Session Notes

Psychology Today

Twenty years after onset of alcohol dependence, three-quarters of alcoholics are in full recovery. . . .more than half of those who have fully recovered drink at low-risk levels without symptoms of alcohol dependence. . . .only 13 percent of people with alcohol dependence receive specialty alcohol treatment (AA, rehab).

“Yes, there is that drop off because alcohol and drug abusers die in such droves.”



In other words, according to this vision of the world, 7 percent of all 18- to 25-year-old Americans die annually of alcohol and drug abuse, since the prevalence of drug/alcohol abuse/dependence drops by 7 percent for the late 20s age group. Do you believe that? Because if you do, you are psychotic.

It’s taken years but there is a backlash finally growing against this ideology/religion that has held captive even large parts of the psychological community. We’ve long known that really rich people who seek treatment in North America will almost never be subjected to the AA model – but the enormous weight of the AA lobby efforts in North America are hardly slacking for the rest and so few have been willing to stand up and admit it is based on fiction and just does not work.

That’s finally starting to change – though it is unfortunate that those who are finally speaking have had to get to this level of rage and name calling to do so…

NewYorkTimes

His work consists of asking patients a series of questions about their symptoms to see whether they match up with any of the disorders in the DSM. This matching exercise, he writes, provides “the illusion that we understand our patients when all we are doing is assigning them labels.” Often patients meet criteria for more than one diagnosis, because there is overlap in symptoms. For example, difficulty concentrating is a criterion for more than one disorder. One of Carlat’s patients ended up with seven separate diagnoses. “We target discrete symptoms with treatments, and other drugs are piled on top to treat side effects.” A typical patient, he says, might be taking Celexa for depression, Ativan for anxiety, Ambien for insomnia, Provigil for fatigue (a side effect of Celexa), and Viagra for impotence (another side effect of Celexa).

As damning as this is, it’s true. This article is probably one of the most accurate descriptions of an industry that has so much respect in our society it almost could be described as a second priesthood.

Yet, the reality of it is that the practitioners rarely do any actual therapy. They simply read a description of symptoms (often written by drug company shills) that are then matched to a set of drugs (for which the basic equivalent of a kickback is often paid to the Doctor) and then prescribe such to eliminate symptoms.

At some level, the practice is critical and essential for some symptoms NEED to be erased. Yet, when this model is applied to the rank and file of broken hearts and troubled minds, the practitioners of such become drug pushers rather then therapists.

Addiction is about numbing pain that needs to be dealt with at a heart level. It makes no difference at all whether the numbing of such is prescribed or purchased on the street.

CATO.ORG

In 1988, I wrote to Vice President George Bush, then head of the South Florida Drug Task Force; to Education Secretary William Bennett; to Assistant Secretary of State for Drug Policy Ann Wrobleski; to White House drug policy adviser Dr. Donald I. McDonald; and to the public information directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Drug Enforcement Administration, General Accounting Office, National Institute of Justice, and National Institute on Drug Abuse. None of these officials was able to cite any study that demonstrated the beneficial effects of drug prohibition when weighed against its costs.[5] The leaders of the war on drugs are apparently unable to defend on rational cost-benefit grounds their 70-year-old policy, which costs nearly $10 billion per year out of pocket, imprisons 75,000 Americans, and fills our cities with violent crime. It would seem that Vernia Brown and many others like her have died for nothing.

Canada has essentially legalized drug use with the gram minimums for criminal prosecution. Isn’t it interesting how all Canadians suddenly went out and became junkies — oh, wait…

Just maybe, now is the right time when our Governments are going to figure out what Scripture always taught — being forced to be good usually makes people want to be bad — while freedom always drives them to seek the longings of their new and good hearts. Addiction is a problem with a broken heart in need of numbing — not a violation of anything but that heart which, yes, clearly was created for so much more.

Perhaps then we could turn the police services loose on the task of dealing with white collar criminals who bilk us out of untold billions every year — you know, the R. Allen Stanfords, the Bernie Madoffs and the CEOs of big residential lending firms that created the financial mess the world is in. Oh, ya, right — I GET IT now.

Ya, let’s push to lock up all the junkies…

The Denver Post

The Rev. Ted Haggard emerged from three weeks of intensive counseling convinced he is “completely heterosexual” and told an oversight board that his sexual contact with men was limited to his accuser.

Ya, ok, not so much… (To say nothing of the idiotic delusion of reparative therapy being completed in three weeks…)

ap.org

Disgraced evangelical leader Ted Haggard’s former church disclosed Friday that the gay sex scandal that caused his downfall extends to a young male church volunteer who reported having a sexual relationship with Haggard – a revelation that comes as Haggard tries to repair his public image.

Brady Boyd, who succeeded Haggard as senior pastor of the 10,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, told The Associated Press that the man came forward to church officials in late 2006 shortly after a Denver male prostitute claimed to have had a three-year cash-for-sex relationship with Haggard.

But of course, the church is clearly living out their commitment to a transparent, open reflection of a new life in Christ… We think… Ok, maybe they are mostly covering it up better then even Haggard himself and even paying hush money…

Boyd said the church reached a legal settlement to pay the man for counseling and college tuition, with one condition being that none of the parties involved discuss the matter publicly.

Boyd said a Colorado Springs TV station reached him Thursday to say the young man was planning to provide a detailed report of his relationship with Haggard to the station. Boyd said the church preferred to keep the matter private, but it was the man’s decision to go public.

But no, of course it’s not hush money — it’s just compassionate assistance… Um, no wait…

“It wasn’t at all a settlement to make him be quiet or not tell his story,” Boyd said. “Our desire was to help him. Here was a young man who wanted to get on with his life. We considered it more compassionate assistance – certainly not hush money. I know what’s what everyone will want to say because that’s the most salacious thing to say, but that’s not at all what it was.”

Boyd said the church will not take action against the man if he tells his story in the press.

“We have legal standing to do that, but not the desire to,” he said.

Yep, compassionate assistance — with a Non Disclosure Agreement. I’ll bet the church also makes patrons of their food bank sign one though so I’m sure it’s all standard procedure…

It isn’t often that Evangelical Christendom manages NOT to make me ashamed to be associated with them — this is not their lucky day…

www.news.com.au

“Internet addiction appears to be a common disorder that merits inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,” Dr Block said in the journal.

Dr Block said all internet addictions had four common components: excessive use, withdrawal, tolerance and negative repercussions.

He said internet addicts developed a tolerance to a certain level of technology, making them want to upgrade software and hardware. Social isolation and fatigue were listed as examples of “negative repercussions” to internet addiction.

Dr Block said the number of people that could be deemed as having addictions was large.

Welcome to our brave new world — where everything is a disease and medical intervention is obviously mandated (And, of course, charged for…). You don’t need to accept the reality that ANY good thing can become a place to hide and take responsibility for dealing with your own broken heart, you just need treatment — in this case Shock Treatment — for a 12yr old.

Yes, the medical community has spoken. Your kid’s longing for the new MacBookAir isn’t simple technolust, it’s really a key demonstration of mental instability which is now helping us to plumb the dark and depraved depths of his compulsion driven insanity.

So, step right up and make sure you bring the power supply. All we need to do to cure this condition is to unplug one little cord from his new toy — so we can wire it into his brain.

recoverynation.com

While the architects of AA should forever be in everyone’s gratitude for such a revolutionary approach, and a pure desire to make themselves and their society better… do keep in mind that what they wrote back in the 30′s was cutting edge — back in the 30′s. With all sociological theories, an evolution must take place–and this is especially true in addiction recovery. So much has been learned about the human condition over the past seventy years that it is unfair to compare today’s approaches to then. Not saying that some of their earlier hypotheses were wrong (well yes, some were absolutely wrong… but many continue to form the basis for today’s recovery community) — only saying that the authors were at a significant disadvantage due to not having the benefit of knowing “what we know now”. They were making things up as they went, based on their own intuition and experience. Well, that and a recovery model loosely based from another created in the late 1800′s. But they did good. Not perfect, but good.

You’ve heard the mantra, “Once an addict, always an addict”… Well, while such a statement is not technically a “lie” — as a lie implies deception — such statements are not accurate, either. Not with what we know today to be true of addiction. They may be accurate on the surface, offering a sense of temporary stability and identity… but they are offering the WRONG identity for permanent change to occur.

There’s a backlash growing in our society against the 12 step model — it’s about 20 years too late — but it’s happening. Here’s the stats:

45% of the people who attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings never return after their first meeting

95% never return after the first year.

Based on Alcoholics Anonymous World Services’ own statistics Alcoholics Anonymous has only a 5% retention rate.

and here’s the research to back them.

If you are an addict in the USA with no money to spend, you will be subjected to a 12 step program. On the other hand, if you have a few (As in up to 9) K a week to spend, you will never see a 12 step model brought anywhere near you. Apparently, when someone is spending almost $1300.00/day, you have to actually help them…;-)

Of course, isn’t it interesting that the church is notably absent from any of the above links and, without a doubt, one of the biggest promoters of the 12 step model… Do we actually want people sick?

womensenews.org

Now, Davis and other local sex workers have banded together to establish Canada’s first cooperative brothel in an attempt to offer women a safe place to work.

The group, formed by a sex workers’ alliance based here, called the British Columbia Coalition of Experiential Women, will incorporate next month and is already setting the groundwork to open the co-op brothel.

Members have begun scouting for a location and are enlisting the backing of local businesses, police and labor organizations.

Faced with the task of cleaning up the city to host the 2010 Winter Olympics, Vancouver authorities said they are open to the idea.

“We would be willing to explore anything that . . . would be helping the situation of sex trade workers, and make it safer for them and make it better for the community,” said Vancouver police spokesperson Howard Chow. He noted one requirement: “It has to be something that is lawful.”

So, let’s see: we’ll take an abuse of women that clearly is also a social blight, mix in the idea of creating a central edifice for it and then ice it with a thin veneer of socialist yammering about cooperative business being a wonderful thing. Take this lovely cake and get an idiot police spokesman to endorse it — now there, don’t we have a warm fuzzy story to tell our children about social progress?

Or, we could endorse the idea, get all the sex trade workers in there and arrest them. Then put in a whole raft of plain cloths officers posing as hookers and arrest all the Johns too. Get a judge to sentence the lot of them to treatment. Find two deserted patches of forest somewhere, set up a bunch of oilfield camp trailers, bring in the therapists and get to work on actually fixing the problem.

Naw, the warm fuzzy stories are more fun…

Substance Abuse:

“Other siblings negatively affected because the family is preoccupied or overwhelmed by consequences of drug user’s behavior.”

This is a good article outlining the progression which can happen if grief and our ways are not given to the Lord. An adult child may feel overwhelmed, shutdown, and not reach out for support if he/she has been neglected or worried about the parent’s emotions.

Carbohydrate-Guide.com

Here’s a list of specific foods that raise your metabolism and help burn body fat. Weight loss that actually makes sense.

Edit: If you ever wanted to totally gross yourself out with exactly how bad your favorite fast food actually is for you, look no further then the Calorie King website.

Probably the most richly government funded and the most poorly researched program in existence is AA. It is a program that claims to bring freedom to millions — whom it tells will always be alcoholics, must attend meetings for the rest of their natural life and must spend such, “Working their program.” Not surprisingly, it has a failure rate of at least 80% and probably is failing at a rate of 95%. For the curious, here are some references:

There are so many voices it is difficult to determine the original source but the information was initially (Quite accidently) released from AA’s own internal studies — which they have been aggressively working to suppress ever since. The most public airing of the data occurred August 20/2004 at 11:00pm and September 12/2004 at 9:00pm on the Showtime original show called, “Penn & Teller: Bullshit.”
    Due to AA’s efforts, the documents are not widely available so Penn & Teller showed them onscreen during their broadcast. They detail a 95% failure (to cease drinking) rate at 5yrs from date of entry.

In my mind, one of the best secular treatment programs out there is St. Jude . A different but parallel retention statistic is right on their home page as well which states that 95% of people don’t even last a year in the program… Do the math: If 97% of programs are AA based, then it comes out even worse then 95% unless there is some hidden program out there with 10 million people in it… St. Jude runs a treatment program that sounds a lot like a secular Living Water’s/Regeneration Ministries program for chemical addictions.
    This is the future of secular level treatment. They have an independently verified 70% success rate — the best in the industry.

Another voice has been Dr. Jeffrey Schaler (Author of, “Addiction is a choice.”) who solidly disputes both that Alcoholism is a disease or that disease related models (Like AA) have any success in treating the disorder. His claim is that while AA appears to help 5% of people who go through it, 5% of people who undertake no treatment manage to get well on their own.

A third has been Jim Christopher — SOS Sobriety — who is willing to give AA only an 80% failure rate at 2yrs from entry. He then disputes the success of such through a detailed assessment of the group think, thought control, cloning, mystique, self-confessions, group speak, fear of judgment, increasing codependency, unhealthy identification and veneration of texts/leaders as being identical to the functioning of a cult. He questions whether the persons have simply exchanged one addiction — alcohol — for another — thought control.
    He is making a critical assessment here in that he understands that addiction is addiction. Just because the socially unacceptable behavior has stopped does not mean that you suddenly have a fully functional person able to live the fully human lives they were created to enjoy.

A fourth is a gentleman by the name of Dr. Lance Dodes MD (The author of, “The heart of addiction.”) who again disputes the idea that alcoholism is in any way related to a disease. He believes that the root of addiction is emotional pain and the practice of an addiction is a maladaptive strategy of coping with such.
    He, by implication, is probably one of the more aggressive in this area as the entire thrust of his argument is that AA is treating symptoms (The behavior of drinking) — not the problem. Thus, any apparent healing seen can not be legitimate — it’s a mask for the problem that just makes it look good but further shatters the person. (He would probably even dispute the 5%…)

S.M.A.R.T. Recovery program’s web site notes that, to date, the effectiveness of AA and related programs is essentially unproven. S.M.A.R.T is a secular humanist treatment program. They are somewhat less then effective but they are a very interesting read as an option…

It just takes common sense really. Clients who have been in AA tell me that they never wanted to drink more then when they were in the program. By the time you label people addicts, then judge people for their failures and then tell those who are already at the end of their rope to work harder (while holding their wounded feet to the fire), it’s only logical that they need a pain killer…

Here’s the bottom line: Statistically, people will always have a better chance of recovering if they have never been exposed to AA’s alcoholism and drug addiction treatment programs.

Just in case it isn’t already clear, we do not and will not use 12 step programs of any sort.