Recovery Talk

Veronica has issues with recovery talk. It is, as she says, all well and good that people head into church basements, drink coffee and quit killing themselves with chemicals. But the haze of goodness and self-realization that surrounds it? Not so much.

“In my book if giving up my substances means I am going to turn into a navel-gazing, self-satisfied clown like the [expletive] I see in your meetings, then you what? — pass the joint, shake me a margarita, and kiss my” — well, you get the picture.

David Carr: Wrestling With Recovery Is No Fairy Tale.
The New York Times, 29 June 2011

Psychiatry & Drug Industry

The drug industry, of course, supports other specialists and professional societies, too, but Carlat asks, “Why do psychiatrists consistently lead the pack of specialties when it comes to taking money from drug companies?” His answer: “Our diagnoses are subjective and expandable, and we have few rational reasons for choosing one treatment over another.” Unlike the conditions treated in most other branches of medicine, there are no objective signs or tests for mental illness—no lab data or MRIfindings—and the boundaries between normal and abnormal are often unclear. That makes it possible to expand diagnostic boundaries or even create new diagnoses, in ways that would be impossible, say, in a field like cardiology. And drug companies have every interest in inducing psychiatrists to do just that.

Marcia Angell: The Illusions of Psychiatry
The New York Review of Books, 14 July 2011

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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