M A
friendthegirl
speedy0314If you’re anything like me (and H[ocus] P[ocus] save you if you are), you’ll be both shocked & amazed to know that ‘The Grapevine’ (The International Journal of Alcoholics Anonymous) gave me the official “thanks, but no thanks” on my submission for publication, “12 Rights For AA New-Comers” (12 Rights For New-Comers To AA/12 Step):
Thank you for your e-mail submission to the AA Grapevine. While I don’t think we’ll be using it, we are grateful for your interest in the magazine and hope you’ll feel free to send us more material in the future. As you can imagine, we receive hundreds of manuscripts every month and many good manuscripts must be turned down because of space limitations. For more information about the Grapevine, its related items, including subscription information, guidelines for submitting articles, and current Calls for Articles, please see our Website: www.aagrapevine.org.
Best wishes,
The Editors
The AA Grapevine magazine
If you’re wondering what the smell coming off the ’shock & amazement’ expressed earlier is, that’s sarcasm. I really was under no illusion that The Grapevine had any interest in publishing anything that might actually empower individual AA members. Still, a man’s gotta do … etcetera, etcetera.
I am curious as to why “The Editors” used the singular ‘I’ followed by the royal ‘we’ in offering up ‘their’ rejection of the material. There go my dreams of conquering the publishing world starting with a by-line from The Grapevine.
In other news …
I went last night to hear author Eric Maisel speak on his new book, “The Atheist’s Way: Living Well Without The Gods”. The talk was sponsored by the local Center For Inquiry chapter and — while a little too top-heavy on the snarkiness toward theism & religion in general for my personal tastes — it was still two hours well spent. You can listen to Maisel talk about his work here: www.pointofinquiry.org.
My ears perked up when Maisel talked about the linguistics of ‘belief’ and how as early as the 19th century academics had identified that it wasn’t the content of the language that was important so much as its ability to be memorable & easily repeated. After all, what does, “God is good” really say about the probability of the existence of [g]od or an objective understanding of ‘goodness’? It’s just a good catch-phrase — kind of like, “Utilize, don’t analyze.” Language and its malleability within the 12-Step experience has long been a hobbyhorse of mine.
One very interesting part of Maisel’s presentation was his suggestion that atheists (existentialists, secular-humanists, non-believers, [fill-in-the-blank]ers) purposefully re-cast mystical language when they are confronted with it. Specifically, he challenged his audience to ask of someone who claims to have had a ’spiritual experience’, “What made that experience meaningful for you?”
The substitution is subtle but does, I think, greatly shift the terms of the discussion.
So I offer an open question to steppers, non-steppers, and all those somewhere in between: Is meaningful experience a fair substitution for spiritual experience? If so, why, and if not, why not?
All input is welcome.
ADDENDUM: All input may indeed be welcome but irrational input will be ridiculed relentlessly for exactly what it is. Now back to our regularly scheduled trolling … .
ADDENDUM II: Thanks so much for all the effluvia, kids. It really was terribly invigorating reading all the commentary on this post … that never actually addressed anything in the post (yes, Cuda, I’m thinking of you). But playtime’s over. Go troll YouTube or ‘help’ people out in Colorado (again, Cuda, it’s all about you). This post is officially closed for business.
Filed under: 12-Step AAll-Stars, AA Terminology, Alternatives to AA, Grapevine, In other news, Mental Health Break, Plain Reason, Propaganda, Sicker than Others, Sobriety, Something Completely Different, Spirituality in AA, powerlessness
That’s too funny. Here’s one right out of the book.”If you want what we have and are ready to go to any length to get it, then you are ready to take certain steps”
Cuda says “If you aren’t willing to go to any length (Which is the 12 Steps and 12 steps only “as they were written”) then go away.
If you are unwilling or unable to accept the program of AA as it was intended, again, go away! Go give your 12 thousand bucks to a rehab center and contribute to their 95% failure rate.
hmmm … .
perhaps i should have written, “all RELEVANT input” or perhaps “all VAGUELY COHERENT input” is welcome.
frankly, “what Cuda says” is dumb, vicious & elitist (in that topsy-turvy, ‘up is down’, ’spirituality equals sobriety’, Cuda and Cuda alone knows the truth big book kind of way).
if you’re an example of a ’spiritual awakening’, i’m happy to remain spiritually asleep.
you really don’t care about any one, do you? has it ever occurred to you that practicing “AA as it was intended” is probably the greatest contributor to that “95% failure rate”?
(what am i saying? it’s not in the big book. if it’s not in the big book, it doesn’t exist. got it.)
thanks for the fish,
speedy
I figured that would set you off but the bottom line is, “Here is what we have to offer. Take it or leave it”.
If anyone want’s something other than what AA has to offer as a “Suggested” program of recovery I suggest they go somewhere else.
Why is that so difficult?
oh great & wonderful oz,
perhaps it’s ‘difficult’ because the “suggested” verbiage is actually IN the big book while you’re “take it or leave it” inference isn’t.
i’m curious, how does it feel to live life without a neo-cortex?
love & tolerance & all that,
speedy
“here are the steps we took as a suggested program of recovery”
To me, and all rational thinking individuals that aren’t scraping all they can to prove a point, that would indicate that there are any number of “programs of recovery” but this what we have done in AA. Therefore, “We suggest it”. because it has worked for us.
I did take the liberty of reading the welcome page and I found that MAs welcome message said the exact same thing I am saying in a different way. Simply put, we both said “If you have a problem with AA, why don’t you go find something you don’t have a problem with.
Read it yourself.
I assume that since you have resorted to insults and name calling from the get go you have run out of ammunition to stand behind your less than spectacular post. Therefore I’ll be checking in from time to time to see if anything comes to you to disprove anything I’ve said.
Cuda
Cuda, I think that too (we agree!) that people who don’t feel that joining a religious organization and following a religion is the way for them to get help with their alcohol abuse or dependence problem should be able to pursue alternatives, but the problem is that 12-step, 12-step facilitation and more 12-step is virtually all that is offered anywhere in the United States. The rehabs that you mention with their 95% failure rates (the same failure rate as AA by the way) are nothing but AA inside a lock-down. The courts send citizens to AA. the VA offers nothing but AA to drink dependent servicemen, or even to servicemen who have become dependent on prescription drugs while being treated by the VA.
That is the problem.
perhaps if there were something qualified with any actual evidence in either of your posts, i’d feel obliged to disprove it (e.g., “take it or leave it”).
perhaps you might indulge me & point to exactly where in my post i implicitly or explicitly said, “If you have a problem with AA, why don’t you go find something you don’t have a problem with.”
this, you actually can quote me on: AA is the problem.
as to your hurt feelings, you’re a big troll now. you can handle it.
rocketed into the fourth dimension,
speedy
No hurt feelings here. Your meaningless opinion of me carries about as much weight as your meaningless letter to The Grapevine. Talk about being a troll.
Here’s the deal. While I respect the intent of this site in pointing to other alternatives to AA for any number of reasons I see things that don’t stand behind what I would call a “Mission Statement”
Here’s what we say here.
” And if the reason is that you’re having a problem with alcohol, I want to make sure that we can offer you something beside our obsession with tearing the ass out of A.A. “.
What do you have to offer besides your obsession with tearing the ass out of AA?
I’ll answer it for you. Nothing
We can be either “Proactive” or “Reactive”
“Proactive” is when you offer an alternative as a solution. That requires some thought. God knows, you might actually help someone.
“”Reactive” is mindless drivel that offers no help whatsoever.
Here is an example of “Proactive”
If anyone is interested in an alternative to AA or is interested in the truth as opposed to what is said either here or in a meeting, I’m behind them 100% and will offer any help that I possibly can.
Here’s an example of “Reactive”
Bill took LSD and saw God!
So instead of your incessive bitching about something that you are seriously misinformed about ask yourself this:
“What have you done latley”
Cuda,
I work in mental health, primarily with those who have coexisting substance abuse problems. In the last program I worked for, all our clients were dually diagnosed and had been through 12step treatment and programs unsuccessfully.
AA doesn’t provide a greater success rate than no treatment at all, it is a false hope, one that distracts people from treatment that actually works or quitting on their own.
The lie that people cannot achieve sobriety on their own makes many try AA, and when they are unsuccessful, give up, believing they are powerless over their addiction and that God will not or cannot help them if they retain any faith at all. A loss of faith at the same time as battling an addiction can be deadly. This is why I attempt to dissuade people from joining AA.
The Vaillant studies showed that AA has a high mortality rate, due in part I believe, to a high suicide rate. AA helps about as many people as no treatment or program at all, but more people die. This is what you call helping?
Ray, you are correct. We toss around meaningless statistics all the time. We seem to favor the 5% success rate whatever that means. I think it means that 5% of the people with a desire to get sober actually get sober. The remaining 95% don’t.
I see it all the time. Out of every 100 people I see walk in the door, 95 of them walk out. Possibly even more.
So 5 people get sober. The question is “Who gets the credit”? Does the individual get the credit, or does the institution? We both know the answer.
Alcoholics Anonymous knows the answer too. That’s why in meetings all across the world we celebrate “Birthday Night”. This is to recognize the accomplishment of the Individual. There is no feather stuck in the cap of AA on this night.
You said,
“The lie that people cannot achieve sobriety on their own makes many try AA, and when they are unsuccessful, give up, believing they are powerless over their addiction and that God will not or cannot help them if they retain any faith at all. A loss of faith at the same time as battling an addiction can be deadly”.
Who is telling this lie?
Who puts the stigma on Alcoholics Anonymous? Who says Alcoholics Anonymous will “Get you Sober”?
None other than the misinformed general public. That’s who. The buzz phrase around the country is “Go to Alcoholics Anonymous” regardless of whether you drink too much or you’re a full blown gutter bum. “You need to go to Alcoholics Anonymous”. Period!
Unfortunately, the very society that put the stigma on AA hasn’t got a clue as to what AA is or does. They’re selling something they don’t understand for something it’s not. It’s being sold as a place that will do everything for you. All you have to do is “Go to Alcoholics Anonymous”.
For this reason Alcoholics Anonymous has become a place to go and not a program of recovery. There is people that come in and struggle for months. Then they leave. Sad thing is that they never opened the book one time.
The individual in this case has failed.
Therefore, the individual is responsible for his success and is also responsible for his failures and Alcoholics Anonymous takes neither the credit nor the blame. We simply offer something that has worked for us.
Why does society put this stigma on AA? Because it’s all they know. It’s the same reason we accuse Wal-Mart of underpaying employees and hiring illegals. Because they’re the biggest. Every company does it but Wal-Mart is all we know so we tend to single them out.
Whay you’ve written does carry a lot of weight with me. Mainly because we aren’t doing enough to dispell this bullshit at the group level and newcomers need to be told that AA will not “Get you Sober”
Take a look at this Tweety and Sylvester video. Sylvester decides that Birds Anonymous is going to fix his problem. This is stereotypical of what America thinks AA really is.
Notice, there’s no work and action (steps) on Sylverster part. Simply being a member is all there is to it.
Cuda,
You admit that AA doesn’t cure any more people then quitting on one’s own, so why should people go? If it doesn’t increase their changes of sobriety and increases their chances of death, it seems like a pretty poor option.
Besides quitting with no treatment or support, there are 37 treatment options listed in “Handbook of alcoholism treatment approaches: Effective alternatives” that are higher in effectiveness:
http://www.behaviortherapy.com/whatworks.htm
h[ocus] p[ocus] you’re boring.
and solipsistic.
i can tell that you’ve got a huge circle of friends — i mean, isn’t everyone hopelessly drawn to (erroneous) black-and-white pontificating?
the quote you offer is from the page entitled, “What Then, If Not AA?”. it’s not entitled “Mission Statement”. one can’t even take the letters from the page’s title & mix them up in some way to make them spell, “Mission Statement”. so what you would call a “Mission Statement” is, in fact, another page on the blog which actually goes a long way toward answering the question it poses.
as to your “proactive/reactive” spew — it must be nice to live in a world where there are two – and only two – sides to every issue (e.g, proactive & reactive, take it or leave it, … i’m sure you’ve got a million more). very wilsonian of you. and utterly at odds with reality.
there are plenty of alternatives to AA that have been articulated in this blog and elsewhere. if you read my post with even the smallest degree of inferential exertion, you’d see that i was actually engaging one alternative as a manner of gleaning material for said post.
what i ‘did’ was pose a question. (i didn’t write anything about bill wilson or LSD — that’s the voices in your head.) what you ‘did’ in response was side-step that question in favor of ranting and generally diverting the discussion.
sort of like a monkey tossing its own feces around its cage.
very helpful, indeed.
the hits just keep coming,
speedy
Now you’re resorting to hair splitting and minimizing whis a brilliant debating technique for the unarmed.
Along with diverting attention from my reply to your OP, you choose to focus on a couple words I used as an example of the difference between “proactive” and “reactive”
I want to see some substance in your posts. Otherwise it’s just “Spew”
ah, the time-honored “i’m a rubber-band & you’re glue” rhetorical technique. very crafty of you, sir.
while i could go on about how your replies not only lack substance, lucidity, and a basic grasp of the english language (i let “incessive” slide from your previous reply just out of pure sympathy, but just what the hell are you trying to say with “whis a brilliant debating technique for the unarmed”? it’s like klingon as translated by babelfish), i’ll just send up the white flag in the vain hopes it might shut you the hell up already.
you’re absolutely right and i’m absolutely wrong. about everything. always.
there. feeling better? go tell god you won & really, really, REALLY helped people with your mindless bickering on a blog.
i know that you saved me … & i’m so grateful. really. i swear.
speedy
I asked you a simple question that you won’t answer. Actually you can’t answer it.
I asked what you have to offer as an alternative to AA.
You choose to disregard the question yet maintain your stance that you’re here for a noble purpose.
Instead of answering the question you immediately jump in with insults, put downs and character assault. You’ve even gone after my spelling.
Debating 101 for the loser: If you can’t defend your stand, character assassination is your best bet.
Also, I ran this through spell check so you can stay focused on a response to the question.
After all, you’re the one that’s so concerned about the well being of your fellow man.
no nitwit, what you specifically ‘asked’ was the following:
“So instead of your incessive [sic] bitching about something that you are seriously misinformed about ask yourself this:
“What have you done latley [sic]”
(sucks to have your own tortured linguistic gaffes & bulls**t thrust back in your face, doesn’t it?)
and what i answered was that i wrote my post — which in & of itself suggested an ‘alternative’ to AA (get involved with a [GASP!!!] atheist organization).
now, shut your ridiculously uninformed, barely literate hole or i’ll happily delete all of your replies. you’re not debating — you’re stirring up shit just like any good 12-step thug.
the clock has run out on that routine.
take your toys & go home,
speedy
Cuda,
Did you miss where I posted above:
Besides quitting with no treatment or support, there are 37 treatment options listed in “Handbook of alcoholism treatment approaches: Effective alternatives” that are higher in effectiveness:
http://www.behaviortherapy.com/whatworks.htm
?
ray,
he didn’t miss your post. it just didn’t serve his purpose of shitting all over the blog & confusing the matter.
here’s the table, here’s cuda, & here’s the whole lot of nothing but hot air (and infantile writing) that he brings to it.
speedy
To quote Cuda
I asked what you have to offer as an alternative to AA.
This blog does list 3 alternatives to AA, however my question is, how come SOS, and WFS are not listed?
“They have an agenda and helping alcoholics and addicts is not one of them as they claim” say the person who admits that AA does nothing.
I believe you like AA because in the rooms, you feel superior to most, something that doesn’t happen in the real world.
joe,
thanks for that little bit of blog-itorial oversight management. “jails, institutions or death” are not listed as alternatives, either. do you take exception to that?
SOS & WFS aren’t listed (& i’m guessing here) because ma and/or ftg (the blog’s creators) just plumb forgot to list them.
is anyone here going to respond to my actual post or should i just turn off the ‘comments’ option for it?
just curious,
speedy