I'm finding myself more and more lately quoting Bender, being accused of stealing a jewel-encrusted tiara: "Yes, but I can explain: you see, it's very valuable!"
People I know who play World of Warcraft to the exclusion of their jobs and non-game-related social lives remind me of the same phenomenon: they try to convince non-insiders (i.e. me) of how cool the game is, what great entertainment it is, what a great deal it is for the money. Yeah, yeah, I say. I don't doubt for a second that it's good entertainment. That's not at issue. If this game fails to suck in the critical mass of the population due to some fault of its entertainment value, the next one will succeed. It's just a matter of time. What's at issue is the people who are addicted to this game recognizing what it is they're doing, the damage they're doing to themselves and their families and careers, and deciding to knock it off-- regardless of how much less entertainment they'd be getting. It's not like there's a dearth of entertainment to be had in this day and age.
What it comes down to, then, is that the game is a behavior the players engage in of their own free will, and can choose to stop of their own free will. They just have to decide that as much as they enjoy it, it's worth stopping.
Boozing it up excessively, though, does indicate a moral failing...gluttony is the sin involved. But its not like a person is an entire moral failure if they drink a lot...no more than an overweight person is a complete moral failure if they indulge in that extra bit of cheesecake. As for the genetics part of it: I have read stories which indicate there might be a genetic pre-disposition towards excessive alchohol consumption...but a genetic pre-disposition, even if true, doesn't mean that a person will be a drunk.
As for me, personally, I became quite the professional drinker in high school, and then went to Booze Graduate School in the United States Navy...gigantic earthquakes of drunkeness...me and 10 or 20 other swabbies out on liberty, with a 12-pack just as a warm-up. In 1988-89, I was living with a friend of mine (who was just out of the Army) and towards the middle of 1989 we sat back and tried to figure out how often we'd been drunk in the previous 12 months...as best we could estimate, of the 365 days we had been drunk about 300. You can do that to yourself and still function when you're in you're 20's; those days when you'd start at a little bar in Hollywood and wake up two days later on a beach in San Diego...
The desire for drink just faded in me...as I got into my late 20's, it just had less and less appeal to me. The last time I was really drunk was on New Year's Eve 2000-2001...since then, the worst I've had is a slight buzz after a couple beers. It is entirely likely that from this point forward, I could go my entire life without ever taking another drink...and without AA or any other group to help me to permanent sobriety.
Booze is a crutch, but AA is a crutch for people who don't want to admit that they went out and decided all on their own that they wanted to get sh**-faced drunk.
I'm entirely behind you on this one, Dean: Don't drink because you simply don't want to, for now...if you do decide to take a drink (or a dozen) then it was your choice to drink like that...but methinks you'll probably just not do it all that much anymore...
...but your quitting smoking; that, on the other hand, was a moral failure...quitters never win, Dean...and think of all those poor tobacco farmers out there...
I can't stand the taste of alcohol, and I hate the feeling of losing control that comes with even slight intoxication. I'll never understand the appeal. So I'm in no position to give you advice, good or bad. Instead, I'll just offer my wishes that you and your family have good health and that you maintain self-control over self-indulgence.
I'm not an alcoholic and no I don't understand them either. I have plenty of family and friends that are and I've been to my share of AA/Alanon meetings. Quite frankly, if I was an alcoholic AA wouldn't work for me either.
Take the first two steps, I am powerless over alcohol and have come to believe that a power greater than myself will restore me to sanity.
Huh? God gave me free will. It's his greatest gift to me, every decision I make is a choice I make, not God, not my family or friends, not society. Me. I make my choices, I live with the consequences. I could never get past the first two "steps". It flies in the face of my very core belief system.
Noonan: you're seriously advancing the notion that drinking to excess (whatever that is) is a moral failing? And that an overweight person having more than an 'extra bit of cheesecake'?
Dean: both of my parents were alcoholics. It could very well be that AA saved my life, as my father called them in 1966 after he found himself sitting in the basement with a loaded rifle across his lap wondering whether he should merely kill himself or take his children with him.
AA, flawed as it is, kept him alive. It rescued my parents from ruinous alcoholism, as it has done for a lot (a very large number) of other people. It may not be (in fact, I would say that it is not) for you, but that doesn't mean that it is 'bulls***'. When you go from saying 'It's not for me' to saying that it's bulls***, you make the same mistake that those ardent 12-steppers who send you email do.
AA isn't for everybody. But that doesn't mean it's all bulls***, either.
I went through some pretty serious counseling after my father died five years ago. My counselor suggested I start attending Overeater's Anonymous. Yeah, I'm fat and I'm a compulsive overeater, and she thought going to meetings would be a good way for me to continue some form of therapy and might actually help me get the eating under control, as well.
It did neither, actually. And I never saw anyone who attended, either overweight or anorexic (we had two anorexics in our regular group) conquer any eating disorder that brought them there.
12-step programs aren't for me, either. Richard Simmons wasn't for me. Weight Watchers wasn't for me. Never tried Atkins, but my step-son did and I can tell that wouldn't have been for me.
But just lately, my sister getting diagnosed with diabetes (she's older and a LOT heavier than I am) is what DID do it for me, because I could see myself in her shoes five years from now. 8 weeks and 25 pounds lighter...
It's bullshit to Dean because he doesn't believe in a higher power, so surrendering to it won't work.
For people of faith, AA can be the difference between life and death. For others, there are lots of choices including medications.
If alcoholism is a disease then why are we still using a treatment that was invented in the 30's? Would you want your diabetes treated with the 1930's method or the 2005 one?
Rosemary and Dean
AA works for some, it doesn't work for everyone. Ignore the AA preachers because they don't get what AA is about.
The 12 Steps are ideals that we can never hope to attain. Personally I believe that the Serenity Prayer is the key to contentment - and almost just as ephemeral.
These are just tools. In the end it boils down to a choice to drink or not to drink.
Some 10 years ago, Dean, i found myself in court-ordered rehab, 30-day inpatient. Not sober anymore, but not wasted all the time either. One thing you rarely hear in any AA meeting that really counts is "Take what you need and leave the rest". You never see that on the AA bumper stickers and i rarely hear it from the mouth of anyone i know in AA, but it was mentioned time after time at the place i found myself in.
I've got a cousin who owns a rehab in New York state , been sober with AA for nearly 55 years. Worked great for him. Not for me, not for some other people. But for the ones it works for, i'm certainly not going to puncture their bubble.
Maybe the inpatient environment is different than just going to meetings. Who knows. I learned a lot in my 30 days and its been enough to help keep from pulling the trigger since then.
Rosemary
The Wife (may Her name be praised!) has had a hard time as well with Al-Anon because she's like Dean. However she has begun to realize that to state conclusively that there is nothing beyond us, that God does not and can not exist is a conceit. Of course, she's reading CS Lewis so I think that he's behind that one.
But she senses that there is something greater than her. Call it Nature, Life-force, God whatever, there is something bigger than her. This sense has allowed her to put up with all the G*d stuff one finds in 12 Step programs.
Dean should know that my "higher power" was Me - or rather the ideal Me that kept me sane and focused at critical times. The best analogy is a "Super Ego" in the Freudian sense which itself could be considered God.
Atheism is a very unstable state. I know because I just went through it with the death of my Father-in-law. Now I see my wife grudginly moving towards agnosticism. She will never embrace religion (nor I - I'm too independent) but she realizes that there are bigger things than her. And that keeps her humble and biting her tongue in Al-Anon.
Just speaking for myself, I must confess that I was quite the boozer when I was young. There's an old joke that goes like this:
The Captain got tired og his First Mate being drunk all the time and finally warned him that next time, he would write it in the Ship's Log. The next day, he saw the First Mate drunk again and wrote: "First Mate Drunk." But the First Mate got his revenge and snuck in and wrote: "Captain Sober."
True to life, as my Dad wrote once in his diary: "Steve is sober today." I would drink a bottle of champagne every New Year's and on some other holidays, too. I drank a lot of beer, too. I once passed out on some vodka. Later on, I got tired of beer and started drinking gin and tonics instead. That's all I drink nowadays.
It's been decades since I've been that drunk or drunk nearly that often. I've never been to an AA meeting or ever thought of going. I just finally decided that throwing up and passing out was not my idea of a good time. Now, I drink about once a month at the most, when I'm out at a restaurant with my family or friend or such to celebrate something or other, and only a glass or two.
I also don't like talking to people when they're drunk. Their memory and comprehension is shot when they're on the sauce, and so I can imagine what it must have been like trying to get through to me when I was on it all the time.
There are other ways to get high. Which brings me to another point about me and the sauce: I know full well that it works the opposite for a lot of other people, but if I may use the Greek mythological archetypes, I have found that Dionysus and Aphrodite never coexist in me. That type of liquid enhances every other emotion in me except that one. Having paid plenty of tribute to Dionysus, I prefer Aphrodite. Actually, I find Artemis even sexier. Perverted, I know. That's just the way I am, take it or leave it.
Honestly, it's not the "higher power" thing that bugs me. It isn't. It's the "you are powerless before this" and "this is the only thing that works" mentalities that do it in for me.
It's also the whole binary "yes you're an alcoholic/no you are not" thinking.
Plus, I get nothing out of sitting around listening to other boozehounds talking about horrible things they did. Others may relate to that, but I don't.
I remember going to a party and having one beer, and having others around me thinking, "Oh crap, he's going to get shitfaced." But I didn't. I had one beer, and went home and went to bed. It was horrible to me that I had to sit through that experience because people thought, "He has this horrible disease and can't control himself."
Well, Dean, far as I'm concerned you hit it right on the head. "Self-indulgent" indeed. I've been a heavy drinker, I've been totally sober, I've been a social drinker. I find I get into the heavy drinker mode when I'm depressed, as a way of self medicating, a counselor told me. Tried the AA way because my wife told me I needed to, and I too balked at the powerless angle, because it's just not true. I over indulge because I'm selfish, because I love that instant gratification and the feeling I can do anything I damn well please, anytime I want.
It's an ugly part of me and one that is hard to admit, but there it is. I suck, so there. Anyway, thanks for the great discussion on a fascinating topic.
People I know who play World of Warcraft to the exclusion of their jobs and non-game-related social lives remind me of the same phenomenon: they try to convince non-insiders (i.e. me) of how cool the game is, what great entertainment it is, what a great deal it is for the money. Yeah, yeah, I say. I don't doubt for a second that it's good entertainment. That's not at issue. If this game fails to suck in the critical mass of the population due to some fault of its entertainment value, the next one will succeed. It's just a matter of time. What's at issue is the people who are addicted to this game recognizing what it is they're doing, the damage they're doing to themselves and their families and careers, and deciding to knock it off-- regardless of how much less entertainment they'd be getting. It's not like there's a dearth of entertainment to be had in this day and age.
What it comes down to, then, is that the game is a behavior the players engage in of their own free will, and can choose to stop of their own free will. They just have to decide that as much as they enjoy it, it's worth stopping.
Boozing it up excessively, though, does indicate a moral failing...gluttony is the sin involved. But its not like a person is an entire moral failure if they drink a lot...no more than an overweight person is a complete moral failure if they indulge in that extra bit of cheesecake. As for the genetics part of it: I have read stories which indicate there might be a genetic pre-disposition towards excessive alchohol consumption...but a genetic pre-disposition, even if true, doesn't mean that a person will be a drunk.
As for me, personally, I became quite the professional drinker in high school, and then went to Booze Graduate School in the United States Navy...gigantic earthquakes of drunkeness...me and 10 or 20 other swabbies out on liberty, with a 12-pack just as a warm-up. In 1988-89, I was living with a friend of mine (who was just out of the Army) and towards the middle of 1989 we sat back and tried to figure out how often we'd been drunk in the previous 12 months...as best we could estimate, of the 365 days we had been drunk about 300. You can do that to yourself and still function when you're in you're 20's; those days when you'd start at a little bar in Hollywood and wake up two days later on a beach in San Diego...
The desire for drink just faded in me...as I got into my late 20's, it just had less and less appeal to me. The last time I was really drunk was on New Year's Eve 2000-2001...since then, the worst I've had is a slight buzz after a couple beers. It is entirely likely that from this point forward, I could go my entire life without ever taking another drink...and without AA or any other group to help me to permanent sobriety.
Booze is a crutch, but AA is a crutch for people who don't want to admit that they went out and decided all on their own that they wanted to get sh**-faced drunk.
I'm entirely behind you on this one, Dean: Don't drink because you simply don't want to, for now...if you do decide to take a drink (or a dozen) then it was your choice to drink like that...but methinks you'll probably just not do it all that much anymore...
:o)
I can't stand the taste of alcohol, and I hate the feeling of losing control that comes with even slight intoxication. I'll never understand the appeal. So I'm in no position to give you advice, good or bad. Instead, I'll just offer my wishes that you and your family have good health and that you maintain self-control over self-indulgence.
Take the first two steps, I am powerless over alcohol and have come to believe that a power greater than myself will restore me to sanity.
Huh? God gave me free will. It's his greatest gift to me, every decision I make is a choice I make, not God, not my family or friends, not society. Me. I make my choices, I live with the consequences. I could never get past the first two "steps". It flies in the face of my very core belief system.
Dean: both of my parents were alcoholics. It could very well be that AA saved my life, as my father called them in 1966 after he found himself sitting in the basement with a loaded rifle across his lap wondering whether he should merely kill himself or take his children with him.
AA, flawed as it is, kept him alive. It rescued my parents from ruinous alcoholism, as it has done for a lot (a very large number) of other people. It may not be (in fact, I would say that it is not) for you, but that doesn't mean that it is 'bulls***'. When you go from saying 'It's not for me' to saying that it's bulls***, you make the same mistake that those ardent 12-steppers who send you email do.
AA isn't for everybody. But that doesn't mean it's all bulls***, either.
It did neither, actually. And I never saw anyone who attended, either overweight or anorexic (we had two anorexics in our regular group) conquer any eating disorder that brought them there.
12-step programs aren't for me, either. Richard Simmons wasn't for me. Weight Watchers wasn't for me. Never tried Atkins, but my step-son did and I can tell that wouldn't have been for me.
But just lately, my sister getting diagnosed with diabetes (she's older and a LOT heavier than I am) is what DID do it for me, because I could see myself in her shoes five years from now. 8 weeks and 25 pounds lighter...
And still counting...
Good for you, Dean. Good for you.
For people of faith, AA can be the difference between life and death. For others, there are lots of choices including medications.
If alcoholism is a disease then why are we still using a treatment that was invented in the 30's? Would you want your diabetes treated with the 1930's method or the 2005 one?
AA works for some, it doesn't work for everyone. Ignore the AA preachers because they don't get what AA is about.
The 12 Steps are ideals that we can never hope to attain. Personally I believe that the Serenity Prayer is the key to contentment - and almost just as ephemeral.
These are just tools. In the end it boils down to a choice to drink or not to drink.
I choose not to drink.
I've got a cousin who owns a rehab in New York state , been sober with AA for nearly 55 years. Worked great for him. Not for me, not for some other people. But for the ones it works for, i'm certainly not going to puncture their bubble.
Maybe the inpatient environment is different than just going to meetings. Who knows. I learned a lot in my 30 days and its been enough to help keep from pulling the trigger since then.
I agree with you. I'm saying why Dean thinks it's bull, I'm not saying that I agree.
I believe in God, Dean doesn't. Because he doesn't AA will never work for him, that is all I'm saying.
BTW, I drink maybe a couple times a year and when I do it's usually only a couple. My choice, I'm not addicted.
The Wife (may Her name be praised!) has had a hard time as well with Al-Anon because she's like Dean. However she has begun to realize that to state conclusively that there is nothing beyond us, that God does not and can not exist is a conceit. Of course, she's reading CS Lewis so I think that he's behind that one.
But she senses that there is something greater than her. Call it Nature, Life-force, God whatever, there is something bigger than her. This sense has allowed her to put up with all the G*d stuff one finds in 12 Step programs.
Dean should know that my "higher power" was Me - or rather the ideal Me that kept me sane and focused at critical times. The best analogy is a "Super Ego" in the Freudian sense which itself could be considered God.
Atheism is a very unstable state. I know because I just went through it with the death of my Father-in-law. Now I see my wife grudginly moving towards agnosticism. She will never embrace religion (nor I - I'm too independent) but she realizes that there are bigger things than her. And that keeps her humble and biting her tongue in Al-Anon.
The Captain got tired og his First Mate being drunk all the time and finally warned him that next time, he would write it in the Ship's Log. The next day, he saw the First Mate drunk again and wrote: "First Mate Drunk." But the First Mate got his revenge and snuck in and wrote: "Captain Sober."
True to life, as my Dad wrote once in his diary: "Steve is sober today." I would drink a bottle of champagne every New Year's and on some other holidays, too. I drank a lot of beer, too. I once passed out on some vodka. Later on, I got tired of beer and started drinking gin and tonics instead. That's all I drink nowadays.
It's been decades since I've been that drunk or drunk nearly that often. I've never been to an AA meeting or ever thought of going. I just finally decided that throwing up and passing out was not my idea of a good time. Now, I drink about once a month at the most, when I'm out at a restaurant with my family or friend or such to celebrate something or other, and only a glass or two.
I also don't like talking to people when they're drunk. Their memory and comprehension is shot when they're on the sauce, and so I can imagine what it must have been like trying to get through to me when I was on it all the time.
There are other ways to get high. Which brings me to another point about me and the sauce: I know full well that it works the opposite for a lot of other people, but if I may use the Greek mythological archetypes, I have found that Dionysus and Aphrodite never coexist in me. That type of liquid enhances every other emotion in me except that one. Having paid plenty of tribute to Dionysus, I prefer Aphrodite. Actually, I find Artemis even sexier. Perverted, I know. That's just the way I am, take it or leave it.
It's also the whole binary "yes you're an alcoholic/no you are not" thinking.
Plus, I get nothing out of sitting around listening to other boozehounds talking about horrible things they did. Others may relate to that, but I don't.
I remember going to a party and having one beer, and having others around me thinking, "Oh crap, he's going to get shitfaced." But I didn't. I had one beer, and went home and went to bed. It was horrible to me that I had to sit through that experience because people thought, "He has this horrible disease and can't control himself."
I admire Dean
For marrying the Queen.
I admire the Queen
For marrying Dean.
It's an ugly part of me and one that is hard to admit, but there it is. I suck, so there. Anyway, thanks for the great discussion on a fascinating topic.
Rick