Recovery: Solutions (Final)
Because I’m fascinated with all things ‘culture’ I could not skip the rabbit hole of addiction in modern American life. I’ve done a good bit of exploration in the last few months and I’m pleased to say, I’ve had enough already.
And, I’ve managed to come to a few conclusions.
- If a 12-Step Program has worked for you in getting sober and/or clean, congratulations, you are the exception to the vast majority.
- The 12-Step Programs have flooded and over-run the recovery market despite any scientific validity to their claims or efficacy in their numbers and despite clear conflicts of interest in public/private partnerships. It is a huge money-making industry globally.
- If a 12-Step Program program has not worked for you, you are in the vast majority, and there are other options, if you know where to look.
I’ve heard or read many accounts that Alcoholics Anonymous is a cult. I’d call it a ‘soft cult’.
There is no doubt it is brainwashing and many in these programs who dare to do the due-diligence of intellectual inquiry readily admit this fact.
I have a great deal of respect for awareness and honesty, so I am not in any way arguing that those in the throws of active addiction might not need a good dose of brainwashing. More power to y’all, paint those mantras all over your walls, because it’s awesome you’re still alive and we want to keep it that way as long as possible! (On that note, thank you to Rick, who shared stories and information and found success in a 12-Step Program, as well as being the one who was the impetus for me in this exploration of addiction.)
But, I really wish now to speak to those very many who may need or want help and have not been successful with the current acceptable brainwashing techniques or soft cults.
Unlike what AA, NA and others are telling you, you did not ‘fail‘. It’s not that you ‘didn’t want it bad enough‘ or that you ‘haven’t reached rock bottom yet’ or that you ‘didn’t work The Steps‘ or that you ‘just don’t get it‘. If you continue to go back into 12-Step recovery programs again and again, which is most often the case, thinking this time you’ll ‘succeed‘, consider this: To keep doing the same thing over and over again but expect different results is the hallmark of insanity.
If you’ve heard this nonsense about yourself, and believed it, you’re still buying into the biggest lie in 12-Step brainwashing propaganda. Stop that now!
It didn’t work for you, that’s all. Not at all unusual. Now, don’t stop there, and find something else that will work, please.
Here’s some others who also say it didn’t work for them either, and who found other ways to deal with their addictions.
https://patch.com/california/pacificpalisades/bp–the-home-of-alcoholics-anonymous-how-it-works
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/addiction-myths_n_1928239
AA: Cult or Cure
13th Stepping, big scandals, no accountability
The Business of Recovery
How has it come to this? I think James Corbett has a big part of that answer right here:
https://youtu.be/LfHEuWaPh9Q
The Corbett Report: The Crisis of Science
We’re trusting the wrong people! We’re losing our skills of discernment! We’re losing our skills, all of them, along with our common sense!
Some might be inclined to wonder why a homesteading blog has anything to do with culture. What do addictions & distractions, conspiracies or occult knowledge, or geopolitics, or geoengineering, or junk science, or spirituality have to do with growing food, raising livestock, or just in general reclaiming our wise traditions?
Addictions and distractions are what’s rotting our culture from the inside-out. Our institutions are not solving these crises, they are exacerbating them. Quite possibly on purpose.
Yet folks continue to support them, continue to throw money at them. Why?
I think our ancestors were smarter than that, or we wouldn’t be here right now as witnesses to the masses skipping to the guillotine!
Maybe it’s time we started listening more to some good old-fashioned common sense rather than to white coats paid by blue bloods to serve black ties? (Several puns intended; let me count the ways!)
We’ve had a good run at addictions this time around, distractions are another rabbit hole for another time.
Thanks for joining me on this latest little wondering and wandering. Brighter posts to come, surely! 🙂
Kensho Homestead 
well done!! I enjoyed your series. and it is absolutely correct. most of what is wrong with people in society is their belief in white coats. science, doctors, governments as their guru’s. these things have turned into gods for most people. They worship the ground these people walk on and in fact, those same doctors and scientists are just high paid con artists. The long con! The end result is the destruction of the mind and the body of the human race. The wiping out of consciousness and spirit.
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