Acquire Today US Of AA: How The Twelve Steps Hijacked The Science Of Alcoholism Narrated By Joe Miller Available Through Ebook

little book with strong research and insight behind it, Main point being:

“It was apparently lost on him Marvin Block backing AA that he was describing a dangerous notion that would lead problem drinkers to drink even moreand suffer more consequencesso as to become a textbook example of a sufferer of the disease of alcohol and thereby be ready to embrace the cure.
” US of AA

Fantastic!!!

I loved this book,

In brief, its simply a history of Alcoholics Anonymous AA and the political, economic and academic interests that have shaped the current beliefs, policies and practices of the current American system of addiction treatment.


Im the program director of an intensive outpatient clinic for treatment of substance use disorders and cooccurring mental health diagnosis.


Im also a licensed therapist, and I have worked on the frontline of the recent addiction epidemic in many capacities and contexts.


I have worked in harm reduction, medication assisted treatment and abstinence based modalities,

I have worked in nonprofit research based facilities, publicly funded community mental health agencies, insurance based and cash only, forprofit programs.


I have served a broad range of socioeconomic groups including homeless populations, low income child and family clients, adolescents in foster care, working class and middle income insurance based clients, as well as wealthy cash pay clients in highend high amenity luxury treatment.


I did community outreach for LA county for bit, where my full time job was to attend any every type of community based, peer facilitated support group available including every type ofStep, SMART recovery, National Association on Mental Illness NAMI, Bipolar Depression Support Alliance BDSA, Refuge Recovery and more.


Although I am not a researcher, I am highly invested in understanding and treating substance use disorder and cooccurring mental health diagnosis, so I consume a lot of the research on the topic and I consider myself sufficiently up to date on the emerging science.


Oh yeah. One other thing. I have a history of recovery from substance use and abuse and oh so much more,

As the adage goes,

Research is mesearch,

So anyway, if some or all of that qualifies me, and if you care to read on, Im here to tell you:

Addiction treatment in America is about as factional and contentiously debated as any contemporary American political issue.


Which is to say its a shitstorm of superstition, rancor, confusion and cash,

The book chronicles how that came to be, and tacitly, how it is that we are still stuck in the same spin cycleyears later.


It would be easy to see this as a fight between good and evil, or red versus blue truth.


But its not,

Its better understood as a tremendously difficult problem with no easy solution,

Hanlons Razor is a useful heuristic that directs us to: never attribute to malice, what is adequately explained by incompetence.


And our current beliefs and system is woefully incompetent to the task at hand,

In other words, we suck,

And addiction is complicated,

Extremely Fucking Complicated,

There is an irreducible level of complexity that needs to be understood in order to think about the issue intelligently.


Just like any other human behavior, there are a host of important factors that come to bear on the issues of addiction including: biological,: psychological,: sociocultural, and some would add: spiritual factors, all of which interact in ridiculously complicated ways for each individual and family dealing with the issue.


Under those broad categories are factors including brains, genes, neurons, neuralplasticity, neurochemistry, stress, grief, anxiety, depression, trauma, attachment, family systems, relationships, work, money, politics, systemic and interpersonal racism, sexism, homophobia, all manner of discrimination, lack of meaning mission and purpose, identity confusion, lack of freedom, lack of connection, lack of personal insight, growth and accomplishment, lack of clarity regarding what matters and how to step to that, and a lack of skills for transcending our thoughts and feelings without dumbing and numbing.


Addiction is a chronic and typically relapsing disease, elicited via exposure to drugs of abuse and use dependent conditioning of the brain, and which effects motivation, judgment and behavior, and which is highly subject to psychological, social and environmental influences.


Its not like any other diseases,

There is no cure and there may never be a cure,

If you want to understand and recover from addiction, you need to work hard at it,

And most people dont want to work,

But if you do work at it,

And if you take advice form a qualified other,

Its totally doable,

It ispossible to recover from substance use disorder, and cooccurring mental heath issues including the immense and completely unnecessary suffering that every ordinary, healthy human mind creates.


Millions and millions and millions of people do it every ding dang day,

That being said,

In addition to simply quitting the alcohol and drug use, You typically have to do some other stuff too,

You will probably have to get out of socalled black and white thinking,

There are some core dialects that you will have to embrace and master,

: you have to accept what you cant change and change almost everything else, and youre going to also have to clearly understand the difference between those two.


And thats like no big deal, but its probably not what you think it is, So youre probably going to need help,

And thats the next dialectic,

: you have to do the work but you dont have to do it alone, and you probably shouldnt do it alone.


Alcohol and drugs modify your brain, destabilize your mood and hijack your motivational system,

People routinely fall back into chronic substance use after periods of hard work and abstinence because they are blind to their own deeply biologically based motivations, and they are either going at it alone or not taking advice.


People are blind to their own motivations under the best of circumstances, so get over yourself and get help.


And getting over yourself is a big part of the next dialectic,

: just because it worked for you doesnt mean it works just like that for everyone,

Lets say you find your way,

Awesome!!!!

Please please dont jam it down everyone elses pie hole, like some kind of postbooze John the Baptist.


Its fucking soooooo fucking obnoxious when you do that bro!!!

Remember attraction not promotion

Oh yeah, that!

And that leads me to the last dialectic I will discuss in this forum.


: the solution is highly personal for everyone, and completely not personal at the same time,

AA, therapy, yoga, niacin, prayer, bearded sky daddies, nature, the universe, the doorknob, atheism, Buddhism, high colonics, animal rescue, ketogenic, paleo, crystallite, whatever youre into, thats so fucking mellow man.


Honestly.

But if you want to establish causation, you need a sufficiently powered randomized, double blind, placebo controlled trial, and if you dont think so, than you probably dont know what that is.


Neuroscience, psychology, psychopharmacology and psychotherapy are not a threat to your religion of sobriety,

Its not a conspiracy,

Were all on the same team folks,

So both/and, please,

Any way.

If we dont know our history, were doomed to repeat it and even when we do, were still pretty fucked because most people dont and wont.


So get this thing and read it,

Why/stars

Im one of those people who does not recommend moderation in early recovery,

You probably cant use “just a little bit” of your drug of choice if you have had problem use in the recent past.


You might be able to moderate, but your brain probably cant,

Brains simply dont work like that,

All drugs of abuse destabilize your brain,

And that thing that you call you, is a pretty small function of your brain, so you cant really “will” that into submission.


Thats sort of the point,

Its literally not

possible,

The book isnt clear about the science behind all of that,

So Im holding back my highest endorsement,

But its still a block knockin hella god as fuck read,

So go get it!! In the aftermath of Prohibition, Americas top scientists joined forces with AA members and put their clout behind a campaign to convince the nation that alcoholism is a disease.
They had no proof, but they hoped to find it once research money came pouring in, The campaign spanned decades, and from it grew a multimilliondollar treatment industry and a new government agency devoted to alcoholism.

But scientists research showed that problem drinking is not a singular disease but a complex phenomenon requiring an array of strategies.
Theres less scientific evidence for the effectiveness of AA than there is for most other treatments, including selfenforced moderation, therapy and counseling, and targeted medications AAs own surveys show that it doesnt work for the overwhelming majority of problem drinkers.

Five years in the making, Joe Millers brilliant, indepth investigative reporting into the history, politics, and science of alcoholism shows exactly how AA became our nations de facto treatment policy, even as evidence accumulated for more effective remediesand how, as a result, those who suffer the most often go untreated.
US of AA is a characterdriven, beautifully written exposé, full of secrecy, irony, liquor industry money, the shrillest of scare tactics, and, at its center, a grand deception.
In the tradition of Crazy by Pete Earley and David Goldhills Catastrophic Care, US of AA shines a muchneeded spotlight on the addiction treatment industry.
It will forever change the way we think about the entire enterprise,
 .