02/21/2023
https://youtu.be/hBMUPgwLaO0
I hope the few people that see this post actually click on this link included. Or just look up Steven Slate's TEDx Talk Tahoe City- The Clean Slate Addiction Site: https://youtu.be/hBMUPgwLaO0 You can also check out his website at https://www.thecleanslate.org/
Anyone that knows me, even slightly, knows that I share information built on actual evidence (not the evidence-based treatments you are told are built on "evidence"). Gabor Mate once stated "I only wish we paid attention to the evidence."
Many people get angry when they here this evidence for the first time, things that I have come to understand through a deep dive into research on "addiction" and "recovery." The idea of addiction as a disease, that it's incurable, that you will end up in "jails, institution and death," and that somehow your Higher Power (which is the Christian God by the way- I mean they say the Lords Prayer at the end of many meetings! As a Jew, that was the first time I heard the Lords Prayer and the Serenity Prayer, which teach you to lay down, not fight, not speak out, not use your power for good. Rather it's about believing you are powerless! I could write books about this, and the problems with this, including the changes in the brain that have been labeled as the "disease of addiction" by primarily Nora Volkow of NIH (someone I studied and taught in the "drug recovery programs" I ran and worked for for much of my life. I myself was labeled an "addict" (an agnostic/ borderline athiest, cultural and full-blooded Jew, was told that if I didn't have faith, in this Christian Higher Power, to have faith in very sick individuals (the program often made them sick), and surrounded by sexual predators, and I as many others, were told that I needed to surrender my power to this higher power, and then I was to pass the message along, and laugh at them (sometimes silently, sometimes quietly, sometimes out loud in someone's face) when they resisted, or questioned, or were "non-compliant" with the 12-step message- as the belief was they were in "denial." How patronizing! And the more I wake up to this truth, the depth of the abuse and indoctrination- borderline cult beliefs- I am shocked how I myself got indoctrinated, not so much that I could actually bear more than a few meetings, or insitutions, and then gather up my life and move ahead- but that indoctrination spread to my clients. i was much nicer about it, but I remember thinking people were in denial, and thinking they needed to be abstinent for the rest of their lives, and going to meetings, and feeling ashamed, or shamed by others for having a half a beer when I wanted (those that know me know how slow I drink and I don't finish my drinks often. Therapists like myself, trained that the client is the expert in their issues and their solutions, and their lives, and that they need compassion and empathy and love, and to be listened to and heard... These same therapists (i include myself in this group), said those things, or at least thought them most days, and yet as soon as someone labeled an "addict, with a chronically, progressive, incurable disease," says to us, "I can stop when I want, I'm not an addict, this doesn't have control of me, and i won't end up in more instituions, or dead from this or incarcerated," we snicker, our loud or silently, some confront these people- I had chairs thrown at me once by an "enlightened" man who ran a halfway house i lived in for a few months- what set him off was that I was doing well and i was making my own intelligent decisions, and was thinking I was going to make it and that I actually completed this program of this abuisve and highly indoctrinated man himself- how dare this woman feel she's ok, or how dare she be proud of herself. How dare she be empowered and successful and leave me! It was like he needed to be my higher power, and I needed to surrender to him forever...." So, if therapists are taught that the client is the expert, why don't we listen when every single time clients with different addictions say to us, "I'm not an addict, it doesn't have control over me, this is not a lifelong battle, it'something i enjoy once in a while, or often, but it's a phase, I want to do that, it makes me happy." Why not listen to that and believe that? Imagine what powerful message that would bring to someone overdoing it with a compulsive behavior. I understand drugs are dangerious, increasingly so, for some people.
But here are the the stats- the EVIDENCE- shows that most people using any kind of substance, including he**in, just stop after awhile- as well as most of us who could qualify as having alcohol abuse disorder as teenagers and young adults. They move on - for the most part. It's called "spontaneous remission," as most people do their drugs, drink their drinks excessively, and then later they just stop, on their own, and without having to carry this false lable of having an incurable progressive disease- if that was true. the majority of people who go through even the heaviest of substance use, are just fine after a few years. That is about 90% of people. The people who don't do well, who have horrifying worsening addictins that does land them in jails, instifutions and death, the evidence has shown repeatedly in a multitude of studies, that the people who do the worst and have the worst consequenses are those that end up in treatment, bombarded with 12-step and God, and ideas that we need to tear you down before we buif you up, That addicts are just liars "whenever their lips are moving." But they were telling the truth, until people are indoctrinated to believe that God and the others around you know what you need to do, and how you feel, and you are not to say anything in contrary. This is how to CREATE AN ADDICT" not help one. and the power of thinking you are powerless, stupid, have to let everyone else tell you what you should do. That creates suffering, and a need to move to what makes you feel good (the substances), And, if you are indoctrinated to believe you have a disease and your powerless, FOREVER, well that leads to the power we give it over our minds. REmember, cult leaders have tactics, one is to say "I know you! I understand you! I have identified the problem, and I am the only one who has the solutionj to your problem- so you need me!"
For any therapist think about this, as it's the opposite foundation, ethics, and effective way of helping others, is to tear them down and then make them depend on you for the solution.
i said earlier on in this venting, and rambling post, that everything we do changes the brain, thus drugs and alchohol and other compulsions chnge our brains, just as being held and loved in the crib as a baby, just as taking drum or dance lessons, or writing an incredible paper, or never hearing your parents say "I love you" or walking down the street knowing you could die, every second of everyday if you are a black boy or black man in the US, just as what we eat- all of thse things, everthing done repetitively especially changes the brain and affects how it develops.
Another point, I'll make this my last one, is that we don't treat people with actual diseases like cancer, or heart disease like they cant recover, we tell them "you're going to beat it,"and we don't have doctors treating them with a very strange Big Book, that makes no sense and was written after the man's own indoctrination in a cult- the cult of Frank Buchman-who wrote the steps the 12-steps came from. We don't hand a person with pancreatic cancer a book to read daily, or a rehab to go to where if your rich, your get to cure your "disease" by walking on a beach and swimming, followed by hours of talk about a Christian God that you must surrender to to heal- imagine the uproar if that's how we treated the sick. No chemotherapy for you! Just read this book everyday, find a way to find how you had a blame in everything bad that ever happened to you, including people who abused or neglected you as children, owners of halfways houses who throw chairs at a woman just to tear her down for feeling happy and proud and powerful and in control!. Imagine telling a sick person that their disease is because of how bad they were to their parents, or abusive spouses..... imagine no chemo, no science, no evidence being utilized, and just treating cancer patients like we do addicts- going from abusive tactics, to the love-bombing tactics, the walks on the beach, telling you how proud they are of you, while an hour later being punished, by being told you're a liar, or being told you will die if you don't surrender to a Higer Power- even if it's a chair????When you imagine treating someone with systic fibrosis, or MS, or Cancer as those deemed to be addicts are pushed into treatment, where there's notreatment, or there's great treatmentmixed up still with theconstant reminders of powerless. need to surrender, that a substance has contol over you,losing those you love, when you most need them, imagine abandoning a loved one or a stranger suffering from a terminal illness and then returning whenthenb8boe was read, and only then giving the sick person some love, only once the person stsrts to figure out to lie about it, that takes away those honest authentic moments we all needwhen we tell the truth, orasmcuh of htetruth they csn hsnflr. ot rrnpough og thr truth to get lovr. be seen,to have people making u feel special.
beating someoe down, just to claim to builf thrm back up, in the name of belief that it's whats right... who doesn't feel so good with the person who always put u down, and then suddenly you felt special. That's how we treat "addicts'"just think about how they are rewarded when they do ollow instructions and at least preach the beliefs, which eventually do becomeour beliefs. Imagine if a doctor wouldn't helpyou unless his familyleft him,unless the personstrts to believe or pretend to belief- then they are joined in embraces and we love you and surrounded by =aprayer filled with god. if addictbegan to believe it orprented to, then you get the belonging, the welcoming back,the love..... imagine telling a late stage parkinsons patient is treated with onlyGod and walks on the beaches, or getting in ttouble for doing anything that was their desisin.it seems sick and crazy, bc we treat didease with science and qualifiifed people knowing the right treatment for him, proven from science..Addictio is not a didease and if people reallly beliived that the treatment would change, and may be more effective And if peole knew that most people have spontaneous remisssssin and its over.but the reminder those going to treatment (even great places mostlu), are indoctrinated with 12-step, which has the biggest failure rate ofe any ohter tx,
and I lied, but look it up- AA has a top- the top controls worldwide AA- well they are ver very wealthy...you can seee cultinfrastructure.
Addiction treatment doesn’t cure addicts, it creates addicts. Our current approach fails by teaching helplessness. We can help by changing our attitudes, and...
