Hi, Darrin.

Could've been worse. He was looking for AAA, and he would've gotten a DUI, too.

Total amateur. He should go in the break room and pound down mouthwash like the desperate alcoholics (aka Publix Employees) on Ponce do.

I_Can't_Believe_it's_not_Boutros: Could've been worse. He was looking for AAA, and he would've gotten a DUI, too.

Nope. Free towing.

He's still just working on his lead.

\Get thee to Oak St., sir

If anyone needed to be there it was that guy. Way to go AA.

What? Maybe he was just starting.

Hello, my name is Bob.


/ironic? If only there was some program to quit being a drunk

you have to be drunk to sit through one of those meetings

How can he be doing it wrong? He's powerless to control his actions. It's not his fault, it's the booze's fault. As long as he says he's really sorry loudly and publicly, the police should've let him go. They should've turned the punishing over to God, I mean to the generic higher power that's totally not the Abrahamic God, please don't cut our funding. I mean, he was clearly at the meeting to discuss his past mistakes...his past few minutes' mistakes...and pass on his knowledge to new people with the disease.

"I'm a drunk. Alcoholics go to meetings."

I'm thinking of getting one of those shirts.

The last fifth of whiskey I bought has lasted nine (9) days now.

But I did have some wine. And some beer. And some rum.

Welcome back, Tommy Gavin.

If you can't be drunk at a meeting of/for ALCOHOLICS, where can you be drunk?

I think the cops crossed the line with this one.

Do they also arrest joggers for lining up to run a marathon?

LabGrrl: How can he be doing it wrong? He's powerless to control his actions. It's not his fault, it's the booze's fault. As long as he says he's really sorry loudly and publicly, the police should've let him go. They should've turned the punishing over to God, I mean to the generic higher power that's totally not the Abrahamic God, please don't cut our funding. I mean, he was clearly at the meeting to discuss his past mistakes...his past few minutes' mistakes...and pass on his knowledge to new people with the disease.

1) They're self funded.
2) You're an asshole.

I went to a few, "God" wasn't brought up or even pushed. It's really helped my mom. And quite a few other farkers based on some of the AAish threads in the past.

LabGrrl: How can he be doing it wrong? He's powerless to control his actions. It's not his fault, it's the booze's fault. As long as he says he's really sorry loudly and publicly, the police should've let him go. They should've turned the punishing over to God, I mean to the generic higher power that's totally not the Abrahamic God, please don't cut our funding. I mean, he was clearly at the meeting to discuss his past mistakes...his past few minutes' mistakes...and pass on his knowledge to new people with the disease.

Heh.

I was mandated to go to a total of 10vAA meetings after I got caught drinking underage in the Army. It was 2 weeks before my 21st birthday, so I *MUST* have had a drinking problem, right? 'Cause I was wicked underage, and all.

Anyway, I was struck by a few things about the program: They don't care if you really don't have a problem. You can say that you don't have one, but to them that's just a symptom of the disease. In other words, there isn't really any objective criteria they judge you on. You could be there, and not have an actual problem, but you are treated like you do have a problem, in fact worse, because you are 'in denial'.

I think the most important thing I learned was this: I figured out by about the third meeting that they don't take attendance at AA meetings, and thus so there was no way for my command to know if I actually attended the 'mandatory' meetings, short of detailing someone to hold my hand.

I went to a total of 3 meetings.

/Also, Antabuse doesn't work for me.

LabGrrl:

What darkscout said: you really are an asshole. AA helps a LOT of people, including my wife, get and stay sober.

It worse when they do it wrong at SA meetings.

dittybopper:
I was mandated to go to a total of 10vAA meetings after I got caught drinking underage in the Army. It was 2 weeks before my 21st birthday, so I *MUST* have had a drinking problem, right? 'Cause I was wicked underage, and all.
The interfaith working group I was part of had to work damage control after the removal of the funding from the mandatory AA group at a local 'scared straight' type summer program for teens. While the religious counselors there were unpaid, the AA group and it's 'facilitator' were paid from HUD funds, and HUD was, ahem, unamused by the reports of how the non-religious teens were treated. They had three problems, AFAIK, 1.They were teaching that any teen that had a drink once was an alcoholic, which was contrary to the teachings in the rest of the program which was all about 'making choices.' 2.They gave the non-Christian teens shiat (which got their funding pulled, which has happened to AA groups all over the US with external funding, in prisons, military bases, VA hospitals, etc.). 3.Teens with mandated substance abuse counseling didn't have to go, because they had no attendance policy. So, basically, your experience. the long and short of it for the rest of us was that if someone served so much as punch and pie we had to document where the punch and pie came from, and that the punch and pie was not used to spread religion unless the punch and pie was fully outside funded, including the dixie cups and paper plates to serve said punch and pie.

/Also, Antabuse doesn't work for me.
Prednisone. Been on and off it for 2 years now and someone gave me an xmas rum ball with maybe about a tablespoon of rum in it and I became Reagan in The Exorcist, only with rum ball coloring instead of pea soup. I knew I couldn't have a glass of wine or pint of beer on it, but OMG, I can't have a rum ball? Also clears up zits, so there is that.

runningesq: LabGrrl:

What darkscout said: you really are an asshole. AA helps a LOT of people, including my wife, get and stay sober.

So that puts them above criticism? My MiL stayed sober with them for 20 years, right up until she died. Doesn't mean they get a pass for the stupid shiat, and seriously, you have to be drunk, or have lost a serious amount of brain cells, to buy some of that crap that they push.

Sin_City_Superhero: haywatchthis: you have to be drunk to sit through one of those meetings

When I was in a band, our drummer's mom made him go to AA because he liked the vodak a little too much. Mike said that going to an AA meeting was a real eye-opener. He said that he thought he had a drinking problem, until that meeting. He said that the pitiful bastards at the AA meeting made him realize that he didn't, in fact, have a problem. After all, these were people who consumed a fifth of whiskey before breakfast.

It's cool, twenty years from now, when he goes back, he can tell everybody how he thought he wasn't an alcoholic because he didn't drink as much as the guys in the rooms and thought that was what made a person an alcoholic.

dittybopper: runningesq: LabGrrl:

What darkscout said: you really are an asshole. AA helps a LOT of people, including my wife, get and stay sober.

So that puts them above criticism? My MiL stayed sober with them for 20 years, right up until she died. Doesn't mean they get a pass for the stupid shiat, and seriously, you have to be drunk, or have lost a serious amount of brain cells, to buy some of that crap that they push.

The Thirteenth Step for some people is "You must defend AA at all costs, any help it has done for any one person means that the program is perfect, and even if an alternative program might have less problems and more efficacy, we must stay with what works (even if it only works for 25% of people, at best."

The Fourteenth step is you get your AA balls by being nasty doing it.

LabGrrl: dittybopper: runningesq: LabGrrl:

What darkscout said: you really are an asshole. AA helps a LOT of people, including my wife, get and stay sober.

So that puts them above criticism? My MiL stayed sober with them for 20 years, right up until she died. Doesn't mean they get a pass for the stupid shiat, and seriously, you have to be drunk, or have lost a serious amount of brain cells, to buy some of that crap that they push.

The Thirteenth Step for some people is "You must defend AA at all costs, any help it has done for any one person means that the program is perfect, and even if an alternative program might have less problems and more efficacy, we must stay with what works (even if it only works for 25% of people, at best."

The Fourteenth step is you get your AA balls by being nasty doing it.

Apparently the First Step for you is that you run down the good AA does because of the gigantic farking chip on your shoulder.

/nuance, you has none

"once an addict, always an addict"
the problem is convincing these fools that you never were addicted in the first place.

habitual use and addiction aren't the same thing.
if you can go a few weeks without using and suffer no withdrawal symptoms, in my mind that means you aren't addicted.

LabGrrl: dittybopper: runningesq: LabGrrl:

What darkscout said: you really are an asshole. AA helps a LOT of people, including my wife, get and stay sober.

So that puts them above criticism? My MiL stayed sober with them for 20 years, right up until she died. Doesn't mean they get a pass for the stupid shiat, and seriously, you have to be drunk, or have lost a serious amount of brain cells, to buy some of that crap that they push.

The Thirteenth Step for some people is "You must defend AA at all costs, any help it has done for any one person means that the program is perfect, and even if an alternative program might have less problems and more efficacy, we must stay with what works (even if it only works for 25% of people, at best."

The Fourteenth step is you get your AA balls by being nasty doing it.

The first step for internet atheists is criticize anything that even remotely resembles religion in any shape or form while having no understanding of it whatsoever. Please tell the rest of us about better programs so that people who have trouble with AA might get help.

/atheist but tired of childish online ones

LabGrrl: The interfaith working group I was part of had to work damage control after the removal of the funding from the mandatory AA group at a local 'scared straight' type summer program for teens. While the religious counselors there were unpaid, the AA group and it's 'facilitator' were paid from HUD funds, and HUD was, ahem, unamused by the reports of how the non-religious teens were treated. They had three problems, AFAIK, 1.They were teaching that any teen that had a drink once was an alcoholic, which was contrary to the teachings in the rest of the program which was all about 'making choices.' 2.They gave the non-Christian teens shiat (which got their funding pulled, which has happened to AA groups all over the US with external funding, in prisons, military bases, VA hospitals, etc.). 3.Teens with mandated substance abuse counseling didn't have to go, because they had no attendance policy. So, basically, your experience. the long and short of it for the rest of us was that if someone served so much as punch and pie we had to document where the punch and pie came from, and that the punch and pie was not used to spread religion unless the punch and pie was fully outside funded, including the dixie cups and paper plates to serve said punch and pie.

Ah. So by that logic lets burn and pillage all christians for the crusades, muslims for 9/11 and jews for killing that cool guy jesus. It sounds like a local politics problem more than anything else. Just like some Boy Scout groups are super die hard No Gheys and Ghey Nazis and most (like mine) didn't really care what the hell you did as long as you were cool.

I guess I don't understand all the aa hate. Apparently it works for some people, great. Other than that I'm like 100% neutral.

Wait, random groups of random people brought together by varying degrees of drug and alcohol problems might not be perfect in their quest to get and stay sober and help others in the process? The hell you say!

Regardless, a meeting in a halfway house is hardly an "open" meeting. When some random drunk walks in who isn't actually living at the halfway house legitimately is trespassing whether he's hammered or not.

/hic

Lurk sober post drunk: I guess I don't understand all the aa hate. Apparently it works for some people, great. Other than that I'm like 100% neutral.

Mentioning the g-word sends some people off the rails.

LeafyGreens:
Apparently the First Step for you is that you run down the good AA does because of the gigantic farking chip on your shoulder.

I don't approve of taxpayer money going to religious programs. I also don't approve of taxpayer money going to programs that don't work. If you like to see that as a chip on the shoulder, have at it. I suppose it's a matter of perspective. Like, from my perspective you're a frothing adherent to a program that -when it works- only does so as a side effect, from the social control involved.

Now, if someone wants to go to an aromatherapy program that makes him smell lavender and see angels who keep the magical faeries from escaping the beer bottles and infecting his aura, and that helps him get through his life, more power to him, but if someone wants to claim that it's the faeries and lavender doing the saving, the public needs to see the data... especially if the public is supposed to pay for one cent of it.

If you refuse to share that data and you have organizations that attack contrary data to yours, you deserve to be called on it.

I have a neighbor with a kid with OCD (or an OCD-like disorder). They are struggling with a lot of stuff, and one thing is that the kid can't breathe if he doesn't count his steps. I would never tell that kid to not count his steps, but I would not advocate prescription counting for Asthma or COPD.

LabGrrl: LeafyGreens:
Apparently the First Step for you is that you run down the good AA does because of the gigantic farking chip on your shoulder.

I don't approve of taxpayer money going to religious programs. I also don't approve of taxpayer money going to programs that don't work. If you like to see that as a chip on the shoulder, have at it. I suppose it's a matter of perspective. Like, from my perspective you're a frothing adherent to a program that -when it works- only does so as a side effect, from the social control involved.

Now, if someone wants to go to an aromatherapy program that makes him smell lavender and see angels who keep the magical faeries from escaping the beer bottles and infecting his aura, and that helps him get through his life, more power to him, but if someone wants to claim that it's the faeries and lavender doing the saving, the public needs to see the data... especially if the public is supposed to pay for one cent of it.

If you refuse to share that data and you have organizations that attack contrary data to yours, you deserve to be called on it.

I have a neighbor with a kid with OCD (or an OCD-like disorder). They are struggling with a lot of stuff, and one thing is that the kid can't breathe if he doesn't count his steps. I would never tell that kid to not count his steps, but I would not advocate prescription counting for Asthma or COPD.

Again, you need to name the other programs you continue to assert are superior to AA with regards to alcohol addiction.

rmoody:
The first step for internet atheists is criticize anything that even remotely resembles religion in any shape or form while having no understanding of it whatsoever. Please tell the rest of us about better programs so that people who have trouble with AA might get help.


I'm not an atheist, but good for you!
Here is NIDA's links page on science-based substance abuse treatment techniques and groups, including a really good "Principles of Effective Treatment" based on the research, including the idea that addiction is a treatable disease:
Link (new window)

LabGrrl: LeafyGreens:
Apparently the First Step for you is that you run down the good AA does because of the gigantic farking chip on your shoulder.

I don't approve of taxpayer money going to religious programs. I also don't approve of taxpayer money going to programs that don't work.

Well it just so happens you're in luck. AA is self-funded and receives no outside funding from any source.

AFAIK, the recovery rate in AA isn't much better than people who just eventually are able to stop drinking on their own. Here's the thing though, the people in AA can't stop drinking on their own. It doesn't help everybody, but it does help some people, so try to drop some of the derp from your posts on this in the future.

Leeds: If you can't be drunk at a meeting of/for ALCOHOLICS, where can you be drunk?

I think the cops crossed the line with this one.

Do they also arrest joggers for lining up to run a marathon?

My thought exactly. An AA meeting should be the one place on Earth that you could show up shiatplastered and be safe from prosecution. It's like a pre-made intervention right there waiting to get started. You should be able to go to an AA meeting, puke on everyone in the back row, shiat your pants, wave a knife around and pass out right after introducing yourself. Everyone there will have been in your shoes at one time or another.

Also, LabGrrl, this is from your link:

20. Where do 12-step or self-help programs fit into drug addiction treatment?

Self-help groups can complement and extend the effects of professional treatment. The most prominent self-help groups are those affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), Narcotics Anonymous (NA), and Cocaine Anonymous (CA), all of which are based on the 12-step model. Most drug addiction treatment programs encourage patients to participate in self-help group therapy during and after formal treatment. These groups can be particularly helpful during recovery, offering an added layer of community-level social support to help people achieve and maintain abstinence and other healthy lifestyle behaviors over the course of a lifetime.

LabGrrl: dittybopper: runningesq: LabGrrl:

What darkscout said: you really are an asshole. AA helps a LOT of people, including my wife, get and stay sober.

So that puts them above criticism? My MiL stayed sober with them for 20 years, right up until she died. Doesn't mean they get a pass for the stupid shiat, and seriously, you have to be drunk, or have lost a serious amount of brain cells, to buy some of that crap that they push.

The Thirteenth Step for some people is "You must defend AA at all costs, any help it has done for any one person means that the program is perfect, and even if an alternative program might have less problems and more efficacy, we must stay with what works (even if it only works for 25% of people, at best."

The Fourteenth step is you get your AA balls by being nasty doing it.

25% cure rate would be fantastic, and would actually be note worthy.

however, every single study that has looked at AA has found that the "cure rate" is no different than no intervention (the natural cure rate is about 3%/yr). not a little bit better, not even hinting towards better, the same. In addition, people who go through AA have more binge episodes, that last longer, and are more frequent than no intervention.

Those are peer-reviewed medical studies. The damn program doesn't work. You/Your family member may have gotten on the wagon while they were in AA, and that's great. It doesn't mean that it actually works. That being said, if they had a problem, and they think that it's AA helping them out, more power to them.

But it doesn't work any more than me writing "DONT DRINK ALCOHOL" on the back of your hand with a sharpie.

rmoody:
Again, you need to name the other programs you continue to assert are superior to AA with regards to alcohol addiction.
Sorry, I was getting links for you. Is your google broken?
Brookside (new window)
Saint Jude (new window)
-Their data (the major problem is that it's THEIR data) shows recovery rates that pretty much blow away everyone.
SMART (new window)
Rational Recovery (new window)
Secular Organizations for Sobriety (new window) [Not a group, but a collection of groups]
Sort of related, not sure how to link the thousands of people with this certification, but here's how one gets the APA certification (new window)in substance abuse

I stopped going to one of my meetings when a woman that was 15 years sober was told she had to go back to day one. Her major infraction? She had ONE bite of turtle soup then stopped when she realized that they had added sherry to it. They said her 15 years of sobriety meant nothing because of one slip up (not even drink related).
The organization was there for when when I needed support and I appreciate that. I, however, will not be attending any more meetings. Their all or none philosophy is what some people need, but it also makes some people feel small and reliant on an organization that depends on them for support. The longer I stayed the longer I felt like they were a cult (even if they had altruistic goals).
I'm able to drink in moderation without going overboard. I dealt with the underlying problems that led to my substance abuse and now I don't have to live my life by an all or nothing philosophy.
Once again, I realize that AA works for some people. I'm just saying that it's not the right choice for me.

EnderWiggnz:
25% cure rate would be fantastic, and would actually be note worthy.

25% is one of the rates AA claims. I was going with their rate trying to be as fair as possible. I don't believe the 25% claim for a second

LabGrrl: EnderWiggnz:
25% cure rate would be fantastic, and would actually be note worthy.

25% is one of the rates AA claims. I was going with their rate trying to be as fair as possible. I don't believe the 25% claim for a second

usually AA doesn't quote cure rates, they quote recurring-meeting rates. yep, 25% of the people who start going to AA, keep going. I won't argue that. It doesn't exactly support that they're helping people get sober.

AA is a horrible scam. It's also going to disappear in the next couple of years. The health care reform passed mandates that all treatment programs be "evidenced based", which means that they have to be able to PROVE that their methods are working, or the rehab houses don't get paid.

/why yes, i'm in the industry.

LabGrrl: dittybopper:
I was mandated to go to a total of 10vAA meetings after I got caught drinking underage in the Army. It was 2 weeks before my 21st birthday, so I *MUST* have had a drinking problem, right? 'Cause I was wicked underage, and all.
The interfaith working group I was part of had to work damage control after the removal of the funding from the mandatory AA group at a local 'scared straight' type summer program for teens. While the religious counselors there were unpaid, the AA group and it's 'facilitator' were paid from HUD funds,

Citation Needed. AA is self funded, although I'm sure lots of groups accept "free rent" from churches, etc for their meeting space.