Fornits

Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora
An open discussion about the troubled parent industry

If you didn't know, David Suzuki's (to all appearances glowing) report on AARC will be aired January 2 at 9pm eastern.

http://cbc.ca/natureofthings/krystal.html

non-Canucks: Suzuki is a scientist and broadcaster with a long-running and highly acclaimed program called 'The Nature of Things', as well as an environmentalist and all-purpose liberal public intellectual.  Sadly, in official Canadian politics being a cantankerous green isn't incompatible with the most dunderheaded 'tough love' approach to sociology...here's the show's precis: '[the program] will document a radical new approach to curing drug addiction in teens. An approach that sets out to treat the family as much as the teen.'

I would expect a "hard science married with soft science equals effective treatment" sort of storyline; the chemists and the kind n' gentle family theorists working together in 'holistic' terms.  not sure if they'll downplay the debt AARC owes to religious lunacy (as against Suzuki's hard-science, rationalist background), or the sinister ideology of AA and the pseudo-Fascist Oxford Group it sprung from; more likely is some skeptical massaging of the degree, rather than kind, of thought control and coercion practiced at AARC.

From the page linked above you can access an online discussion forum which would be a good way to tell another side of the AARC story.

Alternatively, email the show at [email protected] or phone them via CBC Audience Relations, (416) 205-3700.

Who knows: this will be a huge audience of people from all over the country, many of whom will be inclined to view radical Albertan/American interventions into the health care system with real suspicion.  It could be a great awareness booster.

Muster!

Many thanks for your message, Velvet.  It means a lot to know I'm not just being bloody-minded about this. (Or, perhaps, that I'm not alone in being bloody-minded about this...)  I'll see how far I get with the civil liberties resource people.  And a friend of mine is studying law, so I'll see if he knows where to start with that side of things.

But I confess it's hard to see myself doing much in the way of "intervention" -- Antigen was right: when I think about it, this is definitely heading toward a big crucible where I'm either "with" or "against" my family, at least in their eyes.  They really do view me as some kind of heretic -- even to *question* the teachings of "Dr" Vause is suddenly dangerous and perverse.  (Any dirt on that doctorate, by the way? They're apparently quite impressed with the trappings of authority.)

The more I harp on at them -- and I can't be more than a nag, from across the Atlantic -- the more they're convinced I'm just being difficult, "not open minded", etc.  They really can't grasp that I object in principle, that I won't be "brought around" by talking to "graduates", etc.  The worst part is that I can only respond by analyzing their arguments, pointing out the flaws in their reasoning, etc, - which makes me a cold-hearted intellectual quibbler, more concerned with dissecting what was a very difficult, but necessary decision than I am with my bro's welfare.  Sound familiar to anyone?  The argument runs along very predictable lines now, so I feel like the more I press them, the more deeply entrenched their new-found faith becomes.

So how do I get out of that circle?