A Very Rude Take on AA's 12-Steps

The original Twelve Steps as published by Alcoholics Anonymous, and why they cannot be followed even if you wanted to …

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable

Powerless? you got to the meeting. And unmanageable compared to what? – you keep forgetting to get an oil change, or can't stop beating your spouse?

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
This assumes it was insane to drink in the first place, an extremely dubious assumption .... otherwise “self-medicating” wouldn't be intelligible. Capitalism is a power higher than ourselves, and so is widespread superstition, not to say the weather, the second law of thermodynamics, and the porn industry.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him

Wait? What “will”? I thought our unmanageable lives made us helpless? There is no evidence that God, i.e. “him” even exists, much less she, it, they, them is in any position or has the inclination to handle anything we turn over for day-to-day operations.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves

As long as you do not make a searching and fearless inventory of whether the steps make sense. We've been told already what to search for: our helplessness, its terrible effects on our loved ones, and for some personal understanding of an entity named as God who it may take a very long search indeed to discover. No one would be an alcoholic unless this level of self-assessment was too painful to undertake in the first place. It amounts to a required “confession” which might be helpful to some or many or might not. Moral Inventory? – On any disease model of breaking a leg while skateboarding, would it be necessary to inventory any moral aspects of the symptoms and injuries caused? Is there a moral component to losing your balance? With genetic or pathogenic-driven diseases, there is rarely if ever a moral component. Even with AIDS and lung cancer, unprotected sex doesn't give you AIDS, the virus does, and smoking doesn't give you cancer “morally,” your body's susceptibility to lethal cell mutation does. If AIDS and lung cancer had cures, unprotected sex and cigarette smoking would cease to be causal factors, much less moral factors vis a vis their present consequences.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs

No philosophy or religion can agree on the “exact nature” of human wrongs even in the abstract, so blabbing to others about your wrongs will almost always be providing inaccurate information. Also, God is supposed to be aware of what we think, so its redundant to “admit” anything to them, it, she, they.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character

 If alcoholism is in remotely analogous to a disease, character defects cannot have anything to do with its course. What does being “ready” mean if (a) there is no God, and (b) any God(s) are often defined as having the ability to intervene – by say removing character defects – regardless of our being “ready” for it. Is being credulous about a nonsensical system of alcoholism treatment a character defect? And if it were, wouldn't that mean, this step alerts us to be ready to quit meetings at the whim of God(s)?

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings

We have shortcomings whether we like it or not. They are numerous and varied. For all we know some may be there for a reason. And why “humbly” -- fake humility (the biggest category of this trait) is not just dishonest and deceptive, it's worse than alcoholism. It's much safer to booze than to pretend to be humble. If the step means “risk recognizing your inherent frailty and notice it in others too, so that you stand a chance to activate innate and inherent compassion within your self,” why not say this.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all

The concept of “amends” is absurd. Any tragic thing we've done that significantly harmed another, can never be made up for. Where are people suppose to turn themselves in to serve their penitence? Can money do the trick? List of “all” we've harmed – that'll be a cinch, do we have to jot down the name of every sweatshop worker in Harbin we exploited when, drunk one night, we bought a T-shirt made in China? How do we know for sure, that those in our family or circle of friends aren't to blame for driving us to drink? How on earth will we be able to tell the difference between the harm we did due to being human versus due to being drunk and human? Can we be absolutely sure, we would not have done less harm “sober” than drunk in every case? Get out your Chinese manufactured hairshirts for this impossible step

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others

Since you cannot in principle make amends for anything significant, this step is nutterly useless; if the infraction wasn’t big enough to be unnameable to making amends, then the harmed have probably or might well have forgiven the trespass already.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it

Nervously keep checking for character defects, annoying habits, inadvertent slights, and anything that might conceivably upset others – without regard to whether they have a basis to be offended, harmed, or annoyed. Great idea! Keep internalizing that critical parent. Admitting when you make a mistake is always a good idea – it cannot have much to do with booze. In fact, it can be easier to admit when you're wrong when you're inebriated.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out

Waste time with useless ritual, mirroring rather than contradicting one of the soothing and pleasant aspects of drinking .... brilliant. We have no “conscious” contact with God. If any contact exists, it coming from the other direction. Knowledge of his will? Power to carry it out? What if he wants you to drink and release enough inner psychic strangulation so that you can write world famous poetry?

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs

Not much of an awakening to reckon compassion and fellowship might help people stop over-boozing – as it might help human beings do anything. I wouldn't describe importing religious shame and self-shaming, original sin, confession, absolution, penitence, even indulgence sales of a sort, and protestations of faith into the system as an awakening

If anyone thinks adhering to the soul-destroying doctrines of Christianity more thoroughly and rigidly can help people reduce or stop wanting and then having a gulp of booze, they are denying the sliver of free will which is almost surely needed to reduce or stop their drinking. If some concept of "grace" provides this nugget of will, then people are denying themselves the credit for a reasonably tough accomplishment. If my analysis holds, adherence or use of or belief in the 12-Steps will hurt a person's chance to recover, and balancing that with the positive effects of the compassion and fellowship that can exist at the meetings, you'd expect AA to do no better or worse than any other system. And indeed that prediction is what the record reflects. In turn this implies that if the shaming and self-denialist aspects of the program were dropped from the ritual of meetings there would be some non-trivial chance the program would become more helpful to people in distress.

Incarceration & Mental Health Care Treatment

As we move into an epoch of increasing awareness of mental illness and indeed higher incidents of same, we are confronted with a gut-check test of our commitment to two features of fundamental human rights, namely, the concept of self-determination and the idea that society and the State do not own persons or citizens but instead that people own their bodies.

When it comes to physical illnesses – from cancer, MS, and AIDS to an array of non-life-threatening ailments – our right to bodily integrity means individuals have a constitutional right to refuse medical treatment. See Curzon v. Diretor, MDH:

It is a well-established rule of general law ... that it is the patient, not the physician, who ultimately decides if treatment - any treatment - is to be given at all... The rule has never been qualified in its application by either the nature or purpose of the treatment, or the gravity of the consequences of acceding to or foregoing it... he rationale of this rule lies in the fact that every competent adult has the right to forego treatment, or even cure, if it entails what for him are intolerable consequences or risks, however unwise his sense of values may be to others. Curzon, 497 U.S. 261,307[internal citations and quotations omitted]

These rules and legal principles do not apply to mental illness. The right to refuse treatment is severely truncated. And this is obvious when you consider the existence of “involuntary commitment,” which almost by definition betrays the idea that sufficiently competent persons get to make the call.

You might believe that only people who are not competent to make a free and informed decision about their treatment can be incarcerated involuntarily in a mental hospital and forced to undergo treatment. The truth is otherwise. And here's why:

Thousands of people each year who are suffering from severe depression and/or some type of Bi-Polar condition find themselves experiencing the intrusion of serious suicidal thoughts and check themselves “voluntarily” into the hospital because they are afraid they might actually kill themselves. The moment they check themselves in their 'voluntary' status becomes irrelevant and if they attempt to leave or reject proscribed treatments they are subject to legal process to transform their incarceration to the status of 'involuntary.' The legal test for determining the legality of holding a person against their will in a locked ward is whether they are a danger to themselves or others.

Because they've checked themselves in as experiencing suicidal ideation it follows they are a danger to themselves and can be kept in the locked ward until the psychiatric professionals are satisfied they have responded to the proscribed chemical regime. This necessarily means they will be locked up past the time they have ceased to be suicidal. It necessarily means they will be held even when they are no longer a danger to themselves.

How do Psychiatrists know a person is experiencing suicidal ideation? Well the patient has to report it. Once they do, they are stuck and if they report they no longer feel suicidal this self-reporting is not given the equivalent credence that the previous self-report was given. They are suicidal until proven non-suicidal. And must remain in the locked ward and cannot refuse any proscribed treatment without engaging in a futile legal process that can result in their commitment being extended by weeks or months.

In any hearing they might be able to get, the hospital Psychiatrist(s) attest to the patient being a danger to themselves or others, and the patient lacks the ability to procure an independent Psychiatric evaluation to contradict the Hospital's doctor(s) and thus the Court has only the testimony of the Hospital's doctor upon which to verify whether the patient is indeed a danger to themselves or anyone else. With the deck so stacked, the patient has little way of prevailing even where it is the case that they are not in fact by the lights of the psychiatric profession a genuine danger to themselves.

Now you might ask why it is that when a person comes into the hospital voluntarily seeking treatment, this act by its nature doesn't indicate two things: competence and a remarkable unlikelihood of their immediate intent to commit suicide. Such a patient is demonstrating good decision making and is attempting to ensure they won't kill themselves – a straightforwardly competent and non-suicidal act.

Finding that irrespective of the 'voluntary' nature of their commitment they are kept in a locked ward and denied any input or decision-making as to their treatment, any desire to leave is not interpreted as a legitimate concern for their own healthy sense of autonomy but is instead explained as evidence of their loss of competence to make the “correct” decisions for themselves, and thus becomes evidence for their incompetence and willingness to be a harm to themselves.

You can walk away from chemotherapy even if the logical if not necessary result will almost certainly be your own death; you can in effect make a suicidal decision about your medical treatment, except if that treatment is ostensibly for being suicidal.

I offer these consideration as a prelude to a further discussion of the moral and political implication of our nation's commitment regime. As time goes on I will attempt to make the case that the Psychiatric profession accepts the idea that incarceration can be part of mental health treatment an equation it should reject. We have greater protections in our law to ensure that accused criminals are not subject to incarceration than we do for people who most certainly have not done anything wrong and who in many cases have done something exactly right by asking for treatment. Incarceration, in other words, can never be consistent with mental health care and treatment as it invades and demeans and disrespects the very thing it hopes to heal – our dignity and value as autonomous and free persons.

Iowa and Beyond

My older brother is a born-again right-wing Biblical-inerrancy Christian fundamentalist. The the good news is that he's not particularly inspired by the GOP Presidential field and seriously doubts that anyone – with the possible exception of Romney – is a plausible actual President.

I concur, but for reasons you can imagine are based on slightly different criteria. With the batshit quotient now out of control as Perry, Bachmann, Gingrich, and Santorum battle to get into the top three or breakout, we need to settle on what Iowa means for the nomination and the campaign.

It's virtually meaningless. You can safely ignore Iowa. The results – no matter what they are – are unlikely to alter the situation. The nomination is Romney's to lose, and the election has been and will be a referendum on the President's leadership.

Romney can do or say pretty much anything and the result will come down to a thumbs up or down on Obama's tenure. Should any of the other GOP contenders win the nomination, that would heighten the contrast between Obama's calm no-drama one-foot-in-front-of-the-other approach, and help him make his own case for the value of his policies and accomplishments.

Another reason to ignore Iowa is that the results of the Caucus over the past several cycles have not been terribly indicative of how the contest for the nomination would go thereafter. The Iowa winner has gone onto the GOP nomination twice in the past five contested races: George HW Bush beat Reagan(!) in 1980 and failed to get the nod; in 1988 Bob Dole and Pat Robertson beat the eventual nominee (Bush I); Dole won in 1996, and George W. won in 2000, and the 2008 nominee came 4^th in Iowa behind Huckabee, Romney, and Fred Thompson (!!)  On the DEM side the Iowa result tracks the eventual outcome more closely, but it's still true Bill Clinton was 4^th in 1992, and Jimmy Carter in 1976 came second to an uncommitted slate.

Unless Bachmann or Santorum wins and Romney is 6^th, the fundamental dynamic of this race is hardening fast: Romney limps to nomination, blabs or flips-flops at will about anything he likes, and awaits public's verdict on Obama's first term.

Obama can lose this election. Never forget that. Mission one is to stand up against the blistering irrationality of the new Repug consensus that defends the abject failure of the Bush tax cuts, and an insane race to the bottom on a wide swath of social and economic issues best described as inspired by Leviticus, Laffer and Looney-Libertarianism. I'd suggest a little Churchillian wisdom: Let us brace ourselves to our duties in this matter, and act so as to ensure that if our Republic lasts for a thousand years, people will still say “offered an easy path upon which to retreat, they held steady to the American dream of creating a more perfect union”

Beach Blanket Bingo: Zionism and Its Queers

Is the Obama administration engaged in a secret plan to promote gay rights as a way to obscure the existence of the military industrial complex and American efforts to prop up its hegemony worldwide? I suppose it would if it could, but the fig leaf of gay marriage and queer equality is paper thin, if it's a leaf at all, and thus unlikely to obscure larger problematics of American power in geopolitics. My friend Sarah Schulman asks a similar type of question in her NYT op-ed piece from last month – Is the Israeli government trying to cover up its on-going violations of Palestinian human rights by promoting its global reputation as a safe heaven for queers? Pinkwashing

All nations attempt to brand and re-brand themselves in world markets in hopes of bolstering trade or tourism. According to Schulman Pinkwashing Documents 26 million dollars was allocated to branding efforts in 2010 by the Israeli government, and in 2011 the Tel Aviv Tourist board spent over 90 million dollars to paint the city as “an international gay vacation destination.”

Well I don't know about you, but I've totally forgotten about the Wall, the refugee camps, the internal check points, and the arbitrary delays in allowing UN aid into the territories. I've even forgotten that Syria, Jordan and Egypt – funded and equipped with Soviet weaponry – have engaged in numerous wars with Israel for the sole purpose of destroying it and expelling its Jewish citizens from the Levant.

Branding is way powerful! I'm thinking about the beach, the hot Mediterranean men, and how civilized, progressive, and democratic Israel really is compared especially to its primitive medieval Arab neighbors who shun modernity if only to ensure half the population feels obliged to go about in cloth bags. I've forgotten about the scenes on TV immediately after September 11, 2001 showing Palestinians dancing and singing in celebration over the success of the attacks. I've forgotten about Arafat being confronted with a genuine statehood deal at Camp David in 2000 and – abjuring the negotiating technicality of making a counter-offer in response – running to the airport stupefied by the rude intrusion of a viable deal into a peace negotiation. I've forgotten the election of Hamas and Hezbollah, and their liberating and inspiring likeness to groups like the Unitarians and Quakers in their struggle to end America's involvement in southeast Asia.

What concerns me is what might happen if the “Arab Street” gets wind of these branding efforts – not only would Israel's macho/warlike image be undermined, but the spread of a Western perversion into a western colonial territory in the region could be interpreted as a further effort to pollute Islamic culture. Hmmm … Israel better be careful, the pinkwashing could actual hurt its image in the Arab world by linking in the public mind a sickening western perversion with Jewish occupation of Arab territory. It might even risk alienating the American Christian right who support Israel's right to exist based on non-queer-friendly suppositions – you know that insane end days scenario-mongering they can't resist. Boy, come to think of it, this pinkwashing “strategy” might not work out so good. In fact, it's kinda dumb as a strategy – it fails to cover up injustices Israel is responsible for, while simultaneously breeding an additional visceral contempt for the nation's legitimacy among the population of its neighbors.

Well, the gay friendly branding is unlikely to resonate very strongly outside LGBT communities targeted (Basically northern and central Europe), and may not reach past the part of our community contemplating a longish beach vacation in the next couple of years.

The branding is definitely gonna get deep into the European work-out and tanning sector of the gay male community – a sector of LGBT “nation” vital in determining how the marginalization of Palestinian human rights struggles will play out in broad geo-political terms.

With the European gay male beach bums and tanning slaves in their pocket, I don't see how Israel can lose.

Sarah Schulman writes that there is a “growing global gay movement against the Israeli occupation,” of which she is a big part as the intellectual rock of the New York group “Queers Against Israeli Apartheid” QuAIA  It seems to me that if pinkwashing does anything more than support Israeli queer tourism, it might work its re-branding magic on the staple of potential recruits to the modestly relevant Israeli Divestment Campaign on American campuses. If this movement loses students, and freshly engaged queer students especially, it cannot hope to expand or perhaps sustain its efforts.

On a one-to-one match up increasingly LGBT-aware youth on college campuses are gonna find the Palestinian Authority's record less than inspiring – Sarah Schulman mentions that homosexuality was decriminalized in the West Bank, and presumably word-count restraints prevented her from pointing out that in the Gaza Strip homosexuality remains a crime. There are credible reports that LGBT persons are subject to Sharia enforced by PA and Hamas, and that queers under Palestinian jurisdiction face being labeled collaborators and are at risk for arbitrary arrest, interrogation, and torture. WIKI

Palestinian liberation has much bigger fish to fry than tackling the long and difficult issue of the status and rights of LGBT people. Funny, the issue presents a kind of microcosm of the journey to a genuine and sustainable peace with Israel – it presents a test of non-violence and of tolerance.

Ready, Set, ... Democracy

Franklin, Mrs. Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Washington, and John Adams didn't know germs cause disease, how electricity works, that bleeding people doesn't help them, how heredity gives you green eyes and makes you left-handed, that the lights in the night sky are suns and galaxies, why nature makes so many different species of plants and animals, how deep the oceans are, how high the atmosphere is ...... they didn't know shit. They were without flush toilets, toasters, phones, refrigeration, virtually all basic medicines, electric lights, pasteurization, most inoculations-vaccines, and transportation faster than a horse & buggy. And they were among the best educated people in a society that did not have public schools, and did have indentured servitude and slavery. It would be well over a century until women could vote. In the midst of this appalling scientific and moral ignorance, somehow the notion of an independent judiciary along with a quasi-popular franchise and non-dictatorial executive and legislative power suggested itself. Most societies nearly 225 years later could do a lot worse than if they just adopted the original Constitution plus the Bill of Rights; and in fact many, most societies do do worse. We do not make any allowances for the scientific and social ignorance of the founders - we bark into the past at them to express our dismay over many issues like universal franchise, slavery and equal citizenship for women. But whilst we gripe and re-play our own past, we do not hold people around the world who are alive and better informed and educated than the founders, to the standard we hold our miserable forebearers. We believe a society has to be "ready" for an independent judiciary and democratically elected leaders. America in 1787 wasn't ready, indeed America in 1987 was barely ready, but we don't blame our immature culture for our failures, we blame the folks who made the mistakes then and now, and we expect better. We KNOW we're entitled to better. Yet this sense of entitlement scares us, we don't dare export it, that might be imposing on others in a culturally imperialistic, non morally relativist fashion. But what's so funny about (1) an Independent Judiciary as the crux that determines if democratic reforms will work or take hold (2) Religious Liberty (3) Free speech and press (4) universal franchise for voting for legislative and executive offices? If societies and nations cannot adopt these basic components, the necessary though not sufficient conditions for social justice, we should not make any excuses for them. Out forebearers did it; and they didn't know shit. New Rule: You don't need to know shit to adopt secular democracy