Belladonna Boost, Anyone?

Here is an interesting article from the New York Times about about belladonna and its use in treating alcohol addiction. Bill Wilson used it when he had his famous “white light experience”. For any AAs out there who are working those steps with rigorous honesty, and have still not had their spiritual awakening, you might consider tossing a bit of belladonna into the mix. That picture of Jesus or chia pet or pine tree or whatever you happen to be using as your higher power, is sure to come to life:

On the second or third day of his treatment, Mr. Wilson had his now famous spiritual awakening. Earlier that evening, Mr. Thacher had visited and tried to persuade Mr. Wilson to turn himself over to the care of a Christian deity who would liberate him from the ravages of alcohol. Hours later, depressed and delirious, Mr. Wilson cried out: “I’ll do anything! Anything at all! If there be a God, let him show himself!” He then witnessed a blinding light and felt an ecstatic sense of freedom and peace. When Mr. Wilson told Dr. Silkworth about the event, the physician responded: “Something has happened to you I don’t understand. But you had better hang on to it.”

 

“Christians get on my nerves.”

Have you ever found yourself wishing that you could be a self-righteous pain in the ass? You’ve tried going to church with your family, who just end up listening to the sermon! You’ve tried “lording over” everyone, but your toupee makes them laugh! No one takes you seriously. And you thought people would gaze in amazement at your new Prayer Cross from the Montebello Collection, only to find that the !#$%&* bluehair in the front pew got hers first.

And then there’s that huge-ass Bible-whatever, with the onionskin pages, and all those goddamn words in it. Who even really “gets” that, anyway?

What does an ignoramus like you have to do to get people to listen to you? Well, my friend, it’s time to toss out that Bible; take your family to IHOP before the church crowd shows up, cross your arms, peer down your nose, and relax.

Finally, there’s an easier, softer way to become a complete self-righteous pain in the ass! With our revolutionary 12 Steps to instant insufferability!

Wideman also went through a crisis years ago, one that ended up strengthening his faith. But in a curious shift, it also left him questioning something that few believers seem to ask these days: Can you really find God in church?

Wideman is no longer sure.

“For me, I said I’ve got to drop this title of Christian,” he said. “It doesn’t work for me anymore.”

Again, that doesn’t mean Wideman is an atheist or agnostic. He’s found his “church,” if you will. As a former deacon in a Baptist church in Montgomery, Ala., he now finds his greatest source of faith within a very different organization: Alcoholics Anonymous.

Order within the next ten minutes — we can’t do this all day — and get your free Magic 12-Step Ball, which will answer your questions faster than your pastor:

Answers include:

• Call Your Sponsor
• One Day at a Time
• Easy Does It
• You Need a Meeting
• First Things First
• You Can Recover
• …and More

 

Stinkin’ Thinkin’ Slogan Contest!

Update Update: We have some pretty good ones. Agent Mango came with some nice ones. It is kind of nice to see that most of our AA friends don’t like the slogans and aphorisms, either. Just so you folks know, I am using one of these pens, and it writes really well. It has nice feel to it.

UPDATE: These are supposed to be your creation, not slogans already in use. I’ve seen three pretty good ones so far:

“AA: Because thinking is hard” by Sunny
“It’s time to harvest the crust from your eyes” by Sunny
“Just Quit, It’s the Bees Knees” by Tony (must be said sarcastically, but still not bad)
“I have a disease that tells me I don’t have a disease” me, which I stole from Corky the Twelve-Step Monkey
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It’s time to put on your thinkin’ caps and stir up those creative juices, kids. We are having a competition to see who can come up with the best thought stopping AA slogan. Submissions will be graded on catchiness, inanity, wit, thought stoppability, serenity, flavor and rigorous honesty. Everyone is eligible. Easy does it!

The winner gets this inspirational serenity pen (really, we’ll send it to you):

Good Luck!!!

 

The Truthiness, The Whole Truthiness and Nothing But The Truthiness

Truthiness noun – 1) the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true; 2) truth that comes from the gut not books

“The truth only carries so much weight. What we believe to be the truth will trump the actual truth every time.” – Cuda

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The above quote summarizes, in a nutshell, AA’s approach to recovery — or their approach to almost anything else for that matter. There is a reason why the endless debates which take place in our comment section will never be end, and that is because the two sides are playing with different points of reference – with one relying on logic, skepticism and rational thought; and the other relying on what they want to believe.

 

Battle of Delusions

Among our regular readers of this blog is a fundamentalist Christian, John, with an interest in the heresy of AA and the 12-steps. He is a nice guy, and though he does not comment in the public forum, I have received regular correspondence from him since we started a little less than a year ago. I don’t doubt that after reading this blog for a year, he believes that we are headed toward eternal damnation, and after reading his blog, I feel he is off the charts, batshit crazy. That’s OK, because we still like each other, and we have an understanding – and though we agree on few things, we have a common disdain for Alcoholics Anonymous – albeit for different reasons.

 

Quote of the Day

“Considering the chronic nature of alcoholism and the amazingly low rate of recovery using other methods God’s work in AA is inescapable.”

– cknuck, an AA, who is responding to an article on alternative alcohol addiction treatments.

 

Quote of the Day

“dude this is how i look at it, the higher power doesnt have to be god, or budda, or vishnue, it just has to be bigger than yourself. for instance a mountain or ocean, just something that is a lot bigger than yourself. For me, for a long time it was the golden gate bridge….” – colinphw, suggesting to a newly recruited AA who (or what) he might use as his higher power™.

 

Counselor Sorts Out the Bible of AA

Polk court official tells people how to interpret ‘The Big Book.’

If the Bible is the world’s most read book, what’s No. 2?

Richard Rhodes of Mulberry suspects it is “Alcoholics Anonymous,” the manifesto of the organization of the same name. First published in 1939, the so-called Big Book provides the basis for the 12-step process used in addiction treatment programs throughout the world. Rhodes, a clinical coordinator with the Polk County Drug Court in Bartow, considers the Big Book an invaluable resource that deserves to be even more widely read. That’s why he wrote, “A Counselor Looks at the Big Book,” published this month by Millennial Mind Publishing.

 

Captive Audience (part 2)

Now, let’s get into it – the annual Prison Issue of Grapevine “Sobriety Behind Bars: Staying Sober on the Inside.”

As I said in Part 1, in which I focused entirely on the fracking cover (jeezusghod!), contortions and manipulations of AA’s Traditions are required in order to justify actively promoting AA within the court system (and the treatment industry). And what I had in mind was to focus entirely on the theme, but it turned out that the whole thing was just so extraordinarily insane, that I couldn’t think straight when I got through it. It’s just amazing to me how utterly unselfconscious they are about what they really believe and how crazy this all is when they’re preaching to the choir.

Let me focus on another contradiction: Belief in God is not a requirement.

 

Saving the World

I’m responding to one of Danny’s comments here on the front page, because I have been wanting to address some of these points anyway, and because I think it merits its own discussion.

In response to this comment, from Danny (here):

You guys have a whole past-time, cottage industry going here based upon hatting our fellowship. Do you at least have SOME familiarity with the Big Book after which the fellowship is named? I have to wonder.

I asked,

Do you honestly believe that we’re here passing our time hating on your fellowship?

And Danny said:

Some seem that way. Not all do. I don’t ‘get’ the motivation. Would you say that the motivation behind a site like this is a “noble” one?

It seem like, “AA didn’t work for me so it won’t work for you either – and I am going to expend my efforts to prove that to somebody.”

Is this like a “I am going to save the world by exposing the truth” kind of phenomenon?

Am I even close?

Peace,

Danny S – RLRA
Real Live Recovered Alcoholic

http://recoveredalcoholic.blogspot.com

 

’Morning Danny,

A lot of things don’t work for me, but I don’t spend my free time stomping around trying to convince everyone that those things are bogus. (Completely OT, but that just made me think of an angry letter to the editor I read once: This guy wrote in to say that the lottery was a scam because he’d been playing for two months straight and hadn’t won anything yet.) We get that a lot here, “You must have failed at AA, and now you’re just disgruntled and probably still drunk.” That’s one of those Unofficial, Unofficial AA Slogans I wrote about. We couldn’t possibly have a beef with AA unless we failed it. It’s a lazy way to dismiss criticism.

Here’s the noble cause:

AA is fucking enormous. If the treatment industry were a microcosm of the whole country, AA would fill the niche Christianity fills. And like Christianity, which has a mighty sense of entitlement to assert itself and influence every facet of society – public schools, court rooms, the Constitution, people’s private lives – AA/12-step has a similar sense of entitlement within the treatment industry. And it is also treated by the treatment industry with the same… Idunno… unquestioning, kid-glove indulgence that Christianity enjoys. In general, people treat Christianity with respect, even if they don’t believe it. It’s kind of funny how rational people, or people who are not Christians, will so rarely – in the arena of public discourse – call bullshit on someone’s religion, even when their opponent’s religious belief is at the very root of their demented approach to public policy.

 Nobody wants to stand up and lambaste AA anymore than anyone wants to get on prime-time news and tell Christians that their religion is ridiculous and that it has no place in government (unless you’re Christopher Hitchens). If you do that, you become the immoral, godless crank, and the uproar is enormous. How long do you think it will be before our country is ready to elect an atheist President? As it stands, we just don’t take anyone seriously unless they have faith in some in strange, random, unprovable,  supernatural event – among many random, strange things they could possibly believe.

In the treatment industry, public criticism of AA and 12-Step programs is rare, and for the same reasons. It is always very delicately couched – AA is just a given; it’s conventional wisdom, mainstream. I wonder how many times Ann Landers, for instance, has suggested AA to her readers, without knowing anything more about it than that AA is what drunks are supposed to do. The treatment industry is bloated with AA, and this is a horrible result. AA is a “miracle;” it’s a belief system; it’s a spiritual program. But it is not addiction treatment, anymore than Intelligent Design is science.

In order for science to consider Intelligent Design seriously, even just to engage in a debate with ID’s proponents, science itself would have to abandon its rigorous standards; the conversation would require that science actually redefine terminology in order to find some common ground for discussion. This has already happened with AA. The treatment industry takes the utter unaccountability of AA seriously. Terms like “spiritual disease” are rarely questioned. And the result of this has been disastrous for so many people.

Further, AA’s unaccountability and lack of responsibility for what actually happens in AA meetings, and the treatment industry’s dependence on, and unquestioning acceptance of AA, has generated some awful AA gestalt, which is like The Grey Goo . People are not being treated for their addictions in AA; they’re either becoming part of the goo or getting run over by it. As MA pointed out, we’ve seen the damage it does to people — its epidemic.

Compared to the giant machine AA has for support, and the doe-eyed acceptance it receives in general, and the millions of members and meetings, we’re really small potatoes. AA is not the underdog; it’s the Gold Standard. AA enjoys a place at the head of the grown-ups’ table, while its critics are viewed as the turds in the punchbowl.

But when we criticize AA, hold it up to the light of day, the response we receive from AAs is so interesting. You’d think they were being persecuted. An enormous institution with this much influence (yes, I know AAs deny this) should be immune from criticism? Can’t handle a little ankle biting? They do not welcome the muckrakers? They have no interest in doing a fearless moral inventory, rooting out abuses and ineffective elements, in evolving? No desire for accountability? Why? Why are the members who question what goes on in meetings told to take the cotton out of their ears? No checks and balances? No standards? Critics must have failed the program that cannot fail.

So, yeah, I’d say that our mission here is noble. We have a mess. People are being harmed in AA because it mimics the dynamics of an abusive domestic relationship* – and it is The Norm. Is wanting to “expose the truth and save the world” a ridiculous pursuit? The way you phrase that makes it seem that doing so is quixotic, silly, childish, deluded. I guess it’s the “and save the world” part. How about we leave off that part, and put it like this, “expose the truth, keep the conversation going, and hope it leads to reform.”

–ftg

*UPDATED because, amazingly, while I was writing this, AnnaZed sent me a link to this piece from addictioninfo.org, which goes into detail about what I mean when I say that AA mimics the dynamics of an abusive relationship.

Many a newcomer will immediately feel comfy and cozy in the rooms of AA simply because the dynamics of the group mirror that of the newcomer’s dysfunctional family of origin.

    * Don’t think, don’t feel.

    * If you do feel, be advised that certain feelings are not allowed.

    * We know what’s best for you.

    * You don’t know what’s best for you, and we won’t even ask your opinion.

    * The family is correct, it is your feelings which are screwed up.

    * You must honor and respect us. You must be grateful for us. We gave you life. You are not allowed to be angry at us.

    * “Ouch! It hurts!” you say — “We’re only doing this because we love you” — they respond

    * “This doesn’t make sense!” you say — “Do it because I told you so!” — they respond

    * We will love you only if you do “this”, “that” or “the other”… we will love you conditionally

    * Don’t speak the truth — We can’t handle it.

    * Be sure to always pretend that everything is allright, otherwise the family will fall apart.

Sound familiar?