Category Archives: Labeling Teens As Addicts

PARENTS BE CAREFUL LETTING YOUR TEEN ASSOCIATE WITH AA MEMBERS AND THE FELLOWSHIP OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

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Why should parents be careful about letting their teens associate with AA members from the Santa Clarita Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous?

JR Harris's picture

Courtesy of JR Harris on Mon, 12/31/2012

The Santa Clarita Valley (SVC) Central Office of Alcoholics Anonymous is located at 26951 Ruether Ave., Suite B-6, Santa Clarita, CA 91351 and acts as the central focal point of Alcoholics Anonymous claiming no control over the events they coordinate, promote and advertise in that area of Los Angeles County (http://www.aascv.org/). Alcoholics Anonymous actively recruits from jails and prison for members under their “Correction Committees”, from mental institutions under their “Hospital & Institution” (H&I) committees and from the probation, parole and court systems under their “Cooperation with the Professional Community” (CPC) committees. The members of AA will tell you that the majority of the members do not come from these outlets and through the last survey they published, which only polled around 7,000 members, only 11% of the members came from these outlets. Depending upon outside sources this number is actually between 45-55%.

Why should this be important information for parents to know if they allow their children to go to AA meetings, Al-Anon or Alateen in Santa Clarita Valley (SVC)? The simple reason is because this particular Intergroup co-mingles Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon and Alateen members and if a teen is attacked physically, financially or sexually they will be made to blame for the attack. Use Google and find the physical, financial or sexual attacks in Alcoholics Anonymous and you will find that the Victim is almost always made to be the reason for the attack and the AA Intergroup or group will be called blameless and they will blame your teen. You and your teen will be told repeatedly that your teen was at fault and that you can’t hold the people holding the event responsible for what happened. Here is an example that happens every year that co-mingles all three groups that happened this year, luckily without any incidents that are known and reported. Continue reading →

Young People Attending Alcoholics Anonymous Puff Piece

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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

Bogus Labeling Of Adolescents As Addicts And Having A Brain Disease

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All this talk about Whitney Houston’s death has brought out a plethora of talking 12 step heads hyperventilating about how addiction is a life long disease and the children of addicts have “The Gene”. This can become a self fulfilling prophecy. Dr Drew and Jane Velez-Mitchell are all over TV spouting lots of information as if it is fact.

The fact is many people do not agree with the 12 step dogma at all. What is most upsetting though is how they are stigmatizing our children into thinking they have a disease and inherited a gene from there addicted parents.
The Fix has an excellent article about this below.

We need to stand up to this 12 step madness and save the kids from emotional harm from this brainwashing from 12 step zealots.

How a Bogus Addiction Panic is Criminalizing Our Kids
The new official definition of addiction will likely label many more young Americans with the disease. Do we really want to dump this on the next generation?

By Maia Szalavitz
02/15/12

The DSM V—the next edition of psychiatry’s diagnostic bible—will redefine addiction in ways likely to have long-lasting, real-world consequences. As I explored in my column last week, psychiatrists are eliminating the seriously problematic terms “Substance Abuse” and “Substance Dependence” and placing all related conditions into a single new category: “Substance Use and Addictive Disorders.”

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Indeed, research shows that some people who meet the full criteria for alcoholism or addiction can return to controlled use—though this proportion decreases as severity of the problem increases. The data also shows that a large proportion of people who would currently be diagnosed as “substance dependent” recover without any type of treatment or self-help involvement at all.

In short, no one can predict which college drunk will go on to skid row—and which one will become President.

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Even now, however, a great deal of treatment energy and time is currently aimed at trying to get people in recovery to admit that they have “the disease of addiction” and to label themselves as “addicts” or “alcoholics” in therapy groups. Counselors and other staff press clients to confess to a greater and greater problem severity, due to the pervasive suspicion that most people with addiction lie about how much they use. (This continues to be done in the face of research showing that doing so does not benefit recovery—if anything, “confronting denial” is linked with more relapse, not less.)

This push to adopt an addict identity happens even in adolescent treatment— despite the fact that most teens in treatment do not meet criteria for being addicted (some don’t even meet criteria for drug abuse!). Indeed, the vast majority are, not surprisingly, nondaily binge users of booze and pot. Nonetheless, at ever-younger ages, these kids are being pressured to view themselves primarily as addicts and alcoholics and to admit to having a chronic, lifelong illness with a 90% chance of relapse. Very little research has been done on the effects of this “treatment”—but given what we know about the fluidity of adolescent identity, it certainly has the potential to do significant harm.

For one, it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy—and I’ve spoken with quite a few people who have gone into adolescent treatment as marijuana users and emerged as cocaine or prescription drug misusers, in part because they felt that they were “already addicts anyway.” Second, since research cannot predict which teens will outgrow their problems and which will have a chronic course, does it really make sense to have them all embrace a stigmatized identity centered around a disease?

Bogus Labeling Of Teens As Addicts

The Complete Article-
http://www.thefix.com/content/addiction-definition-phony-epidemic-DSMV8765