1.
YouTube still does not play sound for me unless I log in as administrator. Logged in as user, however, every other form of sound plays for me. I do not understand this: is it a problem at YouTube itself, or is there some setting I should adjust?
2.
Recommended reading for interested parties is this long quotation from Sonia Johnson, and these two shorter ones from Elayne Rapping. Both are feminist critiques of the so-called recovery movement, and they are quite astute.
I am interested in these because my infamous Reeducation was recovery-based, although I did not then realize to what degree it was that. I have, however, finally figured out what Reeducation was: essentially, the destruction of women, with recovery-based ideas as weapons. It is because I finally saw this completely that the Shadow lifted: I do not have to struggle against reeducation any more, carry it with me any more, worry whether I am wrong to have rejected it any more.
3.
I sought reeducation because I had never been good at dealing with bullies, and I wanted to get better at it. Reeducation, however, said that given my background – that is, my background as it was perceived and interpreted in reeducation – I must necessarily have other, secret problems in addition to this one. Joy and success in people with my background were symptomatic of “denial.”
I considered these ideas – ideas I would have been wiser to reject out of hand. As we say in Brazil, I should have “closed my body” to them, and not allowed them to “make my head.” But I considered them, and they were very, very destructive.
Slowly I began to see this. I have long, unpublished manuscripts in my archives in which I work out critiques similar to Johnson’s and Rapping’s. At the time I did not know that others shared some of my thoughts on the matter. I am glad to know now.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Profacero, just dropping in to give you some Asa-Luv! I wanted you to know that as far as I’m concerned you are far, very far from being a “heathen”. Actually I discern in you a positive spiritual vibe and sincere integrity. You are always welcome to come hang in my crib.
A Bientot!
Asa
I don’t know what is the deal with Youtube. It is working okay for me, for now.
I am glad your shadow is gone.
What you went through sounds so much like the crap I told you about, how the counselor wanted that girl to find her “Alpha female.” In other words, be a girly girl and don’t ask the menfolk any questions.
HI Asa and CM, and thanks!
Yes, the Alpha Female story. This therapist thought that I spoke like an academic, and that was dishonest, and meant I could not “feel”. ! Being precise (as a result of reflection based on feeling) was bad because it had not been directed by *him* – ‘dishonesty’ meant not having the standard reactions to life *he* expected – and not “feeling” meant not liking or being given to *melodrama*.
What he was upset about was, I think, that I was too grown up and too open. I wish I had been a little less open, though, *to his ideas* – !
Dropping in to say hello. I have my own story about a brief encounter with the recovery movement. The short version of the story is that I was told that if I didn’t own up to everything that they said must be true about me according to their dogma then clearly I was lying. I got out quickly. Their dire predictions about my chances of leading a productive non-addictive life proved false. It is always heartening to find like-minded travelers.
Hi JFR and yes! This has been my experience, although it was unfortunately less quick since it was all filtered through a therapist who was mixing those ideas with other things.
This therapist had some great logic, including that because one of the authors I was working on appeared to have been a victim of childhood sexual abuse, I must also be one, and my creative work and research was merely an overachieving way to cover that fact. If I would not believe this, and confront my parents about it, then I was merely in denial or lying.
This therapist hated achievement and was ‘addicted’ to pain. His whole thing was, give up success, and take on pain. Wanting more than that out of life, or having gotten more out of life, was mere arrogance. We all needed to beat ourselves up more, and spend more time focusing on the bad things which had happened, or which might be happening. Putting up with problems was virtuous. Solving them was sinful.
I also went to actual recovery meetings, because I do actually come from an alcoholic family, and I am not lying. However, there are certain sins the aforementioned family did not commit, and the recovery people believed I was lying about that. And there are certain problems of children of alcoholic families I do not have (the famous one is, road rage), but they thought I was lying when I said no, I am actually quite patient in traffic.
I will say a positive thing or two about recovery meetings, though – a point Heart made. One is getting to discover there that some of the problems you have are not unique, and that they are in fact related to addicts/addiction. Another is that in a good group, people are in fact kind and supportive. The best groups also realize that each person is different, and they confer dignity upon each individual. Finally, those discussions in which criticism / “cross-talk” are not allowed, can be quite enlightening, in that they permit participants to uncover things, but protect each one (at least during the meeting) from emotional vultures or other people who want to enmesh.
I still go sometimes, to a group I like. They keep telling me that if I do not swallow the whole pill, I will not get anything out of it. That is where I disagree.
What Al-Anon did for me, when I went several years ago, was help me realize that I could not fix the addicts in my family, and that I could stop trying, in ways that were not only not helpful to them but also harmful to me. It also helped me recognize that whether or not I believe in god or something like that was less important than recognizing that I am not a god and therefore cannot, by sheer force of will, control the things I am afraid of. I don’t go to meetings anymore, but I learned a lot when I did go to them, and I was fortunate enough not to have to deal with evangelism or shaming by folks in my group. I got that from other sources.
Joanna – yes. I think that where Al-Anon really works is when one is in fact dealing directly with family members who are in fact addicts. After all, it was invented with that in mind! It seems to be extra-especially true for people with quickly evolving situations, and extra-extra-especially true for those who are actually living with the addict (and have to).
It’s where the model gets expanded to apply to everything, so that social ills get reencoded as “allergies” or “sicknesses” on the part of their *victims* (no less!) that I really find the 12 steps problematic.
Control the things one is afraid of, interesting – I will meditate on that.
One of my big complaints about recovery based therapy and Al-Anon, though, was that they seemed to want to whip up fear, often of actually non-scary things. That was “admitting true feelings” (or in my case, taking on false ones). Fear, I had always thought, was something to stare down and walk through, or an emotion which indicated it was time to assess risk and make a decision. But I learned in therapy / Al-Anon that I had insufficient fear levels, and needed to increase them (bad call).
This got me caught in a lot of unnecessary and destructive avoidant behaviors: rather than just face fear, as I had before, I tried, using the exercises I had been given, to feel it in its appropriate fullness. This made things so scary, of course, that all I wanted to do then was hide!
I hid out, for instance, from academia, for no good reason, since the scariest things that ever happened to me there took place *before* all of this psychologizing started to happen.
Hence the blog – to come out of my shell. 🙂
I do not doubt that 12 step groups offer positive benefits to their members, although my experience was all negative. It is the totalizing discourse that bothers me. I was told that since I was addicted to a substance they knew both the cause of my addiction, how I had behaved while addicted, how that had effected the people around me and what I needed to do to avoid ever using again. The trouble was that I didn’t fit their model and when I tried to point that out to them they simply said I was lying.
My addiction, which was to xanax, lasted all of a month, which is when I realized what I was doing and sought out help for myself. For the month during which I was abusing the drug I had continued with my life in a way that had minimal effect on anyone. In fact no one knew I was addicted and they were all surprised when I told them what was going on, so no one other than myself was really hurt by my actions. I had managed 40 years of life unaddicted before this xanax addiction. I didn’t feel that I was doomed to the life of an addict forever. I was told that I was either lying or deluded about all of this. Clearly I had gone doctor shopping. I would need to make full mea culpas to all the peope I had hurt so badly, and that if I didn’t do everything I was told to do I would be back using again in no time.
This was all about 15 years ago. I think I went to 2 meetings and saw a 12 step counselor a few times and then decided this approach was not for me. I have never been addicted to anything again. I have an occasional glass of wine and even took oxycontin for a few months afater a serious back injury. Now a bottle of wine can easily last a week or 2 in my house. When my back stopped hurting I stopped taking the drug. I never took more than was prescribed. I think I still have a few oxycontin in a vial somewhere. So much for once an addict always an addict.
The problems 12 step programs address are real. I have no desire to stop people from using these programs. I just think we need to think critically about them, how they help and how they hurt, how they address real problems and how they mask other broader issues by medicalizing social issues. I find it much more liberating to think about a sick society than to conclude that we are all sick and need the cure.
I am more addicted than you, jfr – I smoke! Not very much, but I break down every third day or so. Some people claim I ‘don’t really smoke’ but I am a.d.d.i.c.t.e.d., I can tell. What will it take to really quit, for real? A little more exercise, sleep, and willpower – and 100% healthy food. I also lose the urge in non-smoking environments. The twelve steps are not what are needed here.
Yours is an amazing story, because it is such a clear example (were those people ever officious and abusive!) but I think it’s a common one. I’ve seen it done kids caught with marijuana one time. They end up in worse shape than they started.
I think the once an addict, always an addict thing is bunk. So is the idea that ‘the first one’ is the kiss of death. And the mea culpas, in many cases, really are not what is indicated.
The problems these programs address are real, yes, they do benefit some people in some ways. If there were an alternative available, it might offer the same benefits and more, without as many of the poor side effects.
I could go on and on about the ideology of it. Not being a god (or a one-person army, or simply, two people), for instance, is fine, except when people apply that to everything in life and use it as an excuse for complacency. “I am not a god – I can do nothing – it would be harmful for me to do anything.”
Another piece of The Theory is, “change is good.” That translates to: if you do not consider it a good idea to do the destructive and self-destructive things they want you to do, it is not because you are sensible, it is because you “fear change.”
And so yes: it’s a totalizing ideology, and this is why I am against it. They are on such a huge POWER TRIP!!!
I’ve got some catching up to do!
mil gracias for the Rapping and Johnson – !
RG, jfr, and anyone else interested, here’s another reference:
Haaken, Janice. “From Al-Anon to ACOA: Codependence and the Reconstruction of Caregiving.” SIGNS 18:2 (Winter 1993): 321-345.
From page 323: “To the extent that codependence literature depoliticizes social reality, it offers narrow psychological explanatioins of feminine pathology consistent with the conservatism of the 1980s.” Ah-HAH! C’est vrai.
Meandering thought: now that my Shadow has lifted, I have almost 100% control of my life (to the extent that one can, I do not mean I control weather and such things), as regular people do. It is great. I wish I had realized during my infamous Reeducation that *most* of the ideas with which I was being presented were these ‘codependency’ ideas, and mangled versions of them at that. I did not realize that this ‘control’ the Reeducator wanted me to give up was just the kind of control over someone ELSE’s drinking (or whatever) that the 12 step groups teach you not to try to have.
We were just supposed to give up control of something, and I had control only over my own days, thoughts, etc., so that was all I had to give up. I actually did it, although it did not seem to be a good idea (but, you see, I was told I was ‘resisting change’). I kept wondering, am I also supposed to give up control of my car, while driving? How far is this supposed to go? It made no actual sense.
But, you are supposed to give up ‘control’ and then ‘accept’ the results – ‘acceptance’ being good, and being another of the goals. This caused me to accept unacceptable things. And on, and on. It was a very weird mind f***, and it happened to me although I am quite intelligent. Weird.
I should have found all of these articles back then, but I did not, and I supposed the result is that I have done a scientific experiment on myself.
!!! Anyway, it is great at least to be able to see it in retrospect – the worse case would be never to have escaped.
Also – here are more of my voluminous notes on this matter. I may have already made these points, but this blog is the archive of my thoughts, so here are these notes.
1. Janice Haaken, the author listed above, is a clinical psychologist at Portland State with interesting feminist writings about Al-Anon and ACOA. I can’t reproduce the analyses here but it is along the lines of: these groups are liberating in some ways and hegemonic/patriarchal in others. Really bastardizing the argument: this is the liberation available to women under Fascism; it is limited, since it is under Fascism, but within its limits, it is real, which is why it remains attractive.
2. I say that the Al-Anon phenomenon is at least as much about resigning oneself to, staying in, and tolerating bad situations as it is about freedom – and that it requires too much confession, repentance, penance, and submission to the will of others.
3. I do not want to join a religion but I am beginning to think that if one is considering joining a 12 step group, one might do better to consider joining a religion or studying theology. Advantages to actual religion are, you can choose a relatively enlightened one. With Al-Anon, you get what you seem to get is conservative American Catholicism + religious right fundamentalism, all cleverly dressed up as non-religious and universal. (It would be different, certainly, if the members were not also members of these religions, but I still say, look at the steps, you will see the religious origins.)
4. AA and NA, etc., is what the courts require all the drug criminals to attend. These groups are widely seen as the answer to addictions. I will say it once again, Al-Anon is an Althusserian ISA (idelogical state apparatus)!
When I attended a very few 12 steps meeting it felt very cult like to me. An enlightened religion at least allows questioning, although religion isn’t my thing either, except for a little buddhism, which isn’t really a religion, in my opinion, if you just stick to the basics. These 12 step groups seem to have a list of inviolable rules that demand all or nothing compliance. It just felt wrong to me, like I had to give up my mind, my control, my ability to judge what was right for me and what wasn’t, and just do what I was told because the group knew me better than I knew myself. Sounds like the patriarchy to me.
I have a book by Janice Haaken, “A Pillar of Salt” which takes on the recovered memory dispute. She tends to give nuanced reading of things at the intersection of politics and psychololgy/psychiatry from a feminist perspective, avoiding either/or kind of thinking. Her primary interest over the years has been trauma theory. Thanks for reminding me of her. Codependence would be right up her alley.
I
“It just felt wrong to me, like I had to give up my mind, my control, my ability to judge what was right for me and what wasn’t, and just do what I was told because the group knew me better than I knew myself. Sounds like the patriarchy to me.”
Yes – exactly! I have now looked up some information on this “Pillar of Salt” book, and it sounds fascinating. Recovered memories: my infamous Reeducator also hoped I would recover some Gothic memories. It was all so formulaic and weird. Anyway, this Haaken is bright and engaged, and does important critique, it appears. I think I will make her a role model !!!
II
On the nature of this cult: its adherents seem to be very volatile and just under control. I do not mean fiery and Latin like me, I mean bossy and egocentric. I mean, they are always talking about just having learned to control road rage, just having learned not to fly off the handle if things do not go exactly their way at the LSU football tailgate. Now they are “turning it over to God.”
Anyway, the interesting part of it is that my Reeducator thought that becauses I was so much more Zen than that, I “did not have feelings.” That is where he got to the idea that I must have memories which needed uncovering.
I do in fact get dramatic and stamp my foot if I have a drunk or some incoherent drunks trying to tell me how life is or what to do. I also got panic attacks from trying to absorb the terribly negative worldview of this shrink, and also later, from dealing with someone else who wanted me to absorbe a negative worldview. But I do not know why emotions should always have to be demonstrated so dramatically, or why having an emotion should mean not having control – or why having control should mean being unemotional.
I would have said that having emotions and being able to handle them was maturity.
http://www.the101program.com/
A friend just sent this link to a program he swears by – although it is for actual drinkers, not so much Al-Anon denizens. Anyway, it is about physical treatment for the problem and it looks really smart: you don’t have to go to meetings and say negative things about yourself, you get to actually modify diet (and more), and seriously address the problem. The analysis seems to be that it is part of a whole, complicated, larger sugar cycle.
Something I have always thought: if it is a disease, and we are in modernity, then there has to be a way to handle it with something other than willpower, submission to ‘God,’ and faith healing.
Here are yet more random notes – not only on Al-Anon / 12 steps but also on my Reeducation more broadly.
1. Al-Anon/12 steps: they want you to internalize political and societal problems, reencode them as problems of yours. If something happened, it is because you did not handle it right, or handle yourself right. This is *really pernicious* and deadens consciousness. I know it is directed at people who do not introspect and think they are perfect, or something, but I do not find that most people are like that.
2. On these crude and destructive ‘therapies.’ I just read something from an entirely different context, railing about how one can destroy in 30 minutes what it took 100 years to build, and how this should be avoided. I liked it because I always feel really weird that I had my entire sense of self destroyed within just a few months.
I know these therapies are proud to break through 100 years of denial in 30 minutes, but what if it is not ‘denial’ they are destroying? I also find them extremely impulsive in their rush to judgment. And yet you are supposed to be so terribly tolerant of them.
I have recently read a book entitled “What Makes You Not a Buddhist” by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse. I quite like much of what he has to say. One of the four foundational beliefs he says underlie buddhism is the belief that all emotions are suffering. It took me a while to understand what he meant but I have come to agree with him. It is not the having of an emotion that is suffering but the attachments that arise because of our emotions. It is tied to another of his buddhist fundamentals, that all compounded things are impermanent. It is so different from the therapeutic stance which treats the release of emotions as cathartic and necessary. I have in my own life recently come to believe that the trauma perspective that permeates much of psychotherapy, with it’s emphasis on releasing emotions, can be very harmful. I find a meditative approach to emotions much more conducive to peace of mind. I believe that psychotherapy can be useful, but it can also do great harm. I have experienced it both ways. Cathartic outbursts can certainly cause harm whereas meditation seldom leads to road rage.
jfr – I’ll read the book! I utterly agree on the meditative approach. This is a good reminder that ‘cathartic release’ and its supposed benefits are bound by a culture and a theory. Mmmmm meditation, I so prefer it.
Cultural relativity indeed. Can you imagine suggesting to the Dalai Llama that he needs to get in touch with his anger over the Chinese occupation of Tibet?
Exactly!!! –Z
More ideas, variations on the theme:
1. Cathartic release: it is as though one were supposed to have some sort of road-to-Damascus style religious vision. We must say we never saw anything before, because we were not in the right paradigm. Suddenly we see everything, under the guidance of someone else. We are to break down completely and then they will help us re-create, very, very slowly and only according to their rules.
2. On the Dalai Lama example: it is interesting how these therapies want one to “get in touch with anger” but then say that anger is a form of denial which one should get beyond so as to “face fear.” If the Dalai Lama said he feared the annihilation of his people, and was angry about the invasion for that reason, but could not afford to be in a state of turmoil with that anger all of the time, therapy/12 steps would be very dissatisfied with him.
However, if he said these same things *after* having been to therapy/12 steps, they would be proud of him and take credit for his maturity. I deduce: they are interested only in their own authority, and of course, as I keep saying, they are an ISA. I am becoming decidedly anti-psychiatry and anarchist.