Welcome to the Sobriety Bestie podcast. This is Kirsten, your host and your friend. We are gonna be trying something different here for a little bit, which is daily dogma detox, daily audios to help you detox from the dogma that might be controlling your mind, your power, and your life.

So I wanted to start this off with talking about how sharing about Alcoholics Anonymous on the internet has shocked me. I mean, I knew I'd get pushback, right? I'm not naive. When you're walking into the arena, you are, uh, you're aware of what you're doing. When you put yourself out there, there's gonna be the haters and the lovers.

When you take a stand, I thought the pushback would be losing air, quote friends. Getting direct messages from the fellowship of AA people that I used to know, or straight up jerks coming in hard, and that's not what happened, especially in the beginning. In the beginning what happened was, you know, well first of all, I had a a bunch of fears about opening up.

As you could imagine, there's something so weird about Alcoholics Anonymous in our culture where you're not supposed to talk about it, right? It's anonymous, even though some people do, but also. We're never told that we can leave. And so if you believe the dogma, the dogma is that you can't leave that essentially to leave us to die.

And so the people like me who leave, we are left in this weird. Space, this anonymous space after recovery. First, there's something that I call like the after recovery void, that period of grief, loss, confusion, mind fuckery of leaving aa, which can be very, very difficult for a lot of us. And it's like not acknowledged, not talked about.

Nobody will address it. None of the main professional people that I ever came across would ever even have mentioned that this is like a legitimate trauma experience or whatever. A lot of us have C-P-T-S-D from AA and don't realize it until we leave and our head pops out of our ass and we're like, what the fuck just happened?

Get that whiplash and yeah, so there's that. Um, actually if you are in this right now, I wanna let you know that I created a course. It's a not a group, it is not a meeting, it is not a sponsor. It is literally an on-demand course called Evolving After Recovery. I'll put a link to it in the show notes in case that's you.

Uh, and you want some support via an on-demand course to go through. But so what actually shocked me about opening up about AA on the internet is the high control tactics. The subtle manipulation, the name calling, and this right here is what is so insidious about high control groups like Alcoholics Anonymous.

The manipulators don't know that they're manipulating. There's something about being in the ideology where the ends justify the means because you believe that you are, air quotes, saving lives. And it's not that people aren't greatly helped here. So there is that fact as well that people do really get help from these mutual support groups or high control ideologies or AA specifically, but.

Uh, when you're blinded by this, I'm in the business of saving lives. The ends start to justify the means, and I believe that's why these people act out and have all this. Obnoxious, that's called behavior without realizing that they're actually doing it. So if you've left a and you're in the middle of that, and you're receiving some of this behavior because either you told people that you left or people are calling you because they're trying to get you back in, or you maybe, God forbid, you said on the internet that you left AA and so you're receiving it.

Um, you're not alone. This is such a weird phase of healing from a high control group is when you have the, um. Yeah, when you have the manipulators who don't know, they're manipulating, trying to manipulate you. But let's be clear here, like how I think about it is that there is nobody to blame. There's nobody even there.

When somebody is coming at you who is possessed by an ideology like aa, it's like they're not even home. This is called or known as a phenomenon called ideological possession being possessed by an ideology. It's where the ideology, essentially the group think has hijacked your brain, and so your entire worldview becomes the ideology.

And this probably is on a spectrum, like I'm not a cult psychology expert. I'm just somebody who was fully indoctrinated into an ideology called AA for a decade. And I've been out for five years now, right? And so I can see it a lot more clearly. I've studied the crap out of it. I've gone deep into psychology, cult psychology, mind control, emotional manipulation, all of this as a way to deprogram myself, get free and also be protected mentally and emotionally, maybe even spiritually, if you will.

From it happening again. I mean, it might happen again, but I wanted to, yeah, I didn't want to fall prey to the same. Con, as I already did. I didn't wanna be indoctrinated again. So I wanted to understand indoctrination. You know, I like freedom. So I'm on team freedom over here. So these people are ideologically possessed.

They're the ones that are gonna try to get you back into the group or they're gonna come at you if you say that you left the group. And quite frankly, their behavior in their words is, it's boring because they're not. There is no person there. There is no individuality. They are literally parroting the ideology.

They are blind. To the mind control. So for me, breaking free from a high control group has been the most liberating experience of my life. There is so much freedom in seeing how your brain has been washed and unwash it, if you will. But it is still shocking. So a lot of the people who are DMing me now that I've been talking about this for a week or two on the internet, they're telling me that they feel shocked to be coming out of the ideology.

It is shocking. It can be even traumatizing for some of us. There's a name for it. It's called exit trauma. There's a lot that can happen when we leave. We're not just losing our community or getting shunned by our community and our support system, but we're also realizing that we've been duped, like it kind of.

You know, it's humiliating and embarrassing. I felt humiliated and embarrassed to realize that I had lived by this ideology that now felt like total hogwash to me. Like, like, wait, this isn't true, but I believe this so fiercely for so long. And I loved it when I was in it. So it's a bit of a, it's a mind fuckery experience, you know, to basically unfuck your mind.

So, yeah, so if you're in that now, I totally get it. And what I wanna say is. Ah, we are powerful af. We are powerful beings. I believe as a core belief for myself that we are souls inside bodies here to evolve. And that who and what we are is super fricking powerful. And the lie that we are powerless is very destructive.

AA ideology can do a number to slowly erode our self con, uh, self-confidence, our self-esteem, our self-worth. It's insidious like we don't even see it. I didn't see it. So when the folks are coming at me telling, trying to control me or silence me or shame me about speaking about aa, honestly I kind of feel like bring it like I, to me it's like a learning experience.

I'm learning about mind control from the outside. Like I'm like, whoa, this is so weird. These people are totally, and I have a lot of empathy for them 'cause I was them. So this is not making fun of anybody necessarily, but like just to see the mind control from the outside is such a weird psychological experience.

I'm really learning a lot about mind control and I guess it's giving me a deeper healing that I didn't even know I needed. 'cause I'm seeing even more clearly what a high control group is because a high control group is trying to control me. So this is a new experience for me from speaking out and so.

Honestly, that doesn't make anybody's recovery look good either, so I didn't expect this. I'm here for it. I'm here for whatever happens. I'm not naive. I'm not a victim. I'm creating this. I walked into the arena, and this is part of the experience that I decided I wanted to welcome because something deep, deep inside of me told me.

My intuition, my heart, my soul, me. Something deep in me is like, you need to speak about this. You need to tell the truth about this. You need to share your story about this. And as much as I don't wanna be controversial about this, as much as I don't wanna talk about alcoholics synonymous, I will not betray myself.

I will not betray that still quiet voice inside me. That soul, knowing that nudge that. Spirit flowing through me that says, this is the way honey. Go this way. Speak about this, do this. Um, I'm here for my own freedom. I'm here for the freedom of others. I really believe freedom is like my anchor. I'm not committed to an ideology.

I'm not committed to a belief system. I'm not committed to any institution group, even if that group helped me at one time. I'm committed to liberation. I wanna speak about freedom. I'm on a path of authenticity. And I'm anchored to purpose, and that's who. That's who I believe you are as somebody who's listening to this.

You are on your own awakening journey. You are on your own liberation path. You wanna step more fully into authenticity and your purpose work as well. We are side by side on this journey aligned in who we are and how we see things. Meaning that we are here to evolve and expand. This is about expansion, liberation, and becoming our.

Potential essentially. So, you know, in that journey, it's all about my motto, which I can't say it without swearing 'cause it's literally two words and one of them is profanity. But my motto in early sobriety was, fuck fear. And that's been my journey this entire time. And that's the reason why I got over my phobia, public speaking, when I was like two, three years sober because I felt called to be a speaker.

I felt called. I felt like I was being used by the. Powers of the universe, if you will, when I was sharing a message like from my soul. And so that's what I'm all about. I'm here to, you know, fuck fear, and right now to deprogram the dogma and help others deprogram the dogma, but not just aa dogma. Dogma in general.

Like what are we believing that's not true? And how can we liberate ourselves and free ourselves from these false beliefs and step into more of our potential, expand, go into our next evolution and become more evolved humans. So, yeah, and reclaim your voice in the process. It's, it's really nice to have reclaimed my voice recently and to broken free from the fear of just sharing my story.

And I want that for you. I want that for all of us. I want us to feel free to be able to express ourselves, share our truth, especially if we are anchored to our purpose, which has to do with spreading a message that can help liberate others. I think it's a very powerful mission to be on, and so, so yeah, I thought I'd do these little daily dogma detoxes and, uh, drop some podcasts to hope, sprinkle a little freedom into your day.

As always, please let me know in the dms, uh, what you think, what you got out of this. Any ideas that you would like me to discuss, I would love for this to be a conversation between us. That's right, and I hope you have a beautiful day.