Interesting line from Wikipedia's Bill W. page: "During the final month he even asked for a whisky once or twice, but was not given one. "
Bill W. is one of the co-founders of Alcoholic's Anonymous. He's dead now, of course. Poor guy couldn't even get a snort on his death bed. Now that's "cut off"!
A handy thing to remember is to look up controversial topics with the added search term "skepticism." I did that with Alcoholic Anonymous and found a post on the Cynical-C Blog that discusses the work of Professor George Vaillant of Harvard University. The post also links to this page at orange.papers.org.
Valliant's research is interesting enough, but I wish there were more studies on the subject. This article about the "alcoholism is a disease" concept at baldwinresearch.com is interesting. And there is at least one mention of the "disease" notion on the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast. The host calls South Park the "definitive treatment of this topic in popular culture," which I think is strangely true.
This subject is really more important than a lot of people realize. Across the USA, many citizens are ordered by courts, companies and other organizations vested of a certain amount of authority, to attend Alcoholics Anonymous -- and other 12-Step programs. Yet neither the safety nor the effectiveness of these programs have really been proven.
Valliant's mention of "external supervision, substitute dependency, new caring relationships and increased spirituality" for the treatment of substance dependency seems reasonable, and one might wonder if these four factors might be employed more consciously rather than in the "serendipitous" manner of AA. If addiction is really a disease, or simply a disorder, shouldn't it be treated by a medical doctor? Perhaps the methods that have been proven to work might be separated from the secret society that has developed around them, combined with other proven supportive practices and given over to persons trained in the diagnosis and treatment of mental health problems.
Of course, between the inequities of our industrialized health care system, and our war on drugs which has so many people confused about the nature of substance dependence, it may not be possible or even wise to truly medicalize addiction treatment. Like the addict himself, our system for treating addictions has deep complex problems that are not always available to direct address.
However, the fact that substance abuse is a serious problem in our society is indisputable, and the fact the situation is not improving is also difficult to contradict. The 12-steppers themselves say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Considering the increasing availability of more and newer dangerous substances, the mounting number of persons killed, incarcerated or otherwise put out of commission and the law-enforcement and health-care resources devoted to these problems it appears that our societal trajectory on this issue might be entirely misaimed. Clearly, a change is needed.
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Bill W. is one of the co-founders of Alcoholic's Anonymous. He's dead now, of course. Poor guy couldn't even get a snort on his death bed. Now that's "cut off"!
A handy thing to remember is to look up controversial topics with the added search term "skepticism." I did that with Alcoholic Anonymous and found a post on the Cynical-C Blog that discusses the work of Professor George Vaillant of Harvard University. The post also links to this page at orange.papers.org.
Valliant's research is interesting enough, but I wish there were more studies on the subject. This article about the "alcoholism is a disease" concept at baldwinresearch.com is interesting. And there is at least one mention of the "disease" notion on the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast. The host calls South Park the "definitive treatment of this topic in popular culture," which I think is strangely true.
This subject is really more important than a lot of people realize. Across the USA, many citizens are ordered by courts, companies and other organizations vested of a certain amount of authority, to attend Alcoholics Anonymous -- and other 12-Step programs. Yet neither the safety nor the effectiveness of these programs have really been proven.
Valliant's mention of "external supervision, substitute dependency, new caring relationships and increased spirituality" for the treatment of substance dependency seems reasonable, and one might wonder if these four factors might be employed more consciously rather than in the "serendipitous" manner of AA. If addiction is really a disease, or simply a disorder, shouldn't it be treated by a medical doctor? Perhaps the methods that have been proven to work might be separated from the secret society that has developed around them, combined with other proven supportive practices and given over to persons trained in the diagnosis and treatment of mental health problems.
Of course, between the inequities of our industrialized health care system, and our war on drugs which has so many people confused about the nature of substance dependence, it may not be possible or even wise to truly medicalize addiction treatment. Like the addict himself, our system for treating addictions has deep complex problems that are not always available to direct address.
However, the fact that substance abuse is a serious problem in our society is indisputable, and the fact the situation is not improving is also difficult to contradict. The 12-steppers themselves say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Considering the increasing availability of more and newer dangerous substances, the mounting number of persons killed, incarcerated or otherwise put out of commission and the law-enforcement and health-care resources devoted to these problems it appears that our societal trajectory on this issue might be entirely misaimed. Clearly, a change is needed.
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