MaggieMae
Reality bits
- Apr 3, 2009
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- #21
Ok Maggie,
I bet Ted's gonna fail again.
There.
Happy now?
Statistics show he probably will. I started this thread in the Health section hoping to generate a discussion on addiction, not as a venue for insults from people like you who wake up ugly and stay that way throughout your miserable day.
What would you like to discuss about addiction?
How you wish it would be?
Or how it is?
How it is is that you can't cure addiction for anyone. Only they can cure it for themselves. No matter what you do, what you teach, what you give, or what you take away, until THEY want to give up the addiction, they won't.
Sounded to me like you were as concerned with patting "Dr." Phil on the back for putting Mr. Williams in greater risk as you were hoping for Mr. Williams to beat the odds and actually get clean. I merely pointed out that "Dr." Phil is an idiot (IMO). He is to psychology what Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olberman are to news......a commentator, not a practicing physician. He is a complete, fabricated fraud. An actor, playing a psychologist. (You do know his license was stripped over an inappropriate relationship with a 19 year-old patient, right? And that his psychological "expertise" is futile in helping him to deal with his own father, whom he doesn't speak with and hasn't in over 25 years?)
Chances are that Ted won't make it. To me, it seems he's "playing the game" and "saying all the right things," but I don't sense that he's sincere. What cures addiction is that you have to hit bottom. I don't think Ted has, and I don't think any of this attention, or Dr. Phil's whoring of his story (along with all the others who have done the same) is helping either.
It would be a warm fuzzy story if we get to write the ending. The problem is, only Ted can do that, and his track record prior to his salvation wasn't too good. Since his salvation, its been about the same as it was before.
I hope he makes it, I really do.
But I don't think he will until he hits bottom. Only he knows where the bottom is for him, but it seems obvious to me that he hasn't hit it yet.
And I certainly don't think an opportunistic thespian, pretending to be a Doctor of Psychology, is any friend of Ted's. Certainly not at this point in his life. Ted needs help from REAL Doctors, not Oprah's pool boy.
If you had really read my OP, you would have noted that I don't think too much of Dr. Phil's methods either.
You are correct defining addiction as something the person has to fix him/herself, but most need help along the way. I've had two alcoholics in my immediate family: My uncle, who on return from Vietnam couldn't kick it and wound up on the streets of Seattle and finally died from alcohol poisoning, and my son who was well on his way (blaming everyone for his successive job losses and unhappy marriage) when his best friend intervened and got him into rehab. (He wouldn't listen to me--I was just picking on him, so he thought). He had one relapse, went back to the same rehabilitation center where he knew all the doctors and therapists, and finally got it, but there was an even greater push the second time to get him into aftercare (with the same people). My son never did like AA, and still doesn't because there's too much emphasis on religion AND too much "talk" among the participants who tend to glorify alcohol with their neverending tales of how much "fun" they used to have. As far as I know, he's been sober now for nearly five years and his lifestyle doesn't even tempt him anymore. He tells me that occasionally he'll think "a drink would be nice right about now," but it's only fleeting and soon forgotten.
There, that's my discussion.