Oranges Dis Apples

“Addictions” Industry Success rate “Flim Flam”ing

Face it – AA does NOT have a five percent success rate!

AA doesn’t HAVE ANY measurable success or failure rate. It cannot because AA does not impose rules on its fellowshippers other than members must be alcoholic. In order to have a measurable sample - participants would all have to qualify as a controlled sampling through RULES! AA cannot, by merit of it’s own Traditions impose any such rules – therefor no sampling can EVER be taken.

Most AA Groups welcome both alcoholics and non-alcoholics to attend their open meetings so to measure success or failure based upon an observation of ‘who still drinks’ out of “all who enter” is asinine.

To attempt to sample AAs ‘successful” or “failed” members would be like measuring the cure rate of a cancer ward among all those who get an MRI there. It should be obvious that not everyone who shows up for a diagnosis is going to recover from a disease they haven’t actually got.

When it talks about AA’s nonexistent “success rate” * the Treatment Industry tries to force “statistics” out of a fellowship that hasn’t got any – or at least not statistics which are comparable to theirs. *

Now, somewhere in the realm of ‘all that is’ AA does have a success rate – even if it is humanly immeasurable – because it’s objective is not to make a success of anything more than trying to carry it’s message. That’s all it wants to do.

It doesn’t want to cause all of its members or meeting attendees to stop drinking. It doesn’t want to cure alcoholism. It doesn’t want to do anything more than present the option of adopting a spiritual way of life to alcoholics – to tell them that their way of life has solved their own alcohol problem and propose that it may also solve the problems of many of those who HAVE alcoholism. The removal of the desire to drink is consequential to the spiritual awakening – not the objective of AA.

This is clearly articulated in AA’s Twelfth Step:

“Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.” (60:0)

There is no Step in AA’s Program which calls for “not drinking”. Not drinking is not even a requirement for membership.

AA’s only yardstick to measure its own “success” if you will — is it’s own conscience – where they ask, “Did we try to carry the ‘this’ message?”

It is not “How many people accepted and benefited from it’s message.”

Folks who talk about five percent success rates and compare them to treatment centers that DO measure their successes by how many people have stopped drinking is ludicrous. It’s the orange trying to judge the apple by how much orange juice the apple yields. “Hey you can’t enjoy that delicious apple juice. It has no orange juice in it” – is illogical, nay moronic.

To assuming that AA’s goal must be the same as the treatment industry’s goal is presumptuous – and to not even bother to learn what AA’s purpose is, and to misrepresent it to their own target markets as identical to their own is downright dishonest.

When there is money involved – a “for profit” industry will tend to compete in just such a fashion – by advertising the “We are better than they are” idea, treatment centers tip their hand. That’s fine for Avis and Hertz – but it is abominable for folks who represent their purpose as helping others.

So if we want to look at success and failure rates then let’s keep the focus on those who keep them -not those who do not, cannot keep and have no need to keep them. Only money making enterprises like Treatment Centers and any employer of “Addictions” specialists require such data. They are businesses and businesses need to compete. AA is in competition with no one.

Do you think that a twenty percent “success rate” for a service which costs thirty thousand dollars is a good deal? Would you plunk down twenty or thirty grand for a car with the understanding that there is an eighty percent chance that you will not actually GET the car? – and when you don’t get your car the dealer blames it on you? “You didn’t really WANT it”.

What gall!

It is the Treatment Industry that are the losers in their own race and inventing competitive statistics which do not exist in the attempt to find someone worse than they are is nothing more than unconscionable sales trickery – marketing flim-flam – that ought to be illegal. But they are “Board Certified”, right?

Let’s get real.

Peace,

Danny S

* Back when AA was a tiny fellowship they were able to track their successes a bit. They had a seventy five percent success rate doing what they did. This observation is noted and published in the Big Book, “Alcoholics Anonymous.” In Cleveland, a ninety five percent success rate was observed. There is no reason to believe that that same success rate would not be also correct today – doing what they did — emphasis on ‘doing what they did’

Alcohol hasn’t become any stronger. Men and women haven’t become weaker and human physiques haven’t mutated.

I myself have observed a 100% success rate among those who do what they did and what I do. I have NEVER seen anyone fail who has followed the path of the co-founders – including myself. Tracking my own Group experiences and protegees, I see BETTER results today than the co-founders ever claimed back then.

But I don’t have to worry about being called on the carpet by the medical profession – because frankly Scarlet . . I don’t give a shit. The co-authors may have – but I do not. DJS

Oranges Dis Apples

“Addictions” Industry Success rate “Flim Flam”ing

Face it – AA does NOT have a five percent success rate!

AA doesn’t HAVE ANY measurable success or failure rate. It cannot because AA does not impose rules on its fellowshippers other than members must be alcoholic. In order to have a measurable sample - participants would all have to qualify as a controlled sampling through RULES! AA cannot, by merit of it’s own Traditions impose any such rules – therefor no sampling can EVER be taken.

Most AA Groups welcome both alcoholics and non-alcoholics to attend their open meetings so to measure success or failure based upon an observation of ‘who still drinks’ out of “all who enter” is asinine.

To attempt to sample AAs ‘successful” or “failed” members would be like measuring the cure rate of a cancer ward among all those who get an MRI there. It should be obvious that not everyone who shows up for a diagnosis is going to recover from a disease they haven’t actually got.

When it talks about AA’s nonexistent “success rate” * the Treatment Industry tries to force “statistics” out of a fellowship that hasn’t got any – or at least not statistics which are comparable to theirs. *

Now, somewhere in the realm of ‘all that is’ AA does have a success rate – even if it is humanly immeasurable – because it’s objective is not to make a success of anything more than trying to carry it’s message. That’s all it wants to do.

It doesn’t want to cause all of its members or meeting attendees to stop drinking. It doesn’t want to cure alcoholism. It doesn’t want to do anything more than present the option of adopting a spiritual way of life to alcoholics – to tell them that their way of life has solved their own alcohol problem and propose that it may also solve the problems of many of those who HAVE alcoholism. The removal of the desire to drink is consequential to the spiritual awakening – not the objective of AA.

This is clearly articulated in AA’s Twelfth Step:

“Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.” (60:0)

There is no Step in AA’s Program which calls for “not drinking”. Not drinking is not even a requirement for membership.

AA’s only yardstick to measure its own “success” if you will — is it’s own conscience – where they ask, “Did we try to carry the ‘this’ message?”

It is not “How many people accepted and benefited from it’s message.”

Folks who talk about five percent success rates and compare them to treatment centers that DO measure their successes by how many people have stopped drinking is ludicrous. It’s the orange trying to judge the apple by how much orange juice the apple yields. “Hey you can’t enjoy that delicious apple juice. It has no orange juice in it” – is illogical, nay moronic.

To assuming that AA’s goal must be the same as the treatment industry’s goal is presumptuous – and to not even bother to learn what AA’s purpose is, and to misrepresent it to their own target markets as identical to their own is downright dishonest.

When there is money involved – a “for profit” industry will tend to compete in just such a fashion – by advertising the “We are better than they are” idea, treatment centers tip their hand. That’s fine for Avis and Hertz – but it is abominable for folks who represent their purpose as helping others.

So if we want to look at success and failure rates then let’s keep the focus on those who keep them -not those who do not, cannot keep and have no need to keep them. Only money making enterprises like Treatment Centers and any employer of “Addictions” specialists require such data. They are businesses and businesses need to compete. AA is in competition with no one.

Do you think that a twenty percent “success rate” for a service which costs thirty thousand dollars is a good deal? Would you plunk down twenty or thirty grand for a car with the understanding that there is an eighty percent chance that you will not actually GET the car? – and when you don’t get your car the dealer blames it on you? “You didn’t really WANT it”.

What gall!

It is the Treatment Industry that are the losers in their own race and inventing competitive statistics which do not exist in the attempt to find someone worse than they are is nothing more than unconscionable sales trickery – marketing flim-flam – that ought to be illegal. But they are “Board Certified”, right?

Let’s get real.

Peace,

Danny S

* Back when AA was a tiny fellowship they were able to track their successes a bit. They had a seventy five percent success rate doing what they did. This observation is noted and published in the Big Book, “Alcoholics Anonymous.” In Cleveland, a ninety five percent success rate was observed. There is no reason to believe that that same success rate would not be also correct today – doing what they did — emphasis on ‘doing what they did’

Alcohol hasn’t become any stronger. Men and women haven’t become weaker and human physiques haven’t mutated.

I myself have observed a 100% success rate among those who do what they did and what I do. I have NEVER seen anyone fail who has followed the path of the co-founders – including myself. Tracking my own Group experiences and protegees, I see BETTER results today than the co-founders ever claimed back then.

But I don’t have to worry about being called on the carpet by the medical profession – because frankly Scarlet . . I don’t give a shit. The co-authors may have – but I do not. DJS

"Credentials" – Who are the REAL DEAL People?

Many Treatment center staffers give big lip service to our Big Books Twelve Step Program – but how many of them are speaking from an experience they have actually HAD? I have to wonder.

Many “Addictions Counselors” rewrite the steps (Usually only the first three) and mold them into new forms and formats – you know . . . Xeroxed “Handouts” that can be used in group sessions and such – supplemented with Internet materials from all sources except the Big Book.

Anyone with experience with the actual Program can look at those materials and weep. They are garbage – not even resembling the Big Book experience and directions. They are interpretations, reinterpretations and downright perversions. IMPOSTERS.

I worked at a place called Gosnold here on the POD. (See link) It’s pretty much all there is on the POD and as far as treatment facilities go, Gosnold is a big fish in a tiny pond – but there’s more food in that pond than you can imagine.

Cape Cod is after all a beautiful peninsula strewn with quaint drinking villages that has a severe fishing problem.

Since most of the AA Program in the Big Book invalidates their “treatment” methods most Treatment Centers are always on the lookout for anyone who is familiar with the Big Book so they can prevent them from speaking to their clients on “incoming speaking commitments” or even worse – getting “On-staff”. Our types are very bad for business.

It took them all of two weeks to figure out that I was “One of those” (“Those” typically have more experience in successfully helping others to recover than do the treatment center personnel.) - and of course I got canned.
_______________________________________________________________________________

Here is a guy employed at a twenty eight day treatment facility – telling people about AAs Twelve Steps – and literally knows NOTHING about them.
_________________________________________________________________________________

While at this facility I read one of the senior counselors handouts on Step One. It was unrecognizable as Step One.Three quarters of it was an opinion about Step Two! I was shocked! It was absolute crap that he had written himself.

So now here is a guy, employed at a twenty eight day treatment facility – telling people about AAs Twelve Steps – and he literally knows NOTHING about them – thinks he does – and has convinced others that he does, simply because he’s been sober and licensed for so many years. And there’s no one to check on him because THEY DON’T KNOW EITHER!

I can’ think of a worse tragedy in that deal.

Addiction Rehabilitation services are not cheap. Facilities like this charge ten to thirty thousand dollars for a single stint – and when it doesn’t work, blame the client. It is outrageous.

Many “clients” finance these charges on credit cards and secure loans by putting liens on their houses or relatives homes. Distraught relatives are often forced by “Love” to withdraw bucks out of their retirement funds in order to come up with the dough.

How sad is this – and Gosnold is not an isolated case. These are people (Not only staffers at Gosnold but at treatment facilities all over the country) who individually kill more people each year, on their own, than Charles Manson ever did. Manson only killed nine people on two occaiisions.

These counselors are in DIRECT contact with perhaps a dozen “Clients” each month. Every day that they are in contact with a real alcoholic is another “occassion” fro them.

I realize that I do have a penchant for hyperbole. I am a writer – but this is no exaggeration. It is THAT BAD. These folks are often lauded for their work, receive weekly paychecks for it, and are known to bask in their own “Charity” for working for such low wages considering all they “Good” they do.

The good news about treatment centers is that many clients DO have a problem with alcohol and drugs but CAN probably stop without the “Real Deal” anyway – if only they will – and can learn some good Rehab “tricks“.

Perhaps you have heard some of the tricks: Having a plan, keeping in a structured environment, (“I need structure”) staying away from “Slippery places”, sharing their problems at meetings, going to lots of meetings (Sometimes three or four a day – what a life huh?) The centers teach them that stuff. But pity the real alcoholic that falls into their domain for whom the only solution is a spiritual awakening.

Professional Jealousy against “We” who actually try and often succeed in carry the message to the alcoholic is rampant. The “Johnny Come Latelies“* - and that’s what the treatment industry is – are doing all they can to discredit AA. I get press releases every day about non-spiritual and “non-twelve step” approaches to alcoholism and AA is getting a huge bashing in these efforts and in the press. Don’t think this isn’t all intentional.

“There’s money in them thar hills!”

There are always exceptions. And in that respect there are some GOOD TREATMENT CENTERS. But there are a HELL of a lot of really bad ones. There are some exceptional counselors out there. They operate under the radar of their employers for as long as they can. Some wind up in private practice. God bless them. They must take a lot of heat! Their jobs are exceeding more difficult than the well-meaning but misinformed, middle-of-the-road based solutions “Addictons counselor“ who hangs a certificate, collect a salary and lies by telling people that he is “Pro AA” but “a drug is a drug is a drug”, and and unwittingly put alcoholics into the dirt. He is not “Pro AA” – he is “Pro-meetings” and “meetings” ain’t the AA Program. The Twelve Steps are.

WHAT NERVE!
If you want to really get sick to your stomach then have a look at this news article Headline.

You will freak. Are there REALLY people out there calling themselves “AA Counselors“?

Peace,

Danny S

* “Alcoholics Anonymous” (1939) was written and it’s Step were being practiced at a time when doctors were routinely committing our type of alcoholics – the hopeless variety – to asylums to “Solve” the problem. Some solve.

There’s Just No Denying It

Modern psychology uses the term “Denial” which many of us are surprised to learn isn’t even in the Big Book. It is thrown around the rooms so much one would think it is.

So is there something akin to “denial” that fits alcoholics? I am happy to report that there is – and it is MORE fitting. It is a term which carries a bit more gravity – and is more fitting to most alcoholics than a size ten shoe.

The term is “Delusional” – and yes that IS in the Big Book. There is an inside joke amongst some of us that, “Denial is for Al-Anons. Alcoholics are DELUSIONAL”. LMAO!

No offense to Al-Anons. Most people I hang with in AA LOVE Al-Anon – me included.

If the difference between the two words escapes you now – just think of someone you know, say a parent who thinks their bratty little kid is the most well behaved kid in the school and just can’t understand why all the teachers give him a C in conduct. That’s denial.

Now think of the parent who thinks their bratty little kid is the most well behaved kid in the school can’t understand why all the teachers give him a C in conduct and is taking the matter to the Supreme Court because little Tommy is actually “in training” for the Oval Office . That’s delusion and now you get the idea.

There are two lines in “Alcoholics Anonymous” that acknowledges the phenomenon of folks not being willing to admit to the BOTH conditions of alcoholism which characterize the real alkie, “Most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows.” (30:0)

Even alcoholics don’t like to admit that there is something different about their bodies (ALLERGY) and their minds (OBSESSION) than other people.

Modern psychology has done a good job of getting folks to believe that their brains may need an overhaul and of course it stands to reason they would concentrate in that area – they are licensed brain mechanics.

But it is NOT in their best interests to embrace the allergy theory because to do so would admit that their treatments are incomplete for the real alcoholic. That is VERY bad for business.

But only AA tries to show where the body is also different – and therefore we have no outside support in this area. Well not until such time as treatment for the allergy becomes profitable to them. In the mean time people are unwilling to admit to BOTH conditions because they aren’t LEARNING of both conditions

They “called” it – seventy two years ago – and folks today are still as unwilling to admit to what we call the “real alcoholic” and can only help those for whom brain medicines and behavior modification therapies have efficacy. They cannot help the real alcoholic recover. (And consequently invented the absurd and historically untrue notion that alcoholics can NEVER recover)

As someone who finally became open-minded and willing to learn from AA I became as convinced as convinced can be since the descriptions of those two conditions so closely paralleled my own experience that I was able to use the Program of recovery fashioned out of ages old spiritual practices, customized specifically for people like me – BY people like me. And I know form my won experience that not only can most alcoholics recover, but they can do so without the help of the profiteers.

AA ARE the professionals when it comes to alcoholism. Medical Science, while it has its value, however limited, are the Jonnie-come-latelys in the field. They were left behind in 1935 when a Stockbroker and a Butt Doctor got together and started the wholesale distribution of a solution that worked for them and now millions of others. And modern science haven’t caught up yet, despite their trying and now their lying.

Peace,

Danny S

There’s Just No Denying It

Modern psychology uses the term “Denial” which many of us are surprised to learn isn’t even in the Big Book. It is thrown around the rooms so much one would think it is.

So is there something akin to “denial” that fits alcoholics? I am happy to report that there is – and it is MORE fitting. It is a term which carries a bit more gravity – and is more fitting to most alcoholics than a size ten shoe.

The term is “Delusional” – and yes that IS in the Big Book. There is an inside joke amongst some of us that, “Denial is for Al-Anons. Alcoholics are DELUSIONAL”. LMAO!

No offense to Al-Anons. Most people I hang with in AA LOVE Al-Anon – me included.

If the difference between the two words escapes you now – just think of someone you know, say a parent who thinks their bratty little kid is the most well behaved kid in the school and just can’t understand why all the teachers give him a C in conduct. That’s denial.

Now think of the parent who thinks their bratty little kid is the most well behaved kid in the school can’t understand why all the teachers give him a C in conduct and is taking the matter to the Supreme Court because little Tommy is actually “in training” for the Oval Office . That’s delusion and now you get the idea.

There are two lines in “Alcoholics Anonymous” that acknowledges the phenomenon of folks not being willing to admit to the BOTH conditions of alcoholism which characterize the real alkie, “Most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows.” (30:0)

Even alcoholics don’t like to admit that there is something different about their bodies (ALLERGY) and their minds (OBSESSION) than other people.

Modern psychology has done a good job of getting folks to believe that their brains may need an overhaul and of course it stands to reason they would concentrate in that area – they are licensed brain mechanics.

But it is NOT in their best interests to embrace the allergy theory because to do so would admit that their treatments are incomplete for the real alcoholic. That is VERY bad for business.

But only AA tries to show where the body is also different – and therefore we have no outside support in this area. Well not until such time as treatment for the allergy becomes profitable to them. In the mean time people are unwilling to admit to BOTH conditions because they aren’t LEARNING of both conditions

They “called” it – seventy two years ago – and folks today are still as unwilling to admit to what we call the “real alcoholic” and can only help those for whom brain medicines and behavior modification therapies have efficacy. They cannot help the real alcoholic recover. (And consequently invented the absurd and historically untrue notion that alcoholics can NEVER recover)

As someone who finally became open-minded and willing to learn from AA I became as convinced as convinced can be since the descriptions of those two conditions so closely paralleled my own experience that I was able to use the Program of recovery fashioned out of ages old spiritual practices, customized specifically for people like me – BY people like me. And I know form my won experience that not only can most alcoholics recover, but they can do so without the help of the profiteers.

AA ARE the professionals when it comes to alcoholism. Medical Science, while it has its value, however limited, are the Jonnie-come-latelys in the field. They were left behind in 1935 when a Stockbroker and a Butt Doctor got together and started the wholesale distribution of a solution that worked for them and now millions of others. And modern science haven’t caught up yet, despite their trying and now their lying.

Peace,

Danny S

Success and Failure of AA

In the past I have been guilty of using statistics to make my case in favor of the efficacy of AA. Sorry.

The numbers I have used are not the numbers proffered by the co-authors of the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous. Those I do not refute. We did have a seventy-five percent success rate back in the day – before the fellowship became infiltrated with the present population of interlopers and uninformed “meeting makers”.

It is just the currently and often quoted success rate of the Fellowship that I have come to question.

You have to be careful of statistics. I served as a lobbyist in Wash. DC when I was a PR practitioner for a major company back in the 70s – and I can tell you that statistics can and are used to promote ideas that can either be true or not. (Remember the old” 9 out 10 dentists recommend Crest”?) The statistics for AA that are used can be easy to manipulate depending on whether you are Pro or Con AA as a whole. And they are.

Remember that there are thousands of practitioners of alternative “addictions” treatments out there who CHARGE or get paid for their services and are extremely prejudiced AGAINST the fellowship of AA because AA takes business away from them.

AA CAN be seen by these people as having an atrocious failure rate of probably 90% or so. But that is ONLY if they count everyone who walks through the doors. Not everyone who walks through the door (i) is qualified for AAs solution, (ii) actually adopts AAs solution even if they are.

For example: Say I have some physical symptoms that also happen to be those experienced by those afflicted with lung cancer – perhaps “Coughing blood” – well, I can walk into a cancer hospital and say, “I have cancer” but unless I actually receive a real diagnosis of cancer I might walk away, still coughing blood, still suffering from something ELSE.

THAT could be- And often is – counted by those (A competitor) with an axe to grind against my cancer hospital as a failure to successfully treat my cancer.

But the truth is I haven’t GOT cancer, so then I cannot very well recover from it, can I? No one has EVER recovered from ANY malady they didn’t’ actually have! And that includes alcoholism.

Yet by using ME and millions like me in the count, the “success rate” can be falsely made to appear very low. It is immensely dishonest, inaccurate and unfair isn’t it?

Or how about someone who indeed DOES have cancer, comes to the hospital and refuses the treatment? Instead this sufferer just hangs out at the cancer ward for the emotional support and felling of “belonging” that the presence of fellow sufferers offer. He will succumb to his illness for not taking his medicines. If someone doesn’t like my cancer ward – maybe someone who also gets “paid” to treat sufferers –they might be inclined by their prejudice to also count THIS person as a failure – but again – it is not true, because he was “non-compliant” – never embraced and took the complete treatment.

AA is FULL of these types and including them in “rating” the efficacy of AA is highly unscientific and produces a ridiculously skewed and inaccurate statistic.

With the millions of people be sent to the “cancer ward” of AA these days by misdiagnosing treatment center counselors and ignorant courts – the unscientific failure rate of AA is grossly overstated.

Personally I have NEVER seen a real alcoholic who follows the path detailed in the Book, Alcoholics Anonymous fail. Not once! Not yet.

So when you see these exaggerated “Success and Failure” rates of AA – just keep this in mind.

From my experience, with the men I work with – the Twelve Steps of AA has a 100% success rate. In fact my own group has a recorded and verified “success” rate of 83%! And that includes all members, not only those with whom I have personally worked. Sounds good right? But I have included only those who members who vocally qualified as real alcoholics and who didn’t “Drop out” of the Twelve Step Program while staying solely for the meetings.

Peace,

Danny S

Alcoholism Treatment in the US

IN A NUTSHELL

When businesses such as rehab centers or anyone who receives funding or compensation to counsel and treat “Alcoholics” attempt to expand their “Market” by being inclusive of ANYONE who simply “Drinks too much” they make a lot of money!

They are compelled through profit motive to label people as “Alcoholic” even though these paying or subsidized “Clients” may be mere non-alcoholic “Hard drinkers” or Alcohol “Abusers”

For example: If I claimed to have a treatment for diabetes, I would make more money and have more “Customers” for my “cure” if I could re-define “DIABETES” as a condition that includes “Anyone who eats too much sugar” regardless of their bodys ability to metabolize sugar and the existence of diabetes in that person. Now I get to include a much larger market in my business plan – I can fill my facilities much easier – AND I can promote my artificially inflated “Success rate” because I am apparently successfully treating people of “Diabetes” who never HAD diabetes to begin with. I have only convinced them that they had it. This is the oldest snake oil scam in the world – only now on a grand scale.

Compound this situation with the idea that I REALLY do not HAVE a cure for diabetes, but it seems so because of my now highly inflated and false “Success rate” and I think you get the idea of what Alcoholism treatment is all about.

And now for a THIRD complication: Suppose I could convince the public at large that not only are “All sugar abuser” diabetic but even folks who abuse coffee/caffeine are Diabetic and in need of my services. Now I have an even more TREMENDOUS market – one I NEVER would have had if I had stuck with REAL DIABETICS – for whom I have no cure anyway.

Now not only am I shamming sugar abusers who are running around saying “I’m a diabetic but Danny’s Diabetic treatment gives me a good life” but REAL DIABETICS seeing these folks living fine lives, get false hope in my phony cure — and die of diabetes for lack of receiving a real treatment from me.

This is a very close approximation of the state of addiction and recovery business in the US today.

Peace,

Danny S

Real diabetics are the alcoholics, hard drinkers are the sugar abusers and the coffee/caffeine abusers are the “drug addicts” in the alcoholism recovery field. It is a real mess!

Lonely? Take Up A Hobby – Like AA!

A great lot of treatment center “Clients” are able to be helped through the psychological counseling offered through treatment centers. Since such a small percentage of those who have a problem with alcohol are actually real alcoholics, fitting AA’s “Description of the alcoholic”, the empowerment methods taught to them in rehab facilities are probably quite helpful.

A problem only surfaces when a real alcoholic tries those same methods which promote “Human aid” as a solution. Real alcoholics are beyond “Human aid” (25:3) and since treatment centers do not QUALIFY the real alcoholic, differentiating us from “Alcohol abusers” we get taught to try methods which history and experience with working with real alcoholics has taught us will not work. The problem can be attributed to money. My wife Nancy is not an alcoholic. No way. No how. She can never become one. She’s just not wired the right way.

But if she walked into a local rehab here with a check for $10k- $30k – she’d be labeled “ALCOHOLIC” or “DRUG ADDICT” or whatever she wanted in a New York minute. The prevailing attitude is “If you can pay – your one!”

It would be a great experiment to expose this sham one day – I’d love to- if I had some extra cash to let go of until the lawsuit settled. Maybe one day.

Unfortunately a similar situation exists in our Fellowship too – where the motive apparently is not money, but some other unhealthy need. I know that the same would happen if she walked into an AA meeting. Apparently we AAs LOVE to pronounce individuals as alcoholic (Despite what our Big Book tells us). She’d be told “If you’re here on a Friday night – you must be an alcoholic” and “No one gets here by accident” or other such hypno-speak.

Then she’d make a bunch of new friends, get some socialization, and AA meetings would become her new hobby. Most of the meetings I attend here on Cape Cod are attended by AA hobbyists – not alcoholics who are suffering from an illness that only a spiritual awakening can conquer.

Peace,

Danny S

Recovery Hurdle Blurs Vision

Around the globe there is abundance – some say an overabundance – of recovery organizations, treatment faculties and books which market “Recovery Models” and theories designed to sell sobriety to desperate people with alcohol and drug problems.

Still ninety percent of all alcoholics like me will die alcoholic deaths and twenty five percent of the suicides in the United States will be attributed to alcoholism.

These organizations are failing and they are killing people as they do. Most real alkies like me, suffer needlessly or die from untreated alcoholism, never knowing why it is that we just cannot “Get it”.

I am one of those who finally “Got it” and for the past eight years it has been my passion to tell my story with dogged determination, intent upon smashing home the powerful message of successful recovery into the hearts and minds of the American consciousness.

But there is a hurdle. It is called controversy.

It proliferates in treatment centers, the medical profession – and yes, it has even been carried into in the once effective Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous – an organization that at one time had a seventy-five to ninety percent success rate. And they have shot themselves in the foot by ignoring their own Traditions and their own method of recovery outlined in the book from which they derive their name.

The controversy stems from concerted efforts to ignore and quash the enormously important distinctions between the heavy-problem drinker and the real alcoholic.

There are many people – entire industries, professional and otherwise – who hold a special interest in keeping the distinctions blurred.

Real alcoholics must learn this distinction or else.

Peace,

Danny S

Relapse "Therapy"

The following comes under the heading of “Relapse” as one of two “therapies” for alcoholism touted outside of the Fellowship of AA.

This is what they think of AA:

Psychotherapy and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy *

Interactional Group Psychotherapy (12-Step Program ). Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), founded in 1935, is an excellent example of interactional group psychotherapy and remains the most well-known program for helping people with alcoholism. It offers a very strong support network using group meetings open seven days a week in locations all over the world. A buddy system, group understanding of alcoholism, and forgiveness for relapses are AA’s standard methods for building self-worth and alleviating feelings of isolation. AA’s 12-step approach to recovery includes a spiritual component that might deter people who lack religious convictions. Prayer and meditation, however, have been known to be of great value in the healing process of many diseases, even in people with no particular religious assignation. AA emphasizes that the “higher power” component of its program need not refer to any specific belief system. Associated membership programs, Al-Anon and Alateen, offer help for family members and friends.” (Source:http://www.anguillanews.com/Healthinfo/alcohol.html)

So this is how AA is presented by “professionals” Does anyone see a problem here? AA is buddy system - that provides group therapy? That’s what the professional think. That’s what they teach their patients – and that’s what we are dealing with when we encounter relapsers being sent to us, once the “treatment money” is exhausted.

Is it no wonder that Step One is so darned difficult to administer and why we really need to look at Step One as a “deprogramming” Step as much as an “admission” step. Relapsers come to us thinking they are doing “the right thing” and if they run into one of us Program People, we are talking a language of powerlessness which is so foreign and contrary to the language guiding their current “hope” that…well, its just so difficult to get them to our side.

I like to remember that it is not the newcomer who is to blame for being so “hardheaded”.

I think I would be too, given a month or sets of months of indoctrination by “treatments” that are so diametrically opposed to what we in AA KNOW works.

This is compounded by plenty of AA’s within our Fellowship who have been schooled in exactly the same way, learning exactly the same things. It is easy to see why newcomers gravitate toward those people and what is already familiar and middle-of-the-road, isn’t it?………..

…………and we who rely upon God to solve our problem are viewed as oddballs in our own Fellowship?

Peace,

Danny S

*The other “therapy” is called “Psychotherapy and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy” which will be touched on in a later article – Part 2.