Daily Archives: March 8, 2012

Suicidal Alcoholics Anonymous Member Calls Veterans Crisis Line

Posted on by
3

Here is a suicide crisis line for veterans, and this one suicidal veteran states he has people in AA he can talk to. AA is not equipped to deal with suicidal, depressed veterans. Lack of real professional help for veterans and depending on 12 step programs is costing lives.

Veterans Crisis Line Seeks To Help Those Struggling With Civilian Life, Unemployment, Post-Combat Stress
Posted: 03/ 8/2012 12:06 pm
CANANDAIGUA, N.Y. — Hi, this is Tricia. Thank you for calling the Veterans Crisis Line. What’s going on tonight?

Tricia, a crisis line operator, is talking with someone we’ll call Steven. Her long black hair frames her face as she bends over her desk, eyes closed, listening and then replying softly.

Steven, will you take a few deep breaths for me, it’s really important that I understand what you are experiencing.

In a few cramped rooms inside a dark red brick veterans mental institution built here in the 1930s, Tricia Lucchesi, along with some two dozen mental health professionals and veterans, fields the calls that come in every minute through the Veterans Crisis Line.

Tricia is 52 and has years of experience in teaching and mental health care; her son is an enlisted airman in the Air Force. Her headset is decorated with blue sparkles. She listens, oblivious to the bustle and ringing phones around her. When she responds she speaks slowly, pouring warmth down the phone line.

What is it Steven, that is making you so desperate that the only way you can think of is to kill yourself?

Seventeen thousand times a month, at all hours of the day and night, the operators answer the callers, listening intently, absorbing the anger and despair, gently shifting them back toward life.

Okay, Steven, I hear that you want to kill yourself tonight and I want to be able to help you not feel that way.

snip

The VA has made huge strides in providing services to the new and Vietnam-era veterans who are demanding medical and mental health help in record numbers. But its facilities, and especially mental health therapists and consultants, are often overwhelmed by the demand.

“Many of the veterans feel very frustrated when the system doesn’t work for them,” said a crisis line responder. “Our VA system is strained, a lot of times there’s not enough staffing. It’s a big job, and often there aren’t enough people to do it.”

Steven, do you have someone you can- … Okay, AA [Alcoholics Anonymous]? Oh, good, you have people in AA. How long have you been sober? Seven years! Good for you! And with everything that’s been going on with you, you haven’t picked up a drink for seven years? … You have a bottle of wine? … Was that today? … Have you been drinking today? … Okay, okay … All right, so you stayed sober for seven years and today you were in so much pain you felt you had to pick up a drink … Okay …. Sure … Sure … I hear you’re in a lot of pain and you want to die right now … We have ways to help you and make your life easier, but you need to work with me on this …

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/veterans-crisis-line_n_1322423.html

Young People Attending Alcoholics Anonymous Puff Piece

Posted on by
1

They really sugar coat Alcoholics Anonymous in this puff piece about AA and young people. The article offers no possible options to AA other than the 12 step program. No mention of the fact that courts are mandating criminals in droves to these meetings without warning anyone. Typical media bias.

Young people turn to AA to break the grip of alcohol and drugs
BY ERIC ADLER
The Kansas City Star

 
• 69 percent of college graduates were current drinkers (at least one drink in the past 30 days) in 2010. That compares with 37 percent of adults with less than a high school education.
• Among full-time college students ages 18-22, 63 percent were current drinkers in 2010; 42 percent were binge drinkers; and 16 percent were heavy drinkers. Those numbers are higher than those for other adults ages 18-22 (non-college students and part-time college students): 52 percent were current drinkers, 36 percent were binge drinkers and 12 percent were heavy drinkers.
 
Names in this story
The Kansas City Star does not publish stories quoting anonymous sources unless there is a compelling reason to do so. Some of the subjects in this story were willing to use their full names, but because the guarantee of anonymity is such a bedrock part of Alcoholics Anonymous’ ethos, The Star agreed to abide by AA’s tradition of identifying individuals only by single, but actual, names.

LAWRENCE — Tall and lithe, 23-year-old Suzanne — once known to her University of Kansas sorority sisters as “Boozin’ Susan” — carries a load of folding chairs into a Sixth Street mini-mall storefront and arranges them in a circle.

Ten young people amble in and, over the next hour, tell why they’re here.

“Hi, I’m Claire, and I’m an alcoholic.” Age 23.

“Hi, I’m Matt, and I’m an alcoholic.” Age 25.

“Hi, I’m Jean, and I’m an alcoholic and an addict.” Age 17. She first got drunk on vodka when she was 8.

There is Stephanie, 20, and two seats away a 19-year-old addict fresh to sobriety. There are Mike and Will, both under 26.

Two sorority girls. A couple of athletes. Gen-Y’ers, children of affluence and of poverty. One young man’s abstemious parents never raised a bottle. Others barely remember mom or dad without a drink or drug in hand.

At a time when binge drinking remains at epidemic levels, and as tens of thousands of high school and college students begin packing for spring break destinations where alcohol flows freely, thousands of other young people nationwide will flow into meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, having concluded that what they once thought was a rite of youth is an addiction.

Young people in their 20s and even late teens have been part of AA from some of its earliest years, not long after Bill Wilson founded the fellowship in 1935 on a 12-step approach.

At the core of AA is a shared belief that, powerless in the face of their addictions, alcoholics and other addicts work to remain sober one day at a time, lean on others for support and rely on what in AA parlance is one’s “H.P.,” or higher power, or God.

Because of AA’s ways — no dues, no fees, no formal membership rosters and only periodic surveys of attendees — it’s impossible to say exactly how many young people are attending the fellowship’s meetings.

What is clear, researchers say, is that although AA does not work for everyone, for young people who stick to its tenets, it can offer a lifeline in a culture where the pressure to drink is often overwhelming.

“Basically, young people benefit from going,” said Harvard University’s John Kelly, an addiction recovery researcher at the Massachusetts General Hospital who in 2008 published a study that followed 16-year-olds from a San Diego rehab clinic for eight years.

“The strongest predictor of recovery was attendance at AA,” Kelly said. “For every single meeting they attended, they gained an extra two days of abstinence.”

There is testament: Shirley, 58, of Kansas City entered 37 years ago at age 21 and has never relapsed. She knows others, at 40 and 50, who came in at age 18.

“It is absolutely doable,” she said. “The simple point of it is whether you no longer want to live that way. We all have to grow up. That’s part of life. In a way it’s an advantage (entering recovery early). I had to grow up anyway. I had help.”

Come September, the 54th annual International Conference of Young People in Alcoholics Anonymous is to be held in St. Louis. Some 3,000 young people are expected to attend.

http://www.kansascity.com/2012/03/03/3467414/young-people-turn-to-aa-to-break.html

Violent Felon Who Led Police On 100-MPH Chase On Christmas Eve Is Sentenced to Alcoholics Anonymous Meetings

Posted on by
Reply

Rickey Lee Lidel broke the nose of a person and threatened to stab him. The victim called police and then there was a high speed chase. Here is another violent felon mandated to the rooms Of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Published March 07, 2012, 12:00 AM
Man who led deputies on high-speed chase on Christmas Eve sentenced
A Bemidji man who led area law enforcement on a 100-mph chase on Christmas Eve was sentenced in Beltrami County District Court on Monday. Pioneer Staff Report, Bemidji Pioneer

A Bemidji man who led area law enforcement on a 100-mph chase on Christmas Eve was sentenced in Beltrami County District Court on Monday.

District Judge Paul T. Benshoof ordered Ricky Lee Lidel, 56, to serve 109 days in jail, stayed for two years, with 73 days credited for time served.

The judge also ordered Lidel to serve two years of supervised probation, attend weekly Alcoholic Anonymous meetings for sixth months and pay $1,300 in fines.

Lidel pleaded guilty Jan. 23 to fleeing a peace officer in a motor vehicle and possessing an assault weapon while having a previous felony conviction.

According to an earlier news release issued by the Beltrami County Sheriff’s Office:

An assault victim suffered a broken nose in a violent encounter with Lidel, who threatened to stab the person with a knife at the victim’s home.

After receiving the call, deputies spotted a silver Grand Am, described by the victim, and attempted to stop Lidel.

However, Lidel drove east on the U.S. Highway 2 bypass from Division Street, leading authorities on a pursuit reaching speeds higher than 100 mph. Lidel stopped the car on Highway 2 and attempted to flee on foot when deputies arrested him.

http://www.bemidjipioneer.com/event/article/id/100037514/

Michigan’s Mental Health Courts Depending On Community Based Programs Like AA Meetings

Posted on by
Reply

More and more mental health courts are popping up. It is wonderful they are trying to help the mentally ill. Yet the courts should not be mandating Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings, where they are often told not to take there meds and make disparaging remarks about the mental health field.AA has no training to deal with paranoid schizophrenics or suicidal people.

Mental Health Court

Michigan’s treatment of mentally ill people has disgraced the state, as hundreds of thousands have gone without treatment and ended up in county jails and state prisons, warehoused at a cost to taxpayers of $35,000 a year each.

It’s a common and tragic story: Mentally ill defendants — often abusing drugs — cycle through the criminal justice system repeatedly for petty offenses until they are slapped with lengthy prison sentences as repeat offenders.

Since 2008, however, eight mental health court pilot programs, now serving nearly 700 people a year, have given hope to mentally ill offenders like Angela DeCant, 35; Henry Smith, 47; and Steven Townsend, 52. Wayne County Circuit Judge Timothy Kenny and others who preside over the courts have the option of sentencing them to 18 months of intensely supervised probation and treatment.

Working with community-based nonprofits like Detroit Central City Community Mental Health, participants get medications, attend relapse prevention classes and group therapy, meet with psychiatrists, undergo residential treatment, and talk with job and housing specialists to get their lives on track.

The pilot courts work at a fraction of the cost of incarceration. But they will end Sept. 30, when the annual $1.65-million federal grant expires, unless the governor and state Legislature find another way to pay for them.

For starters, Gov. Rick Snyder has put $1 million for the mental health courts in his 2013 budget, but legislators must do even better. With county jails and state prisons becoming Michigan’s largest mental health institutions, this is no time to end a rare success story.

Salvaging lives
Over the last two decades, mental health care in Michigan has eroded, leaving hundreds of thousands without treatment and pushing many of them into county jails and state prisons.

http://www.freep.com/article/20120304/OPINION02/203040478/SALVAGING-LIVES-SAVING-MONEY-Eight-pilot-courts-that-divert-mentally-ill-offenders-from-prison-to-treatment-are-showing-promising-results-It-s-time-to-expand-the-experiment-?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE