Dear Art,

[Anonymous]

On 2005-11-22 23:14:00, landyh wrote:

"

On 2005-10-27 21:35:00, Anonymous wrote:


"Barker was a actor and he did a good job of fooling alot of people. "

He was a comedian on vaudeville if I recall"

Vaudeville..is that near Andrews Avenue or closer to SR84?  :grin:

[Ft. Lauderdale]

No, I think its closer to Pennsalvania Ave. :grin:

[Anonymous]

Ft. Lauderdale,

I do believe that you and I have finally found  something on which we agree. :smile:  

Hope you have a great day up here in my neck o' the woods.

Stripe

[landyh]

On 2005-11-23 18:41:00, Anonymous wrote:

"

On 2005-11-22 23:14:00, landyh wrote:


"

On 2005-10-27 21:35:00, Anonymous wrote:



"Barker was a actor and he did a good job of fooling alot of people. "

He was a comedian on vaudeville if I recall"

Vaudeville..is that near Andrews Avenue or closer to SR84?  :grin:  "

For Art it became the backseat of a car in New York in the middle of winter. Perhaps some may find comfort in the image of him shivering there as the Dt's came on each morning.  :wink:

[Antigen]

Honestly, I don't buy the story. Art had a habit of exagerating; specifically, his stories changed over time to better please the audience.

I think maybe he got kicked out from wherever he was staying for being an obnoxious drunk, woke up in his car and that became the legend of Art's stint as a homeless skidrow drunk.

But I'm just guessing. I'd have to hear from someone who knew him when. Oh, and come to think of it, what ever happened to anyone and everyone who knew Art before he ascended to near godhood? How come none of his family or friends, even AA buddies, were a part of his life when we knew him? Strange, don'tya' think?

Web pages are like babies -- creation involves a level of enthusiasm that does not necessarily carry over into maintenance.
--Joe Chew

[cleveland]

I just want to echo that, Ginger. The Seed on SR 84 was a vast, empty building with row upon row of vacant chairs when I was there, '79-'85. There were 20 or so full-time Seed people who came into the group regularly, and a small group of graduates who showed up on ocassion. I never saw Art with a friend or colleague, outside of the core staff members, and in spite of all the talk about the Hollywood connections, war buddies, etc., Art struck me as a lonely person. Also it was so rare that a Seed graduated came back to visit (who wasn't in for a 'refresher') that I can't think of it happening more than once or twice in my 7 years. Art and staff would talk about all of the successful graduates who were off living their lives, while we, the chosen few, kept the temple lamps lit. How come no one wants to visit us? I used to wonder.

[cleveland]

I just want to echo that, Ginger. The Seed on SR 84 was a vast, empty building with row upon row of vacant chairs when I was there, '79-'85. There were 20 or so full-time Seed people who came into the group regularly, and a small group of graduates who showed up on ocassion. I never saw Art with a friend or colleague, outside of the core staff members, and in spite of all the talk about the Hollywood connections, war buddies, etc., Art struck me as a lonely person. Also it was so rare that a Seed graduated came back to visit (who wasn't in for a 'refresher') that I can't think of it happening more than once or twice in my 7 years. Art and staff would talk about all of the successful graduates who were off living their lives, while we, the chosen few, kept the temple lamps lit. How come no one wants to visit us? I used to wonder.
[ This Message was edited by: cleveland on 2005-11-28 06:56 ]

[SMiamiPimp]

Returning to the Seed would be like returning to the hospital where treatment occured after a car wreck.

I went back once to attend an open meeting. It stirred up alot of memories from right before and during the seed experience. It was not like visiting my old college campus.

IMO treating drug addiction is admirable but a dirty businees and part of the requirement is almost a paranoid skeptism to deal with the all the tradegy, bullshit, manipulation and conning many addicts effortlessly generate. Art was no saint, and definitely type A. But how nice can you be in that field?

[landyh]

On 2005-11-26 10:21:00, Antigen wrote:

"Honestly, I don't buy the story. Art had a habit of exagerating; specifically, his stories changed over time to better please the audience.



I think maybe he got kicked out from wherever he was staying for being an obnoxious drunk, woke up in his car and that became the legend of Art's stint as a homeless skidrow drunk.



But I'm just guessing. I'd have to hear from someone who knew him when. Oh, and come to think of it, what ever happened to anyone and everyone who knew Art before he ascended to near godhood? How come none of his family or friends, even AA buddies, were a part of his life when we knew him? Strange, don'tya' think?

Web pages are like babies -- creation involves a level of enthusiasm that does not necessarily carry over into maintenance.
--Joe Chew

"

Must we disrust all? My own experience with alcohol led me very close to its furthest depths and very quickly. There is no question that I am aware of as to Art's Alcoholism. Why is it hard to believe that he experienced some of the worst of that world. What some who are not involved in AA may not realize is that in early AA most of the members were typically serious drunks. Not like today with many coming in before things get to bad. He almost had to be in that class of "low bottom" drunks just to have gotten there. I know enough drunks to know that we seldom have need to exagerate our experiences to make them bad enough. They already are. Of course things can be skewed by personal perspective but I have no reason to think that Art had to stretch his story to make it worse do you?

[Antigen]

Why is it hard for me to believe Art? Landy, because Art lied a lot. A WHOLE lot. He had both of my parents convinced that all the teenagers (including us) were druggies and that he had the 99% successful, only cure for it. I bet he believed it, too. Still wasn't true.

It sucks when decent, hardworking people get screwed over like that. Because that means pricks like us don?t stand a chance.
 


http://www.moderndrunkardmagazine.com' target='_new'>Jim S. watching the devastation of the recent tsunami on the television at JR?s

[cleveland]

Watching my mom 'bottom out' taught me more about alcoholism than I ever wanted to know. She lost her career, friends, house and ended up in a hospital near death. All the time, denying that anything was wrong. Or that she drank too much. It was everyone else's fault. I would have sent her to Abu Graib for treatment - that's how desperate I was. It makes me understand those who pooh pooh the seed's constraints and limititions. Without agreeing...

[landyh]

On 2005-11-28 12:20:00, Antigen wrote:

"Why is it hard for me to believe Art? Landy, because Art lied a lot. A WHOLE lot. He had both of my parents convinced that all the teenagers (including us) were druggies and that he had the 99% successful, only cure for it. I bet he believed it, too. Still wasn't true.

It sucks when decent, hardworking people get screwed over like that. Because that means pricks like us don?t stand a chance.
 


http://www.moderndrunkardmagazine.com' target='_new'>Jim S. watching the devastation of the recent tsunami on the television at JR?s

"

I just don't remember it that way. Nor do I think it is that black and white. I honestly don't know if Art's story is 100% accurate but I just think that blind rejection is just as dangerous as your experiences that feed it. It seems that anybody on this forum who happens to be anti-seed paints with as broad a brush as Art did in one sided dedication to the idea that anybody who found i iota of peace in the program is simply deluded by there conditioning. When we try to break every opposing opinion down into neet little categories of cultic conditioning and coercieve treatment all I see is a glass house of no more structural integrity than Art or the Seed itself. Can I reconcile the damage you experienced by simply accepting what I believed to be Art's good intentions. Of course not. Not when I hurt for you as I do. Am I so simple as to believe that Art's belief that he was speaking the truth as you say completely justify the end results you lived. Absolutely not but I also see that he had little choice but to live in those convictions because he didn't see anything else. I think we can agree that he did believe in what he was doing and that his drive was motivated by an almost blind obeyance to those beliefs. All I am saying is that those of us who are tempted to boil this down to such a simple level on either side of the issue are no better or even different than he was. And nobody seems to offer anything better in the way of a solution. i suppose my understanding of Art's disrust of the Psychological community is just another example of how brainwashed and conditioned I was. It couldn't perhaps be the result of how they failed my mother, failed me with there inkblots and questions.  Gave me the gold seal of the psychological communtity because I knew how to answer the questions correctly. Sent me on my suffering way without even the recognition of how severely I had been destroyed by my experience. Anecdotal surely but when I went to the Seed they at least could see something was wrong, could at least see elements of the truth that were me. That I didn't reveal the full depth of my own problems was not for lack of effort on there part because on some level (perhaps like Art) I had convinced myself of a truth of my own making. I haven't heard anybody offer a relevant suggestion of any better solution than he offered and I am surely convinced that if there was one it didn't exist in the psychological community in any more than in islolated instances. Unless you want to count the pyschiatrist who shared my moms migaines, who solved his own pain through sleeping with his patients and then suicide and my moms's  with an addiction to Talwin that nearly cost her arms to the gangrene that it caused. Ginger you know that I have tremendous respect for the fact that you have responded to my posts with a respect and even maybe acceptance of the possibility that  my view is shaped by a truth that exisited at least for a time. In this light much of what I am saying here is not entirely directed at you. More to a theme I see forming that's seeks to fit my experience into some little box that is a one size fits all model no less dangerous than that of Seed itself. I believe that the issues are much more complicated than that. If you have rooted your convictions firmly on one side or the other of the issues we speak here about then you have sacrificed any chance of finding the truth we proclaim to seek. I am convicted of nothing here in any real way. I have simply my experience to proclaim for you to make of what you will. Those who see nothing good or nothing bad about what the seed was and what it became are suffering from their own conditioning in just as real a way as The Seed itself. I beleive the truth lies neither on one side or the other but somewhere in between. If we can listen to each other and guard ourselves from the prison of our own preconceptions we may have some sort of chance at finding at least a piece of that truth.

[Antigen]

Landy, thanks.

Basically, I don't believe much of what Art said about anything because so much of it turned out to be made up out of whole cloth. He's not a reliable person. He's a known liard. That's all. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but AA and the Seed/Straight programs have a lot in common. For one thing, the process of group intros repeated over and over very often results in the story growing each time in the telling.

I'm really glad for you that you never did tell all to Group. Your instinct was probably right on the mark there. It's one thing to have the strokes and adulation of Group when they think that's the right thing to do. But to trust them w/ the really sensitive stuff? Man, no way! They could turn on you and throw it up in your face just as quick and twice as hard. You probably dodged a bullet there. And I can almost guarantee that whatever troubles you had later were probably not due to your not more fully laying yourself open to them.

All good intentions aside, there's risk in divulging private sensitive information even to someone you know and trust or who's bound by legal confidentiality laws. But to lay yourself wide open before a group of (forgive me but) suggestible teenagers who think they're on a mission from God? No, you made the right call there, my friend.

Guard with jealous attention the public Liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that Jewel. Unfortunately, Nothing will Preserve it but downright Force. Whenever you Give Up that Force, you are ruined.....The Great Object is that every man be armed.....Everyone who is able may have a gun.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1888952229/circlofmiamithem' target='_new'>- Patrick Henry

[landyh]

On 2005-11-28 15:42:00, Antigen wrote:

"Landy, thanks.



Basically, I don't believe much of what Art said about anything because so much of it turned out to be made up out of whole cloth. He's not a reliable person. He's a known liard. That's all. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but AA and the Seed/Straight programs have a lot in common. For one thing, the process of group intros repeated over and over very often results in the story growing each time in the telling.



I'm really glad for you that you never did tell all to Group. Your instinct was probably right on the mark there. It's one thing to have the strokes and adulation of Group when they think that's the right thing to do. But to trust them w/ the really sensitive stuff? Man, no way! They could turn on you and throw it up in your face just as quick and twice as hard. You probably dodged a bullet there. And I can almost guarantee that whatever troubles you had later were probably not due to your not more fully laying yourself open to them.



All good intentions aside, there's risk in divulging private sensitive information even to someone you know and trust or who's bound by legal confidentiality laws. But to lay yourself wide open before a group of (forgive me but) suggestible teenagers who think they're on a mission from God? No, you made the right call there, my friend.

Guard with jealous attention the public Liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that Jewel. Unfortunately, Nothing will Preserve it but downright Force. Whenever you Give Up that Force, you are ruined.....The Great Object is that every man be armed.....Everyone who is able may have a gun.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1888952229/circlofmiamithem' target='_new'>- Patrick Henry

"

Your quite welcome Ginger.
You are right about being careful about saying certain things. Just for the record I wasn't talking about exposing this stuff to the group. There were a couple of people that talked to me indidvidually and suspected something deeper was bothering me but I was able to keep up a strong enough front that they didn't put undue pressure on me but did leave the door open to talk to them. These are people that left when things started to change. They just wanted to help and I knew that even then. Art was one of the people who gave me the chance to talk to him privately. I can only speculate about what changed things and even him but the man I knew then was compassionate and kind  to the furthest degree at least in relation to me. Maybe it was only because I was a child but just maybe that is who he was at the time. I believe it was the later and I don't think any of us will ever truly know. It was made clear that it was between him and I. I just couldn't. I think in the circumstances I'm describing talking would have been productive. Things were really so different. As for now and my wiliingness to talk freely here... that I do for me. It took me a long time to talk about it with anybody and longer still the continuing battle to not feel ashamed or at fault. Talking opening about it helps reinforce for me that it was not my fault and now in spite of a few "insecurites" :wink: I have grown to a place now where I could dismiss anybody who wants to say differently for the idiots they would have to be. In AA though I have never spoke about this to the group, only my sponsor and few select individuals know. I might add it was in aa that I finally found the courage to talk about it and it was because someone had the adacity to talk about his own issues in front of the group. I believe that happened for a reason. He was the first person I was ever able to talk to about it. It has helped and gotten better  little by little ever since. Of course I used to think I was alone but over time I've come to learn that many of us who have real problems with substance abuse are individuals who were damaged in some significant way.  As for later in the Seed there was no opportunity for the kind of one on one discussions I refered too above. And having once felt the pain of being falsely accused of using by Darlene I have give merit to your concerns. Early on for whatever reason I never saw or experienced this kind of stupidity.    
cheers