HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: joni@cbnewsf.cb.att.com (joni.dunlap)
Newsgroups: alt.recovery,talk.politics.drugs
Subject: Re: Abstinence (was: easier?)
Date: 11 Sep 92 17:59:23 GMT
Organization: AT&T

In article <1992Sep10.213219.1941@zip.eecs.umich.edu> carnes@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Richard Carnes) writes:
>met48546@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Marc E. Talbot) writes:
>
>>>I don't know about "easier", but controlled drinking is a much more
>>>*useful and effective* goal than lifelong abstinence for a large
>>>proportion of problem drinkers -- which is not to deny that abstinence
>>
>>How are we defining controlled drinking?  Drinking so that the drinker
>>only gets drunk when he wants to?  The drinker never wanting to drink
>>too much?  
>
>I mean harmless drinking, what is generally called normal, social, or
>moderate drinking.  Research over the last 30 years has repeatedly
>confirmed that persons reliably diagnosed as alcoholics can sometimes
>resume normal drinking.  This finding is embarrassing (i.e.,
>anomalous) to the conception of alcoholism as a disease, but as you
>may realize a paradigm shift is no trivial matter.
>
>I agree that AA offers a new way of life and doesn't just tell people
HMMMMMM You know I thought that the way I drank when I was using was
social drinking. Why not all the people that I surrounded myself with 
either drank more than I did or drank just about as much. Hell I could
go at least a couple of months without drinking and then would go out
and party until dawn sometimes later. There was no way I had a problem
when I could go that long without a drink. When I did drink on a regular
basis I only drank once a week on Friday night. Hell I deserved it. I workded
hard all week long.

It was told to me it's not how much you drink, when you drink, or how
often you drink, it's how you drink and how you feel after you drink that
counts. Well 99 times out of 100 I drank to get drunk and I always felt
remorse the next day after I drank. I had enough I was through I didn't
want to feel that way anymore.
  
It wasn't until I came to AA that I realized that the majority of people in
this country or world for that matter don't drink at all or drink so rarely
that you might as well call them non-drinkers. 

Richard keep comming back eventually you will hear your story.

Joni :)
>to stop drinking.  However, I was primarily referring to clinic
>treatment centers that require abstinence.  It is arguable that
>drinking should be allowed in order to facilitate understanding and
>changing the drinking behavior.  It is as if a doctor merely
>prescribed aspirin to suppress the symptoms of a disease without
>treating the pathology.
>
>Richard Carnes
From: amigan@cup.portal.com (R Michael Medwid)
Newsgroups: alt.recovery
Subject: Re: alternative to AA
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 92 21:20:55 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Distribution: na

I appreciate the description and background on RR.  I've often seen RR
touted on alt.recovery..but never seen a background or personal story.
I still haven't seen a personal story, a la the last section of AA's
big book.  There's something in those stories that just seem so real.

I've asked this before..but will ask again..would someone care to 
post their story about how they came to sobriety and recovery via
Rational Recovery?  Thanks.
From: pwh@bradley.bradley.edu (Pete Hartman)
Subject: Re: Abstinence (was: easier?)
Organization: Bradley University
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 92 21:46:58 GMT

In <1992Sep11.134636.7799@porthos.cc.bellcore.com> lise@kepler.uucp (80734-romanov) writes:
>I am always made uneasy by assertions regarding controlled drinking (or for
>that matter recreational drug use).  Why is it so critical to somebody's
>recovery that s/he hold on to the hope of drinking/drugging again some day?

I think the point is that the often-stated "you must NEVER drink again,
or you will RETURN TO THE DARK SIDE" is overstated by quite a bit.
Perhaps returning to drink/drugs is not a necessary goal, but to
deny that it is possible to do so in some cases is to deny reality,
and also can discourage those who do not feel they should absolutely
have no other course of action.
-- 
Pete Hartman		       Bradley University	pwh@bradley.bradley.edu
    Uncle Sam comes off as the perverted relative who'll offer you a bit of
          candy, but if you won't bend over for him, you get a beating
From: jeremy@vax.oxford.ac.uk (Jeremy Martin)
Newsgroups: alt.recovery
Subject: ODAAT
Date: 11 Sep 92 08:03:00 GMT
Organization: Oxford University VAX 6620

I have been sober in AA for six and a half years. Before that I drank
alcoholically for many years. During my recovery nearly all of problems that
caused me to drink have been resolved. I feel that I'm in pretty good shape.
Sometimes I think to myself "Maybe I could drink like the next man now", and
I almost believe that I could. However there are other days when I feel that
if I took one drink I'd never stop - first I'd have to catch up for the six
and a half years I missed. So there would still seem to be enough residual
sickness present for it not to be worth the risk. Then I can look at the times
when I have accidentally consumed a small quantity of alcohol in sobriety and
the craving that I started to experience. All this despite having faced up to
the underlying causes of my drinking.

It was hard for me to make the decision to go to any lengths to be free from
alcohol because it had always seemed to be my friend. At one level I could
see that it was doing me terrible damage, but it took a long time for me to
feel better without it.

A couple of years before I joined AA, I read about a rock star, who had been
a very public alcoholic, becoming sober. A few months after I quit drinking
I read another article about the same guy saying that he had started drinking
again, but only two or three beers in the evening. That bothered me. Here was
somebody who had seemed to have been an alkie of my type happily enjoying 
social drinking. Then about four years later I heard that he was abstinent 
once more, having been through hell with drink again.

Perhaps this is an example of somebody who had sufficient will power to 
convince people that he was cured of his addiction. But eventually he 
succumbed once more. It would be interesting to know what became of the 
"ex-alcholics", mentioned in another posting, after twenty years.

Today abstinence is not a problem for me. My recovery has given me a lovely
wife and son. I'm not about to risk their lives through trying any more
research. AA is only intended for people who want to stop drinking. That is
made clear to anybody who reads the Big Book. We don't try to persuade people
to stop who don't want to: our time is much better spent with those that do.
So how can we be doing any harm? We believe that alcoholics of our type
require abstinence in order to survive. What's the big problem with abstinence?

					Jeremy
Newsgroups: alt.recovery,talk.politics.drugs
From: pwh@bradley.bradley.edu (Pete Hartman)
Subject: Re: Abstinence (was: easier?)
Organization: Bradley University
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 92 21:55:02 GMT

In <1992Sep11.175923.15822@cbfsb.cb.att.com> joni@cbnewsf.cb.att.com (joni.dunlap) writes:
>It was told to me it's not how much you drink, when you drink, or how
>often you drink, it's how you drink and how you feel after you drink that
>counts. Well 99 times out of 100 I drank to get drunk and I always felt
>remorse the next day after I drank. I had enough I was through I didn't
>want to feel that way anymore.

Well, I find this interesting, because by your definition I definitely had
the same drinking problem myself for a while.  I can remember my friends
looking at me like I was crazed when I would buy a pint of rum and down
it in a couple hours to kill the pain I didn't want to deal with.  Eventually
I grew out of it.  Is someone going to tell me that I'm still an alcoholic?
I would probably agree that I was at that point in my life, but I'm free
of the desire to be blotto now, and don't have any problems with returning
urges to go buy those pints....

The problem I have in all of these is this--abstinence may be an effective
solution in many cases, but I have a hard time accepting the dogma
of its necessity.
-- 
Pete Hartman		       Bradley University	pwh@bradley.bradley.edu
      No one in the world ever gets what they want, and that is beautiful
            Everbody dies frustrated and sad, and that is beautiful
From: altshule@skid.ps.uci.edu (Eric Altshuler)
Subject: (none)
Newsgroups: alt.recovery
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 11 Sep 92 22:16:15 GMT

>  AA has changed over the years, I suppose it will continue to evolve.

Point of interest.  The first 164 pages of the big book has remained
completely unaltered.  This is the portion which contains the program
of recovery.  The "program" has not changed at all.  The recipe for 
staying sober is the same now as it was back when the book was written.

>> Let's instead improve and diversify
>> our means and techniques for helping people so that those improved
>> methods can help a greater percentage of people who need it.

>I agree on diversity. Start another program. My opinion is that most
>will eventually come back to AA once they've tried your new and
>improved version.

I AGREE !!!  Here is another solution.  Insted of starting another program,
start another meeting.  I have started (been involved in starting) two myself.
Work out a format which suits your needs.  The AA traditions say something
to the effect that any two or more gathered together for the purpose of
sobriety may call themselves an AA meeting, provided they have no outside
affiliation.  Good Luck !!!
                                 -Eric
Newsgroups: alt.recovery
From: suhre@meltami.dsd.trw.com (Maurice E. Suhre)
Subject: Re: AA beliefs?
Organization: TRW, INC.
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 01:57:56 GMT

carnes@quip.eecs.umich.edu (Richard Carnes) writes:

> There's no telling how many thousands of people have
> gone to AA meetings a few times, been turned off by the religiosity,
> the irrationality, the self-abasement, the smoke-filled air, and the
> prospect of endless meetings, and gone back home and poured themselves
> a tall drink...

I'm feeling silly and I just couldn't let this go by.  I would estimate
that the majority of people that show up at AA meetings have come their
via the bar route.  Drunken bar talk probably doesn't have much
religiosity floating around, but irrationality and smoke-filled air
about aplenty!

The Southern California area has some smoke free meetings, but I
wouldn't want to hazard a guess as to what the percentage is.  In any
event, I would certainly guess that the percentage of smoke free
meetings is higher than the percentage of smoke free bars :-)
-- 
Maurice Suhre
suhre@trwrb.dsd.trw.com
From: "dale smoak" <dale.smoak@channel1.com>
Newsgroups: alt.recovery
Subject: step nine
Date: 8 Sep 92 04:41:55 EST
Reply-To: "dale smoak" <dale.smoak@channel1.com>
Distribution: alt
Organization: Channel 1 Communications

In article <1992Sep2.182510.18970@news.media.mit.edu> Benjamin
Kline Lowengard writes:
      Subject: Step Nine

>This is interesting..does step 9 mean that my ex-girlfriend(who dumped me
>in the midst of step 4(OA)) will actually try to make amends? I'm not
>trying to be the angry young man here but I do resent the fact that I
>am completely without an explantion as to why she completely shut me out
>of her life...and I offered support and breathing space. This was a sudden
>and complete shutdown of a relationship...in this vein can anyone out there
>talk to me about how your recovery has affected your relationships-for

No, it doesn't mean a thing about what someone else might do, as much as
we sometimes wish it did.  I think the point is that we come to peace
with our side of the street by working through step eight, and then we
start step nine ourselves.

I've been shut out suddenly and without explanation and I relate to the
pain involved.  It was hard for me to learn that other people's
shutdowns are their own processes and have far more to do with them than
with me.  It was a weird idea to get used to because there, still, is
rejection involved in it, but chances are you're not the first person
she's shut out.  We're bound to repeat unexamined patterns, one of the
reasons for working steps in the first place.

Good luck,

Dale
---
  DeLuxe 1.25 #12237  dale.smoak#channel1.com/76350.3662@compuserve.com
--
Channel 1 (R)   Cambridge, MA

Newsgroups: alt.recovery
From: carty@vnet.ibm.com (Jeff Carty)
Subject: Re: This newsgroup (bickering bickering bickering)
Organization: IBM PSP Palo Alto, Ca.
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 92 22:02:52 GMT

In  <199209111751.AA22602@clearwater.cs.uidaho.edu>  weiss872@CLEARWATER.CS.UIDAHO.EDU (Phil Weiss) writes:
> This newsgroup has turned into a bickering war (which I have
> participated in).  I am tired of it.
>
> Look, I don't care if you believe AA works or does not work.
> I don't care if you believe that non-AA works or does not work.
>
> Phil.

Hear, hear.

I don't want to point fingers, but the amount of "academic" type discussion
(featuring the usual proportion of ill-informed generalizations that,
being ill-informed, are actually *someone's* unadmitted projections) has
grown huge, recently, and is not what I (for one) read this newsgroup for.

Is it time to raise the suggestion again that we have a separate newsgroup
for alt.recovery.theory ?

Jeff
Newsgroups: alt.recovery
From: sher@umbc4.umbc.edu (Sherri Crain)
Subject: Re: Boo-Hoo Boo-Hoo Waaaahhh!!!
Organization: Univ. of MD, Baltimore County
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1992 05:38:42 GMT

In article <9209031425.AA01810@mdcsc> mdcsc!ah@uunet.UU.NET (Alexander Herrera) writes:
>James aka jerpseth@sd.cadence.com writes:
>>Poor Me, Poor Me, Pour Me another Drink!


>James is right though. There has been a lot of garbage dumping going
>on. I wouldn't kick up a fuss about it, but I took his message as a
>reminder. We need to stay focused on the solution rather than the
>problem. Otherwise, we forget what is important. 

We need to keep in mind that there are those of us who are not yet at the
point where we can "intuitively handle situations which used to baffle us."
A situation which may sound unimportant or not worth "crying over" to one
of us may be very difficult for another to handle.  I agree that we need
to focus on the solution,but not to the extent that we start censoring
what can and can't be shared,without being labeled as garbage dumping.

I've always liked the fact that people have been able to share openly in
this newsgroup,about all kinds of living situations,and have gotten the
support and shared experiences they've needed.  

And,yes,sometimes people need to just DUMP.  So be it.  If that's what
they need at any given moment,shouldn't we provide an outlet for that 
too?  

>I don't mind listening
>to a person's problem when afterwards they tell me what they've done to
>solve it. They may even have failed to solve it, but if they are trying,
>they gain something too. No one gets out of a bad situation by crying
>about it. When people see you are trying to help yourself, they are
>more inclined to lend a hand.

You have a valid point.  I think it's tough to solve any problem if
you just sit back and cry about it.  However,there have been many times
in my sobriety where I had to sit back and cry or get angry,whatever the
appropriate response to the given situation was,FIRST before I could get
out of myself enough to DO something about the problem.  

I guess what I really feel is that it's cool to bitch about life situations
that are bothering you.  I think it is especially appropriate to share them
here,where there are people who can share their experiences with you and
give some suggestions as to what may help you through.   

I also think the people in this newsgroup are open and honest enough
with each other that if a person continues to just bitch about the same
situation,without taking any of the suggestions they are given (in other
words,playing the martyr) someone will tell them!  

Then again,all of this is just how *I* feel about it at this moment in
time.  Next week I'm liable to chew somebody out for dumping. : )


-- 

     Lack of planning on your part                 -sher   
doesn't justify an emergency on my part     sher@umbc3.umbc.edu
Xref: sparky alt.recovery:3163 talk.politics.drugs:6255
From: al037@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Dave Polewka)
Newsgroups: alt.recovery
Subject: Re: AA beliefs?
Date: 7 Sep 1992 04:05:57 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: al037@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Dave Polewka)
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc4.ins.cwru.edu


In a previous article, carnes@sparky.eecs.umich.edu (Richard Carnes) says:

>.....  My point is that the AA/Twelve-Step programs have worked well
>for *some* persons who have problems with addiction, but for others
>the same approach obstructs their recovery.  

No, generally they obstruct their own recovery.  They don't go to
the meetings to learn how to stay sober, but only to get someone
off their back, or in the hope that they can learn how to drink
successfully.
They arrive late, don't listen for tips they can use, look only
for something to criticize, and then leave early.  Then they
complain that A.A. doesn't work.  Imagine going through school
clinging to preconceived notions of how things SHOULD work, and
then, upon discovering that things don't work your way, 
not listening in class, not talking to anyone or getting involved
in any way, and then bitching that you can't get a job.  The 12-step
program works if you want it to work and if you follow the suggested
procedure.


>The reason is that some of us, in order to recover and get on with our
>lives, need to believe the *contrary* of some AA/Twelve-Step tenets.
>[...]
>Some of us need to believe that our problem is not having a supposed
>disease but ........................................................
>....................................... that some of us can recover
>*without* a treatment program or attending meetings, that lifelong
>abstinence is not necessarily the best goal for every addicted person,
>and that we are not "alcoholics" (or whatever) in the same permanent
>sense in which people are diabetics or hemophiliacs.

No, you don't NEED to believe these things, you WANT to believe
them.  Throw out your old way of thinking---that's what got you
to where you are now.  Experience shows that, if you don't, the
odds are YOU WILL DRINK AGAIN !!!
-- 
=======================
"Endeavor to persevere"
=======================
Newsgroups: alt.recovery
From: davis@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (Barbara Davis)
Subject: Re: Amends revisited
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Distribution: alt
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 22:14:52 GMT

rmy@pyuxf.uucp (Robert Yaeger) writes:

>In article <1992Sep8.204135.14635@gumby.dsd.trw.com> suhre@meltami.dsd.trw.com () writes:
>>
>>=====Begin post for Adria=====
>>I'm really intrigued with all this talk about making ammends and
>>resentments and all.  I just have a few questions that I'd like
>>answered if anyone can figure them out:

>I too wondered why it says that if I have a resentment then I need to make
>amends.  I came to this conclusion; that when I have resentments I tend to
>act it out. either in passive aggression, or verbal abuse or something.
>Hence my need for amends.

>-Bob

This is what I have learned about resentments and amends.  When I harbor
resentments against someone it signals to me that I am incomplete in my
relationship with that person.  I get complete by making amends.

To me, amends mean to own my part in making the relationship what it was.
I am also very clear that amends are done for me although they are an act
of generosity toward the other person.

An appropriate example would be that I feel I own amends to an aunt who 
treated me very unfairly.  I know I own her amends because I feel resentment
and anger towards her.  I am now working on being ready to be generous 
enough to talk to her and to own up to the fact that she was right about
some of the things she said about me.

Her response to my amends is immaterial and I will be listening to it very
carefully to see if the door is open to reestablishing something healthy
with her.

I have learned that being incomplete in any of my relationships effects
my ability to relate to everyone.  Making amends frees me to have good
relationships.

The most important relationships I had to get complete with were those with
my parents.  After years of thinking my mom doesn't love me and that she
has done things deliberately to hurt me,  I went to her with openness and
generousity.  I told her I knew that she loved me and that she had always
loved me.  I told her how sorry I was that I had been unable or unwilling
to recognize the love she offered.  During the long, loving talks we have
had since then we have rewritten our family history.  

Our new family history acknowledges the love that has always been there.
It includes the possibility that there are many interpretations for what
happened and that neither of us has done anything to deliberately hurt the
other.  This incredibly powerful process started with an amend.

Barb
-- 
Barbara G. Davis                       Internet:  davis@ucsu.colorado.edu
University of Colorado, Boulder 

                   If I don't ask, you can't say, "Yes!".
From: wagner@ike.ucdavis.edu (John Wagner)
Newsgroups: alt.recovery
Subject: Re: AA beliefs?
Date: 11 Sep 92 10:12:59 GMT
Reply-To: wagner@ike.ucdavis.edu
Organization: University of California, Davis

>>The admittedly sparse empirical evidence (it's extremely difficult to
>>do reliable research on AA) indicates that the AA program is an
>>effective treatment for a small minority of problem drinkers
>>(something like 5-10 percent); the great majority would be better off
>>with different recovery methods.

Hmm.  5-10 percent of the problem drinkers?  Really?  I was
led to believe that less than ten percent of the problem drinkers
of the world were sober...somewhere about 1 or 2%, as I recall.  But for
the sake of discussion, let's say that 20% of the problem drinkers
had found some form of recovery in their lives.  But now if 5-10% of
the problem drinkers were finding recovery through AA, then I would
suggest that that is not a "small minority."  It would, in fact,
represent 25-50% of the problem drinkers who had found sobriety.

Enough math for the day.  My experience is possibly relevant.
In the two and a half years I have been sober, I have yet to meet
someone who has gotten sober outside of AA.  My other experience is
that when I travel in the US and Europe, I use the phone book a lot.
There are many alcoholism treatment facilities (from detox centers
to 28-day programs), but I have yet to see listings for your ``different
recovery methods.''

``We thought we could find an easier, softer way...''

---
John Wagner
Institute of Theoretical Dynamics
University of California, Davis

Bush/Quayle 1992: Saddam has a job, do you?

My opinions aren't even mine, much less those of anyone else...
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