Columns Oct 10, 2012 at 4:00 am

Stop Spinning

Comments

1
something something COCAINE and MALT LIQUOR
2
You were married to my ex? I could have warned you....
3
headline is from last week
4
I don't know why, but the "Suck my dick," ending to this really made the letter.
5
@4
yes, the saving grace
6
For what it's worth, I and most people I know have our money on GAY

And then...
Suck my dick, YOUR EX-WIFE
Confused?

7
And...
Remember: Your drinking did not lead to your awful, narcissistic, arrogant, self-centered, douchebaggy behavior.
That's not always true. Perfictly nice people become assholes with the addition of alcohol. MALT LIQUOR (and COCAINE) don't just bring out what is already there, they change people.

Having said that, AA IS A CULT. RUN!
8
You need Al-Anon more than I Anon
9
Some AA and other 12-step groups are very cult-y, others not. If you've never been, or only been to one, or only know locked-down recovery-dogma dry-drunks, then it's not surprising you'd think it's a cult. I'm about as cult-proof and not-a-joiner as they get: only child, lefty, professional academic, spiritually omnivorous. But AA (along with other things) saved my life a few years ago. If you drop all the Big Book dogma, it's really just about mindfulness, being present, and taking responsibility.

As for which comes first (assholery or alcoholism), I don't know if it matters - you don't deal with one without dealing with the other. I know a ton of "sober" folks who are still assholes, and those are the ones that usually relapse (and they're often the most cult-ish, interestingly).

And yes, he kind of sounds like an ass.
10
Fact is, AA is *in practice* a cult.

http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-cult…
11
@8: FTW!!
12
Sounds more like his naggy, bitchy ex-wife led to his drinking.
13
Hee hee! Those moments when poorly-sponsored people come try to do an amends with no idea how - comedy gold.
14
@7, no, they bring out what's already there.

This was a boring I Anon.
15
@9: "If you drop all the Big Book dogma, it's really just about mindfulness, being present, and taking responsibility."

And? Christianity has some pretty great ideas that are usually lost in the culture war and witch-hunting. These ideas (as with AA) are present without the ritual and grafted-on cultural detritus.
16
@10,

The author of that article you link to needs to approximately triple the dosage of Ritalin that he/she is currently taking. So many different font types, sizes, colors. And the bullet points! Good lord, enough with the italicized blocked bullet points!

Seriously though, just read what @9 wrote. No doubt some, and perhaps many, groups are going to be cult-like in nature. Others not so much, and individual groups are going to reflect the personality of their membership. Blanket statements are the enemy.
17
@12: And likely his being gay, too.
18
@10: Virtually all of the points made on that website are incorrect, at least in much of the actual lived practice and certainly in my experience. The study makes a fatal logical error: it relies almost entirely on the dogmatic texts that are often used in the program, and then argues that the program is therefore a cult. Groups and individuals that rely much less on those texts simply aren't included in the argument, so it's a tautology. It's really clear the author already had an agenda - my guess is that he's someone that the program didn't work for.

There are also some pretty profound misunderstandings of what a lot of the common sayings actually mean. For example, the "no one graduates" saying (which I don't know if I've ever heard in any of the meetings I attend, to be honest) is not about failure as the website claims; it's about knowing that living mindfully is an ongoing, lifelong process, not a one-shot, teevee intervention, Hollywood feel-good instant cure. The author of the website simply doesn't know how many of the sayings are actually understood by people who try to understand and make use of the ones that make sense for them.

I haven't read the Big Book in years, and find it really unhelpful. I also am not interested particularly in the old, white collar, Christian, straight white guys who founded AA back in the day. I also - like many of us - realize there are many paths to transformation and health. The fact is, though, that there are millions of people out there - most of them anonymous - that AA has helped. We shouldn't discount that.
19
@6, coming from experience, a woman who is married to a closeted or refuses-to-acknowledge-the-truth-about-themselves gay man learns to use such phrases as "suck my dick" to get a pussy-hating man to pay attention to her.
20
I'm sensing marital strife.
21
@10, that just pisses me off. While I'm sure there are anti-intellectual sheeple in AA, just like every other long-lived community made up of human beings, there's probably no organization that has done more to help average human beings with their pain and loneliness.
22
@21: Except for almost any charitable organization.

AA refuses to reveal or publish any statistics regarding their success rate, which is strange if they are so good at what they do.

The fact is, people in AA quit drinking in the long term about 5% of the time. The percentage of people who do the same without any program is about 5%.

I am not saying it is a cult, but the fact is that it does not help people quit drinking, other than the 5% that likely would anyway.

If you stopped drinking and went to AA to do it, you are just part of that 5% of alcoholics that can quit drinking for up to a year.
23
So if the results are roughly the same for AA members (which is a pretty blurry category) and non-members, then what's the problem? Why hate on it? As for statistics, I see them once a week: people with five, ten, twenty, thirty years without a drink.
24
I like this Anon! She's funny!
25
You know, if you *NEED* to be a member of a cult to feel good about yourself, knock yourself out. If you've got to use that crutch of a "higher power" rather than fixing yourself, hey if it works, it works.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_Re…
26
I 2nd #8 FTW.

I've never been to AA and I've only known a few people who did go. Most of them eventually stopped because they couldn't stand it any more. But they all thought it was fairly critical for their own getting sober. I don't know what aspects of it they thought were important, although none of them gave a shit about the religious nonsense. And I've also never met a recovered alky that got sober without AA.

But one thing everyone seems to agree on is what they think of Ala-non folks.
27
Most of them eventually stopped because they couldn't stand it any more...
Listen, what ever it takes.

For example, Dori Monson and his "producer" the cute boy known as "Little Jake" are finally out of the closet.

Yes, it's true, Dori plans to announce today that he and "Little Jake" have been in a relationship for 2 years, and Dori plans on leaving his wife to start a situation with Jake.

Dori says that sex with Jake makes him feel young again. But there is already a minor stink in that Jake says that Dori refuses to properly dispose of the used condoms, and likes to leave them on the night stand sort of like a trophy.
28
In fact, yesterday, "Little Jake" shared with me a iPhone video that he took of Dori just POUNDING away at "Little Jake". You can very literally hear Dori's fat belly slapping against Jake's ass cheeks - sort of a "SLAP ... SLAP ... SLAP". And if this little film is any sort of "trend", it seems the Dori-meister like to pull out spew his seed all over Jake's back-side! SPIRT-SPIRT-SPIRT...
29
Annette?
30
@25 AA saved my ass 23 years ago and I haven't been high since I walked in the door. I could not stop on my own. My life has improved 1,000% over where I was back then, and I wouldn't go back to that life for anything. I continue to go to AA mostly to help newer people and show them how I stopped drinking, and I have seen many success stories. The only thing I know about "Rational Recovery" is that their agenda seems to be all about destroying AA, and then getting people sober. If that works for anyone, it's fine with me. AA's stated primary pupose is to help alcoholics achieve sobriety. Nobody forces anyone to stay and nobody chases those who choose to leave. I have known many, many people in AA who decided it wasn't for them, left the program and I later found out that they had overdosed or killed themselves. Some of those former AA'ers were very young. I am sure I would have been dead years ago without AA. By the way, I am a devout atheist and I have never had a problem reconciling my "beliefs" with the program.
31
i love it when chicks say "suck my dick"

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