Letters CCCXC
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[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters390.html#Tom_H ]
Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2014 12:24:02 -0700 (answered 11 February 2014) Dearest Agent Orange This morning while I was in the kitchen, I heard my wife and her friend ( who is a medical doctor) calling me to come into the computer room and read my e-mail response from my buddy...Agent Orange....They were literally wiping coffee off of my computer desk because they were laughing so hard. We all had a huge laugh at observing which one of Agent Orange's fantasies he was in when he received my e-mail. Obviously, you were in one of your fantasies where, you imagined yourself as a psychologist.....That fantasy is called the Dr. Orange syndrome, which goes along with the Pastor Orange fantasy, and then there is the Healer Guru Orange fantasy, and of course, the Professor Orange fantasy and then finally the addiction expert fantasy.....I apologize, but my eyes are still tearing up laughing. ( I'll be right back*L*) Your response was just as I had expected. Once again, you just change word's to make it look like you are superior to other people and are really a true intellectual.....I won't even waste my time discussing how you simply used the wording changes saying, "it is a bit of a puzzle", and/or "one day I suddenly snapped out of it," etc. etc.....*yawn*.......Next subject please.......Now you supposedly went through DT's at home and knew exactly what was happening, right ?..... if in fact it happened at all.....Let's move forward to the doctor office scene okay ?.....Do you really think that a alcoholic that has gone through DT's would need a M.D. to tell him that he needs to stop drinking ?.... Aren't you leaving out something Secret AgentOrange ? Did you not need this medical doctors evaluation for alcoholism with your paperwork so you could collect disability for life from the government ? Let's not forget that you told the room for years that you were a disabled veteran......Remember ? During this time I was sending you cash. Remember ? I kept asking you if you had been kicked out of the military...and you would not answer. Four years later it came out that the air force had kicked you out... But I still felt sorry for you when you got kicked out of your government assisted apartment in Oregon... I sent you more money once again, but you told me you never saw it ? Then I find out that you have moved into another homeless shelter ? Wait a minute.....this was at over 5 years sobriety....what the hell's going on ? You write about your friends and your son and step children etc... Would not any of them want to help out dear old dad ? I mean dad has been sober for over 5 years right ? Something is wrong here.... Agent orange/dad has been in a dream world...making believe he is a therapist and a religious healer and addiction clinician. He is doing this on the internet. What's going on ? Orange thinks he is saving alcoholics lives....Make believe Guru Orange goes into absolute rages on a regular basis if anyone dare have opinions different that his. He is insulting and dominating and simply a bully and a coward. And this is the guy who says he was bullied by his father. Agent Orange is the same as his father. Except his father supported him and even sent him to college. Then he flunked out because of drugs and depression. This is the guy who was going to jump to his death as a teenager from a tall college building.. And this is what is important to me and would be to all Orange's readers. Very important.... Agent Orange wants more than anything else in the world for his readers to think he is intelligent. Probably a hip college professor type of guy would be one of his many fantasies. My message to Orange has been for him to try and work on his anger and live in reality. But that has been to no avail. Orange's fantasy world is more important to him than anything, including his children. Secret Agent Orange is capable of working and can repair computers for money....Even 10 hours per month @ $50.00 per hour could add up to $500.00 per month. That $500.00 could be sent to his grandchildren for their college education or clothes or whatever. Or possibly to his children directly. Now we are only talking about 10 hours per month. But I am afraid that will never happen. I invested money and trust and hope with Agent Orange since the very start of this site. I had hopes that Orange would be man enough to take responsibility for his past. I was warned against sending money to Orange or putting faith in his actual intentions. But, we shall see. You never know. I have seen people change in sobriety! One last important thing for any readers to understand is this: Terry and I are not enemies. We both have similar dislikes for the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. Our backgrounds and ages are so similar that it is borderline spooky. I don't like Terry's sassy girly acid tongue mouth. I have begged him to stop being an asshole, hiding behind a computer, but he can't help himself. The hit numbers on the site have gone up but the amount of money that comes in through pay pal is like less $.75 cents per day. Maybe Hippy Terry thinks money is bad and he enjoys living on the edge...I don't know...But I do know this...Money is needed for attorneys that continue to fight making it illegal to force people into A.A. through our court systems. Once that victory takes place, I don't care if A.A. goes broke or not. I think Terry tries to score chicks with this site. And I wish he would. Maybe it would stop him from being a little bully prick. But putting out messages like, "Buy a Hallmark card and help a girl in AA get raped" is why the professionals out there don't take Terry seriously. Oh well have a nice day. Hello again, Tom, Yes, you really are in a hostile mood this week, aren't you? Like I said, you seem to cycle.
[ Readers: this is the same Tom H. as the one who gloated that I had lost my apartment, way back here: Now, I did not engage in word games. I answered your question directly. I am not mystified by my sobriety. I know why I am sober. It's because I don't drink alcohol. I know why I do not drink alcohol. It's because I don't want to be that sick again. The only thing that mystifies me is how I could change my mind so suddenly and completely and know that it was in my power to both quit smoking and quit drinking. That cool steel determination and confidence is a wonder. About your other accusations: No, I never got any certification of alcoholism from the Veterans Administration for a disability pension. In fact, the Multnomah County Veterans' Outreach advisor who was helping me with the paperwork told me to never mention it. The VA won't give pensions for alcoholism or drug addiction because they consider that self-inflicted damage. (Their policy is the exact opposite of the A.A. dogma that says that "we are powerless over alcohol".) It isn't the responsibility of family or friends to support me, and I never asked them to. In fact, my family didn't even know what was going on. I didn't tell them.
About the money that you say you have donated to the Orange Papers:
About working as a computer repairman, alas, those days are gone forever. (You sure are eager to get me out of retirement. Why is that?) I am so crippled by sciatica (a crushed disk in my spine) that I cannot stand for more than a few minutes and cannot walk more than about 2 city blocks before the pain is just too much. It's an endurance test just to stand at the sink and wash the dishes. I have to do it in pieces. Wash a few things, then sit down to rest and let the pain pass, and then do a little more, and then rest, then do a little more. Working a straight job all day is out of the question. My powers of concentration aren't as good as they used to be either, so computer programming is out. Hi tech is very much like athletics: a young man's game. You don't see 67-year-old athletes competing with the young dudes in football or basketball or baseball, or any other major sport. Or in computer programming. Those arrogant young whipper-snappers dominate the field. Worse yet, most of what I know is now actually obsolete. I'm constantly playing catch-up just to keep abreast of the new stuff. In just the last two weeks, I had to learn (the hard way, of course) about GPT partition tables to format a 4 terabyte drive, and a new program to write the partition tables (parted and gparted). Fdisk is dead. Trusty old Fdisk, which I've been using for almost 30 years, is history, as are all of the old partition table formats. Too small. They ran out of numbers for sectors. It's going that way with everything. It's hard to believe how much stuff is obsolete and even positively ancient. And I'm struggling to learn MySQL and PHP because that is what the Drupal forum is written with. It's a very steep learning curve. I'm expert in Assembly Language on half a dozen different micros, and also expert at C. I can still program a Motorola M6800 8-bit microprocessor in assembly language in my sleep, but what the world wants now is Android 4.0 apps for smart phones. So it goes. "Life is change, how it differs from the rocks." Gracie Slick sang that. Crown of Creation album. Besides, I already have a job: doing the Orange Papers. You don't want me to abandon that, now do you? Or do you? Back to the physical plane: Just getting to and from the public library is getting to be an ordeal. I fought my way through the snow to ride my bike to the library yesterday, and fell once when my front wheel got out of the groove in the snow made by car tires. Fortunately, I wasn't injured. (I used to play roller hockey, so I know how to fall.) Still, it's getting to be an ordeal. On a different subject: So you think that professionals don't take me seriously because I criticize Hallmark for promoting A.A. while A.A. refuses to do anything to stop the sexual exploitation of young women in A.A.? I disagree. Do you have any evidence, besides perhaps your wife's opinion? Oh well, have a good day now, and I hope you get to feeling happier soon. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * ** When Bill Wilson made up the 12 Steps as instructions for people ** to get a spiritual experience and stop drinking, why didn't Bill ** include instructions for the alcoholics to go to Dr. William D. ** Silkworth to get dosed with belladonna and see God? That's how ** Bill Wilson did it. Why isn't that also how other alcoholics ** should do it? Why are the 12 Steps nothing like how Bill Wilson ** actually quit drinking? 
[ Link here = http://www.orange-papers.info/orange-letters390.html#Mac ]
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2014 18:31:46 -0500 (answered 11 February 2014)
As if... Perhaps the energy spent in punching the air could be turned to other, more edifying pursuits. Further, I believe Buchman was very wrong-headed. I do not hold with the mental contortions he used to cobble up the 4 Absolutes. Personally I see them as a formula for self defeat, self-deception and a form of pride-baited arrogance. I sincerely doubt, from what I've read of your commentaries, that you are an alcoholic of the hopeless variety; there IS something wrong, but possibly nothing that could be changed by the program of recovery outlined in the book "Alcoholics Anonymous". Be very careful with the "facts" and "statistics" you claim; the analyses have been and continue to be manipulated to suit the users, which cuts both ways. For you, and undoubtedly many others, AA didn't or couldn't work. Does that mean the program of recovery doesn't work at all? Hardly. But where there's success, there are those who will say it's a sham.
Our experiences are different. Does that mean one or the other is wrong? No. Hello again, Mac, Thanks for the response. Unfortunately, you are repeating a lot of standard A.A. slogans.
Have a good day now. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * ** The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his ** own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for ** his nation, his religion, his race, or his holy cause. ** A man is likely to mind his business when it is worth ** minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own ** meaningless affairs by minding other people's business. ** == Eric Hoffer, The True Believer [The next letter from Mac is here.]
Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2014 19:50:59 -0800 (PST) (answered 12 February 2014) Hello, I'm writing a paper arguing that addiction is a choice, not a disease. I would really like to use your claims as proof for my paper but i not allowed to if I can't show who produced the statistic, with what data, at what time and place. Hello Tim, Thank you for a very interesting question. Unfortunately, I think you have chosen a very knotty problem. The first problem is that there is no statistical evidence that shows that addiction is a disease. I mean none, zilch, zippo. It's really a question of semantics, not statistics. Ask people what they mean by "disease". You will get a lot of vague answers and fancy tap-dancing.
The dictionaries list a lot of different definitions of disease.
Look here: Some definitions of "disease" are so generalized that they call any condition that causes pain or discomfort a "disease". (Disease == "dis - ease") By that definition, playing football is a disease.
Then you will get the deliberate misinformation and clouding of the issue, like the A.M.A.
has done. They had a committee composed of two A.A. front groups write the definition
of "alcoholism the disease" that is so garbled that it does not even say that
drinking alcohol causes alcoholism. See the story here: By the way, not even the A.M.A. could provide a good definition of "disease". Nor could they explain the etiology of the "disease". I mean, come on, "the disease of alcoholism" must have a cause. The kind of information that you are looking for is in the file The Effectiveness of the Twelve-Step Treatment. There you will find clinical studies and randomized longitudinal controlled studies and doctors' reports about tests of A.A., and also the natural spontaneous recovery rate without treatment. It's all fully documented and referenced, and your teacher will be happy with such references. I also just found this quote in my notes. I don't know where it came from. The file name hints that it came from Australia. Perhaps a Google search can establish the source. Anyway, it gives a bunch of interesting references:
By 1956 the American Medical Association voted to define alcoholism as a medically treatable disease, a decision based not on analysis of scientific evidence, but on economic grounds, to enable treating physicians to become eligible for payment from third parties, i.e. insurance companies (AMA) (Hanson). The AMA's move stirred controversy, but Jellinek justified it by saying that a disease is anything that doctors choose to call a disease. (Jellinek.) Dr. Jeffrey Schaler famously argued that "simply calling alcoholism a disease does not make it one." (Schaler, 1989.)
I know the source of the NIAAA quote:
By the way, "Dr." Jellinek, the modern proponent of the
"alcoholism is a disease" theory, was not a doctor.
He was a fraud and a quack. He faked all of his degrees and credentials.
He didn't even earn a B.A. degree. He never graduated from college.
His transcript at the University of Leizig, where he supposedly got his B.A., says
that Jellinek was dropped from the University's rolls in both 1913 and 1914,
for failure to attend lectures or take classes.
And yet he lied his way into the Yale faculty and passed himself off as a doctor and
a scientific researcher, the world's expert on alcoholism.
Check out what Stanton Peele and Ron Roizen have to say about Jellinek: Three good sources of information on the question of addiction as a disease are:
Another factor to consider is that there is not any one stereotypical alcoholic or drug addict. Note that in the above quote, the NIAAA said, "Only 1% of those surveyed fit the stereotypical image of someone with severe, recurring alcohol addiction." The causes of people excessively using drugs or alcohol until they get addicted are numerous: mental illness (especially depression, bipolar disorder and narcissistic personality disorder), damage inflicted upon them in childhood, bad environments (like wars and slums) driving people to drink, and then there are the veterans with PTSD who drink to forget, and there are people who have genetic disorders. There are people who are sick and in physical pain, and they are trying to blank it out. There are people who are in existential crises who don't think that life is worth living. There are even people who drink to kill the pain from too much drinking and too much smoking. There are a zillion different causes for "alcoholism" or addiction. Oh, and lastly, my own personal experience is that addiction is a choice. I was addicted to tobacco for 30 years, and drank too much for almost 20, and then, when my health collapsed and I was facing death, I just quit all of my bad habits all at once. (And that was 13 years ago, and I'm still sober and healthy.) It was a choice. It was a tough choice, and it took being really sick for me to get the motivation to quit, but I did. And that story is so common. That is how most successful quitters finally do it. "I just got sick and tired of being sick and tired." Have a good day now, and good luck with your project, and don't hesitate to write back if you have more questions. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * * ** Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision ** to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a ** disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to ** do it, it is a social error, a life-style. In this particular ** life-style the motto is "Be happy now because tomorrow you are ** dying," but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is ** a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ** ordinary human existence. It is not different from your life-style, ** it is only faster. It all takes place in days or weeks or months ** instead of years. "Take the cash and let the credit go," as Villon ** said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the ** credit a whole lifetime. ** == Philip K Dick * ** If alcoholism is really a disease, then A.A. sponsors are ** guilty of practicing medicine without a license. They are ** also guilty of treating a life-threatening illness without ** having any medical education or training. They have never ** gone to medical school, and never done an internship or ** residency, and yet they presume to be qualified to make ** life-or-death decisions in the patients' treatment. That ** is what you call quackery. ** == Orange
P.S.: I was just rereading another page of debate about whether alcoholism
is a disease,
"Is Alcoholism a Disease?", by David J. Hanson, Ph.D., here: Dr. Hanson quoted Dr. Stanton Peele:
Ah yes. I was reminded of Ariel Castro, the creep in Cleveland, Ohio, who kidnapped, imprisoned, and raped three women for 10 years, including beating one of them into a miscarriage because he didn't want the baby. At his sentencing, he whined,
"I'm not a monster. I'm a decent guy. I'm sick. I have an addiction. Just like alcoholics have an addiction. I need therapy." Oh yeh. "I kidnap, imprison, and rape women and kill their baby because I have a disease just like alcoholism." NOT!
Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2014 20:13:19 -0500 (EST) (answered 12 February 2014)
Mister T, http://www.suffolkny-aa.org/bulletins/bulletin.php I am not sure I have done this correctly but I know you like to read about other aa activity so I am trying.
Thank you for all you do. Hello again, Bob, Thanks for the tip. What that tells me is that they are having shrinkage problems. Membership, staffing, and money all shrinking. Now they don't have the resources to staff a hotline 24-7? That used to be a point of pride in a lot of intergroups. "Always available, always ready to help. Available 24 hours a day." So you know they wouldn't be cutting back if they could avoid it. Not coincidentally, another correspondent just reported that the list of scheduled major A.A. events has recently shrunk enormously:
It's about time. How many decades can a dishonest quack cure keep on fooling people? I recall President Lincoln's line about, "You can fool all of the people some of the time. You can fool some of the people all of the time. But you can't fool all of the people all of the time." Have a good day now. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * ** The "spiritual, not religious" thing is just an ego game of ** spiritual one-upmanship that says, "I may be a superstitious ** fool, but I'm not as crazy as the ones who go to church."
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2014 18:51:41 -0500 (answered 11 February 2014)
Stanton Peele and Ilse Thompson: Recover! Stop Thinking Like an Addict with The PERFECT Program
Peter Ferentzy, PhD Hi again, Peter, Yes, I definitely have to get my hands on a copy of that. Stanton and Ilse are two of my favorite people, so I know that book will be good. Have a good day now. == Orange
* orange@orange-papers.info * * AA and Recovery Cult Debunking * * http://www.Orange-Papers.org/ * ** True wisdom is knowledge and humor combined. At 3:34 AM, I heard National Public Radio News say that the TIME — AOL merger was considered the worst corporate merger in history. No joke. AOL just destroyed the value of TIME stock. TIME Inc. was actually worth less after the merger than before, which means that AOL had negative value. TIME paid billions of dollars for something that turned out to be worth less than zero. I could have told them that just from my own experiences with AOL. Back in 2005, AOL was censoring my web site and blocking my email, claiming that I had something to do with spamming, and AOL blacklisted me because some account on my ISP's ISP in another state was sending out spam. Well anyway, AOL is history now, and the verdict of history is that AOL was a disaster. Have a good day now.
Last updated 17 December 2014. |
