The Controversial documentary "The 13th Step" is finally finished and is currently making the rounds at film festivals across the globe. We've all been anxiously awaiting its completion, but we're going to have to wait a little longer to watch it online. Right now Monica and her film are at Cannes.
There was an enormous backlash to the film during its production, with current AA members doing their best to prevent it from being made, and ex-members cheering Monica on. The backlash continues.
AA faithful and "stand-up comedian" Danielle Stewart had a lot to say about the documentary, none of it good. Her article, Debunking the 13th Step Movie, can be seen on rehabreviews.com.
It reads like a catalog of every aspersion commonly cast by practicing AA members on the integrity of any AA critic. The litany of insults is tedious; "Monica is drinking", "Monica failed AA", "Monica has a resentment", "Monica is an AA-basher".
But the libel doesn't end there. Comments beneath the film's review, which is posted, by the way, not on a movie site, but on the Rehab Reviews website. Rehabreviews.com is dedicated to providing interested parties with information about, well, rehabs, definitely not my first choice when I'm looking for information about a movie. The webpage does, however, provide a clear and shining example of the kind of reaction you can expect if you dare to question or speak ill of the sacred cow Alcoholics Anonymous.
I found the comments below the article to be much more interesting than the review. There was plenty of flaming of the usual AA versus Anti-AA variety, albeit more vituperative than usual, with lots of slander and even the full names of members and ex-members being thrown back and forth.
But I found one comment, posted by someone who claims to be a current member, startling in its straightforward honesty and condemnation of the choices made by paid employees who run the non-profit organization from behind the scenes, away from the prying eyes of the public and even AA members.
You can read the comment on the RehabReview website, but I'm also posting it below.
JB on JUNE 3, 2015 6:19 AM
All I can say is WOW. This whole thread quickly devolved into a clash of egos. I am a grateful member of AA for decades and I can easily say that AA has brought these problems on itself by not following its Traditions. For years it was thought that the Traditions were just an after thought. So much power was given to the groups autonomy because it was believed that the groups would always be filled with parties that loved AA and would want to follow the Traditions. The Traditions are very simple and mild suggests but they like the steps need to be followed to the best of our ability. Why? once you violate them you no longer have an AA group. 35 years ago we started to affiliate with the courts. This eventually flooded the meetings will thousands of members who did not meet the requirement for membership. Bill W. stated that a member was anyone who had an issue with alcohol AND wanted our way of life. Once we started the IMPLIED (see long form of Tradition 6) affiliation with the treatment centers and worse with the courts we opened up our meetings to a whole host of tradition breaks i.e. anonymity, singleness of purpose etc. Not the least of which is the bad publicity this film has provided. The big book says we should not work with the unwilling and yet our meetings are now filled with more unwilling than willing. These parties do their time and then go forth and defame AA. They should because we did not follow our own Traditions or even the words of the program of recovery. We have not been honest and we have been hypocritical. Appearance becomes fact. If a DUI offender is sent to AA and he does not want to get sober he will not. He has every right to violate all our Traditions and to speak his truth. We were part of his sentence and it was part of a sentence that our book said would not work! Yet we affiliated with court to force him into AA. Then we hid behind the “no comment on outside issues” banner. If its inside our meetings then it is not an outside issue! My only beef with the film is that it didn’t get to root cause of all our problems. The ego based Tradition breaks. Monica has focused on the violent offenders instead of the true first errant step we took way up stream. I am grateful she used her talents to expose the problems and I hope AA will use this opportunity to take its own inventory and start following the Traditions to the letter and to follow the words of the Big Book in “Working with Others”, “There is a Solution”, To the Employers”, “Into Action”, “How it Works”, “Working with Others” and other writings that state that we can not force anyone to do anything and we should not AFFILIATE with anyone who does.
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Rarely have I seen this willingness to confront AA coming from a practicing member. That's a shame, because if AA members were more willing to investigate the organization and judge it by the same standards the program asks them to judge themselves, Monica's film would never have been necessary, and there would be no clash between those members who believe in AA and those who found it lacking.
Until steps are taken by AA's GSO to protect the unwary from predation by other AA members and hangers-on, and until AA at the organizational level makes an effort to adhere to the principles it extols, I will remain as I am; a "failed-AA member, probably drinking resentment holder on a vendetta", just another AA "demonizer".
As always, keeping it anonymous in order to avoid repercussions:
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