Re: Web broadcast: Predatory behavior at AA meetings

Ed <Saywhat@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message:
Gt1Zh.232557$Pi4.53278@xxxxxxxxxxxx,

And you know this, HOW?????????????????????????????




"Juba" <juba@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:st567.lcj.17.1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Bill Wilson, one of the founders of AA was notorious for trolling AA
meetings for vulnerable
young women. No doubt other people have been doing the same thing.


I did a lot of research for an article I wrote on Bill Wilson. You can
read it here: http://www.agilewriter.com/Biography/Billwilson.htm

Do a Google search on Bill + Wilson + womanizer
http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1B2GGGL_enUS177&hl=en&q=bill+wilson+womanizer&btnG=Google+Search
and you'll see that it is common knowledge

And here's an article by Radley Balko, a policy analyst with the Cato
Institute that talks about how Wilson, on his deathbed and dying of
cancer, asked for and was denied a couple of shots of whiskey. I wish I
had written that article too, because it illustrates, "the kind of
zero-tolerance, win-at-all-costs thinking that motivates our 30-year war
on drugs" and "that causes us to put a higher priority on preserving the
purity of Bill Wilson's legacy than to granting a dying man the small
comfort in a shot of whiskey."

------------------------------------------

On May 3, the Washington Post's David Von Drehle wrote a Style Section
profile of Susan Cheever, biographer of Alcoholics Anonymous founder
Bill Wilson. In Drehle's article, we learn that as Wilson was dying of
emphysema, the man who has inspired millions to kick the bottle, asked
his caretakers for three shots of whiskey. Over his last days, he asked
three more times for a drink. He was never given one.

Cheever says she was "shocked and horrified" that Wilson would want
whiskey on his deathbed, and that her "blood ran cold" when she read of
his request in the nurses' logs of the last days of his life. Though she
doesn't say so explicitly, the implication is that Cheever -- and I
would imagine a good percentage of people who read Drehle's article --
took relief in the fact that the man who founded Alcoholics Anonymous
remained clean and sober to the very end.

I don't know why Bill Wilson was denied those three shots of whiskey.
Perhaps alcohol would have reacted poorly with the medication he was on.
Perhaps it was against the policy of the hospital or medical center
where he was staying. Whatever the case, I'm not at all shocked or
horrified that Bill Wilson asked for whiskey as he was dying. But I am
saddened that a dying man was denied one of the few things that may have
given him some comfort. And I find it even sadder that anyone would be
relieved to hear he was denied that final drink.

There are a couple of ways of looking at drug addiction. One way calls
for rehabilitation when a person's craving for a substance begins to
take a toll on his health, his job, his mood, and/or on those around
him. That is, drug or alcohol use only becomes a problem when -- well --
when it actually becomes a problem.

The other way looks at overcoming drug and alcohol addiction as an end
unto itself. There are no "functional" or "recreational" users. Drug and
alcohol use ought to be fought at every turn. Overcoming the craving for
a drink, or the urge for a hit, is always a victory, even if
rehabilitation wreaks greater costs on the user and society than
continued use.

It's this latter approach to drug and alcohol use that causes us to put
a higher priority on preserving the purity of Bill Wilson's legacy than
to granting a dying man the small comfort in a shot of whiskey.

It's also the kind of zero-tolerance, win-at-all-costs thinking that
motivates our 30-year war on drugs.

Last month, Jacob Sullum wrote an article for Reason magazine's Web site
about Richard Paey, a 45-year-old father of three in constant, chronic
pain from a car accident, back surgery, and multiple sclerosis. Unable
to find a doctor after moving to Florida, Paey covertly obtained the
painkillers he needed for relief. Because the painkillers contained
oxycodone (the drug war's latest fashionable target), and because Paey
obtained more than 28 grams of the drug (about 60 pills), he was
arrested last March for drug trafficking. Paey was tried and convicted.
Though both prosecutors and jury conceded that Paey wasn't a dealer,
their hands were tied by uncompromising drug war policy. He was
sentenced to 25 years in prison.

In September 2002, federal agents raided a Santa Cruz, California
hospice where many of the terminally ill patients smoke marijuana
cigarettes to alleviate their pain. Agents pointed their guns at the
head of Suzanne Pfeil, an elderly post-polio patient, and demanded that
she get up from her bed. She couldn't. She's crippled. They settled on
handcuffing her to the bed for over an hour, while they raided the
hospice's medicine cabinets and files for evidence of medicinal
marijuana use. DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson insisted the agents were
only doing their job: enforcing federal controlled substance laws.

The same mindset that finds a symbolic victory over alcoholism more
important than a deathbed drink for a sick man can see fit to justify a
25-year prison term for an oxycodone-using MS sufferer and handcuffing
an elderly post-polio marijuana user to her bed at the point of a gun.

It's the mindset that says victory over drug addiction is an end unto
itself, regardless of method, costs, or consequences. It's a mindset
that fails to consider, for example, that no kid stops or starts smoking
marijuana because federal agents do or don't raid convalescent centers
in California; that no one's decision to lubricate life's monotonies
with Oxycontin is based on whether or not Florida prosecutors decide to
pursue distribution charges against an MS patient.

Likewise, the millions of people who have benefited from Bill Wilson's
Alcoholics Anonymous program aren't going to go back on the bottle upon
learning that Wilson asked for booze in his final days.

And it's tough to see how that would be any different if he'd actually
gotten his "last call."
----------------------------------------------

--
Juba
www.masterjuba.com


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