Hard News by Russell Brown

the healthcare industry – because it’s still very white and very abolitionist, when it gets up to the high level. I think we need to mature, because there’s a whole lot of people being taught about harm reduction at university level, then they get into the industry, and it’s captured by 12 Steps. Absolutely captured.

alcohol. It’s still the most pervasive, damaging thing in our society.

Theres money to be made in addiction on both sides of whatever screen is erected there to keep the cash rolling in. Can I just scream...MOTHERFUCKERS!

For practical reasons, expensive residential treatment centres that house a broad spectrum of vulnerable and potentially volatile people, can’t afford to fuck around with fat heads.

That’s not really what it’s about though. It means that the only way to enter a judicial process and stay out of jail is to formally declare a spiritual belief. I think that’s a bit of a problem.

It’s hard to argue about these things with a man who has an honorarium. But It would be nice if David was will to be challenged on some of this.

I’m happy to see if he wants to respond. But I would point out that he’s someone who works every day at the sharp end of this, both independently and with Waipareira. And he’s not the only person I’ve spoken to about the dominance of the 12 Steps model in treatment.

People who have done things like burgling chemist shops or driving with ridicules blood alcohol levels while having small children the car.

I think I see your point. Perphaps this is about identifying and dealing with different personality types and addiction.

Some people respond well to addiction services that cater for people wanting to change and who have the ability to change and in the meantime don’t pose a risk to others.

But there’s people who aren’t like that the may require some form of stricter regime.

I think it might help just for reference to list what the twelve steps are, because I think AA and NA have sort of entered pop culture from a US perspective without us really realising how religious it is:

Here are the 12 Steps as defined by Alcoholics Anonymous:

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol–that our lives had become unmanageable.
Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character
Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings
Made a list of persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

I have a dear friend who accompanied her alcoholic then-spouse to an AA meeting (I'm not sure how legit that is, but she did), and they both, as atheists, found it really alienating. That's not the problem. The problem is that there wasn't really anything else available.

more secular in its intent.

A big but tho. They still suffer from seeing whatever it is they think cures addictions as being/owing something to some “force” external to the individual, and needing to put that in their framework. Is that what agencies have to do when trying to get funding? That blows big time. Flexibility is key not rigid procedures, The person can do that themselves (with help) later when they get back to life.

IMO it is a person directly experiencing that “other worldlyness’ themselves via psychedelics which is going to give them the strength/ability whatever to move away from an addiction even with therapists whoever being intrusive.

Drug therapy works it seems far better than whatever external thing it is one is supposed to rely on.
On a side note I remember seeing previously solid surfaces start to undulate, take on 3D perspectives while on acid I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I suppose some might find it frightening tho’ not me ;-)

That’s not the problem. The problem is that there wasn’t really anything else available.

Yeah, that’s the problem. Maia Szalavitz is pretty compelling on this – pointing out that 12 Steps does alienate people and doesn’t have a better success rate than other therapies. She actually thinks it should be separate from treatment, available for people who find it of benefit.

Beth Macy’s book Dopesick also identifies the ubiquity of 12 Steps-style abstinence therapy as a problem in America’s opioid epidemic. It fails a lot of people, but it’s generally all there is – particularly in circumstances where people are sent to treatment through a court process. Same problem here. If you want to take the opportunity offered by the AOD Court, you have to embrace 12 Steps, or you're barred.

Sorry to hear that.He was going it alone Im guessing Self medicating, self diagnosing, if it was years ago in NZ would have had to have been

Because you did a little bit of academic study, and a bit of internship, and maybe some work around the outskirts of the 12 step programs and now make a living out your addiction job, doesn’t automatically make you an expert.

You are making a lot of assumptions there. Unlikely to help the conversation.

Because you did a little bit of academic study, and a bit of internship, and maybe some work around the outskirts of the 12 step programs and now make a living out your addiction job, doesn’t automatically make you an expert.

Possibly you’re more familiar with the real hard edge of addiction – something most people don’t see.

There’s some very difficult decisions to be made with drugs that don’t sit easily with the classic harm minimisation model.

The other side of the coin to harm minimisation is risk management. How to deal with people who pose a risk, a serious risk, to themselves and others. It’s going to take some form of coercion and secure residential settings.

David, do you have any idea that Christianity is prominent in Pacific Island communities?

And alcoholism was virtually unknown in all indigenous cultures in that region until western style liquor was bought to that part of the world and tribal structures were undermined/destroyed. The purveyors of god werent far behind ever willing to fill that vacuum. And it changes again as children are raised away from their islands.
<dry> Ain’t civilization grand! </dry>

Those Mediterranean countries virtually run on alcohol that addiction line is blurred to a fuzz. But at least they have a midday siesta to sober them up so they can drink long into the night.

We scoff

Not me I was raised that way. Staying on the right side of the line, well, muscatelly ;-)
Thats an underrated grape variety when not dried and turned to raisin.