Mother FUCK AA...

The BBQ Pit
1

There’s a guy I know peripherally. Nice kid, friend-of-a-friend, good guitar player. Funny.

He’s also a raging drunk. As in, an honest-to-goodness chemical dependence. As in, whenever he’s clean, every cashier in a 5-mile radius of his house asks “No beer today?” if he’s not getting a case whenever he buys anything else. As in, he tried to go cold turkey and had a half dozen seizures in 24 hours from DT, after which he was in the hospital for a week. His skin and eyes are yellow, and his nose is bright red.

His doctors give him less than a couple of months before his kidneys and/or liver give out completely unless he sobers up.

So he’s back out of rehab, after a few weeks of twelve stepping, and fell off the wagon in a couple of hours, after threatening to kill his parents and trying to kill himself. Back to the hospital for a three day hold, and more “group.”

These motherfuckers, and his sainted, but clueless parents, have convinced him that recovery is primarily - no - completely - a psychological victory. That his only choice is to go stone cold sober, and “deal” with the DTs, or keep drinking and/or kill himself. That it’s all about “willpower.”

His friends are trying to get him to ask for some benzos - at least some fucking Valium - but we’re not having a helluva lot of luck. Honestly, if his folks were behind it, we could probably get him to do it, but the excuses I’m hearing right now from him sound suspiciously like the self justifying bullshit you hear from a seriously misguided twelve-stepper; that they’re just “another drug,” that it’s “trading one addiction for another,” that he’s not gonna change unless he “hits rock bottom.”

Right now, he’s sitting in his old room at his parents house, shaking, and contemplating suicide. And I’m sitting here pissed as hell at those superior fucks who want him that way. Instead of letting him have a couple of Xanax to see him to the next sunrise, they’d have him fight some hopeless moral battle with a fucking chemical compound that doesn’t give a shit about morals.

Seriously, fuck you, you delusional, self righteous peices of shit.

I realize a few things - that I’m not a doctor, that many folks in AA have no problem with medication, and that it’s ultimately his responsibility to keep himself alive. But it fucking heartbreaking to watch, made more so by the fact that these idiots are abetting it.

Assholes.

2

Withdrawal from alcohol can KILL someone who is as dependent on booze as your friend appears to be. It should ONLY be done with medical supervision. Dr. Q (our prison doctor and ex-drinker) can chime in with more learned words of wisdom than I can. But I can tell you my sister-in-law, now dead from alcoholism, was told to drink on her way to the hospital so she wouldn’t go into the DTs. It’s VERY dangerous and his parents need to know that. Alcohol is a physical addiction. The good doctor can explain the medical ins and outs of it, I’m sure. Good luck.

3

And this, kids, is why you leave the practice of medicine to the professionals.

Some decisions should be between the doctor and his patient, not the AA group. Part of the reason I am no longer in AA is because of that. I got sick of being told that I didn’t need counseling or antidepressants even though my son had died and my (now ex-) husband was facing imprisonment. I know it was my fault for bringing it up in the first place, but truthfully, it’s none of their fucking business.

Robin

4

Hmm, this wasn’t my experience in AA at all. When I checked into an AA-type rehab center, the first thing they did was put me on Librium to ease me down from DT’s. In the AA meetings I went to, in various ciites, members frequrently encouraged others to pursue counseling or psychiatric treatment.

I’m not trying to be a mouth piece for AA. That just wasn’t my experience, is all.

5

Yumm, booze and Benzos, now there’s a freakishly tasty combination! It’s a good way to kill yourself too. If he’s still fucked up enough to need tranquilizers, he should be somewhere under supervision.

6

I should say it is a physical addication after you reach a certain point. Obviously, not everyone who drinks, and not everyone who is a drunk, is physically addicted to booze. But some are. If I remember what I read correctly, alcohol withdrawal is the only substance withdrawal that can kill you. Not even heroin withdrawal does that. It’s horrible, but not deadly. Hope I’m remembering that correctly.

7

How is sitting in his room contemplating suicide not rock-bottom?

8

Unfortunately, it was mine. However, I think the whole professionalization of AA is responsible for the change in attitude towards professional help. I should point out that few, if any, people in my old group had been through rehab; they were “good” “back-to-basics” AAs who saw no need for professional help and were vocal about that. I sponsored someone who had relapsed after one of these busybodies got a hold of her.

Squink, if you need benzos to detox, you’re going to be in the hospital. They don’t give you a bottle of Ativan and send you home.

Robin

9

I’ve never heard of AA-type rehab centers. Most of them employ AA steps, but AA is in no way part of the medical portion of treatment of alcoholism. At least that’s my understanding. Anyone from the club care to confirm, deny, or elaborate?

10

IIRC, is not a cohesive organization, but rather a collection of independent cells with some common principles. I think this could the reason for the discrepancy in that some are more professional about it, and others decidedly more cultish.

11

Right. But they don’t have a “medical” branch…deciding treatment and dispersing medications, do they? They’re strictly for non-medical support. Just the little meetings and prayers and what have you.

12

Poor choice of words on my part. By “AA-type,” I meant that they followed the twelve steps and that AA meetings were an important part of rehab. And you’re correct, as far as I know, AA does not promote or discourage any particular type of treatment, medical or otherwise. However, even AA’s “Big Book” talks about the need sometimes for medical attention of alcoholism.

Again, I just want to point out that I’m just talking about my own experience.

13

Someone who has had DTs before will be likely to have them again.
DTs are a medical emergency.

Call him an ambulance, he needs to be in hospital.

14

Delusional, self-righteous pieces of shit have problems with alcohol, too. And sadly, “We will cease to be delusional, self-righteous pieces of shit” isn’t one of the AA promises.

Are there other AA meetings locally that might be populated by more reasonable people? Perhaps you could encourage him to attend one, not based on the premise that his group has the wrong idea, but on the premise that more AA meetings = good. If it’s a better group, maybe he’ll come around to their way of thinking instead. If it isn’t, it’s still better than sitting around, shaking, and contemplating suicide.

15

I went directly to a hospital, by way of calling the police and asking them to help me. The ambulance was at my door (as were the cops) mere moments after the initial call. They put me on meds in the hospital to help the withdrawl, although they aren’t the kind of ‘dope pills’ one would expect. There is nothing wrong with getting the help you need to get where you need to go.

There are AA groups that are “puritan” and there are others that are more realistic. And you never know what you’re going to get until you walk into the room with them.

I stopped going when, for the umpteenth time, I sat and listened to a guy with 7+ years sober bitching and moaning about how he envied a guy at a party who was passed out in his own vomit. Nice healthy sobriety you got there, buddy.

At AA, they tell you, “take what you need and leave the rest behind”. I’d say he needs to leave this particular group of people (collective) behind and go to the nearest hospital. Hopefully, they will be able to get him the treatment he needs.

16

I have a difficult time understanding how a whole room full of ex-drinkers cannot know this. I realize there are degrees of alcoholism, but you’d think *someone * would understand that the DTs are a serious situation that needs medical attention. Where does your friend live? There’s got to be someone who understands.

17

I agree, and I’m mystified. I’ve known a lot of drunks with varying lengths of sobriety, and I’ve never known any that thought hospitalization or medication was a bad thing. This is not an “AA thing” in my experience. This sounds like something from Children of the Corn.

18

Some doctors will not give out any drugs to a patient in detox due to potential complications. I’m not a doctor so I can’t elaborate as to why. Your friend is going to go through some rough shit right now, and that’s a given. Contemplating suicide is natural when someone is in that much pain. I know you’re pissed off, but your anger is misplaced.

Best of luck to your friend.

19

I’ve heard conflicting stories about 12-step programs.

An aquaintance that was in Narcotics Anonymous lost her six months of sobriety token because she took an aspirin. That strikes me as absolute bullshit.

I’ve also seen it help people who have hit ‘rock-bottom’, and literally saved their lives.

20

That is way over the top, I wonder if there is any way she could have appealed that decision? An aspirin?! So, if she needed anti-biotics would they say the same? What if she was in a horrible carwreck, and pain medication was necessary for her healing process, and it was given to her in an IV while she was unconcious? That’s messed up.