Kind of upset at a thread on a Lifering email list

 Regular readers here know that I've long been involved with Lifering Secular Recovery, and much of that time, semi-active to active in participation on email groups and Lifering social media, attending a few annual conventions and more.

Sadly, on one email list, discussion about a person having to go to jail for a DUI last fall veered into a ditch earlier this month. I am not naming any names, but I am laying out the bare parameters, because I think they need to be laid out.

Said person is getting three days in jail.

Several people have talked about how cruel this is. One person said that "way back," they didn't get jail in California. (She didn't respond when I said, in one of my emails on the thread, that I didn't know how long "way back" was, but that I suspected California had changed since then.)

One person, beyond the "how cruel," went into this was the same type of barbarism in America as not having national health care, etc., and that America was basically "draconian" or something like that.

And, that (although I totally agree on national health care) went over the line.

First, as I said about setting aside BAC levels, let's NOT set aside BAC levels, and let's note that in most advanced countries, the blood alcohol level that leaves you open to arrest is no higher than 0.05 percent, not the 0.08 percent of the US. We can talk about the sadness of the US not having better public transport, but we can also mention that beyond buses and taxis, ride sharing services do exist.

Now, as for the the reality of criminal sentencing?

You can do time a-plenty elsewhere in the world, including three weeks of "hard labor" in Norway and a full year in jail in Sweden and Finland. 

Remember, these are countries that liberal and, to some degree, leftist America, inside sobriety world and outside, like to tout.

Beyond that, IMO, is a psychological misconception, and that is that addicts, whether to alcohol or drugs, respond only to carrots.

Really? Carrots may be the primary tool in STAYING sober LONG TERM, but sticks have a definite role to play in GETTING sober and in STAYING sober in the SHORT(ER) TERM, as I see it.

Finally, a lot more people drive drunk than drive pot-high, even with the growth in legalized recreational marijuana.

And, that's the other reason to note that neither the US nor other advanced countries are "draconian." Sticks as well as carrots have a part to play, IMO, in reducing DUI in general, not just among people who may be addicted.

As someone who was a fucking idiot once, even with the tie-in of family psychology reasons related to my dumb decision, I don't know if jail time beyond an overnight would have done anything. It might have. OTOH, it might have increased my "I don't give a fuck" at the time. 

But, it would have lessened excuses, if nothing else.

And, for repeat offenders, you know what? The bottom line is that if they're in jail, they're not driving.

==

Update, June 3: They're at it again. So, I'm staying away from the email lists for a while.

With 'help' like this, secular sobrietiests don't need AA stepper 'enemies'

Skeptical blogger Ed Brayton, at the imploring of an anti-AA website, recently did a post on skepticism and the 12-step movement.

Of course, it was a dogwhistle for your usual assortment of steppers, who made the usual arguments:
1. Claims that, despite multiple federal court rulings to the contrary, AA and NA aren't religious, not even in the eye of the First Amendment.
2. Any 12-step "industry" is all Hazelden; AA has no blame, not even for getting in bed with Hazelden 50 years ago.
3. Steps, etc. are just "suggestions."
4. Nothing else that's wrong with AA is AA's fault.

Of course, steppers are immune to reason, but, it was good to refute them, anyway, for Ed's regular readers to learn more about AA. That includes learning that atheists in recovery can, will and do twist their reasoning enough not only to be involved with AA but to say it works.

Even that's not that unusual, nor is it new to me to run into them. (When you run into an atheist, or "atheist," philosophy professor who talks about praying, NOTHING a self-proclaimed atheist does is strange.)

But, then, a certain "Glenn" popped up about 3/4 the way through the discussion, with several bizarre comments.

First, he said alcoholism was a "moral issue." Now, he didn't explicitly say "just a moral issue," but it's clear that's what he meant. I tried to reason with him from several angles.

First, I pointed out what modern neuroscience is discovering about brain chemistry and addiction. He showed no interest in following up on that.

Second, I showed him that the "moral issue" was actually just what AA believed, when it claimed alcoholism was not just a "disease" but a "spiritual disease." That's why you have to admit powerlessness, ask a god to remove "defects," etc. Not only did he not "get it," he started, in essence, getting near ranting level about alcoholism being a moral issue.

Third, he then claimed that I supported courts "coercing" people into secular recovery groups like Lifering. He was totally ignorant of the fact that the issue isn't court power to "coerce" people into ANY sobriety support program, but rather, to unconstitutionally "coerce" people into a program that has been recognized as religious, in light of the First Amendment.

Nor did he get the idea that courts can and do "coerce" convicted criminals into all sorts of "conditions," like ankle bracelet monitors, community service, etc. Now, if a criminal doesn't like that coercion, he or she is free to take a spot in a county or state jail.

He then claims it's different, going on to talk about "abstinence coercion." Well, maybe you want it to be, Mr. Glenn, but, legally, it's not. And, what you want doesn't change law or the enforcement thereof.

Moral of the story?

If you don't know anything about addiction/alcoholism, then just don't talk about it. You do more harm than good, and, just like a zealous stepper, you're likely to make an individual alcoholic/addict less likely to get help.

Yes, we are heroes

From a support group email list, as translated from the German by a friend:

When You Meet a Sober Alcoholic

When you meet a sober alcoholic
You meet a hero.
His mortal enemy slumbers within him;
He can never outrun his disability.
He makes his way through a world of alcohol abuse,
In an environment that does not understand him.
Society, puffed up with shameful ignorance,
Looks on him with contempt,
As if he were a second-class citizen
Because he dares to swim against the stream of alcohol.
But you must know:
No better people are made than this.

-- Friedrich von Bodelschwingh (1831-1910).

Alcohol and anxiety

Had an anxiety attack earlier this week, the first one in a few months.

Like most of them, the final relief from it came by throwing up.

Tonight, while taking a brief walk earlier, I got to thinking about anxiety and alcohol. Anxiety issues, in different ways, run on both my dad's and mom's side of the family. In a more clinical sense, they're much more serious on my dad's side.

And alcohol, and somewhat tobacco, I'll venture, was used as an attempt to control that anxiety by many of dad's side men.

I got to thinking about that in my own case as well. I realize that alcohol just masked anxiety, it didn't control it. And, by actually exacerbating one symptom of anxiety, the churning stomach — at least when I was drinking on an empty or near-empty stomach — it actually made it worse.

Here's to one more reason for staying sober.

Cliques and claques in support

I haven't written here for a while, but wanted to get some thoughts out.

My main sobriety support group is still going through some fallout over changes in the chat room, including more careful enforcement of previous chat guidelines, combined with further detailing of those guidelines in the more recent past.

Some people, a combination of a couple of people who got themselves banned for deliberately challenging the rules and others who stayed away more and more in sympathy, ultimately started their own blog and eventually embedded chat software in it. (It's not hard; heck, Yahoo Messenger lets you create temporary chat rooms.)

Since then, a few more people have been banned while some of those choosing to visit the Lifering chat have done so even less. That said, there's still sniping, and some "recruiting" by people who have left.

And, yes, that will get you banned.

It's still sad, though. And, the more this drags on, the sadder it gets.

If you've made your choice to leave Lifering, then accept it. The current convenor head and No. 2 aren't leaving any time soon.

At the same time, it's also sad to see that it still has a bit of effect on people still there. Like me. Like the No. 2, it appears. And perhaps others.

I had been thinking about writing here for a few days, but, with a new thread on Lifering's Ning page, which I decided to wade into for one, and only one, reply, I decided to go ahead here, too.

Solitary, secretive, scared and shabby

I substitute "scared," for alliteration, for the "Solitary, secretive, timid & shabby" I heard earlier today in an online chatroom. Great description, sadly, of an end-state alcoholic drinker or addicted drug user.

Complex PTSD – and alcoholism and addiction

As some psychological research estimates as many as 15 percent of alcoholics and 30 percent of addicts may have PTSD, and it’s often undiagnosed, more light is needed, especially on the little-understood complex PRSD.

Here’s a longer definition from Wiki and here
That “explanation” she holds on to is a shorter one.

Some good resources are here.

Not so fast on ‘alcohol is good for you’

Most those highly hyped studies that claim that? They don’t meat the scientific smell test, and, shades of Big Tobacco, they’re financed by the alcohol industry. That’s complete with paid-off scientists denying the research subsidies had any effect.

George Vaillant 42 years later

George Vaillant, a psychology professor at Harvard, inherited what was then the Grant Project. Under Vaillant’s hands, it became the largest- and longest-ever longitudinal study of human psychology.

Atlantic Monthly has an update on Vaillant’s work after 42 years.

Although not planned as such, the survey has many invaluable spinoffs, including seeing how manic-depressive or bipolar illness was eventually distinguished from schizophrenia, the state of development in psychology in general, information on human happiness and its whys, and more.

The more includes it becoming an invaluable longitudinal source on drug and alcohol addiction and recovery.

Apropos of that and other things, the Atlantic story has a couple of good rhetorical questions:

Can the good life be accounted for with a set of rules? Can we even say who has a “good life” in any broad way?

Probably not, unless, riffing on Thomas Szasz, we rely on groupthink societal definitions of what the “good life” is. Or, what “happiness” is, for that matter.

That said, Vaillant himself developed some intriguing findings about “positive” emotions:

In fact, Vaillant went on, positive emotions make us more vulnerable than negative ones. One reason is that they’re future-oriented. Fear and sadness have immediate payoffs—protecting us from attack or attracting resources at times of distress. Gratitude and joy, over time, will yield better health and deeper connections—but in the short term actually put us at risk. That’s because, while negative emotions tend to be insulating, positive emotions expose us to the common elements of rejection and heartbreak.

To illustrate his point, he told a story about one of his “prize” Grant Study men, a doctor and well-loved husband. “On his 70th birthday,” Vaillant said, “when he retired from the faculty of medicine, his wife got hold of his patient list and secretly wrote to many of his longest-running patients, ‘Would you write a letter of appreciation?’ And back came 100 single-spaced, desperately loving letters—often with pictures attached. And she put them in a lovely presentation box covered with Thai silk, and gave it to him.” Eight years later, Vaillant interviewed the man, who proudly pulled the box down from his shelf. “George, I don’t know what you’re going to make of this,” the man said, as he began to cry, “but I’ve never read it.” “It’s very hard,” Vaillant said, “for most of us to tolerate being loved.”

I will vouch for that indeed.

Of course, so could Vaillant.

He got married three times, and after six years with Wife No. 3, went back to Wife No.

Take child sexual abuse and child PTSD seriously

Let’s stop blaming priests, or dirty old men on park benches, and instead look inside the four walls of home, or relatives’ homes, a lot more. And, let’s recognize that this causes “PTSD on the home front” (now that, due to the Iraq War, we’re sadly aware of PTSD). That, and more, is in my annual April column.

I thought secular recovery groups were more scientific

It’s all right and good for a group like Lifering Secular Recovery to bash Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous for their reliance on a higher power, confession of sins, etc.

But, for Lifering to have the founder of an acupuncture-based addiction clinic as a principal speaker at its annual convention is, at least least, a bit uninformed and at the most, a bit hypocritical.

For the real poop on acupuncture and acupressure, read the Skeptic’s Dictionary.

Want to quit drinking? Address quitting smoking, too

New studies show a synergistic effect between the two addictions. They also show that cigarette-smoking alcoholics smoke more than non-alcoholic smokers. And, while I'm not in Big Pharma's pocket, and don't normally tout particular products, it appears Chantix can help on the smoking side.

Binge drinking — long-term aftereffects worse with start at younger ages

A new study shows that binge drinking affects ability to relearn tasks that have to be adjusted; what’s more, it shows that this difficulty, as well as long-term loss of impulse control and related issues, is worse for people who start binging at a younger age.

NIAAA: Child abuse-alcoholism link

And, this research points up alleys I have wondered about, such as why different people react differently to child abuse, sexual especially. Read the details on this study:

Girls who suffered childhood sexual abuse are more likely to develop alcoholism later in life if they possess a particular variant of a gene involved in the body's response to stress, according to a new study led by researchers at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The new finding could help explain why some individuals are more resilient to profound childhood trauma than others.

"With this study we see yet again that nature and nurture often work together, not independently, to influence our overall health and well-being," says NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D.

"This finding underscores the central role that gene-environment interactions play in the pathogenesis of complex diseases such as alcoholism," adds NIAAA Director Ting-Kai Li, M.D. A report of the study appears in the June 26, 2007 advance online publication of
Molecular Psychiatry.

Previous studies have shown that childhood sexual abuse increases the risk for numerous mental health problems in adulthood. However not all abused children develop such problems, a likely indication that genetic factors also play a role. Recent studies have linked the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene with adverse behavioral outcomes stemming from childhood mistreatment.

"MAOA is an enzyme that metabolizes various neurotransmitters that regulate the body's response to stress," explains first author Francesca Ducci, M.D., a visiting fellow in NIAAA's Laboratory of Neurogenetics in Bethesda, Maryland. DNA variations occur within a regulatory area - the MAOA-linked polymorphic region (MAOA-LPR) — of
the MAOA gene. Two such MAOA-LPR variants occur most frequently and result in high or low MAOA enzyme activity. In a recent study, researchers found that maltreated boys who possessed the low activity MAOA-LPR variant were more likely to develop behavior problems than boys with the high activity variant.

"Our aim was to test whether this low activity variant influences the impact of childhood sexual abuse on alcoholism and antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) in women," says Dr. Ducci.

She and her colleagues analyzed DNA samples from a group of American Indian women living in a community in which rates of alcoholism and ASPD are about six times higher than the average rates among all U.S. women. Childhood sexual abuse is also prevalent in this population, reported by about half of the women in the community, compared with a
U.S. average of 13 percent.


Analyses of MAOA-LPR genotypes in this study revealed that women who had been sexually abused in childhood were much more likely to develop alcoholism and antisocial behavior if they had the low activity variant whereas the high activity variant was protective. In contrast, there was no relationship between alcoholism, antisocial behavior and MAOA-LPR genotype among non-abused women.

"Our findings show that MAOA seems to moderate the impact of childhood trauma on adult psychopathology in females in the same way as previously shown among males," says Dr. Ducci. "The MAOA-LPR low activity allele appears to confer increased vulnerability to the adverse psychosocial consequences of childhood sexual abuse."

Dr. Ducci and her colleagues suggest that the effect of MAOA on the hippocampus, a brain region which is involved in the processing of emotional experience, may underlie the interaction between MAOA and childhood trauma. They note that previous research showed that people with the low activity variant at the MAOA-LPR locus have hyperactivation of the hippocampus when retrieving negative emotional information.

Now, the $64 question is, what medical benefits will result from this? Will we fine-tune new anti-PTSD medications?

Loneliness vs. aloneness, “black holes” and “beasts” of drinking life, etc.

I never really felt any of this a lot when I was in my drinking life. Oh, sure, a couple of times in college, for example, walking through the small town it was in, I’d look at people’s lit front windows at night, and wonder just what they were feeling inside their boxes. But, I never attributed that to loneliness, let alone any “black hole” of the existential self.

At the same time, and not meaning to boast, quitting drinking seemed relatively easy. I found a new job after having been fired the month before I quit (for other reasons). My office manager who had shamelessly flirted with me was now my former office manager.

In short, I had what AA calls a pink cloud. I didn’t have a “beast,” either.

But, especially with the PTSD-type shock of being downsized out of a job, moving from metro Dallas to highly conservative BFE, and more, plus deliberately journaling to delve deeper into feelings of the past, I have felt all of this in spades.

The “black hole” already goes back to the age of 8, if not earlier, for a variety of childhood abuses, followed by my first drunk.

The loneliness? Well, when you get drunk at 10… or when you try to kill yourself at 10, your mom helps stop it, and nothing is done after that, is pretty effing obvious and incredibly deep. It wasn’t until the PTSD eggshell-shattering that I have REALLY felt it. Before, it was always just “aloneness.”

The “beast”? Well, AA, counselors, and wise people in secular recovery are right that sometimes other “issues” of behavior or whatever can arise after we quit drinking. (In fact, when I hear some people in sobriety recovery say, “We got drunk because we drank,” I first of all feel like they’re attacking or putting down my experiences. I then start to wonder [and yes, this sounds AA-ish] if they’re not in denial about something.)

So, that’s why I’ve become more active in sobriety chats again. I am not the happiest camper in the world.

And, I hope that I can show more empathy to others because of this. That’s part of the growth I want.

My story, part 1

First, without getting into too many details, I’m a sexual abuse survivor.

There’s a word for it — it’s called incest. At least 2 years that I can remember, perhaps more, from at least when I was 8 to 10 years old. Maybe even longer than that. About anything you can think of, without being more specific. (I don’t just blurt this information out, anyway, for obvious reasons.)

I still can’t remember a lot today. And, I have post-traumatic stress disorder (more on that later).

The lack of memory probably says something. I’ve done the “self-counseling” work of looking at old childhood pictures, and I started looking like a pretty unhappy camper already in 4- and 5-year-old pics.

Whether that was some degree of sexual abuse that I can’t remember, physical or emotional abuse from dad, or emotional neglect going to indifference from mom, I was an unhappy camper, to put it mildly.

I know that the phrase “dysfunctional home” gets used a lot, but, I was there. Behind the Ozzie and Harriett of a conservative Lutheran minister and his wife and his five kids, there were seven individual balls of shit as the years went on.

To put it rhetorically, which may keep a little more distance for me:

When you’re 8 and two of your brothers come into your bedroom at night, and family life goes “blissfully” on the next day, you’re not in a normal family.

When you’re 9, and after you’ve chased your 1-year-younger sister with your Christmas present hunting knife (not recognizing she was reaching out from some degree of abuse herself, etc.), and your dad threatens to use the knife on you if you ever do that again, and life goes “blissfully” on the next day, you’re not in a normal house. (Dad was not the most horrible physical abuser in the world, but did go far enough to hit me and each of us kids in the mouth at least once, go beyond spankings to beatings more than once, etc.)

When you’re 9 and your dad catches you reading in bed at 2 a.m. and spanks you to the point of beating, rather than praising your intelligence for reading non-fiction books late at night, let alone not asking why else you would be up that late, you’re not in a normal house. (Why was I up that late? Best I can figure now, I realized my brothers wouldn’t come into my bedroom, even late at night, if I still had a light on. And, I was surely afraid to go to sleep. How afraid, I may still not recognize.)

When you’re 10, and the younger of the two older brothers is physically abusing you, and something finally snaps, and you attempt to strangulate yourself with a belt, you’re not in a normal house.

When, five minutes later, that same brother and your mom intervene to stop the suicide attempt, and nothing more is ever said about it, let alone done about it, as the family life goes “blissfully” on, you’re not in a normal household.

When, also at 10, the oldest brother primary sexual abuser shows you where dad’s liquor is at on the top shelf of the pantry, encourages you to try various things, etc. you’re not in a normal family.

(And when you don’t recognize until almost 30 years later how abnormal this all was, you’ve definitely been affected by living in a dysfunctional family.)

That said, I sampled all the clear liquors. Then, I saw the Jim Beam, or Jack Daniels.

The amber color fascinated me. Besides, I knew that real men like John Wayne drank whiskey — straight whiskey.

So, I did, or nearly so. I may have cut it 10-15 percent with water, but nothing else. This 98-pound kid drank 4 ounces or maybe a little more. He was macho. Wait until the neighborhood bullies heard about this.

Little did that gentle, soft-spoken boy realize he had just turned off, or finish turning off, an emotional and psychological light switch.

He wasn’t macho; he was hurting, and getting drunk for the first time.

(To be continued.)

Hello

I decided to start a blog just about recovery issues, to keep it separate from my other blogs, on political, professional or philosophical issues.

I'll discuss recovery from alcoholic-level drinking, recovery from overt and covert sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, emotional neglect/abandonment, and post-traumatic stress disorder.