them sent to a cult religion when they're trying to break free from addiction. This is the modern world.

[00:47:56]This is the 21st century. We know a lot more about addiction and we don't need your religious [ __ ] rammed down people's throats when they're vulnerable.

[00:48:06]We're not talking about an abstract philosophical problem either. This is a system telling vulnerable people that their lives depend on accepting a supernatural claim that's never been demonstrated to be possible. It's why epistemology matters. Because when you build a recovery model on fear, fatalism, and untested metaphysics, people get hurt. Not metaphorically, not symbolically, but in the most literal sense imaginable.

[00:48:36]Abstract philosophical problems are generally kind of fun. I don't know if anybody's ever heard of deconstruction zone, but I find it very fascinating uh that someone could take apart the Bible and defend it against the believers themselves. But I also have always found certain things about mythology in general quite fascinating. And I have certain ideas about them that I'm not going to share here because I don't think they're necessarily valid or anything like that. It's just a funny feeling I have. But I'm not telling people they'll die. I'm I'm not telling people they'll they'll they'll they'll drink themselves to death to die if you don't uh make comparisons about these analysis or you don't look at the way the Norse smiths were put together in the 1200s or if you deviate from this particular idea about uh you know this one thing or the other uh if we're going to argue about Latin translations and Greek translations and we're going to argue about you know when this book in the Bible was written versus the actual timeline and where these prophecies don't align line with Christ and all those other kinds of things. Those are personal um abstract things that you can argue about online all day long if you want to. But this is not something you just argue about online and go home. This is something that's really active. This is something that's really harming people.

[00:49:54]And we could make a case for the fact that yes, when religion and politics merge that we've moved beyond the abstract and we moved into something serious, but that's not the purpose of this channel. I'm not here to tell you what to think. I don't, you know, that's another thing before I finish this thing. People ask me, I've had people come at me, you're a right-winger, you're a leftwinger, you're woke, you're this, you're that. I'm Victor. I'm Victor from Quackaholics Anonymous. I have no membership in any political party because I think the 99.9% of them are nothing but corrupt corrupt low lives. They're not going to tackle this problem. Do you know why they don't tackle the problem? Because there's too much too much money to be made in treatment. There's too much money to be made in funneling people into this malevolent, twisted, disgusting organization. They're not going to do [ __ ] for us. It's going to be up to us, the people, to keep speaking out about this to the point that enough people are going to say enough is enough. That's when you'll see results. But politics isn't going to do [ __ ] for the people who are truly marginalized and not getting a voice. It takes people speaking out. It takes enough people speaking out like the people that are going to be in my links in this channel like the sobriety besties, the burn the stigmas, the thrive alcohol recovery, the from recovery to discovery, the uh anti-a concept and uh the MSG group think podcast and all of us. It's going to take us speaking out to make people pay attention. The [ __ ] politicians don't give a [ __ ] how many of us drink ourselves to death to die on bad information so long as we can vote before we collapse.

[00:51:29]Now, I'm going to drive home how dangerous this is. We need to talk about dishonesty that pops up because if you resort to misinterpretation and misrepresentation to defend your program, you got a problem. And nowhere is this clearer than when these [ __ ] try to defend the program online, like AA's Cochran review, constantly claiming it proved that AA is the most effective program, which is totally dishonest, when the review did nothing of the sort. What it actually showed was that among the small minority who stay engaged, AA style groups can outperform some individual therapies on one tiny little narrow metric, continuous abstinence.

[00:52:07]The authors explicitly state the advantage comes from social connection, not the 12 steps. And the study evaluated TSF, a professional therapy model, not the chaotic, unregulated reality of AA meetings. We have never tried to see what would happen if we just got a group of people together once a week or twice a week, depending on how often you want to do it, and say, "You know what? We're going to do this week, all of us in here, we're all a bunch of people who used to drink and drug ourselves really badly. And you know what? We're just going to sit here on this Friday afternoon when a lot of us would like to be at the bar or a lot of us would like to be out there chasing our dealers uh to quote the the old song to meet the uh pawn your pistol and go to meet your man and all that other kind of [ __ ] We're just going to sit here and talk to one another. We're not going to talk about politics. We're not going to talk about religion. We're not going to talk about anything other than how the hell do we stop drinking and drugging. No such organization has ever existed. So we have no way to compare it to AA. You could compare it to AA really fast if an organization like that started because then we would actually have an answer for those people who say AA worked for me. What worked for you was social connection. But until such time there's nothing we can do about that.

[00:53:25]But the authors of the Cochran study explicitly state the advantage comes from the social connection.

[00:53:31]AA has internal surveys. By the way, they're available at your own website. I just loved it when this AA guy said, "You're lying. There is no survey. It's on your own website. You don't even know your own [ __ ] program." a aaa.org.

[00:53:45]Internal surveys about dropout rates.

[00:53:48]I'm not contradicting myself when I say AA doesn't measure outcomes and then I turn around and talk about the dropout rates because we can't measure outcomes, but we can measure dropout rates.

[00:53:58]Their own internal surveys show 62% are gone before the first 90 days. Only about 5% is still attendant after a year. And that's not comparing AA to smart recovery, life ring, medication assisted or treatment or harm reduction.

[00:54:15]So when people weaponize that study to claim AA is uniquely effective, they're not defending the truth. They're defending this belief system with selective reading with lies, omissions, and outright distortions. And when a program's survival depends on misquing research and lying and attacking people personally and hiding its dropout rates and preventing alternatives for coming into the mainstream conversation by saying harm reduction kills people and medically assisted treatment is just dependence on drugs. That's gross [ __ ] dishonesty. It's dangerous [ __ ] dishonesty.

[00:54:50]You know, I'm not a paragon of moral virtue. I'm not one of these people that if you tell me a story that seems to get bigger with every story, uh, you know, like like you caught a fish that was this much weight and now it's, you know, he was the size of Jaws in the 1975 original movie. You know, you can kind of look at a person like that and say, "Okay, they're just a [ __ ] storyteller. No real haunt done." Kind of like the Twilight Zone where the guy does nothing but tell lies and concoct stories all the time and then he gets abducted by aliens and he barely escapes the aliens and he gets back to his town to tell him this to tell everybody what happened to him and nobody believes him anymore because he's done lied so much.

[00:55:30]But when you're lying to run cover for an organization that shields predators and you're lying to run cover for an organization that's failing and actively harming people, then that's dangerous dishonesty. and I'm going to call you a [ __ ] liar if you start engaging with it on me.

[00:55:48]And uh I think I've wrapped it all up.

[00:55:51]So epistemology is how you know that your beliefs are justified, what evidence supports them.

[00:55:59]And of course, human beings are not Spock on Star Trek. Uh human beings are emotional. We do have subjective experiences. We do have all kinds of things like that. There's a mystery behind why we have those things. But none of that none of that demonstrates that AA is effective at [ __ ] other than social connection because you don't have any evidence for anything else it's claiming. And I guess I'm done. So that's what an epistemology is. So all you have to do is uh think about the things you believe in and why you believe those things. Just a rational justification for it. If you're interested about competing theories in consciousness, just Google any of those words. Monism, pansychism, if you're interested. Most people aren't interested.

[00:56:46]So, now it's time for a subscriber comment. I hope I've explained epistemology to you in a way that you could understand it because AA has no foundation to base itself off of. So, the next time someone tells you it works for them, simply ask them how they know that that's what it is and simply ask them to demonstrate it and remind them their position is based in total fantasy.

[00:57:06]So, subscribe comment. Speaking of organizations telling you what they're about, AA's alleged mission statement, "Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety throughout its years of operation." They write, "Aa has adhered closely to its primary purpose, the real primary purpose, avoiding in involvement in politics and leaving to treatment programs any recovery concerns for other addictions and compulsions." So they say, boy oh boy, they're leaving a whole lot out about these statements about staying out of politics. They're leaving a whole lot out of their statements about primary purposes. But let's see what their real purposes are about.

[00:57:46]Brainwashing, bullying, manipulation, control, power imbalances, hidden hierarchy, shaming, stunning, hypocrisy, their bait and switch peekab-boo, here's God [ __ ] lowering people's self-esteem and lowering people's self-image and replacing it with either intolerable shame and a self that you hate or on the flip side obnoxious arrogance propping up vile old-timers and old slimers and hammering down confused newcomers and on and on. I think their mission statement needs a rewrite. I think you're right.

[00:58:19]Anyway, let me know what you got out of that if you got anything out of it. And I promise I'm not ducking and dodging my way out of the other thing that I brought up in my last video. Uh, and I'll be talking about that soon. Also, I've got Streamyard downloaded, so I am looking to have guests on here. There's a couple of harm reduction people I see on Facebook that I would love to have on the channel, but I'm not exactly sure how to approach them. Uh, I know I want to do a video with Burn the Stigma, but I would like to have some more of those people on here because they get attacked the same way that Sobratty Bestie gets attacked all the time, and they have a lot of good things to say. There's a lady named Megs Unfiltered, that's a screen handle, that said something that was pretty profound to me. She said, "Have you ever noticed that whenever you quit an addiction, you were expected to do a redemption story? Why is it a redemption story? I was the evil, horrible human being that just deserved to die. And now I'm I'm uh I'm white as snow in my purity. And I, you know, I float on clouds and talk to God and I deny myself all pleasures. It's all [ __ ] It's a [ __ ] narrative. See you guys next