Denying The Description Of The Alcoholic

Has anyone heard a good example of “Our description of the alcohol” lately? I have. Unfortunately is wasn’t in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous – the very place one would think you would here it it most clearly.

I have heard people who THINK they know an alcoholic is. Yet what they describe as being alcoholic doesn’t even come close to the description of the alcoholic in the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous.

That book doesn’t use the modern term “denial” that we hear in the rooms of AA these days BUT it seems to me that unless a person admit that they are alcoholic using AA’s “Description of the alcoholic” then they are still “in denial” in-as-far-as plugging into the AA solution designed solely for THEIR description. Very few people I’ve ever met – (Remember, I work with many newcomers) including myself upon first seeking a solution – have yet to LEARN what an alcoholic is.

Since the first part of Step One is admitting I am alcoholic (Being “powerless over alcohol”) , it as not POSSIBLE to admit that I am something of which I have not even yet learned the definition. Hence a terrific hurdle.

Most people think the hurdle of admission is an ego thing – that once they get through the personal embarrassment of wearing the label and can say, “I’m an alcoholic” it means they’re over it, and therefore cleared to stop drinking by the recovery gods.

That is only because they THINK that they have to admit to being THEIR socially conditioned definition of the alcoholic, – a definition that is usually not sufficient. It might be some mental snapshot of a really bad, anti-social, misfit and bad person, who just happened to choose a destructive method of dealing with life; a “misbehaving” or misdirected person, if you will – but it is a long way from getting to the actual description. They have no idea what is is about them that MAKES them alcoholic.

The public at large fosters this image upon them and professional communities who have not yet discovered or choose to ignore the strides, which the AA co-founders, made when they unwittingly stumbling upon the most accurate definition of the alcoholic that mankind has ever had.

Why would the Treatment Industry “Professionals” accept AA’s “Our description of the alcoholic”?

There’s no money in it for them.

I had a definition in my head of what I “thought” an alcoholic is. Like many people I assumed, through social conditioning, that an alcoholic was someone who just “drinks to much, too often” and therefore can’t reach full human potential; a social eccentric who if only he could DETOX, and then find more socially tolerated ways to deal with his life’s problems, they would be solved.

It may be that they ARE drinking heavily for such reasons, and ARE solely social misfits, but for others like myself, there are OTHER factors well beyond these which in the absence of address, there is no human aid which can help. The socially unfit can simply stop on his or her own, or detox in a controlled environment, then get down to life with the help of a little counseling or maybe even little chemical aid like cannabis or moderation drinking.

But for others, like me, unless I LEARNED what causes an alcoholic of my type to drink, then I could make no progress.

So LEARNING what it is I am saying when I say “I am an alcoholic” had to be done first, and unless one is willing to LEARN and to abandon socially conditioned notions and prejudice which suppose why people over-drink can be set aside, then if I am truly fit the type of alcoholic addressed by AAs Program, then I cannot set about a fix.

So admission to something which we don’t even know what it is we are admitting too, CAN be a problem to taking Step One.

What works for the true socially unprepared individual who does not have a physical allergy to alcohol combined with a mental obsession, never works for someone like me and roughly 10% of all humanity walking the face of the earth.

There is no way out that I’ve found – other than divine intervention of some sort whether through AAs Program or some other spiritual path also leading to God.

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

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