The Coffee Conspiracy

Wednesday, August 31, 2005 - dr.bomb

Something which caught my eye at one of the last meetings I attended was that Buchmanites drink a LOT of coffee. I'm not just talking about just a couple people "chain-drinking" cup after cup but at least 75% of the Buchmanites would have a styrofoam cup or a coffee mug in front of them and consuming that specific beverage.

A.A. lore considers the lone coffee pot a sacramental icon. In fact, within the "Conference Approved" book A.A. Comes Of Age there's a section of photographs which includes the much revered coffee pot used at the Akron (Oxford) Group meeting. It happens that there is much more to the story as to why coffee and sweets are to be found at every meeting short of tradition.

Coffee contains a LOT of caffeine and the majority of meeting attendees drink the high test stuff (tea and decaf coffee is available but in obviously smaller quantities). Likewise, the sweets are a source of sugar. Combine the two together along with some public confession and a few resentments and you have all the ingredients for one to feel very spiritually awake during a meeting. Likewise this coffee isn't just your typical pot. At larger meetings its brewed in gigantic percolators which have the additional action of extracting more coffee solids and caffeine from the grounds. Do you feel that "spiritual" energy flowing yet?

Now that's during the meeting. What about afterwards as the caffeine and sugar wears off? That's when the person who drank the coffee and ate the sweets winds up going into withdrawal as the "high" is replaced by the "jitters". Instead of realizing the obvious the cultist believes that his "disease" is acting up and seeks another meeting where the process begins again.

This drug use is blatantly hypocritical when placed in the context of A.A.'s dogma:

"Here is a case in point: One of our friends is a heavy smoker and coffee drinker. There was no doubt he overindulged. Seeing this, and meaning to be helpful, his wife commenced to admonish him about it. He admitted he was overdoing these things, but frankly said that he was not ready to stop. His wife is one of those persons who really feels there is something rather sinful about these commodities, so she nagged, and her intolerance finally threw him into a fit of anger. He got drunk.
Of course our friend was wrong—dead wrong. He had to painfully admit that and mend his spiritual fences. Though he is now a most effective member of Alcoholics Anonymous, he still smokes and drinks coffee, but neither his wife nor anyone else stands in judgment. She sees she was wrong to make a burning issue out of such a matter when his more serious ailments were being rapidly cured."
-- William Griffith Wilson, "The Family Afterward", pp. 135 Alcoholics Anonymous (Third Edition)

Imagine that! So it's okay to be a nicotine addict who isn't ready to stop. Likewise with being a caffeine addict who isn't ready to stop. But get to alcohol and other drugs and it's all just disease symptoms of a very sick person. So it's okay to die from a racing heart attack from all of the coffee and from lung cancer from the smoking. The irony is that's exactly what happened to William Griffith Wilson regarding his vices outside of his abstinence from booze.

And notice how the caffeine and nicotine addict (most likely Wilson himself) considered his wife, someone who cared about his health, as a "nag" regarding his vices. In order to justify his other addictions he threatened, got drunk, and with the smirking satisfaction underneath it all got to see how his own gluttonous behaviour can be used to justify other gluttonous behavior. Obvious SOME drug use is okay as long as it isn't the "unspiritual" vice of alcohol consumption.

For an alleged anti-addiction organization it sure makes no sense regarding drug use of any kind. But then, in reality, it never was anti-addiction. Take away the other vices which serve the purpose of causing withdrawal to be confused with alcoholic "jitters" and you have a chemical enhancement to the indoctrination. If the vices don't serve a purpose within the cult, such as doctor-prescribed medication which can actually help individuals, then they are considered "dangerous" only in the context of A.A.'s own continued existence.

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