It is often said that Alcoholics Anonymous membership is “like trading one addiction for another.” In reality, 12-step recovery is not another addiction, such as an addiction to meetings, nor an addiction to AA, nor an addiction to recovery. Instead, the original addiction is preserved in a peculiar state called, “in recovery,” tentatively sober, one-day-at-a-time.”
This is because AA is a fellowship of addicted people, with a program created by addicted people for addicted people. In recovery, one is truly living in the bubble of his original addiction, although in a momentarily (one-day-at-a-time) dry state. All of the priorities, values, relationships, social norms, moral codes, and even the mandate of addiction itself, is preserved in pristine, original condition from the day of one’s first AA meeting. Just beyond the pious veneer of AA, there is a remarkable convergence between 12-step recovery and the mandates of addiction itself.
Even the speech of people in recovery remains entirely in the idiom we call Addictive Voice, i.e., thinking that supports or suggests the possible future use of alcohol or other drugs. Any attempt to veer out of the Addictive Voice will be criticized by the recovery group as “denial,” “self-centered,” “delusional,” “dry-drunk,”or “your disease talking.”
By envisioning a future punctuated with possible “relapses,” people in recovery remain between using episodes. As long as an eventual relapse appears possible, that glorious event will cast a shadow over each day in the interim. People in recovery continue to live by the script written for them by addictive desire. From this vantage point, we can clearly see AA as the painted shell of one’s original addiction.
In recovery means in addiction.
In addiction, as in recovery, self-intoxication is considered an innocent act. One may apologize or accept responsibility only for behavior under the influence, but not the act of self-intoxication. The preferred company is other substance abusers, and evenings away from home are taken for granted. As any common drunk will tell you, his family is part of why he drinks; the same is so in recovery. In recovery, the family must be supportive and never confrontive. Because renewed drunkenness may occur at any time, life must be structured around that possibility.
While abstinence appears to be the desired goal, no such thing is so in the group, which esteems “sobriety” and looks askance upon “willful abstainers” who deny their powerlessness over addictive desire. Sobriety is said to be in accordance with an enlightened state of being in tune with one’s higher power, a state of grace, a spiritual dimension unknown to those who abstain by excercising self-restraint.
The recovery group provides no information at all about recovery from addiction through abstinence from alcohol and other drugs. It is likely that AA has no such information to give, for that information would quickly emancipate most of its members from its obligatory meetings. No one ever recovers while “in recovery,” and those who leave AA are actively discouraged (jinxed) from success through their own efforts and integrity. Members warn those intending to leave AA that relapse is practically inevitable, because without the saving grace of AA, alcoholics become “dry-drunks.” AA lore is full of stories of dry-drunkism, tales of alcoholics who tried to go it alone and became miserable, irritable people without the capacity for happiness, yearning to drink every day until finally the struggle to stay sober became so painful that they drank again, always with catastrophic consequences or death.
The step program is enigmatic, full of counter-intuitive advice such as the idea of powerlessness over addictive desire. To survive the onslaught of an irresistible desire and imagined disease, members are required to form a profoundly dependent relationship upon another member who also is bereft of independent judgment in his personal affairs. Together, they strain to believe a creed that contradicts their native beliefs and original family values, and cultivate fear of the bodily desire for addictive pleasures. This condition should be called, “recoveryism,” for that word is far more descriptive than the pretend disease of problem drinkers, “alcoholism.”
Deep structure
The key to understanding the basic dynamic of recovery group dependence is in the deep structure of the 12-step belief system. AA intercepts newcomers who are on the verge of recovery — aware of the problem and ready to take strong action — and disables their problem solving abilities with the disease concept of addiction. Prepared to get a grip and summarily quit drinking for life, newcomers rightly expect they will meet recovery veterans who will encourage them in their quest for secure, permanent abstinence. Instead, the newcomer is met with a bewildering flurry of inverted thinking intended to discourage willful abstinence and encourage continued attendance.
Recovery is not an individual responsibility, but a group project.
Your religion, native beliefs, and family values are insufficient and part of the problem.
You are a comprehensive victim, from womb to tomb.
Drinking is not a moral issue! It’s an innocent symptom of addictive disease.
Free will does not apply to people suffering from addictive disease.
You must not struggle to gain control, but surrender control.
Only if addictive desire abates, may you confidently refrain from drinking.
Dependence is good; independence is bad.
Groupers exist on a social and philosophical plane above others (normies).
The 12-step program is divinely inspired, inerrant, and Bill W is a saint.
Code of the Beast
I have presented the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous below, not for the purpose of derision, but entirely to provide informed consent to recovery group participation. Naturally, professional services that reflect any of the elements of this system of thought, such as addiction treatment and substance abuse counseling, will be similarly at odds with reason and common sense, and will reflect the inverted nature of the 12-step program itself.
Keep in mind the following definitions, which are keys to understanding:
The Beast: Addictive desire; the desire to drink/use, to get high. The animal (party-animal) desire for the pleasure produced by alcohol, drugs, and other vices.
Addictive Voice (AV): Any thinking, in language or imagery, that supports or suggests the possible future use of alcohol or other drugs.
AV —> Beast = Bark —> Dog
The implicit Addictive Voice appears in italics below each of the numbered statements of stepcraft.
Step 1:We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.
Here is what really happened last week, leading up to Mel Gibson’s arrest for DUI and subsequent hate-speech debacle:
Earlier on the day of his arrest, Mel Gibson began drinking alcohol, in spite of his long history of anti-social behavior under the influence. As he took the first drink, he eagerly anticipated the familiar effect of alcohol. His first sensation was the mouth and nasal taste of the beverage, followed by a hot, intense feeling in his esophagus. Then, with a few more drinks, he felt a gentle sweetness spread from his gut throughout his body.
Mr. Gibson felt a physical pleasure similar in some ways to a slowly growing sexual orgasm, but absent the urgency for crescendo and resolution. He felt light on his feet, confident in all that he thought and said, and experienced the illusion of having sublime insight into the true nature of everything. In this realm of sublime pleasure, Mel Gibson’s mental faculties gradually declined, and his moral judgment evaporated into the thin, ethanolic air that surrounded him.
Mel Gibson, in the way of problem drinkers everywhere, had returned to his “home zone,” a realm of unspeakable pleasure known only to those who have crossed the line demarking pleasant drunkenness from the ozone.
The ozone
Let me digress to explain a little about the ozone before I go on with the story of Mel Gibson’s most recent debacle. The ozone is the ohhh-zone, a zone of physical pleasure for which there are no dictionary words to describe, but only the gutteral, animal sounds arising from deeeeeeeep pleasure, “Ohhhh, ohhh, ohhhhhh, this feels sooooooo goooooood. Ohhhh, ooooh, ohhhhh, ohhhhhh…”
The ozone is drug-induced pleasure that far exceeds mere sex or eating delicious food. Accordingly, the desire to repeat that pleasure is also much stronger than the desire for food or sex. Entering the ozone can be a life-changing event, as the case of Mel Gibson illustrates. He entered the ozone decades ago, emancipating within him a base, animal desire to repeat that pleasure for the rest of his life. He went beyond innocent enjoyment of alcohol and began an impossible, biologically-driven quest for total, hedonistic fulfillment.
During one episode of drunkenness many years ago, he actually heard, through his inner ear, the birth of his lifelong passion for alcohol, i.e., “the Beast.” It did not come out with an infant’s cry, but as a slobbering, “Ohhhh, ohhhh, ohhhh,” that grew into a Read the rest of this entry »
Why can’t you just say what Rational Recovery is, instead of attacking other methods and organizations?
Why do you have to constantly put down AA?
I can’t accept any sales pitch or product based on criticizing some other product.
AA has helped millions of people, so it doesn’t make any sense to keep criticizing it.
AA is proven successful, the only thing that really works, so there’s no sense in putting it down.
You’re a dry-drunk; get back to meetings and you won’t be such an angry, miserable person.
You’re just in it for the money.
How many alcoholics have you killed today, Trimpey?
These are among the more polite complaints Lois and I have been receiving since we launched Rational Recovery® twenty-one years ago. Outrage over our “AA-bashing” continues, as part of an unending, ideological firefight between the force of addiction, AA, and the force of recovery, AVRT®. Alas, it cannot be otherwise, for both addiction and recovery are in the balance as the debate rages on. Addiction recovery depends largely upon doing the exact opposite of the guidance given by Alcoholics Anonymous. We criticize AA not to put people in recovery down, but to give them hope for freedom and dignity through secure, lifetime abstinence.
The force of addiction
The force of addiction is the bodily desire for the pleasurable effects of alcohol and other drugs. It is a stong desire, one that arises from the force of life itself, the pleasure drive associated with survival. Hunger and sexual desire are both good examples of survival drives, and we all know how compelling they can seem to be. One’s thoughts, feelings and behavior become organized around addictive pleasures, as if one’s life depended upon the use of alcohol and other drugs.
Because addictive pleasures are so much greater than mere food and sex, nutrition and family relationships cannot compete with addiction, with devastating results. Such inverted priorities usually lead addicted people onto the rocky shoals of misery and hopelessness — and, too often, into the recovery group movement.
Newcomers to recovery groups are nearly always looking for the means to quit their addictions and stay quit. They are not looking for a new religion, nor for a new circle of friends, nor for a new family or home, nor for juvenile dependency on others. They simply want to get alcohol and other drugs out of their lives so they can live in freedom and dignity.
All newcomers know, or at least strongly suspect, that they will have to cease drinking/using altogether, very likely for the rest of their lives. As they prepare to attend their first recovery group meeting, newcomers are ready for change, prepared for the bittersweet pill of lifetime abstinence, hoping to find some inside tips on self-restraint and some encouragement from those who succeeded.
The force of addiction, however, creates a special way of thinking, the Addictive Voice, which dignifies and preserves the option of self-intoxication. Substance abusers will eagerly believe recovery group doctrines that frame the stupid and immoral act of self-intoxication as a disease symptom, thereby making them appear as innocent disease victims instead of stupid or immoral people.
Sweet venom
Imagine a newcomer’s amazement, to be met by men and women who have not resolved their own addictions, saying that recovery is a lifetime struggle against encroaching bodily desires and diseased thinking! Groupers present newcomers with the standard line of shocking, seductive, bad advice, “If you could‘ve quit, you would’ve quit, but you didn’t quit, which proves you can’t quit.” Then comes the bait, “You don’t have to quit forever; just stay sober one-day-at-a-time and keep coming back. It works if you work it.” The hook of continued self-intoxication (yummy relapses!) is thereby set, satisfying the first rule of addiction: Never say never to alcohol and other drugs. Finally, the sinker is the disease concept of addiction, which weighs down healthy men and women at precisely the moment they are wisey trying to rise above bodily desire and leave alcohol and other drugs behind.
Hook, line, and sinker, each AA member swallows the poisonous bait of one-day-at-a-time sobriety, along with an inverted lifestyle based upon the force of addiction, rather than upon the force of recovery. Addicted people are profoundly suggestible to any continued self-intoxication; after all, isn’t it because they feel powerless over their desire to get high that they are looking for help?
All mottoes aside, millions of men and women have not been helped by AA. Millions of men and women, however, have been waylaid by AA precisely at the time when they were on the brink of total recovery, during a moment of clarity and circumspection when they intuitively knew that they would soon have to quit drinking/using altogether, not one-day-at-a-time, but for life. Sadly, they were met by the friendly, cunning face of chronic addiction, “You don’t have to quit for life; just one-day-at-a-time. Keep coming back; it works if you work it,” and so on, and OnAnon. Recovery groupism has destroyed more lives than addiction itself. Unaided by recovery doctrines, addiction may be easily and promptly defeated through moral judgment and free will.
This blog often uses male pronouns when gender is irrelevant, the old-fashioned way.
Family addiction intervention is a practice with its origins in the 1970’s, when American society was in flux from social unrest stemming in part from an outbreak of mass, runaway addiction to alcohol and other drugs. The result of that turmoil has been the emergence of a social movement based upon the values and beliefs of addicted people themselves, a quiet shift in mainstream thinking that has gained considerable momentum in recent years. Concepts from the recovery group movement have given rise to an enormous addiction treatment industry, hungry for the lucrative, repeat business of clients in the throes of unresolved, chronic addiction. One anomaly spawned by the addiction treatment industry is an aggressive marketing concept, addiction intervention, which was hijacked from its legitimate 32nd cousin, crisis intervention.
Addiction intervention is based entirely upon 12-step recoveryism, which denies that free will exists among addicted people. An intervention is a conspiracy by a family to abduct a family member, whom I’ll call a subject, into a treatment center. Not surprisingly, a professional guild of interventionists has formed around this legally and ethically challenged practice. Under the guidance of an Interventionist, families convene a little “surprise party” for the addicted family member during which they use highly manipulative, frankly dishonest, and deceitful means to coerce submission to addiction treatment. These house parties are usually presided over by an Interventionist whose professional ancestry is closer to bounty hunter than to social worker or therapist, although many social workers and therapists engage in or advocate addiction interventions. Nearly always, Interventionists are members of AA/NA themselves, giving rise to inherent conflict of interest.
Interventionists work weeks or months in advance of the planned hit, making preparations for abduction with the cooperation of the family. The Interventionist recruits the subject’s near and distant relatives, co-workers, employers, old friends, neighbors, and anyone else who can be enlisted into the noble cause of abduction. Various means of emotional blackmail and intimidation through shame and guilt are rehearsed, and sensitive information about the subject is collected for later use during the hit. Interventions are carefully scripted, to be done “just so,” so that the chances of escape or backlash are minimized. Informed consent to treatment is denied and suppressed, often under the pretext that the proceedings are ethically proper, legally sanctioned coercion similar to arrest or detention.
In essence, the intervention is sprung exactly like a surprise birthday party, except that the prevailing mood and agenda are considerably different. The room is already stacked with VIP’s from the subject’s life, and the Interventionist calls the abduction to order. Each VIP exudes love as the only purpose in being present, and then recites rehearsed lines about the subject’s disgusting behavior and betrayals. Outside, is likely an idling, white van, treatment center logo on door. When the intervention is successful the subject implodes emotionally, falling into a sobbing heap to be led off to the waiting van.
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I very much liked Ann Coulter’s recent intervention on the American victim racket. Unimpressed by the Naked Emperor, she has spoken critically about the subsequent political activities of four women who lost their husbands in the 9-11-01 attack on America. The women, all from New Jersey, became a high-profile clique of political activists very soon after the WTC tragedy occurred, prompting official investigations into their pleading question, “Why did my husband die?” One widow even appeared in a presidential campaign, hurling accusations and angry, political invective aimed at helping the candidate of her choice to get elected. It’s significant that the same campaign also used a man in a wheelchair, a double-amputee at that, who assaulted the political opposition.
In one, fell swoop, Ann Coulter defied the victim racket and violated the sanctity of victimhood itself. “I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much,” Coulter writes of the Jersey Girls in her new book,Godless…. Ann Coulter has dared to tread on the sacred victim, and it has howled in pain and rage. An outpouring of public anger ensued after Coulter’s candid observation, as talkshows took up the cause of the Jersey girls. The horror seemed shared across the political spectrum. Hillary Clinton lashed out, and even Bill O’Reilly Read the rest of this entry »
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If you’re going to have a higher power in your life, then choose it very carefully! However you conceive of a higher power, it will strongly influence your thoughts, your feelings, and your behavior. It will directly affect your self-concept, your identity, your character, and — yes — your soul. Most of all, your higher power will determine the course of your life, and your destiny as well.
Everyone knows how important the higher power is in human affairs, even those who energetically combat such notions. World history is authored by the higher powers of nations and their citizens, and the human condition may be caricatured as a drama with a cast of higher powers. Power itself is nothing more nor less than the triumph of a higher power!
A higher power may be for better or worse, speak truth or falsehood, or manifest good or evil. Every little choice in life is made between at least two objects of concern. The powers that vie for your submission do not fight among themselves, as ancient myth-gods once did. They engage as ideas, values, concepts, hopes and dreams that compete in in the arena of human consciousness — in your human mind, where they are heard and felt as callings for truth, deliverance, and fulfillment.
As the results of your addiction pile up against you, and your struggles against addictive desire appear more futile, you have become depressed, afraid, desperate, and hopeless. These factors add up to a condition of special vulnerability. You are a sitting duck for bad advice. Your obsession with addictive pleasures has not exactly sharpened your senses or your judgment. You may be suffering the toxic after-effects of alcohol or other drugs, plus the depression, anxious moods, and raw emotions that do little to help you make wise choices that are truly in your best interests.
Few are as powerless as an addicted person, and none is so vulnerable to exploitation than an addicted person seeking “help.” When the world is coming down on you, any friendly face may look very good. When you’re sinking in the quicksand of addiction, any warm hand held out to help feels good. That is precisely why Rational Recovery warns all addicted people to stay away from recovery groups of all kinds, and why we reject all forms of addiction treatment and counseling services that deliver new beliefs, new ideas, new philosophies, and new values, all of which contradict your native beliefs and original family values. You are vulnerable, and the help offered to you, even by your family physician, may be more harmful than addiction itself.
Priorities
Now you act against your own standards of decency, bewildered by repeated losses you clearly saw coming. Your higher power (addictive desire) has been governing your life, and it will continue to be your master until Read the rest of this entry »
I was very disappointed, actually startled, to hear the mother of Tiffany Souers call her daughter’s alleged murder, “…a very sick man.” Mrs. Souers’ naive, gentle comment demonstrates how deeply held the disease concept of evil has become since the recovery group movement injected its pernicious doctrines into mainstream thinking. It is proper to say that the suspect, Jerry Buck Inman, may be presumed innocent until proven guilty, or that he has only allegedly committed murder. A parent of a murder victim, however, would probably find it difficult to restrain a presumption of guilt, especially when he is seen to have bat tattoos on his neck, shaven head, and a lengthy record as a criminal sexual psychopath. It would be very easy, under the cloud of emotion, to make a judgment that the suspect is guilty.
Mrs. Souers seems to suspect that even if Inman is guilty of murder, he is innocent, suffering from some disease or sickness that compelled him to strangle her daughter with her bikini top. I sincerely hope that Mrs. Sours will consider that the man who killed her daughter is not only a criminal, but also an evil man. That way, she may experience the authentic horror and outrage that fits the truth of what has happened to her daughter.
I am speaking of the white-hot outrage that cries out within us when someone has maliciously caused us intolerable loss, violating our very soul. To paint an atrocity as a disease symptom, making an evil man appear to be a sick man, protects the guilty from justice and emancipates evil in society. It also prevents healing of a painful wound by using the anesthetic of denial instead of the antibiotic of anger. Anger vented will fade and dissipate, and will leave its permanent shadow over what was lost, but failure to render moral judgment of offenders results in vacant grief, a sadness that becomes an undertow of depression resulting from unexplained, unaccounted, intolerable loss.
If you want to see and hear dark undertones caused by denying authentic anger, visit an addiction recovery group, where the members have parlayed their common immorality, self-intoxication, into a disease symptom. They say anger Read the rest of this entry »
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Last month, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), crashed his car during a drunken spree, adding to his long history of habitual drunkenness and substance abuse. Capitol Police extended him special treatment, due to his high office, and provided him a ride home instead of to the clink. Rep. Kennedy said he had no memory of the incident or the events surrounding it, although his memory seemed unimpaired to the police at the time of the accident.
He assured the public that he would obtain the finest treatment available for the mysterious disease of addiction, the same treatment he’s received many times since the onset of his addictive disease in 1986. He spoke of himself as a heroic figure, as someone who has struggled with addictive disease most of his life. Then, he was quickly on his way to the Mayo Clinic addiction treatment program.
Today, Mr. Kennedy was released from rehab, and at a press conference he assured the public and his constituency that his “treatment” for the disease of addiction will never be completed. He said he will remain “in recovery” for the rest of his days, diligently attending 12-step recovery group meetings in order to stave off his progressive, chronic disease. He assures us that he can never guarantee anyone that he won’t once again explode into drunkenness, and endanger the public by driving under the influence of alcohol and other drugs.
He further explained that, even with the very best medical care, cancer patients cannot guarantee that they will remain tumor-free, so neither can he guarantee that he won’t decide sometime to have a drink or take illegal drugs when conditions are perfect for a “relapse.” Very importantly, the congressman did not apologize for his substance abuse. How could he apologize for using drugs, rendering himself senseleses, when reserves for himself the privilege of relapse? Indeed, he explained that he suffers from a disease, similar in many ways to cancer, that compels Read the rest of this entry »
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Blog copy<b>Brave New Science brings us wonderful new hope for drugs that combat drug addiction. Yes, we can fight drugs with drugs by waging chemical warfare on chemical dependence. The last few months have brought several new entries into the drug war on drugs. Much excitement surrounded the FDA approval of Vivitrol®. This drug works, they say, by threatening to ruin the pleasure produced by cocaine. Vivitrol® is another version of naltrexone, also introduced amid media fanfare as a wonderful new drug, Revia®, for people addicted to alcohol.
Just weeks after the Vivitrol® splash, came modafinil. It hasn’t yet acquired the little ® added by drug companies when a drug is ready for the market. Modafinil is said to repair certain brain tissues that are said to be damaged by cocaine use, tissues without which cocaine addicts experience notorious cravings. Taking modafinil, naltrexone, Revia®, and Vivitrol® are all intended to reduce the notorious cravings for alcohol and other drugs over which addicted people are said to be powerless.
Even smokers may benefit from Brave New Science. Chantix® made its debut recently, offering new hope for ciggie smokers who have not been helped by a similar drug, Zyban®, and for those unlucky smokers who have had no success using nicotine replacement therapies, i.e., patches and gums. By using Chantix®, they can all can hope to be among the lucky one in five who have not resumed smoking afterthe three month course of “treatment.”
These anti-drug drugs are advertised to (1) reduce the desire for the pleasures released by the original drugs, and to (2) reduce the amount of pleasure in the event one indulges in the original drug while attempting to discontinue the drug. Thus, a new family of anti-pleasure drugs brings new hope for addicted people everywhere, if only they will work as advertised.
We should assume that these anti-pleasure drugs work as advertised, because it is entirely possible they do. I have no doubt that biologists can tease one’s brain chemistry in such a way that pleasure is converted to disgust. For example, one drug, Antabuse®, has been used for decades to induce violent illness in its users who drink alcohol. Antabuse® works exactly as advertised, even killing some users who drink, but as a remedy for addiction, it’s worthless. Taken voluntarily, Antabuse® is essentially a self-erected barrier to a good buzz. Taken involuntarily, Antabuse® is half of a deadly poison that might impose the death penalty. Yes, Antabuse®, the brand name for disulfiram, an industrial chemical for vulcanizing rubber, is worthess. Worthless and dangerous.
Surely other anti-pleasure drugs aren’t so crude. For example, naltrexone may simply prevent drinkers from feeling the full effect of their drinks. This allows the drug to be promoted as a drug that makes it easier to stop drinking (once one has started drinking.)
Fatal Flaws of Anti-Drug Drugs
My question is this, “Why would any addicted person take an anti-drink in advance of taking a drink?” Better yet, will they? Read the rest of this entry »
It is an ugly word about the dark and seamy side of life, the waste of life on bodily pleasure. Addiction is about degeneracy, violence, abuse, exploitation, crime, and death. Addiction is a dark place illuminated only by the glow of addictive pleasures, the sensate signatures of substances not found on nature’s plane.
Addiction is a comforting word for the addict, a nicer word than others that might come to his mind. Addiction confers identity upon the addict. After all, addiction is not something one does, but what one is. Once addicted, it is forever. Addict-identity runs deep; it is real. Addiction defines the addict’s life. It is his last name.
Addiction is a welcome word for the families who have lost loved ones to addiction’s grip. Addict or alcoholic is better — yes, nicer! — than ass. Addict is nicer than traitor, or thief, and all the other truthful words that have already been said in addiction’s turbulent wake. Addicts can’t help what they do. So they say.
It’s a disease, according to all higher authorities and powers that be. In other words, the only evidence of addictive disease is some higher authority, never based on biological evidence from the real world where diseases reside. Example: “My doctor says addiction is a disease, because the AMA says it’s a disease, because all the people in recovery say it’s a disease, because my cousin says it’s a disease.”
What a wonderful disease! Many say, “When I learned I have a disease, it was as if a great burden had been lifted from my shoulders.” A recovery group flyer shows an irritated man saying, “Don’t tell me I don’t have a disease!” Addicted people love the disease concept of addiction.
For doctors, professional counselors, and others who treat this mysterious disease, addiction is a gravy train. The first element in addiction treatment is saying you have addictive disease. You must say, “I am an alcoholic/addict.” If you won’t say that until you get some medical evidence that you have addictive disease, then you are in denial. Denial is a symptom of addictive disease. If you think you don’t have the disease, that proves you have it. Some disease.
Many people stay away from recovery groups because of the disease concept of addiction. ”Disease” means “psychological disease” as well as medical disease. However, they continue to act as if they are diseased, powerless over the desire to get high, and they encounter increasing problems in life. If recovery groups only made more sense, and didn’t depend upon regular attendance in order to survive, they would likely exist.
Think of it. Suppose a recovery group explained exactly how to totally recover from any addiction all at once, through planned, permanent abstinence? The only members attending the next session would be the one’s who didn’t get it the first time, or members who are unwilling to forsake their addictions. Very soon, the latter would outnumber the former, and would become a support group for addiction itself rather than an addiction recovery group.
That is what happened to the Rational Recovery Self-Help Network, disbanded long ago. Addiction gets massive support in our society. Massive! Rational Recovery does not support addiction, nor do we facilitate relationships between addicted people, nor do we harbor the Addictive Voice in groups that require repeat attendance for their own survival. To think that the survival of the individual depends upon the social support of similarly dependent people is a great folly.We believe that the survival of the individual is infinitely more important than the survival of recovery groups, and that individual survival is greatly hindered by recovery groups, so we have none of them.
The only people who are actually recovering, and not just in the moral slumber called, “in recovery,” are doing it on their own, along the general lines described in Addictive Voice Recognition Technique® (AVRT®).
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The ozone is drug-induced pleasure that far exceeds mere sex or eating delicious food. Accordingly, the desire to repeat that pleasure is also much stronger than the desire for food or sex. Entering the ozone can be a life-changing event, as the case of Mel Gibson illustrates. He entered the ozone decades ago, emancipating within him a base, animal desire to repeat that pleasure for the rest of his life. He went beyond innocent enjoyment of alcohol and began an impossible, biologically-driven quest for total, hedonistic fulfillment.
Hook, line, and sinker, each AA member swallows the poisonous bait of one-day-at-a-time sobriety, along with an inverted lifestyle based upon the force of addiction, rather than upon the force of recovery. Addicted people are profoundly suggestible to any continued self-intoxication; after all, isn’t it because they feel powerless over their desire to get high that they are looking for help?
In essence, the intervention is sprung exactly like a surprise birthday party, except that the prevailing mood and agenda are considerably different. The room is already stacked with VIP’s from the subject’s life, and the Interventionist calls the abduction to order. Each VIP exudes love as the only purpose in being present, and then recites rehearsed lines about the subject’s disgusting behavior and betrayals. Outside, is likely an idling, white van, treatment center logo on door. When the intervention is successful the subject implodes emotionally, falling into a sobbing heap to be led off to the waiting van.
