If I opened up the waters of my entire memory banks, I could turn the flood myth into a reality
Chiropractic, acupuncture and homeopathy were very common amongst my JW friends. Questioning those practices often led to similar emotional responses as if I had questioned the authority of the GB themselves. "It's from Jehovah!" They say. One particular alternative medicine "doctor" was very popular because he was, himself, a JW. I don't know what the actual connection was, but I was told that "Bethel sent" brothers and sisters to him. The friends would tell me about how he miraculously cured absolutely everything, by using all sorts of thoroughly debunked pseudoscience. It was embarrassing and depressing.
Several friends tried to get into multi-level marketing schemes, expecting that Jehovah would bless them with success and they could set their own part time hours and pioneer. Sometimes, they'd try to push the product on other JWs despite clear direction not to do so. It seems they were desperate to have success despite having no verifiable skills.
In similar vain, there is a huge racket for need-greaters to use phony academic credentials, including diploma mill degrees, in order to secure jobs and maintain visas. Thing is, many of them actually believe that their degrees are legit. Often, people who get these phony degrees know they're being dishonest, but these JWs, somehow, are completely clueless.
Lastly, for now, allow me to recount something a seemingly intelligent sister once told me. She told me that she had heard a talk where the speaker made a linguistics argument against evolution. The speaker explained that older languages used to be "richer" and more "complex" than current languages, demonstrating that human beings are actually devolving instead of evolving.
I kept quiet, knowing how well any objection would have been taken. I wanted to scream "THAT'S NOT HOW LINGUISTICS WORKS, THAT'S NOT HOW EVOLUTION WORKS AND THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS DEVOLVING!!!!!"
*sigh* Why was it not obvious? I guess I'm not one to talk. Despite knowing that things were not as they seemed, it wasn't always obvious to me that this religion can't be the truth. Also, when I was a teenager, I believed in the moon landing hoax conspiracy and was a devoted student of herbal remedies.
At least I can say I grew out of it all, and learned tremendously from my mistakes.