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InvisibleOrgoneConclusion
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God, prayer and recovery from addiction
    #7523621 - 10/16/07 02:53 PM (16 years, 3 months ago)

Not surprising to this poster is that the recovery rate (return to sobriety) for alcoholics who go through the religious-based Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step program and those who do not attend meetings nor call on God's help is nearly identical.

What does this tell us about the power of prayer?


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OfflineMushroomTrip
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Re: God, prayer and recovery from addiction [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #7523670 - 10/16/07 03:01 PM (16 years, 3 months ago)

God bless you son :pope:


--------------------
:bunny::bunnyhug:
All this time I've loved you
And never known your face
All this time I've missed you
And searched this human race
Here is true peace
Here my heart knows calm
Safe in your soul
Bathed in your sighs

:bunnyhug: :yinyang2:


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Offlinefireworks_godS
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Re: God, prayer and recovery from addiction [Re: MushroomTrip]
    #7523714 - 10/16/07 03:08 PM (16 years, 3 months ago)

Mmmmm... fresh blood. :naughty:


--------------------
:redpanda:
If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you

:heartpump: :bunnyhug: :yinyang:

:yinyang: :levitate: :earth: :levitate: :yinyang:


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InvisibleOrgoneConclusion
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Re: God, prayer and recovery from addiction [Re: MushroomTrip]
    #7523719 - 10/16/07 03:09 PM (16 years, 3 months ago)

I AM HEALED! :bow: Hallelujah!


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OfflineWalter1496211
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Re: God, prayer and recovery from addiction [Re: fireworks_god]
    #7523723 - 10/16/07 03:10 PM (16 years, 3 months ago)

Prayer works for some but not all.


--------------------
you see the world through the window of your experience


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OfflineMushroomTrip
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Re: God, prayer and recovery from addiction [Re: fireworks_god]
    #7523732 - 10/16/07 03:12 PM (16 years, 3 months ago)

Mmmm... which reminds me... :smirk:

Spanking time :naughty:



--------------------
:bunny::bunnyhug:
All this time I've loved you
And never known your face
All this time I've missed you
And searched this human race
Here is true peace
Here my heart knows calm
Safe in your soul
Bathed in your sighs

:bunnyhug: :yinyang2:


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OfflineSneezingPenis
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Re: God, prayer and recovery from addiction [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #7523968 - 10/16/07 03:57 PM (16 years, 3 months ago)

orgone, you have had enough discourse with "believers" that you know what the top three answers to that would be.

1) God works in mysterious ways
2) sometimes an unanswered prayer is God's greatest gift
3) the trinity (it is the go-to answer when everything else doesnt measure up).


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InvisibleOrgoneConclusion
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Re: God, prayer and recovery from addiction [Re: SneezingPenis]
    #7524005 - 10/16/07 04:04 PM (16 years, 3 months ago)

The 12 Steps Debunked by Joe Berenbaum

I'll comment on the usefulness and accuracy of both the steps and the additional text. The relative success of the A.A. program seems to be due to the fact that an alcoholic who no longer drinks has an exceptional faculty for "reaching" and helping an uncontrolled drinker.

Yes, the perceived, or alleged success, is due to the cult-like indoctrination of new members into AA, and into the particular belief system. If new people were not being assimilated all the time, AA would disappear altogether. For this reason new members are told that they must go to meetings for life, and must in turn "help" new people themselves. AA's belief system states that one can only stay sober with the help of God and AA. Thus sobriety, in a wonderful example of circular logic, is held to be "proof" of AA's "success".

In simplest form, the A.A. program operates when a recovered alcoholic passes along the story of his or her own problem drinking, describes the sobriety he or she has found in A.A., and invites the newcomer to join the informal Fellowship.

Not exactly. In its simplest form, the AA program operates when someone who may have a drink problem is given a lot of untrue information and is invited, or forced, to attend meetings at a vulnerable point in their lives at which time they will be more impressionable. They will be encouraged to stop thinking for themselves with slogans like "My best thinking got me here"- implication; your best thinking is only capable of getting you into trouble, so don't think anymore, just do what we suggest (tell you to do). They will be encouraged to adopt the set of false beliefs that underlies the AA program and philosophy. Some people will adopt this set of beliefs and become AA members.

The heart of the suggested program of personal recovery is contained in Twelve Steps describing the experience of the earliest members of the Society:

Actually the heart of the AA program is contained in a set of untrue statements that are held to be true, such as but not limited to;


"Alcoholism is an incurable disease",
"No-one recovers outside of AA",
and suchlike.
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.

No-one is powerless over alcohol. Alcohol is an inanimate substance, usually inside a bottle or sitting in a glass. The act of drinking requires a choice to be made, and muscles to be used to move the alcohol upwards to the face, towards the mouth, the mouth then has to opened, the lips arranged around the top of the glass or opening of the bottle to contrive a seal so that the alcohol does not pour down the front of the drinker, the arm and wrist then pour the alcohol into the mouth, the mouth and throat them swallow the alcohol. Although the AA program may try to disguise this sequence of events or fudge the issue, drinking alcohol, like mowing your lawn, is a deliberate act. Most peoples' lives are unmanageable to some extent, so this is not really meaningful. Unless seriously unmanageable is what is meant- well someone with a drink problem may well have neglected areas of their life, so they should stop drinking, obviously. Problem solved. Step 1 is bunk.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

A capital P indicates religion has entered the room. We do not need religion to control our behavior any more than we need a priest telling us how to live and who to have sex with and when. Someone with a drink problem who is checking out recovery programs is obviously not insane, since they are seeking information and help. It is ironic that if they go to AA for help, the information they receive will mostly be untrue, and they will be encouraged to form a pointless dependence on meetings and the supernatural.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

Thus is religious indoctrination in the name of sobriety. It is far better to take responsibility for your own behavior than to surrender your will to a supernatural entity. This sort of nonsense may not have looked too eccentric in the 1930's but in 1999 we can do better than this. We have programs that actually work, and without indoctrination or superstition.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

There is no need for a moral inventory. It isn't a question of morality- unless you have the appropriate religious hangups, of course. This step can give you those hangups. People can spend months anguishing away over writing this thing when they could instead be getting proper help.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

More moralizing nonsense. "Wrongs" indeed! Take someone with a behavioral problem and tell them in an underhand way that they're bad. Just think, these people could be getting good help instead of this.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

God doesn't remove defects of character because there is no such thing as a "defect of character". We are all humans and are all imperfect. And that's the way its going to stay. Problem drinking isn't based on character, it is a self-defeating behavior.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

The original version of step 7 actually said "on our knees", but leaving that in would have rather given the game away. This is nonsense. Asking God to change our behavior for us is primitive, medieval, superstitious bunk and has no place in a recovery process. Just think- people could be learning how to evaluate and change their behavior instead of this religious mumbling nonsense.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

As was pointed out earlier, the distinction between people we have harmed and people who have harmed us is totally fudged by this step. The guilt-inducing programming here looks at harm only one way, as if we did it all. In reality in many cases far more harm was done TO us than BY us- I know of many women of whom this is true. But the self-undermining slant of the program takes no real interest in our mental well-being, seeking only to direct us to our own sense of guilt, or create it for us. What is there in the steps for a victim of multiple violent abuse? Oh yes, looking for their part in it. Very healthy! Although the awareness of the harm we have caused is useful, it is looked at here in a totally one-directional and self-blaming way that is not conducive to balance or mental health.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Notice that conspicuous by its absence is any caution that this process could injure US. But then we are supposed to have totally abandoned the "self" by now anyway so there is nothing left to harm. Notice also that there is nothing here about any repair or even consideration of harm that may have been done TO us. The idea is of course that we are wholly responsible for everything bad that ever happened to us, so no need to even consider such an angle. It is one-sided, self-hating, and guilt-reinforcing and to stipulate that amends should be made in this way is unhelpful.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

There is something rather unhealthy about admitting you are wrong every time you realize it. It would make more sense to say "and when we were wrong, we promptly made a note of it"! This is probably written this way to counteract the tendencies of self-justifying people with boundary problems who like to push others around and define peoples' realities for them. Maybe if AA members actually DID this step, for real, AA itself would change dramatically. Who knows?

11. 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.

Oh dear, this is just so silly and sad. This is RELIGION, folks. So as a useful part of a recovery program for addiction, this is a total irrelevance. It is simply there to maintain the intensity of the religious experience. Bunk.

12. 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.

Or, more accurately, "Having had a hallucination under the influence of our medication, we tried to universalize our "hot flush" experience to others and convince then that this was necessary (quite an achievement) and then we tried to make this program actually work in our life. Unfortunately the program is ineffective for anything other than religious conversion and indoctrination so we spent most of our remaining years in a state of deep depression, which we carefully avoided mentioning in either of our books on AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, and 12 Steps and 12 Traditions." Step 12 is dishonest bunk.

Newcomers are not asked to accept or follow these Twelve Steps in their entirety if they feel unwilling or unable to do so.

Newcomers are encouraged to study the program literature which repeats many times how the steps are the only way to recover. They are encouraged to attend many meetings in which the same stuff is read out, over and over, every time.

They will usually be asked to keep an open mind, to attend meetings at which recovered alcoholics describe their personal experiences in achieving sobriety, and to read A.A. literature describing and interpreting the A.A. program.

Yes, newcomers to AA will need an open mind if they are to assimilate a program that makes no sense whatsoever. They will also need to be in meetings often so that the indoctrination can happen while they are surrounded by people who already believe it. Testimony and confession will be used as in the Oxford Group- to make it sound like there is something valid going on. They will need to be reading the indoctrination material regularly for it to "take".

A.A. members will usually emphasize to newcomers that only problem drinkers themselves, individually, can determine whether or not they are in fact alcoholics.

Some will say this, but I'm not at all sure that the word "usually" is accurate. Some will state that no-one ever comes to AA by accident, and that any drinking problem means one is an "alcoholic".

At the same time, it will be pointed out that all available medical testimony indicates that alcoholism is a progressive illness, that it cannot be cured in the ordinary sense of the term, but that it can be arrested through total abstinence from alcohol in any form.

"All available medical testimony" -what incredible nonsense! Who wrote this stuff? This is totally untrue. There is no medical evidence that shows conclusively that "alcoholism" (not a medical word, it is usually called problem drinking or alcohol dependance) is an illness or disease at all, let alone a progressive one. Since it is not an illness, the concept of "cure" is redundant. Alcohol dependance is not an illness; it is a behavior and behavior can be changed. Everyone in AA who gets sober changes their behavior. Everyone who gets sober anywhere changes their behavior. The incurable illness myth is simply to get people to stay in AA for fear of what would happen otherwise (cult characteristic- terrible things will happen if you ever dare to leave...). But since it is a myth, their continued attendance for years after getting sober is a sad and pointless waste of their time, and serves only to keep the program virus alive so that it can be passed on to others (who don't need it either).






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Offlinefalcon
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Re: God, prayer and recovery from addiction [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #7524009 - 10/16/07 04:04 PM (16 years, 3 months ago)

What does this tell us about the power of prayer?

That it transcends beliefs and practices. :wink:


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OfflineSneezingPenis
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Re: God, prayer and recovery from addiction [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #7524070 - 10/16/07 04:13 PM (16 years, 3 months ago)

meh.... that article stunk of bias and overall just seemed like it was grasping at straws to try and connect the dots.

yes, AA is a religious based organization.... but a cult? I seriously wish some people would just look up the definition of that word and use it properly.
forced? indoctrination? with no real proof in that article, I dont see how he makes those claims.
once again, if people find something that works for them, it is their choice to continue to be a part of it, or not.
I find this "brainwashing" craze being used far too often by the "cult theorists". There is no such thing as brainwashing. no one can force you to do anything. They can lie to you, and give you false information, but ultimately, you fail to check those facts, and thusly act based on those lies.
I will agree that AA uses a lot of misinformation to keep its members, but it is ultimately up to them to make a decision/choice to continue going.

IMO, AA, is at best, a social gathering where people can go to keep away from their drug of choice, instead of trying to hang out with their friends and make them miserable and sober.
It can work in some way to reverse condition yourself to not equate good time/conversation with having to drink.


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InvisibleIcelander
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Re: God, prayer and recovery from addiction [Re: SneezingPenis]
    #7524562 - 10/16/07 06:01 PM (16 years, 3 months ago)

It can work in some way to reverse condition yourself to not equate good time/conversation with having to drink.


True, they have good time/ conversation over a big bowl of white sugar and some strong, bad tasting, black coffee.:rofl2: Oh and plenty of smokes.


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC


Edited by Icelander (10/16/07 06:01 PM)


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OfflineSneezingPenis
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Re: God, prayer and recovery from addiction [Re: Icelander]
    #7524655 - 10/16/07 06:20 PM (16 years, 3 months ago)

well, everyone needs a vice, and if you can satiate your thirst with lesser evils, or atleast something that doesnt give you DUI's and make you beat your wife.... then go for it.
this is a concept completely misunderstood by methadone clinics.


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InvisibleOrgoneConclusion
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Re: God, prayer and recovery from addiction [Re: SneezingPenis]
    #7524666 - 10/16/07 06:22 PM (16 years, 3 months ago)

As an apprentice alcoholic, must I beat my wife to graduate to the next level?


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InvisibleIcelander
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Re: God, prayer and recovery from addiction [Re: SneezingPenis]
    #7524675 - 10/16/07 06:24 PM (16 years, 3 months ago)

I prefer methadone to heroin so it never worked for me.

Sugar is really not a lesser evil. That stuff kills slowly and painfully. I just read that one out of eight people in New York have diabetes.


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC


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OfflineSneezingPenis
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Re: God, prayer and recovery from addiction [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #7524754 - 10/16/07 06:39 PM (16 years, 3 months ago)

Quote:

OrgoneConclusion said:
As an apprentice alcoholic, must I beat my wife to graduate to the next level?



you dont have to, but it is the preferred method. You can also molest your children, have sex with the turkey during thanksgiving dinner or find various ways to break your mothers heart.

icelander: most alcohol has tons of sugar in it already. nor is it common to be belligerent while "high on sugar". Most people dont go to AA for health reasons, but rather because they think alcohol has destroyed their life.


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InvisibleIcelander
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Re: God, prayer and recovery from addiction [Re: SneezingPenis]
    #7524766 - 10/16/07 06:43 PM (16 years, 3 months ago)

but rather because they think alcohol has destroyed their life. Yeah I know. Too bad they're wrong.


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC


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OfflineSneezingPenis
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Re: God, prayer and recovery from addiction [Re: Icelander]
    #7524903 - 10/16/07 07:22 PM (16 years, 3 months ago)

hey! alchoholism is a serious and debilitating disease, just like restless leg syndrome and aspergers syndrome!!1!


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InvisibleIcelander
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Re: God, prayer and recovery from addiction [Re: SneezingPenis]
    #7524920 - 10/16/07 07:25 PM (16 years, 3 months ago)

OK, OK but compared to Christianity those are small time stuff and often treatable.


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC


Edited by Icelander (10/16/07 07:26 PM)


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OfflineSneezingPenis
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Re: God, prayer and recovery from addiction [Re: Icelander]
    #7524988 - 10/16/07 07:40 PM (16 years, 3 months ago)

not really. im willing to bet more people believe in those diseases than jesus christ is their saviour.


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InvisibleIcelander
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Re: God, prayer and recovery from addiction [Re: SneezingPenis]
    #7525056 - 10/16/07 07:52 PM (16 years, 3 months ago)

Probably.

But how about a belief in God?


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC


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OfflineSneezingPenis
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Re: God, prayer and recovery from addiction [Re: Icelander]
    #7525181 - 10/16/07 08:11 PM (16 years, 3 months ago)

well, if merck and pfizer could put bilboards or somehow market to the far, semi-deserted areas of the globe, I would say so.....


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