Soon afterwards, Kishline admitted that "moderation management is nothing but alcoholics covering up their problem."
Audrey Kishline ended up killing herself in late 2014. This was the end result and ultimate consequence of denying she had a drinking problem and deceiving herself and others that she could drink moderately again: Death. Not only her own death, but the death of two innocent bystanders.
One refrain anti-steppers attempt to make when people point out the consequences of Audrey Kishline lying to herself about her moderate drinking, is that she was in AA when she had her fatal drunken driving episode.
There is no evidence that Audrey ever actively worked an AA program before this tragic incident.
The evidence anti steppers bring up is this: http://archive.is/yDrVt where Audrey finally admits she can not drink moderately to the Moderation Management mailing list; she wrote that "I am now following a different path, and to strengthen my sobriety I am attending Alcoholics Anonymous, but will also attend Women for Sobriety and SMART Recovery. I am sure I can learn much from all of these fine programs."
Did Audrey get a sponsor? How often did Audrey go to meetings? Did she work the program as described in the first 164 pages of the Big Book? Was she serious about the program, or was she just trying to look good to others?
The fact that she was considering other programs when she wrote this sentence indicates that she was not serious about AA. I suspect she was just trying to look good to others.
In fact, let's look at an obituary posted after she killed herself to get more details of her life when she drove drunk like that: http://archive.is/SyhFU
When she wrote the email saying that moderation was not working any more, her drinking was so bad, she was forced by law enforcement to go to a detox program. Not a peep in her email about the fact her drinking was so bad, it was giving her legal problems, The email she sent to the listserv was dishonest, so its claim that Audrey was actively going to AA meetings is, at best, suspect.
The only evidence that Audrey went to even a single AA meeting between the time she wrote the email claiming she was going to AA and the time she killed two people driving drunk is an email which we now know was dishonest.
(Update: The Dateline piece on Audrey's drunk driving has a tiny bit more detail about Audrey's supposed membership in AA between the time she left Moderation Management and that her fateful accident: "The creator of MM was admitting defeat. She checked herself into a detox facility followed up by AA meetings, but she couldn’t play by those rules either. It did not go unnoticed by her 10-year-old daughter. [Kishline said that] 'I would keep falling off the abstinence wagon.' " Again, no details about the number of AA meetings Audrey went to or whether she actually got serious about working the program)
Update #2: Here is how Audrey Kishline described her year-2000 Alcoholics Anonymous supposed attendance in her autobiography Face to Face:
In the two months that followed [after she wrote the email to the Moderation Management list saying she could not moderate her drinking and before her tragic drunk driving accident] I was supposed to be attending AA meetings, abstaining from drinking, and "working the program." I had huge remorse about having become so drunk and calling the police [This refers to the event where she was forcibly put in detox]. Remorse was my motivation this time to get my act together and quit drinking. But the same old cycle I lived for years began to repeat. I'd abstain for a few days and immediately fall off. Each fall was getting worse and worse. It became increasingly harder for me to remain anonymous too. I was easily recognizable when I attended AA, which only added to my discomfort. I never identified myself as anyone other than "Audrey," but lots of people knew exactly who I was.(emphasis in bold like this mine; notes in italics and brackets [like this] added by me to give context)
This is a description of someone who almost never went to AA because they found excuses and justifications not to go, not the story of someone who took AA seriously and worked the 12 steps to the best of their ability. Supposed-to-be-going-to-AA but finding excuses not to go (such as thinking people will recognize and judge them) is not good enough for someone to get sober using the AA program.
