Good post Cleveland. I too have watched alcohol destroy a person in my family, and I have also watched AA type treatment further erode my family and seen it fail first hand.
I have also listened to the rabid AA types talk and they have a religious fervor about them. Then I will talk to the next guy and he will tell me AA helped him but he doesn't go to meeting anymore.
What really helped that guy? Steps? serentity prayers?
Perhaps he just choose not to destroy himself anymore and AA was in his life during that time. AA operates under a myth that Alcoholism is a disease. It is a choice, a bad one at that, and a compulsion, and a developed physical craving , but it is not a disease. There is no "alcohol gene", your cells do not "cry out for alcohol" six months after quitting drinking, "once an alcoholic always an alcoholic", "if you are drinking you are sinking" and the myriad of myths promulgated under the AA model. Does AA work? For a few yes. For others it becomes a replacement for their compulsion to drink and AA becomes the focus of their lives. For many others it becomes a crutch and an excuse for their failures and relapses. They are powerless, after all...they have a disease, after all. For many many others it becomes a temporary diversion in their lives and they either continue to fail or choose to stop all on their own.
I find AA devotees annoying, but I support their right to choose to go there. When the court system starts ordering people to go worship a higher power, I have a problem with that. A big problem.
And finally, all this talk about AA negates the fact that The Seed was anything but an AA program. They do not lock you up, Isolate you, belittle and humiliate you, sleep and food deprive you, prevent you from speaking to outsiders, demand you cut your hair and wear your clothes in a certain way, pulbically sexually humiliate you, poke you in the back when you don't pay attention, force you to keep your back off the back of the chair for hours, force you to face foward or be stood up and screamed at,force you to say you love everyone,force you into chairs 12 hours a day with no fluids and deprive you of your right to determine when to move your bowels in AA.
The Seed, like heavens gate and Synanon, was the bastard cult child of AA and had less in common with it than it had differences.
[ This Message was edited by: GregFL on 2004-09-14 10:09 ]