Here in Russia, you are expected to get thoroughly sloshed on special occasions (including today, International Women's Day). On really impressive holidays liek New Year's, people will drink for days on end. When a woman is giving birth, the father is expected to be out somewhere drinking himself blind, esp. if it's the first baby. People drink vodka over breakfast. When you are having a hectic day at work, you go downstairs to the cafeteria and have a shot. I have returned home to find friends passed out on my kitchen floor.
None of this is considered alcoholic behavior in Russia, though most would be at least suspect in the US. An "alcoholic" in Russia is someone who drinks all day, every day.
Hell, Ango-Saxons just don't like anything pleasurable! :)
Chris Doss The Russia Journal -------------------
Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 01:06:07 EST From: Stuart323 at aol.com Subject: AA Not for Drunks Only (was Borderline Personality)
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Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com>
> Because AA is for drunks.
Not true.
In its early years AA pretty much restricted itself to hard-core alcoholics,
what are now termed "low bottom" drinkers. Like Bill Wilson these were folks who were physically addicted to alcohol and who required medical detoxification. (Wilson's treatment included morphine and belladonna which probably accounts for his flash of light experience).
In THE 12 STEPS AND THE 12 TRADITIONS (1952) Wilson wrote that AA began to attract alcoholics who still had their health, families, jobs, and "even two
cars in the garage."
Wilson then writes "...they were joined by young people who were scarcely more than potential alcoholics. ...It was then discovered that when one alcoholic had planted in another the true nature of his malady, that person could never be the same again."
Today tens of thousands of teenagers are being sent to treatment by parents and by courts where they are indoctrinated with the notions that they are powerless over alcohol.
Pollack also writes that
"This is a libel on AA, although I'm sure an inadvertant one. AA people don't recruit and never will. The whole point of the name is that many of them don't even tell their friends they belong, never mind strangers. Their attitude is that if people want them, they'll find them; they're in the yellow pages."
Totally wrong. AA has professional relations committees that recruit doctors and lawyers to refer people to AA. They created medical and legal assistance programs which force professionals to attend AA on penalty of losing their professional licenses.
And, perhaps 30% of AA attendees are there under court orders.
The multi-billion dollar "treatment" industry is almost totally controlled by AA programs (the "MInnesota model"). For the last decade about 900,000 people a year have undergone treatment.
Stuart Elliott