Sincerely

Steve

Steve,

Such pristine logic! Alcoholics are people who drink too much but don’t really love to drink, but drink because they are powerless over their desire to drink resulting from a mysterious, unidentified, incurable disease for which their is no laboratory test, alcoholism. Naturally, alcoholics don’t have favorite drinks because they are just obeying forces beyond their control. People who quit drinking aren’t alcoholics because if they were they wouldn’t have been able to quit. If they were real alcoholics they wouldn’t have been able to quit. If they could‘ve quit, they would‘ve quit, but they didn’t quit, which proves they absolutely cannot quit, and only God can help them.

I’m thinking real hard about this and I think I’m getting it. Maybe some other 12-steppers can illuminate this conundrum.

Jack Trimpey

I believe alcoholism and similar addictions have been moral issues from the beginning of human history and still are. When you identify the problem you know where the answer lies. I have attended many open AA meetings, to try to “understand.” AA says their “disease is baffling.” As long as well-meaning but misinformed people try to treat moral problems with medical means they will always be baffled.

Nancy,

Very well said! Here’s my 2¢.

The clergy, scientists, physicians, psychologists, and three blind men would all agree that addiction is a moral problem if they weren’t swarmed the the mendacious sentimentality of the addiction treatment industry, and its feeder system, the recovery group movement.

As an addicted, licensed professional, I was once convinced that my “alcoholism” was the outcome of physiological and psychological factors. My colleagues had similar beliefs, and so did the various graduate schools we all attended. While I was “in recovery,” i.e., tentatively sober, I “treated” a good number of “alcoholics” and other substance abusers. I dictated clinical notes documenting the backgrounds, clinical planning, and prognosis of people suffering from addictive disease, and when they continued their addiction, as practically all did, I closed their cases and opened new ones. The disease concept of addiction fit me well, so I wore it to work, did my job, and got drunk on weekends.

In 1978, the A.M.A. conceded to an internal special interest group, the “two-hatters” who had received a political rehabilitation throught the disease concept of addiction, and merely endorsed the proposition that alcoholism is a disease. For thirty years, they had acknowledged AA’s “religious solution” without endorsing it, but the stench of money finally overtook their scientific and moral forethought. Brought to a floor vote, the “ayes” won, just as that annual conference was ending. Although science isn’t democratic, the A.M.A. has permitted the illusion to continue, that the incurable, insurable disease of alcoholism/addiction may be treated medically, just as cancer, diabetes, and multiple schlerosis and other chronic diseases are treated. For a discussion of that, read this blog.

My point is that the medical profession, which enjoys the greatest benefits of its powerful role in society, is also most liable for the iatrogenic nightmare they have loosed upon America and the rest of the world. While most believe that the recovery group movement is expanding to keep up with mass, runaway addiction to alcohol and other drugs, that is simply one more inversion added to the comprehensive inversion of reality created by the disease concept of immorality.

Jack Trimpey

I tried the AA way. I left every meeting with the intense desire to drink - a complete flip from the desire to be sober that led me to the meeting mere hours earlier.
The stories of devastating failure and painful struggles within from the members around the room only deepened my feelings that I was doomed to fail, and therefore, must be a failure. I was a daily drinker for many, many years. I felt lonely and misunderstood, feeling that no-one could know how strong the pull of alcohol was. All day long while at work I would tell myself “I’m NOT going to stop at the liquor store on the way home, I don’t want to”. Sure enough, I would end up in the drive thru lane feeling like a failure. The dismal thought of attending an AA meeting instead only added stress, which I counteracted with another drink. How sad!

After searching for a better way by researching my ‘hopeless disease’ online (online learning - which I just learned is another disease - Ha!), I came across your website and a HUGE weight lifted from my shoulders. I clicked my way to success in mere minutes by reading your FREE web pages about the addictive voice and the basic animal desire to feel good (I called it ‘numb’) and relaxed. I instantly saw what I knew all along. I was the reason that glass kept being refilled. Wow… Just imagine! It’s been a while since it had a drink. Not counting the days, weeks or months as there’s no need. It’s something silly I used to let happen.

Please don’t let a few insecure people get to you. They are clearly angered that there is a simple way to stop what they have worked SO hard to justify. It must turn their world upside down.

One more thing — THANK YOU, more than you will EVER know!

---

Carl,

You made my day!

Jack Trimpey

(No Name),

It would be good for you to identify statements you believe are false. It’s so considerate for you to completely avoid presenting any citations or other contradictory evidence in support of your views. I undersand completely that, because of the sheer intensity of your beliefs, they are commensurately true. However, you are following the AA tradition very well, which is to attack the character of those who criticize or contradict the doctrines and practices of your beloved Alcoholics Anonymous.

The Structural Model of Addiction you condemn as heresy comes directly out of a junior high school health sciences textbook provided to me by my wife, Lois, who was a teacher at the time I was setting down the elements of AVRT®. If you disagree with that version of the human brain, then I suggest you contact the A.M.A., because it is currently the foundation of medical practice. A good number of impaired physicians have come through AVRT: The Course; all of them agree that our simple explanation of addiction as a normal function of a healthy human body is therapeutic, elegant, and scientifically correct. I find it amazing that members of AA, who hold the most bizarre beliefs about addiction and recovery, perceive that something as elementary as the gross, functional anatomy of the brain is scientific heresy.

The use of alcohol and other drugs by problem drinkers is immoral conduct. “Alcoholics” are simply self-excusing problem drinkers, consequently deeper in the moral abyss of addiction. It cannot be otherwise, because the addictive mandate to self-intoxicate is a drive to deeeep pleasure, akin to the drive to overeat, and akin to the drive for sexual error. The pursuit of deeeep pleasure at the expense of others, while defaulting on one’s moral responsibility to remain productive and independent, contradicts the basic values and morality instilled in children by their parents. In other words, once a pattern of harm or risk to others is established, the use of alcohol is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Failure to comprehend the moral dimension of addiction is part of the comprehensive breakdown of morality that affects all addicted people. It is no accident that fellowships of addiction always deny the moral implications of self-intoxication, and that the 12-step of AA is founded entirely upon original denial, i.e., the belief that self-intoxication by problem drinkers is an innocent act, a symptom of an unidentified disease for which there is no cure, but only the enticing drama of one-day-at-a-time sobriety.

From your comments, (No Name), I get the impression that you will not be dissuaded from whatever it is that you believe. However, I am not writing my comments to you, but rather as a writing exercise that might edify other readers of this blog. I like to place before the public good examples of recovery group disorder, so that more people can see the corrosive effects of 12-step recovery upon the human intellect and moral conscience.

So, you might wonder, am I suggesting that the dreaded “relapses” that hold you firmly in recovery will amount to immoral acts? If you are only wondering, then shame on you. Of course I’m telling you that your precious relapses will be profoundly immoral acts! I guarantee you that you won’t be trying to make yourself feel bad as you open the container and raise the drink to your waiting, trembling lips, as you might claim during your next drunkalog.

Will that deter you from having any more relapses, (No Name)? If not, then you’re a good 12-stepper, with no more moral conscience than a child who must struggle to be good every day, and who needs adult supervision to stay out of trouble. In that case, you have a new family that will keep you in perpetual childhood, with fearless moral inventories and a neeto God you can make up all on your own.

It is possible, although not very likely, that you will feel some twinges of manhood, and realize that there was never anything wrong with you in the first place, e.g.,  addictive disease.  You might recall your original self, and that you are an individual soul, a moral being with free will and knowledge of right and wrong, just as your original family taught you long ago. In that case, you might decide to never drink again on moral principle, as many problem drinkers decide, and get on with your life as a normal, healthy man who simply never drinks for personal reasons, and finds the company of “alcoholics” aesthetically and intellectually displeasing.

You can be sure I won’t hold my breath.

Jack Trimpey

Readers,

(No Name), above, is an example of “all Beast,” a flagrant condition in which the moral conscience is entirely absent, with no self-awareness at all, running on direct, biological voltage. His comments, with corrections, in order:

Avrt is bullshit.

In AVRT-based recovery one makes a commitment to lifetime abstinence and then learns how to catch himself in the process of changing his mind.

There’s no beast in your brain.

The human animal is as much a beast as any other animal in the field or barnyard. The human being is a consciousness that inhabits the human animal. Addiction is our animal nature prevailing over moral judgment.

You are pushing your ideas of morality on others.

You are getting smarter already. The only means to defeat addiction is through one’s better, i.e., moral, judgment.

Drinking is a choice — no more, no less.

For problem drinkers, drinking is an immoral choice — no more, no less.

Name

Who was that masked man?

Jack Trimpey

Anonymous,

Your comments would have more standing if you were to assign yourself a name. However, nothing can rectify the amazing display of ignorance in your message, above.

The human midbrain is the brain of an animal. In other words, the human animal is a beast, just as a buffalo is a beast. The appetites for survival, the pleasure drives for eating, sexing, and other comforts are mediated in the midbrain. The neocortex is more sophisticated, although still animal in nature, but also hosts human consciousness, which a different realm than the animal realm. The neocortex is the residence of the human spirit/soul/self, along with the capacity for moral judgment.

Lassie the dog is alert, somewhat intelligent, and has certain emotions, but she has no concept of morality. Nor do drunks/junkies have any concept of morality. Addiction is a comprehensive breakdown or morality resulting from the action of alcohol and other drugs upon the brain. In recovery groups, self-intoxication is regarded as an innocent act, because addicted people, who are only sober one-day-at-a-time, cannot comprehend that the act of self-intoxication is profoundly immoral. They wait for a miracle to take away their desire for addictive pleasures, because they cannot comprehend that they are not powerless over immoral desires. Morality is human.
You are correct, that drinking is a choice. However, so are all immoral acts. With AVRT®, you may finally re-boot your moral conscience and walk away from your addiction, on your hind legs, as a human being. I do understand your anger, however. It’s like Lassie the dog growling at a stranger.

Jack Trimpey

Rather than relying on AA, Mel should do some reading of the lives of his own church’s saints. Matt Talbot, upon realizing that he was degrading himself by his drinking, took a pledge of abstinence. He didn’t declare himself powerless or ask God to do everything — he acted.