No One to Rescue Me from My Drinking
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Addiction is no joke and anything that can provide relief or help to those who have found themselves caught up in it would be a huge thing. I always think back to a former friend of mine who battled with opiates. She lost her family and children -- well after she had completed a recovery program and been sober for a year. When she started with pills there was a very good reason -- several surgeries and a lot of pain management. When the pain was well and gone, she was left with a strong addiction. The woman she was before she started popping pills regularly and the woman she is now (completely sober) are different people. She told me that long term opiate addiction changes your brain chemistry in such a way that depression becomes a way of life -- I'm not sure if that's true, but it looks like it is with her. The worst part is that her marriage problems started well after she had cleaned up. Her husband, still a friend, said he couldn't stand the woman she'd become and confessed to me that he sometimes wished she'd never stopped. Before the judgement starts, he's a solid guy and I stand by his decision to fight for full custody of his children (you'd have to understand the whole story which I can't do justice to here).
Her description of addiction still haunts me, though. She said "you need it like you need food after having not eaten for a week". She's done a week long fast (as have I). She'd know. That description is the only thing I've heard that adequately explains why addicts will put their children in harms way if it means getting their next fix (ever wonder why cigarette prices can go up 600% in two years and people still smoke?). I watched her become completely broke buying pills from scary people in scary places. I've heard from others some of the things she was willing to do to get enough pills to get her through a day; it's way beyond what you already couldn't imagine a suburban mother of 4 doing.
What happens if they can't get the drinks one day? Do they get agitated? Does it impair their lives in any way?
Except when you don't, as was the case with some adults that I spent a large chunk of my life with. Binge drinking is a different kind of alcoholism, but it is still alcoholism.
To get a medically supervised withdrawal in England you need to be drinking 40 units a day - that's a litre of 40% spirits every day. (That number drops if you have severe and enduring mental illness, or are female).
Binge drinking - having most of the week alcohol free and ten having a bunch of drinks over a few days is associated with increased risk of sexual violence; unplanned pregnancy; STDs; accidental injury; etc, and the the alcohol harms on top. But uaving those drink free days is somewhat protective.
Drinking a couple of drinks everyday makes the alcohol harms much more likely, and reduces the other risks. (It depends how big those drinks are.)
I'm not sure what I want to say but perhaps just that it's important to realize that your or mine experience is not at all the same as others.
Ultimately we broke up as it's remarkably easy to bamboozle a drunk into admitting that yes, they have cheated on you dozens of times with dozens of men.
This woman is a high court judge now. As far as I can tell, most barristers and judges are full blown alcoholics. For some reason I loved her - probably in the same way as I love my three legged cat - broken, piteous things, both.
I suppose the point of where I'm going is that the only person who can rescue you is yourself. I tried for far too long for both of our sakes.
I've not spoken with her in a decade, I hope she's at least found a way of living with her demons - but as I said, drinking is a huge part of the legal professional culture, so as long as she's inured in that world, I don't know what hope there is.
Either way, it's her life. I guess the main thing I learned is that kindness can kill, be careful how you apply it.
80-hour weeks are going to take a cut of your soul and I wonder sometimes how many of us are trying to replace said cut with alcohol or other drugs.
I haven't read the book the above article is covering but it seems Dodes argues psychotherapy is a better alternative as 'addiction' is usually just a manifestation of self-destructive/self medication behavior ultimately due to untreated psychological issues. In this OP's case this is looks like it was depression - though it's unclear if she is seeking treatment outside of AA.
In the hardest periods of my life I managed to guzzle 6 liters of coca-cola every day, plus eating lots of chocolate, and drinking lots of coffee and tea, of course this also ruined my overall health.
I recently managed to "get clean", but I also stopped working, then I gave up, decided to buy 1 liter of red-bull style energy drink (not redbull itself because I can't afford it), drink it all in one go...
then I could work, and I felt MUCH better... but I am also drinking lots of coca-cola and eating lots of chocolate again.
I am seeing a psychiatrist, and seemly I have ADHD, and caffeine (and other stimulants) are a common way to self-medicate, and many ADHD sufferers, specially those not on legal meds, end having some strong vices (not only stopping at caffeine... cocaine, meth, and other strongly stimulant drugs abuse is also common).
I started taking Ritalin (Adderall is illegal here) this week, for now only half a pill per day, because my psychiatrist is inexperienced and probably wants to be safe, let's see if with it (and an increased dosage later) I will be able to stop abusing caffeine, my kidneys (that had stones) and my liver (that is covered in fat to the point of failing to work properly) will thank me. (I am also going to a psychologist...)
I hope you get past this. it's especially difficult because a lot of people don't realize caffene is a drug. Like watching a couple who drink three bottles of wine a day talk down on someone for drinking a liter of spirits as an alcoholic.
They're one and the same.
I might have misunderstood what you were trying to say. If I did, I apologise in advance:
Because I get a day-long headache whenever I don't drink a caffeinated beverage for a day or so, I know that I'm a caffeine addict.
Speaking about volumes of ingestible substances with somewhat-known properties to provide a general idea of how much of a thing one is ingesting doesn't mean that one is an addict; it means that one is interested in attempting to convey information somewhat precisely. If you don't specify things in known quantities, you're left with vague and imprecise descriptors like "some", "not much", and "a lot".
I am struggling to barely work, I keep getting repeteadly fired even when my performance is good (because my behaviour is too strange in the office), I lost a girlfriend due to ADHD (I have to constantly fidget or move, this girlfriend tought I was anxious and didn't wanted to pay attention to her when I was fidgeting when she was talking to me).
Also caffeine don't induce ADHD (the medical condition).
Unsolicited advice: I recommend taking days off your stimulant meds where feasible (e.g. weekends), as tolerance can build quickly and you can end up feeling like you need both your prescribed medication and whatever you were using to self-medicate prior to being diagnosed in order to feel "right" and able to focus. That, and my experience has been that, when I'm taking my meds regularly, I feel as dumb/unable to focus when they wear off as I feel calmed down/finally able to concentrate when they're in effect.
The only exercises I do that actually help my health is weight lifting with low reps (with high reps I also start to lose muscle).
Wilson hoped LSD would help those addicted to alcohol. He realized that A.A. simply did not work for every motivated alcoholic. According to Wilson, “It is a generally acknowledged fact in spiritual development that ego reduction makes the influx of God’s grace possible. If, therefore, under LSD we can have a temporary reduction, so that we can better see what we are and where we are going–well, that might be of some help.”
http://mywordlikefire.com/2012/10/28/lsd-researcher-and-a-a-... http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/aug/23/lsd-help-alco... http://www.maps.org/research-archive/w3pb/2005/2005_Dyck_228... http://www.bbc.com/news/health-17297714
If you've got the bug, that book is not going to help you. It'll just tell you how screwed you are. If you don't have the bug, I think that book might help you understand the problem.
* Plato's Republic. It's not meant to be read alone, I think. Read it with a like minded group of folks a book at a time. Our discussions of this work still inform how I think of all the ways people form groups together, in more or less ideal forms. * The Master And His Emissary. This book opened up the ancient worldview to me, and also gave me a strong rap on the head that "figuring things out" might not be the best way to navigate through life.
I haven't read the book the above article is covering but it seems Dodes argues psychotherapy is a better alternative as 'addiction' is usually just a manifestation of self-destructive/self medication behavior ultimately due to untreated psychological issues. In this OP's case this is looks like depression.
Fortunately most people don't take the entire philosophy of the group to heart - if they did, I couldn't imagine the psychological toll it would create on an attendee.
That's pretty much the antithesis of the AA philosophy, as well as the exact opposite of the "alcoholism is a disease" thinking. IOW, no one thinks you got cancer because you're a "weak human being". If there's any "ego death" involved, it's that you're not going to solve this in your own.
Source: attended my share of AA meetings and even read the book.
trashing those who you don't agree with isn't a fair justification to downvote.
My point is proven in the _first_ and _third_ steps of the program, In the admission that you have a problem, and that you are helpless to solve the problem yourself, respectively. [0][1]
What about your point? Your personal opinion of it? It is the admission that you are _helpless_ to your disease, and it is that very reason you don't have the self efficacy to overcome your issues yourself.
An ego death involves, in albeit, sometimes flawed Jungian psychology a loss of identity, and A transformation of ones psyche in such a way that the Self is not perceived the same way after such transformation.[2]
MY argument is that AA involves such ego death in that your admission over having a lack of self-efficacy in solving your own alcoholism is transformative, and you can't do it without the group or other external help, a la Step 3.
I am a different person than you. I find my inability to solve problems for myself _weakness_.
And just because you disagree, instead of positing an argument against my thoughts, you downvote my comment and claim you "read the book."
This was the same exact fashion of discourse that had me leave AA in the first place. I handled "alcoholism" differently. My life is a legal nightmare but alcohol isn't a personal issue.
In sum: People read things differently. But you don't see my flagging your comments because I disagree.
[0] a real source: http://www.alcoholic.org/research/aa-step-1/
[1] http://www.alcoholic.org/research/aa-step-3/
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_death
my source: sentenced to AA, went to a few meetings, found it damaging, and worked out an alternative treatment plan with court.
The reason this is so important is that should this woman have a "slip" - which LOTS of alcoholics do - now the world, and needy alcoholics, have one more reason to dismiss AA.
Try it before you judge it.
AA finds u when u need it, not to be traded for a drunkalog to generate page views.
> Try it before you judge it.
An organization that tries to inflate its own public success rate, and then asks people to keep an open mind towards it rather than dismiss it. Ok.
Jeez these AA PR snippets are just stellar.
Participation in AA or other support groups (eg. SMART/Rational Recovery) is associated with substantially increased rates of continuous abstinence at the 1, 3 and 5 year marks after quitting, although there may be some self-selection bias going on there (participation rates being higher among the more motivated and so on).
It's been shown, as much as is possible, that that's all selection bias. People rarely fall off the wagon and then keep going to meetings.
AA's rules around anonymity and consent make it conveniently impossible to run good studies, so they are able to (rightly, for the most part) write off any study that runs against them, but are also unable to show any positive findings that don't fall prey to very obvious problems.
> People rarely fall off the wagon and then keep going to meetings.
I have a significant number of acquaintances who did exactly that, myself included, but I am not going to make the claim that my personal experience means anything statistically.
> It's been shown, as much as is possible, that that's all selection bias.
If that is the case, feel free to provide some sort of citation to back up your claim.
In Project MATCH [1] we learn that "twelve-step" (AA), cognitive behavioral therapy, and motivational enhancement therapy all have very similar results across a large number of measures.
We also find that CBT performs equivalently to "brief opportunistic intervention" (which goes under a variety of names, but takes a single 5-minute meeting), which is the minimum amount of treatment that we're ethically allowed to give alcoholics.
So it may work better than nothing (can't really study that), but there are much lower-touch methods that give equivalent results.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MATCH
[2] http://robinsteed.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/52176344/Treatmen..., study by "Chick et al. (1988)"
Why the focus on high-touch/low-touch? It doesn't cost anyone anything except for those who attend, and even those who do aren't obligated to spend anything. It does take up some time, but it is time that I enjoy spending.
I have undergone both CBT and yes, have attended AA. The former did not do much for me, the latter did. AA as practiced in my area is strongly remniscent of CBT, only with additional social support, which is helpful for recovering alcoholics who have likely either alienated most people or who have built social networks focused around substance abuse.
If you were to say that addiction is complicated and the right course of treatment is difficult to determine and efficacy is hard to measure, I certainly would agree.
It is a high-touch treatment that performs as well as a 5 minute intervention, despite constant claims that it is better. In the post I originally replied to, you implied that you were comparing it to other methods rather than nothing, although it wasn't terribly clear.
> It doesn't cost anyone anything except for those who attend
The oft-claimed improvement of AA over other methods messes up our views on addiction, as well as the justice system for addicts. Our refusal to use drugs to fight addiction even though the science is quite clear stems from full-abstinence organizations, largely led by AA.
A couple of days ago, I stepped off my back porch wrong and broke my ankle pretty badly. I was in a lot of pain, and I definitely needed to go to the hospital. A part of me was actually quite excited at the possibility of obtaining a "legitimate" supply of opiate painkillers. Luckily, I called a friend from AA and took his much more reasonable advice not to take the chance. Once I'd made that decision I realized that I'd been greatly exaggerating the pain to myself, and that it was nothing OTC painkillers couldn't handle.
Scary stuff, right? I had come up with a way to convince myself that it'd be ok to take score some drugs, which could very easily have sent me off into a relapse. It's when things like that happen that you need to listen to a "higher power": someone who isn't having your crazy addict thoughts and can assess your behavior rationally and objectively.
Since I'm laid up, AA people have been helping me get groceries, rides to meetings, and just stopping by to say hi. I can't really see a recovery professional doing that.
It has to do with encouraging humility among its members, who are alcoholics and who generally tend to have issues with being self-centered. This is true of a lot of the traditions - "leaders are trusted servants, they don't govern" and so on. Basically trying to keep addicts from getting an inflated sense of their own importance.
The particular tradition you refer to (appropriately) is about protecting AA from the ego's of its members and protecting members from arrogance which everyone know 'precedes a fall'.
Another misunderstanding of this tradition has to do with confusion with confidentiality. It was never intended for members to be secret from each other. This tradition is at the level of press, radio and films. Some people have tried to say that anonymity is at the level of members with each other, and that members should hide their full name from each other. In my opinion (which could be wrong) this is due to the influence of treatment centers in the 80's and 90's on the established program of AA.
Regardless, I find that careful anonymous sharing about the program of AA online is ok as long as you don't identify yourself as an AA member or use your full name and picture. Or if you do use your full name and picture, you shouldn't admit membership in AA.
I do not care to comment on my personal affiliation :)
I feel like nothing can _really_ protect you from members' arrogance if they were determined enough. The rule, in my mind, only creates a certain exclusiveness shrouded in secrecy, which as far dealing with alcoholism seems pretty pointless. If it really works then why not spread the word?
much worse i'd imagine :/
what?
I read the article a couple of days ago, but I don't recall anything here being particularly gender-specific.
I will admit, though, I assumed it was a woman just from the male romantic interest, which is my bad.
What? There's something to be said for not being hostile to those with different proclivities, however, there is certainly no reason to apologize for assuming something that is true in the vast majority of cases.
It's also not at all unlikely that you would consciously or unconsciously pick up on things in writing that would allow you to make a better than random guess about the sex of the author.
no idea why... these kinds of first impressions are always hit and miss. it goes to show what terrible judges of character we all are. :)
It sounds like he was an enabler to me, and that she would have done better off without him if he'd cut off contact with her at any point, even after she started AA.
So I would tend to be reluctant to help people that were above a certain size or physicality. Smaller people were much less of a threat, and I was exposing myself to less danger by helping them. Women, with their tendency on average to be both shorter, lighter and having a smaller proportion of muscle, happened to be below this "physical threat" threshold far more often than men.
Some regulars I'd see intoxicated enough to know that they weren't the violent drunk type and they'd often get a helping hand, even if they were twice my size. Conversely, some small people I knew were the violent drunk type and I didn't get involved.
Or in this case; not drink.
I agree with meesles sentiment.
> The absence of alcohol revealed that my “dark soul” was the manifestation of a decades-long depression. Booze had masked its diagnosis while also egging it on.
They to me are more talking about binge drinking.
I'm not sure an addict can just go to one AA meeting and stop. Sure it's possible, but to me they didn't sound like an addict, more self destructive.
I think one of the common(if not primary) ways people become alcholics is when their senses keep delivering overwhelmingly negative signals and they want it to just stop.
When you feel that your life is awful in every way imaginable and you just don't want to feel anything anymore...
Fast forward about two decades and surprise, I'm an alcoholic!
> Point is, some people genetically have an alcohol problem.
Can you explain how you got from point A to point B above? I don't understand how your observation implies dependency, addiction, or any of the numerous problems that alcoholism causes in someone's life.
It is also true that some people have inherited traits that interfere with processing alcohol. But I don't understand how you can conclude that someone has such a trait from observing their behavior when drinking, nor how you conclude that such a person is an alcoholic. In fact, perhaps the most common genetic quirk (it's not really a defect) is a missing encoding for alcohol dehydrogenase, which according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_flush_reaction) is correlated with lower rates of alcoholism. Of course, others exist also.
Not really interested in the emotional reactions here on either side. Just interested in why/how you conclude that these three things are strongly correlated/causal.
I observe someone undergoes a huge personality change after drinking and seems a lot happier. I get a sense that this person might have difficulty consuming in moderation.
It seems consistent with a physiological or genetic basis. Not trying to win a prize in genetics or logic, just to use common sense to understand the human behavior I'm seeing.
I guess it's also possible something our mothers did while pregnant made the difference. I believe Occam's Razor and the body of evidence point to a genetic basis. What do you think the evidence points to?
> As a lot of drunks report, introducing alcohol into my body just felt like "Ooh, there we go. Here I am." Sort of like it elegantly completed a chemical equation of some kind.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a25749/rob-delaney-red-...
I can't relate to that at all...alcohol has no interesting effect on me. There's a science in studying genes and chemistry, and a sort of science in just observing people and life and storing things and noticing patterns and developing hypotheses.
Jesus. Empathy is dead here.
But now, thinking about the story, I think maybe she meant it more as "No One [but me] to Rescue Me from My Drinking", because certainly she's taken control of her own life, and that's commendable.
There was no one to rescue her because you can't be rescued from yourself.