Substance abuse: Alcoholism
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) 12 step programs
Alcoholism is a sinful choice not a disease. |
Introduction:
1. See the case of "Dominatrix"
2. Alcoholics always know what problem they are trying to solve through drunkenness but lie that they do not know because the truth would be too embarrassing to admit.
a. Carl Jung noted that this is precisely what happened to a man who used alcohol around 1900 AD, as "a desperate attempt to narcotize himself, to forget his oppressive situation."
b. Carl Jung treated Rowland Hazard in 1931 AD for alcoholism in Switzerland but upon return to the USA he reverted to his drunken binges. Jung told Hazard that without conversion to genuine Christianity most alcoholics were beyond help. This event happened at the time that the Lutheran religious "Oxford Group" was operating to get alcoholics to repent of their sin of drunkenness. The Oxford Group is where one of the founders of AA learned the basic concepts of AA today. See the case of "Dominatrix".
3. Picking up a glass of alcohol is no more an "involuntary physical compulsion" than is rape, gluttony, smoking or ingesting drugs. The body may crave because of a historical pattern of bad choices, but the spirit is always in control.
A. The Biopsychiatric view of alcoholism as a genetic DNA flaw:
1. Biopsychiatry has deceived the general public by transforming drunkenness from a sin into a disease.
a. God will hold all drunks accountable in judgement, but atheistic Darwinian chemical psychiatrists remove all personal accountability which makes the Devil happy.
b. Alcoholism is a moral choice not a genetic predisposition.
c. The reason alcoholics "can't stay stopped" is because they have been lied to, that it is a genetic defect over which they have no personal responsibly or control in the same way as if they contracted pneumonia or gall stones.
d. If they had any fear they might be cast into hell for drunkenness, they would likely find a reason to "stay stopped".
2. "I am constantly amazed by how many patients who come to see me believe or want to believe that their difficulties are biologic and can be relieved by a pill. This is despite the fact that modern psychiatry has yet to convincingly prove the genetic/biologic cause of any single mental illness. However, this does not stop psychiatry from making essentially unproven claims that depression, bipolar illness, anxiety disorders, alcoholism and a host of other disorders are in fact primarily biologic and probably genetic in origin, and that it is only a matter of time until all this is proven. This kind of faith in science and progress is staggering, not to mention naive and perhaps delusional. (Against Biologic Psychiatry, Dr. David Kaiser, Psychologist, Psychiatric Times, December, Dec. 1996, Vol. XIII, Issue 12)
3. "American researchers typically ignore the work of Robin Murray, the leading British expert in the genetics of alcoholism; Murray found no difference in rates of alcoholism for MZ [mono-zygotic, or identical] and DZ [di-zygotic, or non-identical] twins, effectively ruling out a genetic hypothesis if these results are replicated by other researchers" (Pseudoscience in Biological Psychiatry, Colin A. Ross, M.D., & Alvin Pam, Ph.D., 1995, p. 52).
4. "This doctrine [alcoholism is a disease] has been adopted throughout the chemical dependency field including Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). despite the fact that it has no scientific foundation and is logically incorrect. ... The idea that alcoholism is genetic is the leading example of the effective marketing of pseudoscience by biological psychiatry. ... There cannot be a gene for alcoholism, and alcoholism cannot be a biomedical illness, for logical reasons..." (Pseudoscience in Biological Psychiatry, Colin A. Ross, M.D., & Alvin Pam, Ph.D., 1995, p. 96.)
B. The Biopsychiatric view of alcoholism as an allergy:
1. Dr. William D. Silkworth is the person who taught the founders of AA, William Griffith Wilson and Dr. Robert Holbrook Smith his false theory that alcoholism was an allergy in 1935 AD.
2. Biopsychiatry has bizarrely diagnosed alcoholics with an allergy of all things, in an effort to explain why some people consume alcohol and do not become addicted and others become alcoholics when they consume the first drink.
a. A bee sting causes a physical reaction in some people because they have an allergy.
b. Their body chemistry is different from the majority of the population who have no such reaction to a bee sting.
3. The alcoholic/allergy etiological theory, however is nothing like a true allergy, or anything else in medicine we know of.
a. The allergy to alcohol, so the myth goes, induces a chemical compound in the body, only after you take that "first drink". If you had never had that first drink, you would never have developed the allergy, but once you add alcohol to the body chemistry, new chemical compounds are manufactured and you develop the craving, for the first time, to consume more alcohol.
b. Before you had your first drink, you didnt crave alcohol. But that first drink changes your body chemistry so that you are forced, uncontrollably and against your freewill, to take the second and third drink and so on.
4. While allergies may create pain and alter the appearance of the body, no allergy affects mood or choice.
5. The allergy/alcoholic theory is a completely false analogy constructed not by scientific observation, but to strategically remove responsibility from the individual.
6. God never condemns behaviours caused by disease. God condemns drunkenness.
7. There is not a shred of scientific proof for the allergy etiology of alcoholism. However, it sounds "scientistic" enough to deceive the general public into believing that there is factual scientific data to prove it.
C. The Twelve Step Program: AA "religion for atheists"
1. The Twelve step program Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is church for atheists.
a. AA is a cheap counterfeit of Christianity.
b. AA was patterned after a program run by Christians to help alcoholics.
2. A Lutheran minister named Dr. Franklin Nathaniel Daniel Buchman conceived "The Oxford Group" in 1931 AD. As a minister, he rejected the Biopsychiatric view of alcoholism as a disease, allergy, but emphasized it was a sinful freewill moral. In this he was correct.
i. All people are sinners
ii. All sinners can be changed
iii. Confession is a prerequisite to change
iv. The change can access God directly
v. Miracles are again possible
vi. The change must change others.
i. Confidence
ii. Confession
iii. Conviction
iv. Conversion
v. Continuance
i. Absolute-Honesty
ii. Absolute-Purity
iii. Absolute-Unselfishness
iv. Absolute-Love
5. Twelve step programs don't work:
a. 95% of people who join AA fail to get clean of alcohol for life. 5% of those who convert to Christianity in genuine faith and obedience to God return to their former sinful addition because they fall away and lose faith.
b. In 1937 AD, co-founder of AA, Dr. Robert Holbrook Smith looked back at both the Oxford group and his own and realized the rate of failure was 95%.
c. "It seems that, whatever the results, addiction treatment is identifiably a business that ignores its failures. In fact its failures lead to more business. Its technology, based on continued recovering, presumes relapses. Recidivism [a tendency to relapse into a previous condition or mode of behavior] is used as an argument for further funding rather than as evidence of an ineffective treatment." (Manufacturing Victims, Dr. Tana Dineen, 2001, p 215)
d. In an effort to appear humane, courts have moved towards referring for psychological treatment not only crime victims but also those who have been convicted of a crime in which "psychological problems" are identified as a factor. In some jurisdictions, employers are also mandated to provide treatment for employees with psychological problems, such as alcohol and substance abuse or sexual disorders. Similarly, workers' compensation programs now include provisions for job-related stress, and stress debriefings are required for both victims of trauma and emergency personnel. While these treatments generally lack any proof of their long-term effectiveness, they have become legally sanctioned, publicly endorsed and accepted, and are widely used. In referring to publicly accredited psychological services as "sanctified snake oil," Susan Sarnoff, professor of Social Work at Ohio University, states that government support and funding of "junk social science" creates an implied approval of these bogus methods that is unwarranted and wasteful of tax dollars. She warns that what is truly dangerous, at this time in history, is not the sale of "snake oil" but rather that it is legitimized by these official stamps of approval" (Manufacturing Victims, Dr. Tana Dineen, 2001, p 276)
e. "The American treatment of alcoholism [AA, Alcoholics Anonymous] follows a standard formula that appears impervious to emerging research evidence (which shows no evidence of effectiveness), and has not changed significantly for at least two decades." (Manufacturing Victims, Dr. Tana Dineen, 2001, p 228)
f. "how effective is AA?." Some information about AA's success rate comes from its own membership surveys. In particular, the rather famous 'Comments on AA's Triennial Surveys' document cited by Charles Bufe in Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure is AA's ID # 5M/12-90/TC, which was produced for internal purposes. It is also summarized in Vince Fox's Addiction, Change, and Choice (1993). The document is not listed in AA's 'Conference Approved Literature' but Fox was able to obtain a copy from AA. AA's own analysis was that 50% of all those who try AA leave within 90 days, which they describe as cause for 'concern'. Their own data shows that is actually optimistic. In the 12-year period shown, 19% remain after 30 days, 10% remain after 90 days, and 5% remain after a year. The retention rate of AA is 5% after one year.
6. Some of the twelve-step groups are absurd. There are groups for an amazing number of "spiritual diseases". Just the short list of the common ones includes:
AA Alcoholics Anonymous |
Abusive Parents Anonymous |
ACOA Adult Children Of Alcoholics |
ADD Attention Deficit Disorder Anonymous |
Al-Anon |
Alateen |
Alcoholics Victorious of the Institute for Christian Living |
ARTS Anonymous (Artists Recovering) |
Augustine Fellowship: Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous |
CA Cocaine/Crack Anonymous |
Calix (a Catholic 12-Step-based recovery organization) |
CDA Chemically Dependent Anonymous |
CEA Compulsive Eaters Anonymous |
Chronic Illness |
CLA Clutterers Anonymous |
CMA Crystal Meth Anonymous |
CODA Codependents Anonymous |
Compulsive Eaters Anonymous |
Compulsive Shopping |
COSA Codependents of Sex Addicts |
Debtors Anonymous |
Diabetics Anonymous |
Divorce Recovery |
DRA Dual Recovery Anonymous |
Drug-Anon Focus |
Dual Disorders Anonymous |
EA Emotions Anonymous |
EAA Eating Addictions Anonymous |
EDA Eating Disorders Anonymous |
Emotional Health Anonymous |
Ethics Anonymous |
FA Families Anonymous |
FA Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous |
GA Gamblers Anonymous |
GamAnon families of gamblers |
Gangs Anonymous |
Gangsters Anonymous |
HCVA Hepatitis C Virus Anonymous |
High blood pressure |
ISA Incest Survivors Anonymous |
Marijuana Anonymous |
Methadone Anonymous |
MTC Make Today Count (for someone with a terminal disease) |
NA Narcotics Anonymous |
Nar-Anon families of addicts |
Nick-a-teen Anonymous |
Nicotine Anonymous |
Obsessive-Compulsive Anonymous |
ODAT One Day At a Time pagan recovery |
OE Overeaters Anonymous |
Offenders Anonymous for convicts |
Overcomers Outreach |
Pagan Sanctum Recovery |
Parents Anonymous |
Partners and Friends of Incest Survivors Anonymous |
Pill Addicts Anonymous |
Pills Anonymous |
PIR Pagans In Recovery |
Prostitutes Anonymous |
Recovering Couples Anonymous |
RSA Rape Survivors Anonymous |
S/A Schizophrenics Anonymous |
SA Sexaholics Anonymous |
SAA Sex Addicts Anonymous |
S-Anon family groups of sex-addicts |
S-Anon International Family Groups |
SCA Sexual Compulsives Anonymous |
Self-Mutilators Anonymous |
Sexual Recovery Anonymous |
SIA Survivors of Incest Anonymous |
SLAA Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous |
Tough Love |
WA Workaholics Anonymous |
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Conclusion:
1.
Jesus loves me! This I know,
Alcoholism disease? I don't think so.
Little ones to Him belong;
Repent of drunkenness and you'll be strong.
Yes, Jesus loves me!, Yes, Jesus loves me!, Yes, Jesus loves me!
The Bible tells me so.
2. People drink for a number of perfectly rational reasons, if they would be honest enough and tell the truth what is driving them to drink.
3. "A psychiatrist specializing in alcohol abuse reported, "We now know why some individuals after staying sober for years return to drink while others never go back. Those who labor every day, vowing not to drink today, may become overwhelmed with the onerous burden and start drinking again. On the other hand, those who move from the vow of sobriety to the joy of sobriety never go back." (Smith, F., & Goetz, D. L., Leading with integrity, 1999, Vol. 5, p 128)
4. Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor deviant sex practitioners, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:911)
5. Only Jesus can motivate the alcoholic to be filled with the Spirit rather than being drunk with wine.: And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. (Ephesians 5:1821)
6. Find me a good, Bible-believing, local church where I can learn about Jesus and free myself from my alcoholism.
By Steve Rudd: Contact the author for comments, input or corrections.
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