12 fun things to do at forcibly attended AA meetings

[RTP2003]

Your acceptance of AA/NA/Stepcraft implies that you accept the disease model, as they do.  I mean, if you took away the disease model, the concept of powerlessness, and the religious nature of the program, then I wouldn't think of it as being harmful.  Then again, if you took away those aspects of the program, it would cease to be AA/NA/Stepcraft.

You are engaging in double talk and sideSTEPping the issue, which is what I have come to expect from 12 Step devotees.  I bring up the cornerstone of the 12 Step Religion, the disease model, and suddenly I'm putting words in your mouth.  Bullshit.  I'm just bringing to light one of the many, many outdated, flawed, and inherently wrong (on many levels) aspects of the program, and you say "that's not how I feel".  Well, excuse me........I mean, you're carrying the 12 Step torch but I am wrong for assuming you believe their dogma?  If I saw someone goose-STEPping and waving a Nazi flag, I think I'd be pretty safe in assuming they didn't like Jews.  I see you propagating 12 Step mythology and I assume you believe the rest of their fables as well.  Seems consistent to me, but maybe you're one of the AA types that doesn't accept the dogma hook, line and sinker, which is kind of like "Christians Against Jesus".....makes no sense whatsoever, but you are right in inferring I have no idea how your thought process works.

[Anonymous]

You sound as testy as the devotees that write hate mail to Agent Orange.

I have taken it up with Judges.  Both professionally (I'm a paralegal) and personally.  Most of them totally agree and wish that AA itself would take a stand and say that they will no longer accept court orders.  As do I.  But, they won't.  Now, I do give props to the few individuals at AA that refuse to sign slips for that very reason, but they're few and far between.

Why is it such a problem for you that there are legitimate criticisms of AA?  If it works for you, great.  Not everyone shares that view though.

This is what I mean by posting bunk, show me where in this entire country that the judicial system has stated they would like AA to stop taking people they send. That is my first problem here, second we have to because if they express a desire to not drink

[Joel]

Edited: Wednesday, October 06, 2010

[Free Will]

Anne Bonney,

What treatment do you suggest for alcoholics?

Stop drinking.

That is not realistic for everyone and I know you're aware of that.

It is realistic.  It's unrealistic to expect a higher power to do it for you, or has done it for you.  Even by Christian standards, God gave men free will to fuck up or succeed on their own.  Drinking to excess is listed explicitly as a sin, not a disease, in the Bible.  It amazes me how so many Christians can attend AA and not understand the heretical nature of their teachings.  At it's core it denies that man has free will, stating instead that a substance can make a person "powerless" when in reality picking up a drink (yes, each one) is a conscious choice, as is the choice to quit.

Smoking is a behavior.  Cancer is a disease.  Promiscuous sex is a behavior.  STDs are diseases.  Snorting cocaine is a behavior.  A deviated septum is a disease.  Drinking is a behavior.  Cirrhosis of the liver is a disease.  All behaviors are choices, and while they might result in diseases as a consequence, a pattern of behavior is not in itself a disease.  A person with cancer cannot "quit" cancer.  A person with AIDS cannot "quit" aids.  The element of choice, the exercise of free will, is what makes drinking to excess a behavior and not a disease.

So why do so many AA supporters maintain that alcoholism is a disease?  Because it's a lot easier for people who have fucked up their life and hurt others to blame it on an inanimate substance than it is to take full responsibility for the bad choices they have made, and the consequences of those choices.  A person who has killed a kid while drunk driving is far more likely to say "i was sick" so they can live with themselves than "I killed that kid, there is no excuse, and I should probably either find a way to live with what I've done or eat my gun".

AA does not work.  Sure there is anecdotal evidence all over the place of people claiming the program saved their lives, but statistically, those people would be sober anyway.  The rate at which AA works is actually worse than the rate people quit drinking on their own, with no aid other than with their free will.  How do we know this?  Because there have been double blind studies done with court offenders (such as the Brandsma study).  What's also interesting is that often the people who do the worst with the AA program are the most emphatic in their claims that the program is saving their lives.

Of course we already know this.  Everybody has seen kids coming out of programs claiming the program saved their lives from addiction -- kids who never had actual drinking problems to begin with, only to identify with the "addict" identity in the program and act it out on release, drinking alcoholically and using drugs to excess.  Why do they do this?  Because they are indoctrinated to believe they cannot help themselves.  They've learned to be powerless, and as such, don't bother trying.  This alone explains why the rate of binge drinking for AA members is 5 times higher than those who quit on their own in the Brandsma study.  And let's be clear.  The participants in the study were selected randomly from the same group of court ordered offenders.  There has never been a single study, not a single one, to show that AA works better than nothing at all.

Why is AA so popular then?  It's free, it makes people feel good even when they shouldn't, and it's 12th step spreads it's ideology like a virus.  It's influence has so permeated modern society it's difficult to listen to an album or watch a TV show without being bombarded with it's philosophy and lingo.  From birth people are exposed to what they see as the "truth" about alcoholism and the "cure".  It's been a silent, subtle takeover by an objectively false belief system masquerading as the truth, masquerading as science, and one that suppresses all other beliefs as "dangerous".  Like a cult, the AA way is the only way to sobriety, to salvation (there is doublespeak on this within AA.  I'd be glad to discuss it.).  I won't go so far as to say it's a full blown cult Cult, but I will say that many of AA's practices are very cult like, and that the way it spreads is in many ways something cults like Scientology and the Unification Church could only dream of.

Let's be clear.  I have no problem with people voluntarily believing a lie in order for them to feel better about their lives.  It's their choice.  What I have a problem with is forced (by the state, workplace, or parents) indoctrination into this belief system that is based more around a religion, a feel-good lie, than around science or objective truth.  Actually.  Let me clarify.  I have a problem with forced treatment of any kind, AA or otherwise (i prefer straight out punishment for non-consensual crimes, and no punishment for consensual), but AA is especially bad because it is religious in nature and as such, sentencing to AA violates the establishment clause of the first amendment.

If you got sober through AA, pat yourself on the back.  You did well for yourself.  It wasn't the program and it certainly wasn't the higher power.  Smile at your own accomplishments.

[Che Gookin]

# 13-  Sit in the front row and masturbate.

[Anonymous]

edited

[Froderik]

Say, did you hear the one about the priest, the alcoholic, and the pedophile?


And that was just the FIRST guy....   :roflmao:  :cheers:  :notworthy:

[Free Will]

:shamrock:  :shamrock:
Well it all makes sense when your not a "alcoholic" you can pontificate from your soap box especially
when there's no sense of urgency. All these theories are great but here is my problem, I am getting all this feedback from folks that drink and smoke pot (which is fine no problem with me) but "WTF".
Please give it a rest, OK you did not like AA, you wanted to drink and be merry so be merry.
Happy, Joyfulness and Free.
The other thing I've noticed all this no-god and self-will, ME ME ME....most of ya are single, live w/mommy, (if your not living with mommy ya should because look around ya don't have much to speak of), not very happy "really" and party like a eighteen year old "sailor" who just left home and brag about here on fornits. Now most of you folks are to old for this. So how is this all working for ya....... Ya I thought so....bash AA a little more denial will help ya sleep.
Danny...........

Lols.

As for your generalizations about my personal life -- I'm screwed any way I respond to your insinuations.  If I say that I drink or smoke pot every day, you'll call me an alcoholic/addict in denial, proving yourself right. If I say that I don't drink and don't do drugs, or that I moderate, you'll claim i'm either a "dry drunk/druggie" or not an alcoholic/addict, can't understand addiction, and thus can't make educated commentary on the subject (also proving yourself right).  It's this mechanism that allows you to disregard any and all information coming from outside your little clique.  There is nothing anybody can possibly say to you that won't be disregarded automatically, not because of the arguments or information itself, but because of who it's coming from.  The funny thing is you probably don't even realize you're doing it.  You filter information coming to you.  The first step, as with AA, is to realize you're doing it.

Come on now.  You have a brain.  Use it.  It's not "stinking thinking".  It's rational thought given to you by god or evolution or whatever you believe in.  It's there for a reason.  A person does not need to have had cancer to be an oncologist, or to have had a urinary tract infection to be an urologist.  The arguments I present are sound and you should at least consider them to make an educated decision.  The only reason why AA states that only an alcoholic can understand an alcoholic is because the system was designed so you would ignore all outside influences.  Even the definition of alcoholic is twisted in AA to control who is considered worthy of respect and attention.  If you get sober within AA you're considered a "recovering alcoholic".  If you get sober outside of AA you're a "dry drunk" or "merely abstaining".  All of it's designed to tell you who is worthy to listen to and who is an apostate for whom you should plug your fingers in your ears for your own damn good.

Is it for your own good?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  How will you ever know if you don't look at all sides of the argument.  Are you afraid the truth might shake your foundations in sobriety?  What if that fear is based on a lie?  It all boils down to this question in the end: would you rather live a life within a pleasant lie, or face the harsh truth.  You'll never know what is the truth unless you research both sides.  So which will it be.  The red pill or the blue pill?  If you choose to look at both sides, try here for starters:

http://www.peele.net/lib/diseasing3.html

Or if that's too heavy for you, OrangePapers.org is pretty easy to read.

[Anne Bonney]

:shamrock:  :shamrock:
Well it all makes sense when your not a "alcoholic" you can pontificate from your soap box especially
when there's no sense of urgency. All these theories are great but here is my problem, I am getting all this feedback from folks that drink and smoke pot (which is fine no problem with me) but "WTF".

Well, quite a few of us have been told by AA that we ARE alcoholics. So, take that for what it's worth.

Please give it a rest, OK you did not like AA, you wanted to drink and be merry so be merry.

Might I suggest that you steer clear of threads that you don't like. I started this thread and posted a joke.  You guys came in here and decided to debate the issue.  You're hearing things that you don't like so you're asking us to stop???  Get the hell out of the thread if you don't like the subject.

Happy, Joyfulness and Free.

Yes, we can see that from the sentence directly below.......
 

The other thing I've noticed all this no-god and self-will, ME ME ME....most of ya are single, live w/mommy, (if your not living with mommy ya should because look around ya don't have much to speak of), not very happy "really" and party like a eighteen year old "sailor" who just left home and brag about here on fornits. Now most of you folks are to old for this. So how is this all working for ya....... Ya I thought so....bash AA a little more denial will help ya sleep.
Danny...........

Ah...there's that special brand of spirituality.  You just can't stand the thought of someone being able to deal with their problems without your precious AA so you have to write us off as kids or losers or that we're in denial.  You sound just like program staff and you're proving some of my points about AA and it's people right here in this thread.  You sound like program staff.....same fucking shit, different wrapper.

By the way dear, I'm 44 year old married woman who's raised two grown children.

[RTP2003]

Anne Bonney,

What treatment do you suggest for alcoholics?

Stop drinking.

That is not realistic for everyone and I know you're aware of that.

It is realistic.  It's unrealistic to expect a higher power to do it for you, or has done it for you.  Even by Christian standards, God gave men free will to fuck up or succeed on their own.  Drinking to excess is listed explicitly as a sin, not a disease, in the Bible.  It amazes me how so many Christians can attend AA and not understand the heretical nature of their teachings.  At it's core it denies that man has free will, stating instead that a substance can make a person "powerless" when in reality picking up a drink (yes, each one) is a conscious choice, as is the choice to quit.

Smoking is a behavior.  Cancer is a disease.  Promiscuous sex is a behavior.  STDs are diseases.  Snorting cocaine is a behavior.  A deviated septum is a disease.  Drinking is a behavior.  Cirrhosis of the liver is a disease.  All behaviors are choices, and while they might result in diseases as a consequence, a pattern of behavior is not in itself a disease.  A person with cancer cannot "quit" cancer.  A person with AIDS cannot "quit" aids.  The element of choice, the exercise of free will, is what makes drinking to excess a behavior and not a disease.

So why do so many AA supporters maintain that alcoholism is a disease?  Because it's a lot easier for people who have fucked up their life and hurt others to blame it on an inanimate substance than it is to take full responsibility for the bad choices they have made, and the consequences of those choices.  A person who has killed a kid while drunk driving is far more likely to say "i was sick" so they can live with themselves than "I killed that kid, there is no excuse, and I should probably either find a way to live with what I've done or eat my gun".

AA does not work.  Sure there is anecdotal evidence all over the place of people claiming the program saved their lives, but statistically, those people would be sober anyway.  The rate at which AA works is actually worse than the rate people quit drinking on their own, with no aid other than with their free will.  How do we know this?  Because there have been double blind studies done with court offenders (such as the Brandsma study).  What's also interesting is that often the people who do the worst with the AA program are the most emphatic in their claims that the program is saving their lives.

Of course we already know this.  Everybody has seen kids coming out of programs claiming the program saved their lives from addiction -- kids who never had actual drinking problems to begin with, only to identify with the "addict" identity in the program and act it out on release, drinking alcoholically and using drugs to excess.  Why do they do this?  Because they are indoctrinated to believe they cannot help themselves.  They've learned to be powerless, and as such, don't bother trying.  This alone explains why the rate of binge drinking for AA members is 5 times higher than those who quit on their own in the Brandsma study.  And let's be clear.  The participants in the study were selected randomly from the same group of court ordered offenders.  There has never been a single study, not a single one, to show that AA works better than nothing at all.

Why is AA so popular then?  It's free, it makes people feel good even when they shouldn't, and it's 12th step spreads it's ideology like a virus.  It's influence has so permeated modern society it's difficult to listen to an album or watch a TV show without being bombarded with it's philosophy and lingo.  From birth people are exposed to what they see as the "truth" about alcoholism and the "cure".  It's been a silent, subtle takeover by an objectively false belief system masquerading as the truth, masquerading as science, and one that suppresses all other beliefs as "dangerous".  Like a cult, the AA way is the only way to sobriety, to salvation (there is doublespeak on this within AA.  I'd be glad to discuss it.).  I won't go so far as to say it's a full blown cult Cult, but I will say that many of AA's practices are very cult like, and that the way it spreads is in many ways something cults like Scientology and the Unification Church could only dream of.

Let's be clear.  I have no problem with people voluntarily believing a lie in order for them to feel better about their lives.  It's their choice.  What I have a problem with is forced (by the state, workplace, or parents) indoctrination into this belief system that is based more around a religion, a feel-good lie, than around science or objective truth.  Actually.  Let me clarify.  I have a problem with forced treatment of any kind, AA or otherwise (i prefer straight out punishment for non-consensual crimes, and no punishment for consensual), but AA is especially bad because it is religious in nature and as such, sentencing to AA violates the establishment clause of the first amendment.

If you got sober through AA, pat yourself on the back.  You did well for yourself.  It wasn't the program and it certainly wasn't the higher power.  Smile at your own accomplishments.

:rocker:

[Anonymous]

As for your generalizations about my personal life -- I'm screwed any way I respond to your insinuations.  If I say that I drink or smoke pot every day, you'll call me an alcoholic/addict in denial, proving yourself right. If I say that I don't drink and don't do drugs, or that I moderate, you'll claim i'm either a "dry drunk/druggie" or not an alcoholic/addict, can't understand addiction, and thus can't make educated commentary on the subject (also proving yourself right).  It's this mechanism that allows you to disregard any and all information coming from outside your little clique.  There is nothing anybody can possibly say to you that won't be disregarded automatically, not because of the arguments or information itself, but because of who it's coming from.  The funny thing is you probably don't even realize you're doing it.  You filter information coming to you.  The first step, as with AA, is to realize you're doing it.

Come on now.  You have a brain.  Use it.  It's not "stinking thinking".  It's rational thought given to you by god or evolution or whatever you believe in.  It's there for a reason.  A person does not need to have had cancer to be an oncologist, or to have had a urinary tract infection to be an urologist.  The arguments I present are sound and you should at least consider them to make an educated decision.  The only reason why AA states that only an alcoholic can understand an alcoholic is because the system was designed so you would ignore all outside influences.  Even the definition of alcoholic is twisted in AA to control who is considered worthy of respect and attention.  If you get sober within AA you're considered a "recovering alcoholic".  If you get sober outside of AA you're a "dry drunk" or "merely abstaining".  All of it's designed to tell you who is worthy to listen to and who is an apostate for whom you should plug your fingers in your ears for your own damn good.

Is it for your own good?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  How will you ever know if you don't look at all sides of the argument.  Are you afraid the truth might shake your foundations in sobriety?  What if that fear is based on a lie?  It all boils down to this question in the end: would you rather live a life within a pleasant lie, or face the harsh truth.  You'll never know what is the truth unless you research both sides.  So which will it be.  The red pill or the blue pill?  If you choose to look at both sides, try here for starters:

http://www.peele.net/lib/diseasing3.html

Or if that's too heavy for you, OrangePapers.org is pretty easy to read.[/quote]
 :shamrock:  :shamrock:
I don't have a lot of time to get into the other points you made.
I do want to take the time and apologize for my rude comments in the post above,
You highlighted my comments.
This was very rude of me, Freewill.
If you will notice my original post I edited. It was removed. If you wish to do the same
I would appreciate it (your high lighted post of mine).
Danny....
 :shamrock:  :shamrock:

[Joel]

Edited: Wednesday, October 06, 2010

[Inculcated]

Say, did you hear the one about the priest, the alcoholic, and the pedophile?


And that was just the FIRST guy....   :roflmao:  :cheers:  :notworthy:

:rofl:

[Joel]

Edited: Wednesday, October 06, 2010

[RTP2003]

I don't know anything about the AA model.  There are some questions I have about AA and hopefully people can answer them.

1.  How long do people have to attend AA meeting per court order?
2.  Who runs AA meetings?
3.  How long are AA meetings?
4.  Do AA facilitators or participants frown upon those who are skeptical about religion?
5.  Do the courts allow for people to choose other treatment methods besides AA?

1) It varies, sometimes for years.
2) There is generally a facilitator who is an AA member with at least (I think) 90 days of continuous sobriety (or at least willing to say they have that long)
3. It varies, but most are from 1-2 hours.
4. Yes, very much so, though they will deny it.
5.  They are supposed to, but frequently do not unless challenged.  The challenges that have come up so far have all found, on appeal, that AA/NA/Stepcraft IS a religion, regardless of their claims to the contrary.  One case was in New York sate, another in Tennessee, and a third in California.