“Contemplation Hell,” the “Security of Familiar Miseries” the “Pretend Trap” & Other Procrastinations One of my favorite descriptive terms for that state most of us spend too much time in is “Contemplation Hell.” That’s the purgatory we self-inflict on most of the decisions we are unwilling to convert into action. This state is reinforced [...]

Outpatient vs Residential Callers, as well as clients, find themselves being accused of “taking the easy way out” if they work with me instead of going off to “rehab” which, “everyone knows,” is the only thing that “works.” A lot of “…” in that sentence. And for good reason. But… First, I am not the [...]

The Fear of Leaving AA and its Pseudo-Relationships I frequently hear from people who want to leave AA but who have been so brainwashed by AA mythology they are afraid to take the chance that they will end up “in jail, a mental hospital or dead.” That’s a reasonable fear if it were true, [...]

Happy 2022! Time for an update for anyone who is interested. After a few months of Newsletter silence, work reconfiguration, geographic relocation and considerable pondering, I have the following to report: I will be continuing to provide services to a select few clients; “Select” means, mostly, over 50 years of age, motivated and capable [...]

Back From a Working Vacation Three weeks ago, I wrote that I was suspending the Newsletter for a couple of weeks while I took a break and went visiting back east. I did and the results were a little surprising. First, it’s always disconcerting to visit the part of western Pennsylvania where I grew [...]

“Doing Stuff” We provide clients with a “Goal Setting” handout (attached to this email) which is designed to help identify areas which could stand to be improved in one’s life. Mostly, we tend to see our lives as one big ball of twine and change looks far too complicated to untangle. The result is, overwhelmed, we do nothing.

Fall is Approaching Once Again… Usually this is the time of year when I suggest that you “fix” things before the holidays. Beyond the previous sentence, I’m not going down that road again this year. Instead I’m going to ask you to reflect on what autumn means to you. As readers, most of you could be described as entering the autumn of your life, in my case that would, optimistically, be late autumn. Happily for me, autumn has always been my favorite season.

Harm Reduction as a Strategy in Overcoming Excessive Self-Medication While changing any behavior is difficult, especially one which becomes as pervasive as our alcohol use, there are any number of ways to go about, as well as ways to avoid going about it. A currently popular buzz word approach is “harm reduction.” Simply put, this means reducing your use over time. Tapering off is the old term. The ubiquitous “does it work?” question, here as elsewhere, is better asked as “can it work?” in which case the answer is yes.

Research Versus the Cult 95% of rehab in the U.S., inpatient or outpatient, amounts to simply charging people to attend AA. As invented by Hazelden and the Johnson Institute in the 1950s, the idea was to sell AA - which wasn’t going to sell itself – and, because AA efficacy rate was 5% or less, they would be able to recycle clients endlessly, or at least until they died. The plan worked beyond the Minnesota Model’s originators’ wildest dreams and grew into a more than $35 BILLION annually industry that sells guaranteed failure. Imagine conning people into spending that kind of money on a product guaranteed not to work? And not just buying it once but repeatedly? And blaming the buyer for failure? And conning TV shows and novelists into promoting the scam?

A Bit of Clarification When I reported that Mary Ellen and I will be closing our practice at the end of the year a reader wrote, “I was thinking about signing up for the last week in December when I’m off from my work, but if you’re closing on December 31 I won’t be able to do the follow-up…” Wrong! You will, of course, be able to do as much follow-up as you want/need. So too, former clients can schedule sessions. The difference is that we won’t be accepting NEW clients.