Medicare and Medicaid illegally pay for religious faith-healing.  Then those pay for   indoctrination into one specific religion.  The method of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) and Narcotics Anonymous (N.A.), the “twelve steps”, are on the Internet.  The method contains the religious faith-healing of step 2, the ‘surrender to God’ of step 3, “prayer” in steps 5,7, and 11, the religious mysticism of step 11, “conscious contact with God”, and the proselytizing of step 12, “we tried to carry this message”.  Proselytizing is evangelism when it is Christian.  The A.A.-N.A. message is the method, is the steps, and is the religion.  Fraud enters, because members and supporters of A.A. or N.A., who are professional addiction counselors, wrongly deny that religiousness, in order to receive those monies, which totaled $17 billion of combined federal, state, and local monies in one year.

The U.S. Supreme Court let stand three separate applicable decisions.  In Griffin v. Coughlin (1996), A.A. or N.A. was “unequivocally religious”.  It “engages in religious activity and religious [proselytizing]”.  It was “deeply religious”.  It was “intensely religious”.  Warner v. Orange Co. Dept. of Probation (2nd Circuit 1996) followed Griffin.

In Cox v. Miller (2nd Cir. 2002), a U.S. District Court gave Cox’s manslaughter confessions to A.A. members the same confidentiality protection reserved for clergy.  The convictions were reinstated at the Circuit level, not that A.A. is largely secular, instead for another reason.  The English language itself proves that the steps comprise a specific religion, because that religiousness is defined alone by proselytizing; as if faith-healing, mysticism, prayer, and surrendering the will were not included in the 12 steps.

The method is a failure.  A graph of A.A.’s 95% one-year dropout rate may be downloaded from the website “A.A. Recovery Outcome Rates”, wherein five of A.A.’s official Triennial Membership Surveys’ results are graphed together.  The author of the website was a propagandist for A.A.  The sobriety rates are much lower than membership rates, less than 3% for any year, not approaching the rates for quitting independently.  The misnamed “natural recovery rate” is at a minimum of 5% a year.  This means that A.A. is outright harmful, statistically worse than never being exposed to it.  Remember, the membership percentages are official, from A.A. itself.

The President and Vice President of Rational Recovery have, as only two people, heard of at least hundreds of suicides because of A.A.-N.A.  Please see the “orange papers [home]” website.  We all understand that addictions can contribute to suicides.

All of the national civil liberties organizations are against government coercion to it.  The Ohio A.C.L.U. took a case.  Courts have awarded monetary damages, even though there is, or at least historically is, no money in religious liberty cases.  Any professional use of the method violates A.A.-N.A.’s own twelve traditions: “Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever non-professional….” 

Professionals have outright lied to advance the steps, as well as used other forms of deceit, such as making no reference to the fact that the method is legally religion.  Its professionalization is massive felony fraud, professionally confusing the A.A.-N.A. religious definition of addiction as ‘spiritual disease” with the scientific medical secular definition, then using covert religious indoctrination as treatment.  Information concerning thirty-two court cases is available from me, Kevin Russell, electronically at no cost. Religious freedom, as defined in law, does not exist for millions of Americans.

Sincerely, Kevin Russell, 185 East North Broadway St., Columbus, OH 43214, (614)263-9346, russell.kevin@gmail.com