Addiction in Society

Still I find no theory, group, or discussion centered on the needs of the family. Except Al-anon, which in practice just seems to advocate disertion of the addicted SO.

For example, what is missing here?

"Recovery involves individual, family, and community strengths and responsibility: Individuals, families, and communities have strengths and resources that serve as a foundation for recovery. In addition, individuals have a personal responsibility for their own self-care and journeys of recovery."

So the family and community (along with the individual, the one in need of recovery) serve as a foundation, they provide resources and strength. Additionally the individual (addicted or recovering) has responsibility for their own self care and journey.

So once again the family is 'used' as a tool. In addiction they might provide assistance knowingly (behaviors some groups like to call a sickness) or unwittingly (when the addiction is hidden, for example). What remains the same is they carry a share of the burden and are expected to do so selflessly.

Addicts, it seems, while activly using or activly recovering are entitled to extra resources, as drug users they chose to think of themselves first, put their desire for X (whatever they get from using, a high, relief from stress, fun, whatever) above any and all concern for their families and communities. -

I guess I need to explain that I don't believe addicted people are stupid, despite all the messages that claim they are so stupid they can't see the harm they cause or improperly analyse the costs vs benifits- I'll grant shortsightedness but it isn't just this. Because even in the short range drug abuse is often clearly detrimental to others- the Mom that shoots up the money for her kids dinner isn't too stupid to know it means they will go without dinner. It isn't a failure to see the costs, it is a failure to factor in anyone but them selves into the equation. So not stupid, selfish.

-(to continue my thought above) once again it seems the individual (recovering person) is encouraged to think in terms of themselves above others. "the individual (addicted or recovering) has responsibility for their own self care and journey." so as family members or community members we have a responsibility to help them recover, but there is no mention of any responsibility towards family or community for the recovering individual.

Here, once again, is one of the huge problems I see with the idea of recovery, be it in the way it is presented by AA or the way alternate views present it. Selfishness is justified, even glorified, deemed nesacary and encouraged.

Addiction is a problem of chronic self centered thinking. While individuals differ in how they wrongly define the good, the benifit of using, they have this commonality: it is their good, their benifit, short sighted, and selfish.

I wonder what would happen if recovering people were taught, you must think of others first, protect and benifit your family and community as if your life depended on it even if it is to your personal detriment. I wonder how it would work if be selfless, practice generosity, replaced gaurd your sobriety as if your life depended on it, even to the detriment of others. If others must come first replaced getting clean must come first.

Of course if you believe addicts suffer from chronic stupidity this will seem like a foolish suggestion. They are incapable of benifiting others, too stupid to figure out how, right?

And by the way, I completly agree that recovery needs to be defined as more than abstinence and empowering the individual is more likely to help than taking away their power with disease thinking and reliance on externals for motivation.

Principles of Orderly Recovery (PoOR)

- it never happens in the first year(12step, Peele, SAMSHA et all)

The critical point isn't quality of recovery / good life but quantity measured in time of an alternative perspective.

In reply to (the reply link is broken)to Rul82

I must say that I went to Alanon several times and read some of their literature. I found several suggestions helpful and as I was exhausted from worry I put them into practice. They helped. I have no desire to attend meetings or do service but:

I will not argue with a mood altered person

I will not shame a person for their behavior while mood altered

If I have a point to make I will say it once and not repeat myself

I will walk away if I feel the mood altered person is disrespectful

LOVE let others voluntarily evolve is a great acronym

OK I'll be a mom here. My beautiful beloved son kicked cocaine in, as he called it, "Philly's Underground AA." He was 25 when his problem went from snorting coke to smoking crack to smoking DMT to all of the aforementioned. I knew of AA's failure rate and was not
keen on him entering as I didn't want his problem to get worse. He stayed in AA for a few months and said that he regained his clarity and stopped going. As Stanton's research indicates his abuse of coke/crack/DMT lasted about 8 months. He resumed drinking but hasn't touched drugs in almost a year and as he tells me he is regularly around coke.

AA-MDs have some weeks specific training, PhDs some month. Like the non-academic addiction pros. Plus some years in 12 step-groups.

50,000 sponsors get $ 5,000 x 20 sponsees ("clients") to cover
- premium health care for some
- 12step homes for others
- after-meeting social activities for all
- jobs in the 12step /addiction industry for the most fanatic ones
of 1,000,000 new aa-members x $ 25,000

is $ 30 billions / yr.

PLUS the normies had to stop social drinking or drug abuse. Else they would trigger those "new in recovery" = two decades or younger.

I've been a member of AA for over 19 years and to me this is a welcome change. I hit a wall a couple of years ago and found I needed to treat my depression. I also found that a lot of the negative self-talk and obsessive worry I was still experiencing was from what I was taught to believe about myself in AA, though I still attend a meeting every week (after so long it is such a part of my life I cannot completely leave), I have been working on trying to counter the negative habits/thinking I have taken on as a part of AA recovery.

This is to the poster above who pointed out the idea of the family having responsibility for the addict/alcoholic under this new definition of what recovery is; all I can say is that I certainly hope not. I was not permitted to address this in AA, since everything that ever happened to me is supposed to be because I am a perpetually defective person, but my mother was/is mentally ill and untreated, and my father fully supported everything she did and said in order to keep the peace. My mother emotionally abused me and my sibling as a child and doubled up on it when I drank as a young adult. If she had had responsibility for my recovery I would have never gotten back out of the room she and my father tried to finally keep me in to hide my drunken self from public view as I was berated, harassed, even hit by my mother daily, and drudged out of my mind on anti-psychotics by worthless psychiatrists who told them I was hopeless. I was literally saved by social workers I managed to get in touch with who got me into treatment. I clung to AA because it was my only hope out of this situation. Now I am working to reclaim my mind from worthlessness I picked up there.

It works both ways on family. Addicts are human beings, not monsters who need punishment for eternity, please keep that in mind.