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Tias posted:I have personally talked with at thousands of alcoholics, junkies, overeaters, terminally codependent and sex addicts who got permanently clean using the steps, and our own estimates( because we don't keep rolls) puts the numbers at at least 10 million recovered. Yep, there's definitely no outcome measures to addiction treatment. Definitely nothing like 10 year mortality or 5 year relapse or addiction related convictions. It's impossible to measure which is why those non-existent measures show statistically identical results to people electing to go cold turkey, and substantially inferior results to getting therapy. Also, consider homeopathic medicine for your cancer, because I've met several people at my homeopathic clinic who got better.
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Dec 19, 2017 20:41
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| # ? May 12, 2024 22:39 |
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AA is just one of many different methods for getting clean, all of which work based on the same fundamental rule - the addict has to want to change some people need therapy. some people need to test their will. some people need group support structures
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Dec 19, 2017 20:46
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AA founder guy also asked a Ouija board about starting the organization. I mean talk about LOL.
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Dec 19, 2017 20:54
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Tias posted:AA is not an explicitly christian organization. If it upsets you to talk about its past and a huge portion of its present, well too bad for you..
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Dec 19, 2017 21:44
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Your higher power can be a rock* (As long as that rock is named yaweh and rules the heavens and the Earth)
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Dec 20, 2017 00:01
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The less explicitly Christian thing is definitely a more modern development. Bill W was big into the whole salvation through Christ thing
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Dec 20, 2017 00:33
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chitoryu12 posted:Which parts are you referring to? I've never actually worn a Nazi uniform so I'm not sure how they feel. Nazi uniforms weren't meant to be worn in the field, it would be like suggesting the USMC's dress blues are meant for combat. Heer uniforms, even in the early part of the war where much more practical, just a tunic and trousers like the other armies. It wasn't the level of WW1 France where they insisted that the "red pantalooons were France!' and let their troops run around looking like a popsicle. But the uniforms did exactly what they were trying to do, make the Nazis look cool, and it worked. Nazi Germany was a nation in uniform, which worked hand in hand with the symbololgy and propaganda that the population was fed. Facisim is in part the aestheticism of politics, don't ask why just look at this statue! The funny ting about AA is that there was an organization a century earlier that was basically the same called the Washingtonians, they were basically the same.
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Dec 20, 2017 03:48
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twistedmentat posted:Nazi uniforms weren't meant to be worn in the field, it would be like suggesting the USMC's dress blues are meant for combat. I was just asking because I have a lot of familiarity with what the Wehrmacht uniforms looked like, and none of them seemed terrible. I wasn't sure if this was about to be a lesson in how their Sam Browne belt was actually slightly off-spec from the original British design and thus squeezed their testicles when they raised their right arm or something.
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Dec 20, 2017 20:18
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You almost feel bad for Germany: you have a young empire trying to be cool and no one gives them respect. Unfortunately it ends with Russian blood orgies, raping Nazi corpses https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hs8_9o_Osmo Lurks Morington fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Dec 21, 2017 |
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Dec 21, 2017 03:34
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chitoryu12 posted:I was just asking because I have a lot of familiarity with what the Wehrmacht uniforms . *Not including the SA or SS which were party, not state, organs. Rent-A-Cop fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Dec 21, 2017 |
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Dec 21, 2017 06:00
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Lurks Morington posted:You almost feel bad for Germany: you have a young empire trying to be cool and no one gives them respect. Unfortunately it ends with Russian blood orgies, raping Nazi corpses you're a really weird person in every thread i see you in. are you alright? are you getting help?
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Dec 22, 2017 01:36
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Re Nazi chat: this video examination of Triumph of the Will seems very appropriate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ1Qm1Z_D7w
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Dec 22, 2017 09:49
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As I studied Nazi Germany in university, I've seen a lot of their films, and Pride of a Nation is pretty spot on to what they produced. Though something like Uncle Kruger can be viewed as a movie, their "documentaries" are really creepy in the way they dehumanize the Nazis enemies, but what they say is not far from how many people would portray people of colour or gays or basically anyone who the Right wants to scapegoat. So Steven Segal has written a book, with a forward by Sheriff Joe. This twitter thread points out all you need to know about it https://twitter.com/iAmTheWarax/status/943665409865207808
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Dec 22, 2017 12:31
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Somewhere out there, an aspiring YA fantasy author is swearing furiously as they edit their manuscript because noted connoisseur of his own farts Steven Seagal beat them to their title
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Dec 22, 2017 13:07
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 well I'm sold
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Dec 22, 2017 15:37
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twistedmentat posted:As I studied Nazi Germany in university, I've seen a lot of their films, and Pride of a Nation is pretty spot on to what they produced. Though something like Uncle Kruger can be viewed as a movie, their "documentaries" are really creepy in the way they dehumanize the Nazis enemies, but what they say is not far from how many people would portray people of colour or gays or basically anyone who the Right wants to scapegoat. Did you see Quex during your studies? I've always been fascinated by the HJ and as it was a film that really pushed the death cult mindset I've always been curious about it.
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Dec 22, 2017 15:55
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Polygynous posted:
 Toblerone Triangular has returned, as the prophecy foretold! Goon Danton fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Dec 22, 2017 |
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Dec 22, 2017 16:00
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No matter how often I see it, people treating the US Constitution like a goddamned holy book never stops being creepy.
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Dec 22, 2017 16:17
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Baka-nin posted:Re Nazi chat: this video examination of Triumph of the Will seems very appropriate. There's also a great book out there called Hitler And The Power Of Aesthetics that focuses on both Hitler's personal artistic preferences and those the Nazi government enforced from light opera to the design of Nazi resorts.
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Dec 22, 2017 16:48
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Renaissance Spam posted:Did you see Quex during your studies? I've always been fascinated by the HJ and as it was a film that really pushed the death cult mindset I've always been curious about it. I had to look that up, and I think it was mentioned, but I never saw it to my relocation. The funny thing is switch a few words around, and it could easily be one of those Christian movies, like replace community with Atheist, or Science, but the kid is lured away from that by the Christians who seem to having more fun! Kevin Sorbo plays the abusive dad.
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Dec 23, 2017 06:32
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Keeshhound posted:No matter how often I see it, people treating the US Constitution like a goddamned holy book never stops being creepy. we'd be in a lot better shape if people just treated it like a normal government document.
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Dec 23, 2017 15:12
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Groovelord Neato posted:we'd be in a lot better shape if people just treated it like a normal government document. For every amendment we add, we have to repeal two others!
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Dec 23, 2017 16:19
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ikanreed posted:Yep, there's definitely no outcome measures to addiction treatment. It must be hard being so bad at thinking, but I'll bite: The issue is not that you can't measure the efficiency of a method, it's that you can't tie the AA method to the measurements, because we don't keep membership rolls or admit membership to anyone but our groupmates and personal phys. But sure, keep making poo poo up if it gives you a kick.
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Dec 24, 2017 23:43
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AA actually fits in this thread really well since its defenders use debate tactics that are basically indistinguishable from those of Scientologists or homeopaths. On the plus side there's free coffee and the ability to take advantage of vulnerable women via the 13th step.
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Dec 25, 2017 00:00
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Groovelord Neato posted:we'd be in a lot better shape if people just treated it like a normal government document. Or just actually read the loving thing, but I repeat myself.
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Dec 25, 2017 00:06
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moller posted:AA actually fits in this thread really well since its defenders use debate tactics that are basically indistinguishable from those of Scientologists or homeopaths. It's odd because Americans who have been in AA don't usually get this... defensive about it. A lot of them are perfectly willing to admit that it doesn't work for most people, and don't weasel around with "well you can't test it!".
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Dec 25, 2017 03:20
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Tias posted:It must be hard being so bad at thinking, but I'll bite: It's late and I don't have good links collected, but I read a ton about this a long time ago when I was into psychology and here are the impressions I walked away with. Apologies, there may be inaccuracies in here. It's been years since I dived into this and I only did like a quick ~10 minute refresher before writing this post. Re testing AA: - Most studies on AA allow people to self-select into whether they get AA vs control, then rely on self-reported info from AA facilitators. These studies show that AA works. - In particular, AA facilitators usually undercount people who relapse because relapsing counts as not following the program. Also, people who relapse frequently stopped attending AA meetings, things like that. Effectively, people who relapse are undercounted in most studies of AA. - A real study wouldn't let people self-select into whether they got AA or not and wouldn't exclude people based on whether they failed to follow 'the program.' Example: if you were testing a cancer drug and excluded everyone who died of cancer because they didn't compete the course of drugs, your study would be ridiculed. - Some studies have randomized whether people get exposed to AA vs no treatment vs a non-faith-based group treatment. These studies didn't retroactively exclude people who relapsed or stopped attending meetings. Some were set in institutional situations where patients didn't have a choice about whether to keep attending meetings. - None of those randomized studies have really shown that AA is great. Studies prior to the 00s are pretty unkind to it and find it works about as well as no treatment, but also frequently find nasty things like that AA members have a higher suicide rate than the general public. (NOTE: I suspect I'm misremembering this one, but my point is that there's little evidence AA is good, not that there's tons of evidence AA is bad.) - There are apparently some more recent studies that found some positive short-term effects, but I haven't read them so I really don't feel comfortable talking about them. There aren't any that found positive long-term effects, which is at odds with AA's claim that AA prevents relapses. - Usually bad quality of research on X indicates that X is a fringe, crankish thing, but AA is hard to research. More studies are needed, but studies involving a large number of people doing a complicated trial over a long period of time are really uncommon because they cost so much. Usually you run an experiment because you have a good reason to believe your guess might be proven right. There's no good psych reason faith-based AA would work better than a strictly-secular group treatment plan like SMART, but there's a good psych reason to think that group treatment plans like AA could be better than solo cold turkey. - But evidence doesn't say they are and many therapists just prescribe solo treatment like CBT. - It's possible that AA is actually good and some other variable is confusing the data: maybe there's a population that recovers more often in AA than in conventional treatment, so the numbers just kinda even out in that population's case. But I don't think this conclusion falls out of the statistics we have right now. - People are really good at coming up for false explanations of why they did things, and AA strongly encourages you to write stories about your past. It's likely some AA people say that they were hopeless before AA because that's the narrative AA was pushing them into. This isn't unusual and it's not necessarily bad: Christianity encourages people to tell the same story about themselves. A lot of organizations develop narratives like this as part of their folklore. It means people's personal opinions about AA are less likely to be objective though. Re AA culture: - AA is not an explicitly Christian organization. It's an offshoot of the Oxford Group, which was a religious organization with some Christian trappings but not a lot of Christian theology. - A lot of AA meetings run a bait and switch -- you're told to name your own higher power and that it's fine to be an atheist, but a lot of groups don't like atheists and the higher power has to have attributes that only make sense for a monotheistic deity. - The guys who ran the Oxford Group were not good dudes. Bill Wilson was also a bad dude and a hypocrite. (This doesn't mean his methodology doesn't work, but IIRC he used drugs a lot and drank occasionally up until his death, so it probably didn't work for him.) - AA defenders are, for whatever reason, crazy hostile to AA detractors online, and they have a nasty habit of googling AA articles and divebombing them on masse. Basically every source I read that was critical of AA got bombed by people who went past normal criticism and straight into threats and insults. This really does remind me of Scientology, and it creeps me out a lot. EDITS: my grammar is horrible at 2 AM, clarified some claims Krotera fucked around with this message at 05:15 on Dec 28, 2017 |
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Dec 26, 2017 10:54
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"This organization deliberately obfuscates attempts to test its efficacy but I am sure it's good" is not exactly a great standard. Assuming it's effective without evidence because you're personally invested in it, is making poo poo up.
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Dec 27, 2017 20:27
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That sounds like something a detractor would say
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Dec 27, 2017 20:30
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Keeshhound posted:No matter how often I see it, people treating the US Constitution like a goddamned holy book never stops being creepy. Better than a religious document from centuries ago. Like, if we're going to allow past humans dictate how we live at least it's on the premise of "be decent to each other" as opposed to" hate all who don't worship what this book says."
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Dec 27, 2017 21:04
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I think a fair few people would disagree that the US constitution is an effective method of ensuring that, though. Not least the people who felt it necessary to amend it.
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Dec 27, 2017 21:08
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OwlFancier posted:"This organization deliberately obfuscates attempts to test its efficacy but I am sure it's good" is not exactly a great standard. I want to be nice to AA because it's the kind of thing that would be hard to test, but I think the reasons it got so prevalent have nothing to do with whether it works. One big reason is probably that it's super moralistic and vaguely religious and society likes having an excuse to be super moralistic about drugs. It also makes unrealistic claims that people believe: example, a center in town claims it has an 80% success rate and from what I can tell that's based totally on self-reported data taken after excluding most of the people who relapse. It also has a really cultish fanbase, like I said -- that's not everyone, but many of the people who like AA like it to a creepy extent. People who act like that have probably made it appear more popular than it is. Last reason: there are a lot of AA fans in academia, psychology and the legal system who push really hard for it despite the lack of evidence, and there are many places where a DUI first-offense commonly gets you sentenced to AA meetings, which probably boosts membership numbers. There are probably even more reasons, and a lot of them are probably historical, but we can probably eliminate "AA makes psychological sense" (it doesn't) and "AA works better than the alternatives" (statistics consistently fail to show this) as reasons why it got popular, and I think all these other explanations have a history of being true for multilevel marketing and other religious organizations. You can find most of the above characteristics in ex. Herbalife, The People's Temple, Synanon, "tough love" summer camps, and those institutions usually stay well-respected for a while before society turns on them. Krotera fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Dec 28, 2017 |
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Dec 28, 2017 05:30
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I mean there's a pretty immediate reason why a program that takes vulnerable people, tells them they're poo poo and useless and can't help themselves but if they surrender their sense of agency then they'll be much better, might have a weird culty following among the people it doesn't kill.
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Dec 28, 2017 07:34
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Hey who wants to see a guy who sounds just like Patton Oswalt give a 2 and a half hour presentation on how he found numeroology in the Bible and how it proves the JFK assassination, 9/11, and the destruction of the tower of babel are all linked together? You all do, of course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rHlyffuhSA
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Jan 7, 2018 01:26
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no thank you do you have a copy of Groundhog Day that I can rent instead? If not then I'd like to cancel my membership with this Blockbuster
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Jan 7, 2018 01:28
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Polygynous posted:
Uglycat?
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Jan 7, 2018 03:43
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In case it helps anyone that hasnt heard of it: When AA Doesn't Work For You: Rational Steps to Quitting Alcohol by Albert Ellis https://www.amazon.com/When-AA-Doesnt-Work-You/dp/0942637534 quote:Albert Ellis (September 27, 1913 – July 24, 2007) was an American psychologist who in 1955 developed Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT). He held MA and PhD degrees in clinical psychology from Columbia University and the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP). He also founded and was the President of the New York City-based Albert Ellis Institute for decades. He is generally considered to be one of the originators of the cognitive revolutionary paradigm shift in psychotherapy and one of the founders of cognitive-behavioral therapies. quote:According to the authors, the irrational thoughts and beliefs of the alcoholic--as opposed to the concept of "powerlessness" taught by Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)--contribute greatly to alcoholism. Recognizing that AA may not work for everyone, they present a form of cognitive therapy known as Rational Emotive Therapy (RET). In RET, the alcoholic's irrational beliefs about drinking are consistently flushed out, challenged, and replaced with more rational ones. The authors also address "stinking thinking," a phrase coined by AA to describe the negative thoughts that often lead to relapse. Exercises in positive self-talk, creative imagery, and daily self-care are included. The ideas presented are similar to those found in a growing number of titles that offer alternatives to AA, including Jack Trimpey's The Small Book: Revolutionary Alternatives for Overcoming Alcohol and Drug Dependence (Delacorte, 1991). However, the information may be more beneficial when coupled with professional guidance.
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Jan 8, 2018 01:52
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This has been shared in several internet review threads. Its long but its an incredibly well researched debunking of the Left Behind franchise and its religious/cultural/political foundations and attendant conspiracy theory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRxN1DXmSdA
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Jan 20, 2018 16:07
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i've never actually seen much of the movies - what the gently caress were they thinking with that casting of nicolae carpathia? that's the name for a tall suave dude with jet black hair not a brunette wearing his dad's suit.
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Jan 20, 2018 18:29
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| # ? May 12, 2024 22:39 |
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Lugubrious! posted:So I guess holocaust denial is now in the conspiracy theory wheelhouse of spiritual new age guys. I just had to spend several agonizing days convincing several of them in my immediate community that Just keep working on it. I had a heap of these in my outer fringe of facebook friends, and just patiently going through the isues with them most have shaken that poo poo out of their ears by now. And those that refused to be reasoned with, I just kicked em off my wall
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Jan 21, 2018 01:42
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