>On the contrary. It is a smashing success. What better means of
>controlling discontent than to dope a substantial portion of the
working
>class and disenfranchised poor, then put a significant minority of them
>under the direct control of the State? And to boot, another section of
the
>working class is employed in building prisons, overseeing their
occupants,
>or monitoring those outside prison who remain under the watchful
control of
>the criminal injustice system. It's a growth industry! As an added
bonus,
>while incarcerated, we can put those folks to work at slave wages
(another
>oxymoron) and use their labor to drag down the wage standards of those
who
>have yet to be jailed. If they should happen to get out, they
certainly
>pose no electoral problem, for we take away their right to vote. I'd
say
>the War on Drugs has achieved all that it was intended to. Invest
those IRA
>dollars in a business with a guaranteed future - Penal Enterprise, Inc.
>
>In solidarity,
>Michael E.
>
>
Yes (maybe I should have said "The War on Drugs is a miserable and horrific success"). I was also wondering if anyone has any thoughts on the potentially (politically) disempowering role the open secret of AA and recovery plays in the drug (in the broadest sense) scene--of how AA "controls discontent". To say the least it is an incredibly complicated, delicate thing, with lives and bodies on the line. As far as I know, it's not possible to get numbers on AA membership, but the recovery industry sure is booming.
As for the disempowering: the first of the AA twelve-steps is an admittance of powerlessness over drugs and alcohol. But as is the self-propagating way of addiction "treatment", it doesn't take too long for this powerlessness to darken multiple horizons. This is where recourse to a Higher Power comes in, to letting go. In one sense, this suspension of agency can be distressingly disempowering. It can lead, for instance, to complacency with socio-economic conditions, where the activity of the alcoholic's "self-will", a perverted and damaged thing, but maybe one of the things required for activism, is kept in check by "God's will". How is this spirituality a sublimation of agency, and a perpetuation of a submissive subject? I think of Wojtek Sokolowski's post of 23 June, 10:51, and the distinctions of misadaptation he articulates: either being caused by a "malfunctioned" individual psyche, or by the pressures of a malfunctioning social environment, where "psychotherapy is nothing more but a reactionary trick to stiffle opposition and prevent social change." And so, in a not so roundabout way, is AA. As the AA adage goes, if we spent as much energy on [say, opposition and social change] as we did on getting our alcohol, dope, coke . . .
But I would say again--not to cave into the medico-juridical gaze--but as someone becoming more and more attuned to the collective struggles of recovery (and AA is a kind of collective) on the person-to-person level, it is a complicated thing.
Also, I remember reading sometime ago about the Betty Ford Center, and another 12-step center talking about soliciting... was it Federal money? Does anybody know about this? Anybody have any economic specifics on the recovery industry?
Thanks!
-Alec
______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com