One addiction replacing another?

"In time, I grew to alternately resent and hate AA because in some ways it stole my husband from me. He stopped going out at night or socialising with anyone who was not a member. He went to meetings at least once a day, sometimes twice. The only person he spoke to, aside from me, was his sponsor. I knew it was keeping him sober, but I was not sure, as someone had told me, that it was not one addiction replacing another" writes Janine di Giovanni in Ghosts by Daylight: A Memoir of War and Love (Bloomsbury).

The question whether one addiction is simply replaced by another I do find a rather academic one for not all addictions are the same - some will eventually kill you, others will help you living a constructive life.

Learning to live

I was astonished to discover that only one of the twelve steps, the first one, mentions the word alcohol (specifically, the admission of powerlessness over drink). The other eleven all have to do with getting by, with learning to be honest and responsible and humble, to own up to your mistakes when you make them, to ask for help when you need it.

Caroline Knapp: Drinking, a Love Story

The War on Drugs

The report (of the Global Commission on Drug Policy) describes the total failure of the present global antidrug effort, and in particular America’s “war on drugs,” which was declared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to substitute treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort on combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent, low-level offenders.

Jimmy Carter: Call Off the Global Drug War

The New York Times, 16 June 2011

Sólo por un día

Todos nosotros en A.A. permanecemos alejados del primer trago sólo por un día. Y, para muchos de nosotros, es igualmente importante que permanezcamos alejados de la primera pastilla, sólo por un día.

El miembro de A.A. y el Abuso de las Drogas

Das Leben findet jetzt statt

‎Dieses 'später' und dieses 'eines Tages' gibt es einfach nicht. Das Leben findet jetzt statt, man kann es nicht verschieben.

Claudia Kotter

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Not now, not ever

Sometime later, Bruno quit drinking with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous. He walked into a meeting – in English because he felt the Americans handled addictions more positively, more actively than their French counterparts – and seemed to never walk out. I was, and am, fiercely proud of him, because I knew how hard it was to take that final drink and know he would never be able to drink a glass of champagne or fine burgundy, or click a martini glass with me again. Not now, not ever.

Extracted from Ghosts by Daylight: A Memoir of War and Love
by Janine di Giovanni (Bloomsbury)

© Janine di Giovanni 2011

Treatment success rates

Do you know the success rate of this Hospital?
No.
It's about seventeen percent. That's of Patients who are sober for a year after they leave here.
That sucks.
That's the best success rate of any Treatment Center in the World.
That really sucks.
I've worked in six. I'm an Alcoholic and an Addict myself, and the only thing I've ever seen that works is the Twelve Steps.

James Frey: A Million Little Pieces