Tobacco kills 50 Indians every hour

tacita

it's true that AA doesn't work for everyone, and it sounds as if your professional experience was primarily with those for whom it did not work, which would certainly color your view of the program. you likely have less experience working with those whose lives have been turned around and who have, by picking up a few simple "tools" in the 12-step program, learned the mechanics of staying clean and sober one day at a time. that makes sense, of course, because the AA "success stories" wouldn't need to seek out the facilities and programs in which you work. or maybe they do, i surely don't know.

i applaud your work to help those for whom the 12-steps aren't enough. they are many, but there are also many --and i would indeed hazard again to say "scores of thousands"--who have recovered in AA.

i reacted as strenuously as i did because many people close to me suffered the devastating effect of decades of addiction, and i the impact of their addictions. alcohlism isn't an individual disease, it's a family disease. some of the things you wrote about the 12-steps suggested to me that you aren't intimately familiar with AA, and your refrains sounded to me, in all likelihood, just as mine sounded to you.

i also agree that the 12 steps can be "reinterpreted" in the way that you apparently did. i take issue, however, with the notion that it somehow "improves" upon them. at that point, they cease to be the 12 steps and have no relation to AA's spiritual principle of acceptance. the "big book", however provincial its wording, is as solid and applicable today as it always was and always will be. for those for whom it works, it doesn't need tweaking at all. the same is true for the twelve traditions.

i think that if you spoke to more people, not just a few, but many--and they're out there--or sat in on a bunch of AA meetings (and perhaps you already have), you might better understand the simplicity, the beauty, and the life-altering potential of the 12-steps, or simply have more faith in its potential for some, if not everyone. i wish it could help more people, but i wish HIV and AIDS treatments did, too.

please accept my apologies if i sounded to be impugning your knowledge and experience. it's a gut-wrenching field to have chosen, not for the faint of heart. i'm sure your clients, disappointed and demoralized if AA didn't work for them, were relieved to find in you an alternative. i'm glad, however, that the program works for so many others, and that they need not ever reach your doors in utter despair.

maybe we should let the OP have his thread back now? i'd be happy to hear from you by PM if you see any merit to that.

my best wishes,
janice

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lotus blossom

my reason for posting anything here in the first place (aside from the original post, which i actually started), was to support dharmabum in his own personal struggles with addiction. so, rather than sending you a pm, i'll post this on the forum.

as i've said, i no longer work in the field, but i still like to discuss it because it is such a personal part of my life, the reason that i got into it in the first place. my daughter's father killed himself of alcoholism, my son had severe adhd as a child, and there is a lot of addiction in my family. i studied addiction rigorously for several years before actually getting professionally involved with it. over the course of time i spent in the field, i worked with hundreds of people, most of them in treatment centers vs. my own practice. while it would be a lie to say they were all disenchanted with the 12-step programs, few of them felt that it was of much help.

because addiction does spread it's far reaching tentacles into the lives of family and friends, support (for everyone) is important. however, talk therapy, in absence of other treatment, rarely works. in fact, it has been shown to exacerbate the condition in some people, because of the issues that it can unleash, which cause guilt, shame, feelings of worthlessness, etc. in a person. while such feelings can (sometimes) be an effective way to promote change, they're not likely to in someone suffering from addiction because their sense of self is generally already too damaged.

addiction is such a complex disease, and deserves (continued) intensive research (there's already some pioneers who do amazing work with it) so that those suffering can receive the best possible care. too many lives are lost because of the way that the field is mismanaged. imo, people do not fail treatment as much as the treatment fails them.

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Buck

Since this thread started yesterday over 1300 Indians have died by tobacco, maybe they were stood close together and a big bale of it fell on them or something.
Subsequently I have moved up two places on the wait list for my train.
Simple arithmetic will show that only 1 in 650 tobacco related death victims were actually booked on the same train as me. (If they were on the wait list then that's 1 in 42! Scarey!!)which in turn can be shown as 0.15% of people on the same train as me are about to die from something fatal. Or if you are on the wait list there is a 4.76% chance you ain't gonna make the train!
Makes you think that you might be better off sticking a fag in your mouth. At least it would stop you smoking!

Zyban (Wellbutrin?)rules! Apart from the first few days when you think you're going to die.

Buck - Free and Healing for Eleven Months, Twenty Five Days, 16 Hours and 37 Minutes, while extending my life expectancy 31 Days and 5 Hours, by avoiding the use of 8992 nicotine delivery devices that would have cost me £2,007.84.

shashank.aggarwal

its not correct now as well...how can 13,245 people die out of 10,000 people..

Even I cant believe 3,583 figure, it means more than 1/3 people die due to tobacco...

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capt_mahajan

On a lighter note, the title "Tobacco kills 50 Indians every hour" reminds me of an old joke:

One Sikh gentleman: Did you know that in India, a woman gives birth every 0.9 secs?
Second sikh gentlman: Then we must find and stop her!!

tacita

heh-heh...my bad!

oh, well. to paraphrase an famous old adage, "you can offer someone an olive branch, but you can't make 'em take it".

and i am reminded of this, cap'n:

"I have every sympathy with the American who was so horrified by what he had read of the effects of smoking that he gave up reading." -- Henry G. Strauss, 1892-1974

lotus blossom

i didn't realize we were having a feud? i'm always about peace, something that can only be achieved by discussion of issues, and the commitment to get to the heart of the matter. if the 12-step programs have worked for your loved ones, that's truly great! but they are in the minority.
--
i didn't read it word-for-word, but wiki seems to have a pretty balanced view (from success to near failure) of AA - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholics_Anonymous

from their page:

one of the leading proponents, Harvard psychiatric professor George E. Vaillant, author of The Natural History of Alcoholism Revisited showed a "95% failure rate" in his study on the efficacy of AA.
---

From Valliant's book:

To me, alcoholism became a fascinating disease. It seemed perfectly clear that ... by turning to recovering alcoholics [A.A. members] rather than to Ph.D.'s for lessons in breaking self-detrimental and more or less involuntary habits, and by inexorably moving patients from dependence upon the general hospital into the treatment system of A.A., I was working for the most exciting alcohol program in the world.

But then came the rub. Fueled by our enthusiasm, I and the director, William Clark, tried to prove our efficacy. ...

After initial discharge, only five patients in the Clinic sample never relapsed to alcoholic drinking, and there is compelling evidence that the results of our treatment were no better than the natural history of the disease.

Not only had we failed to alter the natural history of alcoholism, but our death rate of three percent a year was appalling.

Once again, our results were no better than the natural history of the disorder. pp. 349-352

http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-big_lie.html

Rama

You are correct, such a statistic no one should believe. However, you are not correctly reading the statistics that I wrote.

In the post you quoted, I tried to clarify on how to read the statistics stating that Europe has almost 17 deaths per 10 thousand people. I guessed this one example would make you understand and apply the same technique for the other two numbers. I even linked to an explanation on how to read the numbers. Nevertheless, here they are: over 13 deaths per 10 thousand people in the USA and over 3 and a half deaths per 10 thousand people in India. Although note that, as it was mentioned after my post, the India statistic should be halved according to the news source, which means over 1 and a half deaths per 10 thousand people in India. Please read post #58 for more information.

Nick-H

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shashank.aggarwal

Thanks for clarifying...I though that I was reading it incorrectly or was not able to interpret it properly...

Now the number seems to be reasonable..

crvlvr

this is off topic, but I am still trying to figure out why they use "," instead of "." in europe. For example the prices I saw would be 10,00 (for 10.00) or 100,00 (for 100.00)

shashank.aggarwal

Thanks for info..

n.n*10 to-the-power-of n..if I remember correctly it can be written as ^n, I guess we used this while doing programming in school..not sure though...

Nick-H

...Oh yes, right.

tacita

i think this thread demonstrates the veracity of the following actual quote:

"It is now proved beyond doubt that smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics."

~~ Fletcher Knebel, Reader's Digest, December 1961

Rama

People tend to see topics such as "20 deaths per hour" and think it is some huge tragedy until they see it via the bigger picture. Of course, it goes the other way too. Malaria statistics are also interesting.

Interesting how people can cope with all the diversity that is India, from a plethora of languages to religions, yet cannot comprehend or cope when one uses a , instead of a . or vice versa. Boggles the mind!