Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Passages Malibu claims they have the cure for alcoholism via a non-12 Step Method because they do not believe the disease concept of alcoholism.
Do you believe they have invented the cure ?
Interesting. Is that what they say in those commercials? The guy (the owner?) in the commercials strikes me as deceptive and slick. I'm not sure anybody can "invent" a cure for alcoholism, but they may be able to find a recipe and create a program from it. I don't know anything about the Passages Malibu program, but I went from being what seemed to be a full-fledged alcoholic to being able to drink moderately and without a problem. Time will tell the most, but it was a drastic change. I'm not going to write you a book, but you can read my thread that in pieces describes the process and lots of insight:
Interesting. Is that what they say in those commercials? The guy (the owner?) in the commercials strikes me as deceptive and slick. I'm not sure anybody can "invent" a cure for alcoholism, but they may be able to find a recipe and create a program from it. I don't know anything about the Passages Malibu program, but I went from being what seemed to be a full-fledged alcoholic to being able to drink moderately and without a problem. Time will tell the most, but it was a drastic change. I'm not going to write you a book, but you can read my thread that in pieces describes the process and lots of insight:
IMO, you are a "Hard Drinker" If you continue to be able to drink moderately
that will be your proof. If not, your thread offers plentiful suggestions about
the 12 Step solution.
What I want to know is, can they prove you're NOT an alcoholic or addict if you want to go to Passages? The way it's presented on the TV ads, it looks like a spa! I'd love to go away to a nice place like that, but I can't afford a vacation. I do, however, have great health insurance. I could fake addiction since I've known/lived with so many of them.
Alas, my medical department at work would likely send me to South Jersey. Oh well.
Wow. I thought they sounded pretty secular and thus anti-A.A.
The dad sells a book for 20 bucks and I heard the full program was upwards of 80G. All that to say, "Go to an A.A. meeting?"
80K is the minimum for a room in the main house, which isn't as nice or private as the other two houses. The therapists represent a mixture of faiths. AA is recommended fairly strongly, as are other 12-step meetings. Chris Prentiss, the founder and my former boss, has very strong Buddhist leanings.
Some people insist that Passages is a scam. However, clients receive professional therapy of all sorts, to include detoxification under the supervision of a nurse, medication, psychotherapy, marriage and family therapy, massage, acupuncture, aftercare planning and more. The claim that clients are cured of alcoholism, on the other hand, would be very difficult to support statistically. Pax Prentiss, co-founder of Passages, disappeared from work for a few weeks at least once during my time there; the rumor was that he had returned to a treatment facility himself.
...so while you might have thought you were an alcoholic, in reality, you were not. An alcoholic cannot drink moderately.
I do not know. It depends on how you think of it. The line of thought you're displaying is common, especially among AA types, and suggests that once you're an alcoholic, you're always an alcoholic. However, that may not be true. I think that line of thought is designed to prevent people who are actively alcoholics from killing themselves and a basis for strongly suggesting the easier way out - total abstinence. I don't think active alcoholics can correct their drinking and I don't think they'll have success going back to the same approach they were taking before, even after a period of abstinence. It takes experience, education, lots of introspection, and taking a few steps back and really evaluating your situation, along with seeing alcohol in a new light and taking a totally different approach to drinking - at least that's what it took for me. Oh, and while I learned a lot from AA, letting go and distancing myself from AA seems to have played a large part in my ability to drink normally. I think some cognitive dissonance was occuring with me toward the end and some of the counterproductive (for me) AA rhetoric was still weighing on my mind.
I got some education from attending AA, but also from reading on my own. A lot of the principles I've applied in my life basically mirror those of AA. Anyway, I was what the vast majority of people would consider an alcoholic. I was not able to drink moderately. I was in the vicious cycle of trying to control my drinking. I'd sometimes drink once, maybe twice "successfully" (it wasn't really, it was still drinking alcoholically), but it always ended up the same. I was chasing something that didn't work. I *did* have the phenomenon of craving - which I would decribe as an uncontrollable urge to drink more, more, more, which was set off by the first drink - and during which all I cared about was getting my next drink, and would drink until I was passed out, in jail, or in the hospital. So, the question was "Was I an alcoholic?", and the answer would have been a solid "yes" in the opinion of most.
Now, the physiology of alcoholism is very complex, not solidly understood by science, and there are all kinds of theories. With that said, all alcoholics may not be created equal. Not even all diabetics are. I mean, there are different types of diabetes. The same may be true with alcoholism. So it's possible, even if I was truly an alcoholic, that not every alcoholic can replicate what I've done. Even those whose form of alcoholism was basically identical to mine, I'm not sure everybody has what it takes to succeed. And the last thing I'll say is that while I did experience the phenomenon of craving that was set off almost every time after just 1 drink, which is likely physical reaction, I had a lot of issues in my mind that I had to sort out and get a hold of. There were underlying patterns of negative thinking that drove my drinking, patterns that I'm not sure everybody has the ability to recognize and correct. I think a person's psychology may even drive the phenomenon of craving, even though it's physical reaction, and it may largely be a subconscious process. If I wanted to try, I may be able to still set the phenomenon of craving off in myself. I have a very good idea of how to do it. I have some vague ideas I could expand on about that, but for now I'm going to stop writing.
Good post MOKAN. I believe what you say about yourself is true. You also touched on some important parts of alcoholism which jive with what the first 100 talked about... aka the original A.A. program... aka what's in the actual book.
So I believe it's our job to say to you, "Our hats are off to you." That being said, do you think you could pass the Marty Mann Test? Under my understanding, that's two drinks... regular drinks, every day, for 30 days, and don't skip a day. If you can do that now, then A.A.would say that you are cured. People in most meetings would only conclude that you must not have been alky in the first place... because most A.A. groups/meetings never knew how to qualify a real alky in the first place. My group does. You sound like you were real alky... or a hard drinker very near the line.
The line in my understanding is simply this... the real alky cannot control their booze once they start AND they cannot keep themself from the first one... for long... except for the guy who took 25 years off from drinking, retired and took out his slippers and tried some controlled drinking.
But the hard drinker can be a continuous hard drinker OR a binge-type drinker, but if given sufficient reason, he or she can either moderate the amount and/or stay stopped... whereas the alky can do neither.
Rpc1, thanks for the info. I didn't realize Passages did all that other stuff. Sounds like a good program for many.
Quote:
Originally Posted by McGowdog
The "original" 12 Step process has never used nor have they condoned the "disease" concept. They draw a line between the alcoholic and the different types of drinkers.
Hard drinkers who have not crossed the line into alcoholism can either drink two drinks and stop... OR they can drink and get drunk, but then walk away from booze and stay away from the next first drink... given a sufficiently strong reason.
A real alcoholic cannot do either of the above. They cannot control the amount once they start and they will drink again... usually for some trivial reason like, "I can control it this time. Just watch." or "Maybe if I put some whiskey into milk and drink it on a full stomach." or "I've never drank in Texas before."
The 12 Step process says you can get recovered from alcohol, but not cured. Being recovered puts you into a state of neutrality over booze... a state where you do not even want a drink of booze, as you've found a sufficient substitute.
That Malibu process has a 20 dollar book and an $80,000.00 treatment center.
What they mean by cured, I do not know. Where they draw the line on being an alcoholic, I don't know. Where they draw the line on other drug addictions, I don't know.
I've been sober for going on 7 and a half years. I don't think about what life would be like if I could drink two bourbon and cokes and stopping. That's something I just wouldn't want to fathom. Why would someone want to drink booze and not get drunk? To some of you, you don't understand my question. But you might understand this; Why would you want to go snort a line of sweet n low? What's the point?
You don't need to waste your 20 dollars to operate on this reasoning.
I guess if you are cured you should be able to drink like a regular earth person. If a diabetic was cured then he could eat sweets like anyone else and not need to use insulin to maintain healthy blood sugar levels - that's what a cure means IMO.
I'd say Paw is referring to the 80-90% of folks who don't have to worry about whether they drink too much booze or not. The A.A. book refers to trying to "... drink like normal men." Then in the rooms of A.A., folks joke about there being no such thing as normal.
So, it's sort of an inside joke really.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
