The failure of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous)

What would it seem like if ONLY those who successfully completed a program were featured in the media? What would we think about a school where 85 out of 100 students flunked, but only the graduates showed up to say how good the program was? That is the starting point for Dr. Lance Dodes and Zachary Dodes' article in Salon: "The pseudo-science of Alcoholics Anonymous: There’s a better way to treat addiction."

Rehab owns a special place in the American imagination. Our nation invented the “Cadillac” rehab, manifested in such widely celebrated brand names as Hazelden, Sierra Tucson, and the Betty Ford Center. . . . The fact that they are all extraordinarily expensive is almost beside the point: these rehabs are fighting the good fight, and they deserve every penny we’ve got. Unfortunately, nearly all these programs use an adaptation of the same AA approach that has been shown repeatedly to be highly ineffective. Where they deviate from traditional AA dogma is actually more alarming: many top rehab programs include extra features such as horseback riding, Reiki massage, and “adventure therapy” to help their clients exorcise the demons of addiction. . . . Why do we tolerate this industry? One reason may sound familiar: in rehab, one feels that one is doing something, taking on a life-changing intervention whose exorbitant expense ironically reinforces the impression that epochal changes must be just around the corner.
Who is studying the effectiveness of these programs? Not the programs themselves or, at least, they are not making their data open. That makes these authors suspicious:
Efforts by journalists to solicit data from rehabs have also been met with resistance, making an independent audit of their results almost impossible and leading to the inevitable conclusion that the rest of the programs either don’t study their own outcomes or refuse to publish what they find.
What is the solution? Rather than preach to addicts about a "Higher Power," the authors suggest that they need something far more personally empowering: sophisticated self-awareness."

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Graphic Novel version of super stimuli

I enjoyed this primer on super-stimuli by Gregory Ciotti, titled "Is Your Brain Truly Ready for Junk Food, Porn, or the Internet?" Super stimuli, featuring the work of Niko Tinbergen. He discovered that we can hijack animal's instincts beyond their evolutionary purpose.

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What it’s like to never have enough – the story of a Wall Street hedge fund trader

This is what it's like to never have enough. It's the autobiography of a Wall Street hedge fund trader, published in the NYT:

I noticed the vitriol that traders directed at the government for limiting bonuses after the crash. I heard the fury in their voices at the mention of higher taxes. These traders despised anything or anyone that threatened their bonuses. Ever see what a drug addict is like when he’s used up his junk? He’ll do anything — walk 20 miles in the snow, rob a grandma — to get a fix. Wall Street was like that. In the months before bonuses were handed out, the trading floor started to feel like a neighborhood in “The Wire” when the heroin runs out. I’d always looked enviously at the people who earned more than I did; now, for the first time, I was embarrassed for them, and for me. I made in a single year more than my mom made her whole life. I knew that wasn’t fair; that wasn’t right. Yes, I was sharp, good with numbers. I had marketable talents. But in the end I didn’t really do anything. I was a derivatives trader, and it occurred to me the world would hardly change at all if credit derivatives ceased to exist. Not so nurse practitioners. What had seemed normal now seemed deeply distorted.

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Twenty things mentally strong people don’t do.

Here are twenty things mentally strong people don't do. I do like this list- go to the article to read more. Many of these have to do with worrying about what others would think. 1. Dwelling On The Past 2. Remaining In Their Comfort Zone 3. Not Listening To The Opinions Of Others 4. Avoiding Change 5. Keeping A Closed Mind 6. Letting Others Make Decisions For Them 7. Getting Jealous Over The Successes Of Others 8. Thinking About The High Possibility Of Failure 9. Feeling Sorry For Themselves 10. Focusing On Their Weaknesses 11. Trying To Please People 12. Blaming Themselves For Things Outside Their Control 13. Being Impatient 14. Being Misunderstood 15. Feeling Like You’re Owed 16. Repeating Mistakes 17. Giving Into Their Fears 18. Acting Without Calculating 19. Refusing Help From Others 20. Throwing In The Towel

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1,000 pound woman

I just don't know what to think when I hear of mega-fat people, those who grew while they were bed-ridden. This type of spectacle simply has to be enabled by others, because there's no way these people can get to food on their own. These are stories of intense co-dependence. They have to be. The murder allegations here almost seem like a distraction to the main story.

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