Spiritual Emergencies in SAA: Gaslighting Addicts into Sobriety
The “anonymous” nature of the SAA program is an ideal stage for scripted “spiritual emergencies.” Nonprofessional volunteers and professionals using false identities use Jungian methods in small, undisclosed teams to ambush program participants and overwhelm them into emotional and mental submission to the sobriety values of the group consciousness.
Sophisticated gaslighting techniques are used to shock and overwhelm vulnerable participants with the particular vices and sins which they openly disclosed to the circle.
For some, this is retribution for their transgressions. For others, it is a way to reprogram their broken spiritual values.
This gaslighting culture is a product of the older, original program codes of Alcoholics Anonymous.
People get into SAA for different reasons. Sometimes, they find the program because they feel guilty for some particular behavior. Sometimes, they are pressured by a partner. Other times, they are ordered by a court.
Eventually, after enough time in the program, individual members of SAA are targeted for experiences of radical shock treatments, or complex traumas orchestrated by private volunteer cells—volunteers who attend SAA not to stop their own addictive behaviors, but to stop the addictive behaviors of other people.
These inner-circle cells are embedded inside, and networked across, other SAA groups, and inside COSA, where the agenda is the destruction of addiction and codependency “at any cost.”
Their anti-addiction shock treatments overwhelm the victim with their own vice.
Sponsors and accountabilities partners have been volunteering in programs like SAA for years, luring newcomers into appealing but destructive patterns of behavior, and then gaslighting them into the belief that they themselves are responsible for the fallout—and that they need the group to help them stabilize and remain “sober.”
Historically, these crises and rituals of trauma bonding have been so effective because the victims have shared their histories and vulnerabilities openly with their abusers during elaborate program “coursework,” which is a mandatory part of the program.
Victims voluntarily provide lists of their every transgression and insecurity, every possible pressure point, and have recited them for their bullies in a ritualized setting.
Victims immerse themselves in program literature which tells them to defer to the will of the group, and to protect the reputation of the program and its membership.
Victims are trained to implicitly trust the very people who are now poised to betray their confidence as part of the 12 Step process.
Episodes of “spiritual emergency” like this are orchestrated by self-appointed volunteers who network with one another inside SAA and COSA, and with others outside the program circles. They are scripted and calculated to trauma-bond troubled members of the fellowship more firmly to the program, or to parallel groups that stand to benefit.
The survival of the relationships between addicts and codependents is not a primary concern of the treatment. The wellbeing of addicts is not a primary concern of the treatment.
The primary concern of the program is the cessation of addictive behaviors.
The emotional trauma of the gaslighting—the discovery that their trust is radically misplaced, and that their “support” partners have betrayed them by releasing their information, giving them terrible advice, sharing their confidences, abusing their family members in cruel and intimate ways—is brutally painful.
This pain, shock, humiliation, and brutality helps some anti-addiction vigilantes rationalize their failure to inform proper authorities (qualified police officers, for example) about ongoing criminal abuse that is sometimes disclosed to 12 Step volunteers. They keep secrets for sex addicts because they intend to cause them extreme emotional pain, and they imagine this is better than justice for the victims of their abuse.
When individuals confess to serious sexual crimes, like spousal abuse or sexual assault, as just another incident of "relapse," the SAA protocols request that members keep this to themselves.
Unofficially, without the official sanction of ISO, longterm SAA members and program affiliates create punitive trauma for repeat offenders by leveraging their personal information and sexual histories, to cause them serious psychological harm.
Once an SAA member begins sharing themselves inside the 12 Step program, their personal data may be gathered from a multitude of places: phone numbers, email addresses, IP addresses, directly from in-room sharing, and from sources that aren’t directly connected to the rooms, like social media accounts, linkedin profiles, public records, digital footprints, chat rooms, and so on.
There are no laws against using tools like accountability software—which provide detailed maps of search histories and daily online activities—to build psychological profiles on program participants, or against sharing any gathered data with the larger 12 Step community, or with outsiders.
Because the program relies so heavily on broken thinking, traditional SAA hazing or gaslighting may be conducted in a legalistic manner, with program associates going through the hollow motions of honoring program codes, while simultaneously destroying their recovery partners' trust in humanity.
Gaslighters and anti-addiction volunteers shock and swarm SAA members, using their data and vulnerabilities in various ways.
Accountability partners may share "accountability" software data with third parties, so that parties unknown can track an SAA member and monitor their daily online movements.
Recovery partners may deliver implied threats of exposure to cause fear and uncertainty and rage and feelings of helplessness.
They may actually expose a member’s secrets, online or in person, either partially or in full, or endanger a member’s family in ways they imagine corresponds to their past sins.
People may say strange or threatening things, and then deliberately misrepresent prior conversations (a classic gaslighting technique) in large groups, en masse.
Sponsors may offer bad advice to cause relationship disasters.
Strangers may call and offer direct harassment to cause anxiety and terror.
Episodes like this can begin to stack up, to cause a build up of mental pressure in a subject, pushing them towards a breakdown and eventual compliance—a classic “healing crisis” in homeopathic cultures.
"Did my accountability partner really mean to suggest my boss would find out about my history? Why should I start bringing my wife to meetings? How is that supposed to keep her secrets safer?"
"How did that stranger know about my history? I've never seen him at meetings before, but he said he grabbed my number...."
"The last time we spoke he accused me of betraying his confidence and hung up on me, but this time when we spoke he laughed, and said I should come over to his house, and that he was just sad because I had accused the program of being dangerous? Did I misunderstand?"
"I thought my sponsor said my husband would understand? But now he's talking about divorce? Why won't he tell me what advice they gave him in the COSA circle?"
"Who was that on the phone? How did they get my number?"
"How did my private information get released in this public book? Are these characters supposed to resemble me and my girlfriend? Is this some kind of joke?"
"How is this happening all at once? Why is my SAA group confident I should surrender to their will? I told them Love was my Higher Power but now my sponsor wants the group to be my God? And the entire group is sharing that the group should be the higher power in my regular meeting?"
In a program built on anonymity and group-think, it may be virtually impossible for a victim to pinpoint exactly who is doing what, and when, and how, once the harassment begins—especially if they are trusting, or believed themselves to be in a safe environment, or are convinced by collective gaslighting that their sudden emotional devastation is actually the consequence of their own “addiction.” The program members surrounding the victim may push ideas like this on them aggressively.
There is no law against sex-shaming or gaslighting members of SAA into compliance or "sobriety." (Well actually, there is. Sexual harassment is illegal.)
SAA data and related personal information is not legally confidential, especially when it was surrendered voluntarily to an open community circle where there are no guarantees of protection, and there is an obvious pretense of compulsive relapse among thieves with no honor.
There is no law against using someone’s phone number to look up their information in public databases, or tracing their cookies and histories if they visit your websites.
Doxing someone is not illegal. <— true
There is no law against making false confessions in the SAA rooms, to encourage other SAA members to make real and dangerous confessions of their own.
Although it is against official policy, there is no law against misrepresenting yourself as an addict to attend "closed" meetings. You may do so and listen to shares, and then catalogue any data, and share it with anyone you like. An unethical person might even discretely record meetings directly.
There is no law against private organizations, church groups, therapy groups, social justice groups, active police groups, or retired police groups from establishing their own SAA circles while failing to disclose their presence.
There is no law to keep investigators of any kind—private or police or vigilante—from attending open meetings to observe and report. This might happen in any 12 Step program of any sort. Narcotics Anonymous. Marijuana Anonymous. Cop Killers Anonymous. Wife Beaters Anonymous. I'm-Super-Trusting-and-I-Gave-My-Secrets-to-Psychopaths-and-Now-I'm-Trapped Anonymous.
SAA has no regulation against this, as long as no organization formally attempts to sponsor an SAA group in its own name. Groups should be sponsored by private individuals with no disclosed secondary agenda... beyond stopping sexually addictive behaviors.
The fundamental goal, the essential requirement for open membership in SAA, is to regulate the behavior of addicts.
There are also no explicit laws against certain unusual shock treatments, like publishing humiliating parody erotica.
Parody erotica using real data, even the data of private persons, is protected speech under the Expressive Use clause of the US Constitution.
Under existing US law, SAA members can find themselves targeted in a variety of ways, if they do not comply with the will of the group. This includes observing SAA sobriety standards, and remaining silent about in-program abuse.
There are all kinds of ways to emotionally and socially leverage an individual's sexual information, once your phone number has been released to a collective of sociopaths. They can use your phone number to find your real, full name, your registered addresses, your public records, your social media profiles, and so on.
Members of SAA, or members of the public working in tandem with SAA volunteers, might use whatever methods they desire to shock members out of their addictive behaviors.
That is the express, written purpose of SAA. To stop behaviors. Not to support addicts. To stop sexually addictive behaviors.
In transpersonal psychology, experiences of extreme psychological crisis are referred to as “spiritual emergencies,” which lead to personal devastation and then "spiritual emergence" or rebirth.
In homeopathic literature, this is often referred to as a "healing crisis," as a sickness gets worse, or is made worse, during a recovery process.
Transpersonal psychology is one iteration of this homeopathic principle. Gurus of many types—from Jungian alchemists to cult spiritualists to transpersonal therapists—have expanded the principle in spiritual metaphor and application.
In Freemasonic and Swedenborgian theology, overwhelming someone homeopathically in order to reconstitute them is symbolized in the familiar religious images of death and resurrection.
Astrologists may appeal to the sign of Scorpio, with the stinging tail of betrayal; biblical theologians may appeal to the image of the bronze serpent, which heals the snake bites by imaging the snake.
Jungian gnostics frequently appeal to the archetypal symbol of the phoenix, the bird of fire rising from the ashes of devastation, to justify the alchemical process of "vastation."
Richard Rohr calls this dissolving the ego, to find the "immortal diamond" of self within the soul. He is, incidentally, also a gnostic Jungian.
Alan Watts described it as shattering the ego, like an egg, by finding out what a disciple loved, and then using it to ambush them unexpectedly.
In 12 Step application, as part of a healing crisis, people are likewise broken down without warning, contrary to every expectation of privacy and care created by the careful doublespeak of the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions.
To be perfectly clear, none of this is written, overtly, into the SAA program literature.
SAA emerged in the decade after the field of transpersonal psychology was legitimated, and by circumstance affirmed many transpersonal theories of collective spiritual awakening.
But SAA does not explicitly, openly advocate for transpersonalism, which is heavy with New Age spirituality.
Neither does SAA explicitly use transpersonal or integral language in its literature, or openly endorse the scripted, coordinated gaslighting of its members.
Although popular culture is riddled with references to 12 Step gaslighting culture, admitting that it actually happens regularly, in real life, is something that seems unlikely. You're not supposed to talk about Fight Club—because it is so obviously dangerous, and immoral, and hypocritical, and absurdly, absurdly stupid.
SAA GASLIGHTING
may use classic techniques of misdirection, deception, and feigned indifference in order to confuse, humiliate, and frighten victims
may point victims away from the program as an obvious source of betrayal and shaming
may place blame on the victim or addict, by framing the shaming or hazing as a karmic, mystical punishment for his or her past wrongdoing
may involve several members of the fellowship or even multiple groups, creating the impression in victims that there is no real hope of being heard or resisting the will of the hive
may be coordinated with people in adjacent programs (like COSA, a parallel program open to sex-addict victims and codependents, concurrently open to SAA members and their partners)
may be coordinated through off-brand spiritual directors, program-adjacent therapists, religious specialists, or spiritual homeopaths who see the 12 Steps as a venue for unmonitored or under-regulated psychotherapy
may prolong psychological distress until SAA members break down, are unable to resist the pressure of their peers, and become more compliant with group values
may be conducted behind the structures of group anonymity, to prevent or hinder victims from lodging concrete complaints against specific abusers
This form of transpersonal psychology has been practiced, historically, as Jungian alchemy, or psychological alchemy, intended to "transmute" or transform the base nature of ordinary people into “gold,” making (as Freemasons love to say) good men better.
SAA accomplishes something similar in a 12-Step process, a process that gradually places members under more and more pressure.
During 12-Step program work, members of SAA may select any Higher Power of their choosing, whether that is God, or Krishna, or Satan, or their sponsor, or their dog.
But the SAA program frequently encourages members to select the SAA group as a Higher Power, in its official literature, its regular newsletters, and in its culture of sponsorship and sharing.
Even devout religious members who already have a God of preference may be pressured to adopt the SAA group as their God, if they involve themselves in the fellowship long enough.
(See Rich B., "Defining a Higher Power," in The Outer Way: The Newsletter of SAA's International Service Organization (Jan 2022), Vol 16, No 1 10-12, cf 11.)
All Higher Powers are treated as deities of equivalent weight and value in the SAA circle, with equal merit, as long as they enable SAA members to maintain their “sobriety,” or to avoid their self-identified acting-out behaviors.
In practice, this means that people motivated by wildly different value sets, cultural expectations, theological symbols, religious practices, and moral codes may engage members with targeted practices of undisclosed sex-shaming, staged mysticism, and shock therapies to produce forced compliance—all to stop sexually addictive behaviors.
For people whos select the SAA community as their Higher Power , what the group chooses for them becomes divine commandment, the divine will. The majority vote becomes their God.
Some members of the SAA circle never escape the conclusion—produced via collective gaslighting—that their shocking humiliation was divinely ordained. They remain bonded by program trauma to the very false impression that God sanctioned a betrayal of their soul in order to heal them of their free will and better judgment.
They may even join in the collective ritual of gaslighting others, of gaslighting and fracturing other souls, seeing themselves as part of that pseudo-divine collective, inflicting the will of this lower-order god on newcomers.
This is one reason members are pressured to submit to the wisdom or will of the group as their Higher Power.
So later, when the group manipulates the individual, and shocks them with ‘confusion swarming,’ (sudden, overwhelming betrayals from multiple sources) the group feels divinely justified.
Like the victim actually asked for it.
Like the group was actually doing the will of God.
Or Satan.
Whichever Higher Power they serve.
