Not so funny when it actually happens to you:
Because of really bad experiences with alcoholics as a child, I am afraid of people who drink. My psychologist and my doctor wrote that down.
When I became seriously ill and could no longer work in my old job, I had to retrain. To do this, you have to go to the German employment office and get an assessment of your strengths and weaknesses, including what your doctor and therapist have to say.
They read the paper from my doctor and my psychologist, but just skimmed over the words and decided that because the word “alcoholic” was there, I must be the alcoholic. They told me that I could get paid retraining and benefits, but only if I attended a therapy group for alcoholics once a week - me, who is afraid of alcoholics because of the abuse I suffered as a child. … I immediately started crying and swore that I had no problem with alcohol, only with alcoholics!
It took 6 months to get someone at the job centre to actually read the papers word for word to find out that me saying “I’m not an alcoholic” was not me being an alcoholic in denial. I got a half-assed apology and my retraining 6 months after I could have started it because of this. Not to mention that every time I refused to go to AA meetings they threatened to take away my benefits and I was in such a bad mental state that I probably would have killed myself without the help of my family. Oh, and my family who tried to intervene were labelled as co-alcoholics, holding me back.
That is terrible and I am so sorry.
They do AA in Germany? I thought that pseudo science was just an American thing.
Group therapy is pseudo-science?
Others have mentioned it, but to elaborate, Alcoholics Anonymous is not merely sitting in a circle and sharing your problems, but a belief system which requires you to submit to a higher power to move forward.
Knew a guy who insisted he wasn’t addicted, but he can’t go a day without attending an AA meeting. 40 years, non stop. Even when in other countries for work, he finds them. Left his own daughters wedding dinner to make it to one.
He runs his own chapter where he lives. He’s had people follow the steps, sure, but some don’t. No matter how successful the latter are, he tears them apart for “not doing it right” and has turned his back on them for not following how he did it.
There is no greater fucking idiot than the one who thinks a social gathering for discussion is subject to the rules of double-blind scientific testing. Watching some arrogant fucking shithead attempting to slander 12-stop programs as “not scientific” is hilarious because OF COURSE IT ISN’T SCIENTIFIC!! IT MAKES NO CLAIMS TO BE.
That’s all fine and dandy until you get court ordered to attend these meetings as if it were a scientifically proven method of quitting drinking. It’d be like doing something bad and then being court ordered to attend church so that you can “gain a moral compass.”
Out of curiosity, where are people being remanded to AA specifically?
Having some experience in those circles. Courts often order “recovery programs” not AA, usually some form outpatient/inpatient group therapy, run by licensed therapists.
In the US, you can have court ordered AA f as punishment for alcoholic related crimes. This is sometimes given as an option over jail time or fines, so the legality is questionable, but people in those situations rarely know their rights or want to extend the court process.
That I agree with…but that’s a criminal justice problem
It makes no claims to be scientific… so it’s measurably worthless?
You seem to be agreeing my dude
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Damn bro rather be me without legs than you with millions you disgust me
You measure these things with surveys and interviews and design statics. AA claims to have success and relapse numbers, but I’d prefer independently run ones. Not everything scientific needs to be or can be a double blind trial.
If it’s measurably, it can be improved. Even if AA works, does it have a better success rate then quitting cold turkey? Even if works, are there things that can be changed to make it work even better?
You’re a very bizarre form of evil.
You sound like you’re in a cult.
Only pussies pull out the “cult” word when they have obviously lost, as evidenced by that EXTREEEEEMELY stupid ‘cold turkey’ bit. Since you clearly know nothing at all about addiction or anything remotely related to it, you can fuck right off into the sun.
And ftr, I haven’t been a part of AA since 2007. Yet all you assholes still claim “cult” when talking out your fucking ass about shit you know nothing about. Fucking morons.
My lord that is absolutely bonkers and I am so sorry for what you had to go through!
I was diagnosed with anorexia because I was 5 kg ‘underweight’ and answered ‘no’ when asked if I had an eating disorder. Answering ‘no’ was apparently the justification for the diagnosis. It’s still on my file 10 years later, despite now being ‘over-weight’ and always having had nominal blood test results. Conveniently, denying you have anorexia is a symptom, and so is asking to have the diagnosis removed, I guess.
This has completely blocked me from receiving medication and treatment, because any physical or pyschological ailment I seek help for gets blamed on ‘my anorexia’ and I’m referred to psychotherapy.
I’m in a similar situation with a bipolar diagnosis. I was diagnosed after speaking with a sketchy psychologist for 20 minutes at best. Apparently thinking you don’t have bipolar disorder is a symptom of bipolar disorder.
Even after working with two other psychologists for well over a year and both diagnosing me with PTSD and that diagnosis perfectly matching my experience, not a single doctor will put that on my medical record. They won’t refer me to appropriate treatment. They won’t change my medication and tell me it works instead of asking.
I’ve been trying to get this fixed since 2008, but I just get shut down immediately after bringing it up. I’m barely getting by due to very poor mental health and everything just keeps getting worse.
Have you talked to a medical malpractice lawyer about your original diagnosis? Most will do an initial consult for free and work on contingency. In this rock-paper-scissor world lawyer beats doctor.
That is so fucked up. I hate the lack of self awareness the medical field has with regard to the impossible situations it puts some patients in.
same with autism (in a social sense not medical).
I believe you when you say you’re not anorexic, or ever had anorexia, but as a 43 year old man, who is 185cm tall, my healthy range is 63-86 kilos.
I am 82 kilos give or take a meal, and if I lost 15 kilos I would be very, very slender, and that would still keep me well in the “healthy” range.
What I’m saying is the healthy range, to me at least, should be taken with a pinch of salt, and it’s shithouse that your diagnosis has vexed you for over ten years.
I don’t drink
Oh, so you don’t like it when other drink then?
Edit: that’s literally the response my buddy gets every single time it comes up, every single time without fail, even from other people who don’t drink.
What the fuck?
Haha yeah it’s weird how NOT drinking is weird. I couldn’t care less what other people do, nor what they think of me; drinking is just no longer appealing to me
No idea why you got downvoted so bad, I guess I did have the benefit of your edit when I read your reply.
Right?
I mean, you teach yourself to drink something that tastes rotten. It impairs your ability to think and accomplish basic tasks. It increases your risk for legal trouble. It can make you vomit and sick the next day. It damages your internal organs, and it costs a ton. Finally, it traps you into needing it.
Yet, it’s the people who DON’T do it who are weird?
Water on top!
I understand most of your point, you do you. But tastes rotten? Only my really bad batches of homebrew have truly tasted rotten. There are many delicious alcohols!
It tastes rotten because it is rotten.
No sir. Sounds like your projecting, are you uncomfortable that I don’t drink alcohol?
Whatever helps you sleep at night.
Oh that’s the booze.
Oof ow my kidneys
Congrats, how many years are you sober?
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“I don’t have time for alcoholism—I’m too busy shooting heroin.”
At least your not a Morman
“My psychiatrist prefers to say that I have a ‘substance use disorder’ and cautions that the old ‘alcoholism’ model isn’t very scientific.”
“I don’t limit myself to just alcohol”
Modern problems require modern solutions.
Fortunately, alcohol is a solution. Unfortunately, far from modern.
Pure Ethanol isn’t a solution it’s a solvent!
Hazy IPAs are no solution at all.
That’s a colloidal suspension, that is.
Seriously! The new model and terminology have been around for a decade or so! Why aren’t more people aware of them yet? throws hands up in frustration
But, having said that, now deny that you have an alcohol use disorder without sounding like you have an alcohol use disorder😏
“I have literally not had alcoholic beverages even once in my life, how would it be possible to become an alcoholic given that?”
You must be a hardcore alcoholic if you had to abstain for that long.
I suppose there’s no way for me to actually know if I’d be particularly susceptible to addiction from it or not, never having tried it
Yeah, same here. I was just making a joking advocatus diaboli argument.
I need some alcohol at least once per month.
Well clearly given your decision, your mother drank with you in the womb and you had fetal alcohol syndrome. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.
Checkmate, atheists.
I drink a lot less now that I have easy access to THC.
This goes for a lot of other bad things, too. “Just to get it out of the way, I am not a child molester”.
To be clear, you’re not a child molestor since you got access to THC right?
I am not certain whether I can safely upvote or the last part is too weird.
Back on Reddit for /r/bestoflegaladvice, you always knew the post was going somewhere when it started with that exact phrase.
Only acoholics actually need to try to convince others that they aren’t alcoholics. Nobody goes up to a person on the street to start aggressively asking if they have a drinking problem.
Any serious questions about how alcohol is affecting your life will quickly demonstrate whether it is is or isn’t a problem, without you ever saying that you don’t have a drinking problem.
Sounds like you have a drinking problem…
I don’t have a drinking problem. I drink, I get drunk, I fall down, no problem!
Seriously, the drinking part isn’t the problem, it’s the not drinking that’s hard for me
The last time i got drunk was two months ago. The time before that was back in January.
The last time you remember getting drunk.
Methinks thou doth protest too much.
It’s pretty easy, actually. I drink around twice a month. No one could credibly accuse me of alcoholism.
Exactly what an alcoholic would say
Notice how they didn’t say how many drinks? I bet its the wildest bender each time, black out drunk, ends up in the drunk tank type situation, so they tell themselves, I need to stop, and they last a week or two and then it happens again, because theyre an alcoholic
I am glad your recovery is going well
I only drink on weekdays ending with ‘y’
I dodged it as a youth, no point starting it now.
I don’t think there’s that sort of age restriction, you can start any time!
It’s because denial is part of being an alcoholic. The same goes with being called a liar.
Nuh uh!
Except when it’s not. I so much hate this rhetoric. You know what? You can freely think that I am one, and I genuinely think I’m not. If you think that I am one, that’s your problem, not mine. That’s why OP’s question is so hard to answer. Because everybody is just parroting this rhetoric.
And “you are clearly an alcoholic” comments in 3, 2, 1…
You can freely think that I am one, and I genuinely think I’m not. If you think that I am one, that’s your problem, not mine.
I mean that’s exactly the issue lol. You might not be an alcoholic, but if you were there’s a solid chance you’d deny that fact.There is a good reason why parts of the 12 step program involve admitting and recognizing that there is a problem, and it’s not limited to alcoholism but substance abuse in general.
A lot of people who genuinely need help refuses to see or admit that they do.
If someone has problem x but doesn’t want others to know about it, how would they behave?
If someone didn’t have problem x and didn’t want others to think they did, how would they behave?
And most importantly, how would you differentiate between the two cases? Don’t just stop after the first question.
In both cases I think they would deny it.
I don’t have a solution for the 2nd situation (and I don’t think anyone really does), this is more of a social problem. The point I’m making is that in the first scenario there is a clear pattern of denial for those who need help.
In terms of how you differeniate it, my understanding is if the behavior is impacting your life negatively then you would seek help. But I’m not an expert and that’s not a problem we are solving here.
The same goes with being called a liar.
Every statement I make is a lie.
I am actually incapable of lying
“What do you mean? I don’t even drink”
I literally just threw up. I feel better now though.
“I have about three drinks a week and get drunk maybe once or twice a year. I’d say I’m the picture of moderation, but I’m not really concerned with how you feel about my drinking habits.”
