Tuesday Group pt. 1

How do I explain in a concise way my experience of being in a no-named cultic/ high control- high demand group of AA from April of 2020- February of 2024? How do I explain that I joined it because I thought it was a safe haven from the previously cultic and abusive AA group and sponsor I had from July of 2016- April 2020? I really feel at a loss for how to share this. It’s been nearly a year since I left, and it’s taken me about that long to feel brave enough to talk about it.

My previous Substack posts were of an experience that I left over 5 years ago. I’ve had time to process it, and consider all of it and come to conclusions and be sure about them. But this? I left, and all I felt for a really long time was heartbroken, and utterly lost. All I knew when I left on February 13 of 2024 was that things were really unhealthy, and that I tried everything I could to try and change that, but I couldn’t. But what was unhealthy? Why couldn’t I change it? The short answer is, my relationship with P, and because it takes two people wanting to change in order for things to get better. What I realized at the very end, was that she wasn’t an altruistic helper and my closest person, as I had spent the previous 4.5 years believing. I finally saw that she was a narcissist, running a group she carefully curated to serve her need for love, admiration, and control. What I thought I had joined— a group set on healing and spiritual awakening, ended up not being what I thought it was. I had found myself in the same place I had nearly 5 years prior, only it was a different flavor, and harder to detect.

So, I guess I’ll start at the beginning.

When Mary (now called L) and I stopped working together as sponsor and sponsee, I had only one intention, and it was to finish the 12 steps so that I didn’t drink and die. I was so convinced of that happening, and so sure that the way that we were doing the steps was the only right way to do them, from so many times of L saying,

« Not everyone makes it doing the steps this way. » that I sought out P to finish them with.

What was so significant about P, is that she was the one who took L through the steps, the very way that she was taking me through. P was the source of it all, and I wanted to do this right, because I believed that my life was on the line.

I remember one of the first conversations that P and I had on the phone, very soon after L and I stopped working together sometime around August of 2019. She asked me what my experience of going through the steps has been, and she went step by step asking me to clarify exactly what I did and how it affected me… Based on my answers, she determined that something was missed, and that’s the reason I was still unhappy and considered drinking from time to time. She explained that in a truly recovered person the obsession to drink has been removed. And since I had reached step 10 with L, and still had the obsession come up, something was missed in the very first step. So, I’d need to start them over in order to get what was missed.

Shortly after this phone call, I attended her exclusive, invite-only Big Book study on a Tuesday night in Agoura Hills. I rented a car to go, since I didn’t have a car at the time. I drove from Santa Monica, up the PCH to Malibu Canyon, and then to Mulholland HWY. I drove the winding road, anxious the entire way. Afraid because all I could think of was when L told me that if I ever worked with P, I wouldn’t make it. Her insinuation was that I would drink and die. And having had her as the authority of my life for the last year an a half, a large part of me felt like I was running on self will, driving toward my death. But P had been so kind, and already established such a sense of trust with me, that I was able to quiet those fears enough to keep going. Then, on a turn of the highway, I drove past a private street named, April Rd. Being a huge believer in signs from God at the time, I pulled over and took a photo of the sign. That was the confirmation I needed that I was on the right path, and that at least going to the meeting was going to be ok.

When I arrived, I drove up a long, steep driveway, and at the top was a stunning chapel overlooking the Agoura Hills. It was golden hour, and the height of summer. The air was still and just starting to cool. I parked, and waited in my car until I saw more people park and walk into the chapel.

When I walked in, I said hello to the people inside and introduced myself, saying I had been invited by C. I asked if I could help with anything. I helped with the chair set up, and then I sat down.

More people filtered into the chapel, and because I had never met P in person before, I wasn’t sure what she even looked like. With each woman who walked in, I wondered if they could be her. Then a tall brunette woman walked in, leather bound Big Book in hand, and she set it down in the chair next to me and introduced herself to me as P.

I had heard about her for so long now, and imagined what she would look like. I always thought maybe she’d be a round bodied, grandma type. Being southern, and having a reputation of being entirely selfless in this spiritual work, it just made sense to me. So, I was shocked to see a beautiful, 5’8 woman, not grandmotherly in the least. She had a simultaneously calm and electric energy about her. And her eyes were wide open and dark brown. I felt uneasy upon meeting her, like I was meeting a celebrity. I wanted her to love me immediately, but I didn’t want her to know that and for me to come across as too desperate, so I kept our conversation short, and I was using my most polite tone. I said it was good to meet her, and we made a little small talk, and then she went to speak to a few other people before sitting down next to me, and when it came to be around 7:30p, the meeting started.

P said a little something as a disclaimer at the start of it,

« This is not a regular AA meeting, however we will be reading out of the Big Book, sharing our experience strength and hope. We will now say the third step prayer, followed by a moment of silence. God… »

we all said the prayer together,

« …I offer myself to Thee, to build with me and do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties that… »

I noticed that P said « so that » which was different than the written prayer,

« …victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy power, Thy love, and Thy way of life. May I do Thy will always. »

Then the silence… I peaked to my right to see P silent and smiling, eyes closed. Then she took a deep breath and said in a long drawn out way,

« Okay… » signaling the moment of meditation was over, and the reading was to begin.

She opened her book and started where they left off the week before, reading a passage, and pausing to explain the meaning of the text along the way. She had such a deep, and slow cadence to her southern voice, and everything important she shared was emphasized with a tap of her hand in her Big Book.

Then she finished her share, and it was time for everyone else to share for a few minutes on what was read. We went around the room, and what struck me most about the shares, was that everyone seemed to share the same message— a deeply transformative experience as a result of doing the 12 steps out of the Big Book. Everyone had their own story, but no one deviated from The Message and it really freaked me out at first. I didn’t really know what a cult was at the time, but I remember thinking… this feels like a cult.

When it came time for me to share, I felt extremely insecure and nervous. I felt an implied pressure to share like everyone else, but I also felt broken, completely lost, and also a little freaked out, so I just said my name, that I’m alcoholic, and shared that I had just stopped working with my sponsor and was wanting to finish the steps. I may have cried, but I can’t remember.

When the meeting ended, I hung around for a few minutes talking to people, and wanted to say goodbye to P and thank her for letting me be at the meeting, but she was talking to so many people. So, I just quickly interrupted her and said,

« I just wanted to say bye, and thanks for having me. » and then started toward the car.

As I did, P yelled to me,

« See you again next week? » and I said,

« I DON'T KNOW… MAYBE »

She clocked my fear and asked,

« … Are you scared or something? » and I said,

« A little!!! » in a nervous laughter, and got into my car and left.

I was reeling the whole drive home. I didn’t know what I had just experienced. On the one hand, I felt surrounded by calm and peace and kindness that felt unexplainable, and on the other, something about it felt so off. I teetered between the two perceptions for the next week, and by the following Tuesday, since I had been well-trained to believe that the disease I suffered from is centered in the mind, I decided that I couldn’t trust my own thinking about it. I reasoned that my hesitance to go back, and my gut reaction that something felt off, was simply just my alcoholism trying to take me out.

Also between that first and second meeting I attended, I called P and asked her if she would take me through the steps, but she told me she was too busy taking others through the work, and pointed me to work with her sponsee, LC. I was bummed because I had already formed a connection with P, and wanted to work with her. But if she said LC would be able to help me, I trusted her and did as she suggested.

The issue I found myself in however, was that I was so used to having an unhealthy codependent relationship with L, that when I went into the connection with LC, and she didn’t reciprocate with daily check-in’s, directions and lectures, I didn’t know what to do. I was so trained to be a very obedient sponsee— that doing so made me a good AA. So I thought she was a bad sponsor, and opted not to work with her. I tried doing the work with 2 more of P’s sponsees, while continuing to attend the Tuesday night meeting, but both didn’t feel good to me. I asked P between each sponsorship ending if she could sponsor me, and she said she couldn’t each time. When I stopped working with the third of P’s sponsee’s, P told me I could no longer attend the meeting, since I didn’t have a sponsor in the group, and so I went back to doing PG full time.

It was a hard period in my life where I couldn’t tell what was and wasn’t healthy connection with a sponsor. I was blindly navigating the aftermath of the narcissistic abuse I had experienced from L the previous year and a half, and all the effects it had on me. With no education around any of it, I was running on my own instinct and old patterns. I believe what has been said— that we repeat our patterns until we are ready to let them go.

A pattern I had since I was little was finding female mentors and trying to get from them the guidance and love I didn’t get from my own mother. It was an unconscious pattern for much of my life. But by the time I ended things with L, I was fully aware of that pattern. I recognized that my tendency to attach in that way created a deep dependence on her, and that’s what allowed her to have so much control over me. I was really ready and wanting to change that, but I didn’t have the tools and education to. All I had was the desire, and so I tried my best to find a sponsor that I didn’t think walked on water. I found one in Pacific Group, and I liked her because she was kind to me, and seemed down to earth. She was an old-timer in PG, so she didn’t hold the belief that the 12 steps were a cure-all. What I was required to do instead was to attend all of the PG functions, and to be of service. That was the way of recovery I was being taught under her guidance, and I tried my best to go along with that new- to- me ideology.

Then when the pandemic hit, and we were all in isolation, I went into a depression and I started to feel like all the magic had been drained out of life. I was going to so many AA zoom meetings a day, and was on the phone with other members all day long, but I felt that no matter what I did, nothing made me feel better. I felt lost. I had become agoraphobic, body-obsessed, and I fell into despair.

So one day in April 2020 I reached out to my then sponsor, K, and asked her if we could do the steps out of the Big Book. I told her I believed that I was suffering spiritually and that if we did the steps together, maybe I would be ok. I still had that idea so deeply stored in my psyche from L & P. But her response to me was,

« Your expectations of what the steps will give you are too high, and you need to lower them. The only thing the steps promise is that you’ll never drink again. » and I remember being so discouraged by her reply.

The one thing that had brought me hope in the last few years was the idea that this was the solution to my problems, and I thought, If this is what life is going to be like sober— that I just won’t drink, but I will be miserable and void of all magic— then what’s the point of any of this?

I got off the phone with K and I immediately called P. I was crying and I told her what K told me, and I asked,

« Is that true? » in full hysterics.

Then P responded with emphasis that it was absolutely NOT true, and she started reciting from memory, promises from the Big Book that each step, once completed, carries for the recovering, and eventually recovered alcoholic.

Like in step 3, We felt new power flow in… we began to lose our fear of today, tomorrow, and the hereafter. We were reborn.

Then in step 5, We can look the world in the eye… our fears fall from us.

The infamous step 9 promises, We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness… We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.

But the promises she shared that struck me the most were the step 10 promises, We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically… it just comes! That’s the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality— safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us.

Hearing her recite all of those calmed my fears in the magic way I felt I no longer had access to. I had experienced the same altered state when speaking with her before, where suddenly everything I saw looked more bright and real, and I felt inspired. I asked P then, one more time, if she would please take me through the steps, that I was desperate, and she told me,

« I am taking people through the work right now, but if you can wait a month, and if you can agree to one condition, we can talk about it, and see if it will work. »

So, I agreed to wait a month.

I remember wondering over the next month what her condition would be, but I thought, Whatever it is, I’ll agree to it. This is the closest she’s been to agreeing to work with me of all the times I’ve asked her, so whatever it is, I’ll do it.

What I know now is that narcissists/ cult leaders use this tactic of making you wait, to create a sense of importance and urgency around what they have to offer— making it seem so special and rare that you’re being given the grand opportunity to be let into their circle. It worked wonders on me. I became more convinced and committed over the next 30 days.

When the month had passed, and we had the conversation, I was so desperate to be accepted into her program, and so afraid of being rejected that I had a back-up sponsor ready just in case P deemed me unworthy of being in her crew. Then came the one condition… it was simply, If you have a problem with me or the group, you come to me about it, and not go to anyone else. I couldn’t believe THAT was her condition. It seemed like such a no-brainer! I agreed so quickly, not imagining I would ever have an issue. I was so grateful for the opportunity to recover by doing the steps with HER, that absolutely nothing else mattered but that.

Another hindsight understanding is that what she was really doing there was setting it up so that I would stay quiet and contained, so I didn’t make her or the group look bad. At the time I didn’t see how I ever could, because I believed it, and her to be wholly good. But as the years went on, it became clear why she made me agree to that before being able to join.