Whitney Houston: A Drug Treatment Success Story

Posted on February 21, 2012 by mdunbar

Most everyone will read this title and be instantly horrified or angry. You may be wondering how I can say that a tragic death like that of Whitney Houston is considered a “successful” outcome for drug treatment. But what is truly horrifying is Ms. Houston’s life post treatment, and her subsequent death, fit exactly into an expected and acceptable treatment outcome.

Whether you look into the most common 12-step treatment programs, non-12-step and holistic treatment programs, religiously based drug treatment or any form of addiction counseling, all require the substance user to accept that they have lost control over their thoughts and behaviors; i.e. they are powerless. In fact most drug treatment programs will not allow patients to graduate from their programs without admitting and accepting they have a lifelong disease that renders them powerless over substances.

In many treatment settings patients are asked to look around the room and are told that only 1 in 10 of them will maintain sobriety for any length of time. And worse yet, all are told that they can never recover fully, but instead will remain in a state of perpetual recovery where relapse is common and expected. Not only is this erroneous information stressful for the substance user, but it also provides a ready-made excuse for continued drug and alcohol use problems.

According to multiple sources Whitney Houston attended her first outpatient drug treatment in 2004, and thus began her descent into typical and accepted treatment success: the revolving door. Houston, like the millions of substance users much less notable than she, absolutely accepted her powerlessness and embraced it. She became a living example of the self-fulfilling prophecy created by drug treatment; ‘I must accept that I am powerless; I am powerless over drugs; I have cravings; it’s part of my disease; I can never recover; I must use drugs; I have no power; I want to use drugs; drugs will kill me; I am powerless…’ These ideas are indoctrinated into the drug treatment patient and ruminate around their minds continuously. Treatment providers espouse that if people understand and accept their “disease” that is marked by “powerlessness” that they will then be able to “control” it. What?!? Even the idea itself is convoluted and has now created a culture of ‘Whitney Houstons’ who truly believe they are powerless and can never overcome their problems.

As people who have been labeled addicts continue to use drugs post treatment, (i.e. relapse as referred to by the treatment community), this reinforces the idea in their own minds that they are powerless. While the vast majority of people know they are not “powerless” when they enter their first drug treatment program, most believe they are when they leave. No one ever stops to ask the question, if addiction is a disease and people really are powerless then how do millions of heavy, problem substance users stop using alcohol and drugs or moderate their usage each and every day, and most without any treatment whatsoever? The answer is, they couldn’t possibly, but they do. Teaching Whitney Houston and millions of others like her that they are powerless is a death sentence. Ms. Houston is just one more in a long line of tragic outcomes that drug treatment and the prevailing addiction disease fallacy create.

As we mourn the passing of a truly talented artist, it is most important to understand the real tragedy; that is Ms. Houston was given the wrong information and as a result did exactly as the treatment providers said she would; she kept using drugs. She kept struggling needlessly, when in reality she had the power to change herself all along, and in fact, she was the only one with such power. What is even more tragic and despicable is this same treatment community that gave her the noose that killed her now holds her up as a poster child for the awful ‘disease of addiction’. For them her death is a success on multiple levels as it allows them to continue to disseminate their misinformation that ultimately lines their pockets and keeps substance users dependent forever. What a convenient dichotomy.

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Addiction Treatment and 12-Step in the Media

Posted on October 11, 2011 by mdunbar

You can’t turn on a sit-com, drama series or watch a movie without hearing about someone who is an “alcoholic” going to AA or a drug addict who just got out of another treatment program and must go to meetings. Some of the most popular series of the 21st century have all incorporated this issue into their story lines or have dealt with addiction and 12 step programs in at least one episode. And what is even worse are the plethora of reality shows that exploit those struggling with “addiction.” Between Dr. Phil (who is not a doctor at all), Dr. Drew (whose license should be revoked) and many other charletons who proclaim themselves to be addiction experts the level of misinformation fed to the general population is staggering. This leads to the question, what do people really know about substance use, substance abuse and the so-called disease of addiction?

There is a common misconception that is absolutely pervasive in our culture: that is that there is a disease that takes away our free-will rendering us powerless over thought and action with respect to drinking, drug using, eating, gambling or any number of vices with which people struggle. If there really was a disease like that it would be terrifying, wouldn’t it? Think about it for a moment; it takes away an individual’s free-will and choice. This disease actually takes people hostage. Victims of the disease report that they cannot stop certain behaviors no matter how hard they try; no matter how committed they may be to stopping. Whether the behavior is drinking alcohol, smoking, taking drugs, shopping, sex, watching internet pornography, eating, etc., millions of people believe that there is line peoople cross wherein they lose the power of choice.

While millions may believe this, few have used common sense to ask the question; if this were actually true, then what about the millions of people who struggle then spontaneously stop these behaviors and change their lives? What about the thousands of “crack addicts” who go on a binge on Friday night and show up for work on Monday, not high on crack? What about those who use heroin for 10 years and then one day put it down simply because it no longer fits in with their goals and their lifestyle? You see these are the stories that the addiction treatment community ignores, yet they are the majority.

According to SAHMSA’s Monitoring the Future Surveys heavy drug and alcohol use peaks between 18 and 24 years of age and systematically declines as people age. In other words, people quite literally mature out of heavy substance use. They start their careers and families, and the party lifestyle no longer suits their needs. But there are those few who try to hang on to instant gratification, and they may begin experiencing negative conseqences but still continue those behaviors. Some may try to break free from the cycle of substance use on their own and when they are not successful they seek help, but these people are just a small percentage of the many who do stop on their own.

Why then does the media paint a picture that people literally lose control? The answer is simple and will come as no surprise to anyone…money. The alcohol and drug treatment industry is a multi-billion dollar industry in this country which continues to grow. The New York State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services (OASAS) budget for 2010 was nearly $1 Billion dollars, and this is simply the regulatory agency that oversees treatment centers in New York State. The world famous Betty Ford Center earned nearly $35 Million in revenue in 2010 for their 172 bed facility. And the alleged ”philanthropic” organization Alcoholics Anonoymous World Services, Inc. reported income in 2010 of nearly $10 Million with $1.6 Million reported as pure profit. You see making people dependent is big, big business and those that invested, and continue to invest, in the addiction disease hoax know it.

Perpetuating the notion of powerlessness and disease not only makes money for the drug treatment industry but it also sells billions in medications for the pharmaceutical companies, and now it is a cultural phenonemon that has crept onto our television sets and into our homes, schools and communities. When one dares to question the disease theory even to those with no investment, pop-culture prevails and facts tend to be no match for beliefs. Beliefs whether they are right or wrong are incredibly powerful motivators, and those with strong beliefs often close their minds to alternative points of view. Remember there was a time when everyone believed that the world was flat and if you sailed to the edge you would fall off. Seems absurd now, doesn’t it…

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Watch That First Step; It’s a Doozy!

Posted on August 16, 2011 by mdunbar

“What are you talking about; of course it’s a disease!”  “Once you start drinking you just can’t stop!”   “You must keep going to meetings to stay sober one day at a time!”  “Yes, I go to meetings every day, but this disease is killing me!” “Well, yes, that first drink is a choice…now you are just trying to confuse me!” “Geeze, you really need to get to a meeting!” “I’ve known people with 20 years of sobriety who picked up right where they left off. Why?…because they stopped going to meetings.” “You can never feel too good; that’s a trigger, too!”

I heard all this and more last week during one conversation with a nice man who has been going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for nearly 20 years. He has never put more than a few weeks of sobriety together in all that time but he could quote the Big Book verbatim and knew all the slogans. He said he has done all of the steps over and over again, and he just can’t figure out why he’s not staying sober.  

Like so many others who struggle with alcohol problems, his binge drinking has become more severe during the 20 years he has been going to AA. Now he and his family are concerned he might kill himself or someone else in a blackout. His sister found the St. Jude Retreats online and thought maybe we could help her brother. She showed him the website and encouraged him to call us. And when he did last week, I got the opportunity to talk with another tragic example of how damaging 12 step indoctrination really is to those seeking help.

He has attended traditional alcohol treatment programs multiple times in 20 years, and is convinced that he is one of the few who just can’t get “this simple program [meaning AA].” He is concerned that he is “constitutionally incapable of being honest with himself” [another quote directly from the book Alcoholics Anonymous] so now his thoughts literally go in circles; powerless, insanity, God, AA, powerless, insanity, God, AA. His fellow AA members under the guise of helping him have effectively convinced him that the problem is him and if he would just do the program better, he would succeed. The real irony of our conversation was that he called me for help and throughout our conversation he bestowed the virtues of the AA program while simultaneously admitting he has not succeeded in that program in 20 years.  

Double talk, harsh criticism and judgments, slogans and platitudes, program doctrine and dogma; these are all designed to make people believe they are absolutely powerless without AA. Whether they stay sober or not, members believe AA is the only way and if they can’t seem to get it, it’s because there is something terribly wrong with them, not with the program.

I spent some time in rooms many years ago and I would ask these questions… Do I have a choice to drink or not drink or do I have a disease rendering me powerless over that choice? And if I am powerless, how do I choose not to drink one day at a time? Is it that the first drink is a choice, but the rest are not choices? Is my ‘ism’ doing push-ups in the parking lot, just waiting for a moment of weakness or temptation? Are there triggers I should avoid, or can one pop up on a moment’s notice that will reinstate powerlessness over the first drink? Exactly when and where do my responsibilities end and the disease takes over? And if the answer is, “just don’t drink and go to meetings” how exactly do I just not drink? And if I could figure that out, why do I need meetings? My questions are endless.

12 Step Programs starting with the original, Alcoholics Anonymous, are filled with these inconsistencies and experienced members can talk around them all day long. If you ask too many questions or have an analytical mind at all, you are told, sometimes not so politely, to take the cotton out of your ears and stick it in your mouth! Keep coming back; it works if you work it. And don’t over think it. Then there is one of my personal favorites, keep it simple, stupid. The stupid is added to the end of that slogan for those like me who question everything. When Charlie Sheen said the word, cult, this is exactly what he meant.

This nice man, who asked me so many questions and then expressed his concern for my ongoing sobriety admitted he was intrigued by the St. Jude Retreats philosophy. I gave him some food for thought toward the end of the conversation; I said, “What if the struggles you have had these past 20 years have not been your fault? What if the AA program itself is the problem? And what if, there really is a better way?”

He then asked two really great questions, “If what you are telling me is true then why isn’t everyone doing it? Why hasn’t AA and the 12 step program been systematically replaced?” It’s very simple, paradigms exist to perpetuate themselves, and the disease theory has become a well-entrenched, 100-year-old, socio-cultural paradigm and a multi-billion dollar industry. The not-for-profit organization, AA World Services Inc. reported more than $10,000,000 in revenue last year with $1.6 Million in pure profit. It would seem this is not very much money for a worldwide organization, but they did this selling $10 books and taking donations from AA members. With only a handful of people on payroll and relatively low operating costs, I would say that’s a great year financially during a terrible recession. But that is also a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of drug and alcohol treatment facilities around the country, the multiple government agencies at all levels devoted to the “addiction epidemic”, and pharmaceutical companies whose livelihoods are directly tied to addiction being a chronic, progressive, incurable disease. The money to be made on a pseudo-chronic illness like “addiction” is well into the trillions of dollars.

I assured him that Baldwin Research Institute and the St. Jude Retreats were working diligently to spread the good news that there is no disease that renders people powerless to change their lives; and that anyone and everyone can change when given the right information and the freedom to choose. I then let him know that I was happy to help him anytime, and that he could rest assured I would give him concrete solutions, not platitudes or slogans and I certainly would not judge him as so many had done in AA.

Our conversation took just 20 minutes, and some might think I dread these calls, but in fact, they are the reason I do what I do. We are here (and I am here personally) for those that have been a victim of the indoctrination of learned helplessness as promulgated by 12 step programs and the addiction treatment industry. Hopefully, during our conversation his mind opened just a bit and a seed was planted that he has the power and ability to finally overcome this problem. The real first step in this process is realizing just how powerful you really are.

If you or someone you love is struggling with drug or alcohol problems, you can contact Michelle Dunbar at the St. Jude Retreats by calling 1-888-424-2626. Or to get more information about the St. Jude Program offered at the St. Jude Retreats visit the St. Jude Retreats online at www.soberforever.net.

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Confessions of a Reformed 12-Stepper

Posted on April 19, 2011 by mdunbar

When Michelle asked me to write this article I was a bit nervous about it actually. I’m not a writer, nor am I much of a reader, but I do have extensive experience going to AA meetings. You see 16 years ago at 24 years old I got a DWI and lost my license. It wasn’t just any DWI, I had crashed my car and nearly killed two of my friends. I blew a 0.25 which for me didn’t seem that bad, but to the courts was bad enough to suspend my license for a year and mandate me to 28 days in treatment and three months of AA meetings.

At alcohol rehab I learned about my “disease” and how important it was for me to attend daily meetings and to just take things “one day at a time.” This sounded good to me as I felt as if my future was already looking awful and I just couldn’t face thinking too far ahead. After rehab I continued to go to outpatient treatment and I relapsed more than once. One night after a particularly bad day at work I showed up at a meeting completely hammered. To this day I can’t remember much of that evening, but it was a scene! My sponsor basically took me out of the meeting and brought me to his apartment. He fed me coffee and spent a few hours telling me what a loser I was and how I needed to get my life together. When I told him that AA just wasn’t working for me, he told me, it works if you work it! He then said it was time for me to get a coffee commitment and become more involved with my home group.

For those who don’t know about AA groups, the coffee commitment seems to be reserved for those like me who can’t seem to string more than a few weeks together. So I did it; I became the assistant coffee maker at my home group on Tuesday nights; the current coffee maker was not willing to give up the job. This meant I had to be there a half hour before the meeting started and stay later to clean up.

I kept my commitment for several weeks and before I knew it I had strung 90 days together and my homegroup presented me with my 90-day chip. I felt pretty good about myself and after that meeting a young new guy asked me to be his sponsor. I wasn’t really sure what that meant, but I was pretty honored and said yes. I began to be accepted into the “inner circle” of sober guys in my group. I had a set bunch of meetings that I hit every week and quickly became known around the rooms. I finally felt like I fit in somewhere. It was like high school all over again only this time I was a popular kid. There were a few miserable old timers with a few years sober who were talking sh** about me, saying I was on a pink cloud and stuff, but the truth was, I felt like I was on cloud 9.

Then I met her…she was stunning. She came into my meeting 20 minutes early and it was just myself, her and Jim, the coffeemaker. Jim was right on her like flies on a fresh pile of you know what. Jim sat down with her and they talked quietly. She started to cry. We learned she was mandated to meetings because of a DWI and that she didn’t believe that she was an alcoholic just that she had made a stupid mistake. She was forced to get an evaluation and the counselor had said she was definitely an alcoholic and she was in denial. The courts mandated her to 6 months of outpatient treatment and meetings, and she was facing losing her job because of having to attend treatment.

I kept making coffee all the while watching Jim as other members started trickling into the meeting. I was hoping Jim would introduce her to one of the female members of our group, but he didn’t. He spent the rest of the meeting sitting with her and the two of them left together after the meeting to get coffee. I had never seen Jim act this way before, but we had never had such an attractive, young woman come into the meeting before. Not a single one of the women from our group went up to her at any point during the meeting or after it. When I asked Jim how the coffee date had gone, he said, it was just fine with a snide little chuckle. I didn’t see that girl again for nearly 10 years.

I would like to say that the way Jim behaved with this young woman was rare in the rooms, but that just wasn’t the case. I began to notice more and more women being hit on aggressively in the rooms. I vowed I wouldn’t date anyone in the program, but most people didn’t take that vow. After attending literally several thousand AA meetings over the course of nearly 10 years, I can say that AA truly is just like a single’s bar, with the added problem of immense egos and narcissists seeking a place to become king.

Over the years I became more involved in the AA inner circles as my ego was continuously fed. I was asked to speak at meetings regularly and men and women alike were asking me to sponsor them. AA became all consuming in my life and my parents began to comment that they never saw me anymore. I was not advancing in my career because I was so focused on AA and when I spoke with my sponsor about pulling back and taking a few nights away from meetings to build a my life outside AA, he chastised me and said that was my “stinkin’ thinkin’” coming back to haunt me. I was offered a job as a counselor at a local rehab and was encouraged to take it to “ensure my sobriety” but declined thinking it was wrong to be paid to help people in this way.

Ten years of my life seemed to just pass me by as I lived “one day at a time” and while I stayed sober during that time, I became increasingly depressed and lonely. I had not built any real intimate relationships and still lived with my parents. I wanted to plan for my future; I wanted to finally become an adult. I wanted to meet someone, start a family and reap some of the benefits I was promised through a sober lifestyle, but when and how was I supposed to do that? My parents who were once concerned about my drinking, now were concerned about my obsession with AA and my lack of planning for my future. I then decided it was time to move on with my life, get my own place and begin to truly live again.

As I tried to pull away from a few meetings a week, my mind started to race and I was gripped by terror and self doubt. What if they were right? What if I couldn’t handle planning my future; what if I wasn’t ready to start a relationship with a woman? What if I found myself drunk again? Did I need meetings everyday to stay sober? On one hand that thought seemed crazy but on the other hand it seemed absolutely plausible that missing a meeting would lead me down the path to drunkenness. What if this really was ‘stinkin thinkin’? What if this is exactly how people go back out after years sober? After all that is what I was taught for nearly 10 years, and I had watched countless people leave the rooms only to fall flat on their faces.

It was a cool summer night when I was on my way home from a meeting and stopped by a diner to get something to eat. Remember that girl, the stunning one at the meeting many years earlier? There she was waiting tables. Though I had been there many times I had never seen her there before. I was certain she wouldn’t remember me, and when you see people you have met in the rooms it can be very awkward. She came up to my table and smiled that smile that says, yes I remember you, and she asked if I was alone or  waiting for someone to join me. On a whim I said, what time are you off tonight? Instantly I felt like an idiot, but she took off her name tag, yelled to a man in the back and said, “right now” and sat down. 

Sara and I spent two hours laughing and talking like old friends. She didn’t talk about the night that she had left the meeting with Jim but said her folks had hired a better lawyer and she had gone to a program out of state called the St. Jude Retreats to fulfill her court obligations. There she learned that there was no disease called addiction or alcoholism, and that she could overcome her alcohol problems as well as her emotional problems forever and never have to repeat those same mistakes again. She told me St. Jude’s assured he that she would never have to set foot in one of those awful meetings again, no offense.

As Sara and I started dating, I slowly built more and more confidence to leave the rooms. I was becoming more aware of how women were mistreated at meetings. The young and attractive women were treated especially badly by other women and were preyed upon continuously by the men. I began to question some of the steps and traditions and my eyes became opened to the hideous flaws that existed in this very secretive, secluded organization. I began to research alternatives to AA, and also began to research the possibility of moderate drinking. Sara and I would go to dinner and she would have a glass of wine, and her cheeks would flush and she was radiant. She wasn’t getting drunk, and it was clear she wasn’t an alcoholic just like she had said 10 years before. Then it occurred to me that she and I had nearly the same experience those many years ago, making a stupid, childish choice to drink and drive. I began to think that maybe I wasn’t an alcoholic either; and maybe alcoholism didn’t even exist at all. Once again I felt a grip of anxiety, is this that stinkin’ thinkin’ again, or is it just possible that I was finally growing up? I decided to stop analyzing and go with it. I asked her more and more about her experiences with this strange program she had attended, St. Jude’s. We found they had a home version available to order online and she bought it for me. I didn’t go through the entire text and workbooks but I began reading and was fascinated. Everything they were saying made sense to me and validated so many thoughts I had for so many years. I wasn’t an alcoholic; there was no disease called alcoholism and I absolutely had the power to change my life.

As Sara and I began spending more and more time together for the first time in more than a decade I looked toward a future filled with promise. My old sponsor who had recently relapsed warned me of getting too comfortable; that I was in real danger of picking up right where I had left off just like he did and that the top reasons that people relapse are due to relationship issues and overconfidence. This is when I truly realized that I had to make a clean break and that no one in the rooms would ever approve of me moving on with my life because that was not the purpose of AA. The sole purpose of AA, the organization, is to continue to prosper and grow. That is all. AA, the organization did not care about me; and it certainly hadn’t cared about Sara. While there were a few select people that called to check up on me after I stopped going to meetings, in just a few short weeks the calls stops altogether.

A week before our wedding I ran into a guy from my old home group who me asked how things were going. I could see the concern on his face as I told him about my upcoming wedding, my promotion, and how incredible my life had become since leaving the rooms. I didn’t tell him about the fact that I could now drink socially, but he left me by saying, “Just be careful, man, you know it is possible for things to get too good.”

It’s been five years since I left the rooms and married the girl of my dreams, and I’m here to tell you that things can never get too good, and that there are people just like me who lose many years of their lives lost in a cult called AA. I never went to the St. Jude Retreat House myself, but I could see that Sara’s life was forever changed by her experiences in their program and because of what she learned and has shared with me, my life has changed too. I have learned that there is value to planning your future, and there is value to building intimate relationships outside AA, and there is value to aspiring to lead a normal, happy life.

If you would like information on how to overcome a lifetime “in recovery” once and for all, check out the St. Jude Retreats and the St. Jude Home Program or call 1-888-424-2626.

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