bugsworth

Evil is such an ordinary word.....how about nefarious? That has a nice ring to it! LOL

freya

I disagree -- in my experience with program people here in upstate New York, the term "dry drunk" is short-hand for a person who is not drinking but who in engaging in most of the other behaviors that typically go along with the disease of alcoholism. As such, it is a term with a relatively clear meaning that does indeed accurately describe certain individuals whose behavior does indeed match the despcription above. As far as I can tell, is is no different than saying that someone has the flu. I might just as accurately say that that person has a runny nose, sore throat, slight fever, dizziness, etc...etc...etc...but most sane people who are native speakers of American English, will understand me more quickly and I will waste less of their and of my time, if I just say that that person has the flu.

Now, obviously, the flu is not commonly considered a good thing to have, just as a dry drunk is not commonly considered a good state to be in, but the fact that someone says that I have the flu or that I am a dry drunk is not a slur, or a slam, or an allegation -- and, as it seems quite direct to me, I'm not sure how it would ever be an insinuation -- if the state that is being ascribed to me is, in fact, the state that I'm in. The truth does not become a slur or a slam or an allegation (unless we're talking legalese) just because it is unpleasant and someone might not want to hear it.

If people have a bad history with this word or if they have seen it used in unnecessarily hurtful ways, and they, therefore, choose not to use it, well, then obviously that's their choice, but it seems a bit extreme to me to jump to the conclusion that it has no valid meaning or usage.

freya

RufusACanal

What a awesome post Freya! Simply Brilliant!


Nefarious is more than cool and more so since you gave it to me. I like "Nefarious Creature of the Night" or NCN for short.

bugsworth

Well we will have to agree to disagree. There is no way in the world I would ever equate the flu with some mysterious affliction as being a dry drunk. Funny thing, everybody knows what the flu means, starts calling people dry drunks outside of the rooms and you are bound to get some weird looks. I stand by my statement, it is a slur and useless.

bugsworth

Well NCN it is! Way better than aa Fundamentalist! LOL

Tommyh

a dry drunk is a very real & horrible place to be.I have been there and no amount of knowledge can help me,it takes a HP to help me,period.
When a chronic alcoholic has one,and it progressively gets worst,that is when they pick up a gun and blow their brains out,sober!Most alcoholics who commit suicide do it on a dry drunk,not a wet one.Clancy I talks about this and I am with him 100%........real alcoholics know excally what I am talking about

RufusACanal

I love Clancy and have had the opportunity to meet him several times. From his AA experience and his mission work, Clancy has witnessed plenty of untreated Alcoholism in the dry man or woman who come to the mission in LA. I find no slight with the word, because I have been both a Drunk and a Dry Drunk. What I realize to be true does not make it so for others; thankfully you folks accept me for the turd I can sometimes be.

What an awesome avatar bballdad.. reminds me of...never mind; I have succumbed to the pepper diet of late. LOL

bugsworth

"dry drunks" and "real alcoholics" both program gibberish. Maybe the constant bombardment of powerlessness theory leads many alcoholics to thoughts of suicide.

Professor (and Doctor) George E. Vaillant of Harvard University is an enthusiastic advocate of Twelve-Step treatment, and is currently a member of the Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. (AAWS) Board of Trustees. In 1983, he published his book The Natural History of Alcoholism: Causes, Patterns, and Paths to Recovery in this book he states....

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

Clancy's opinion means as much to me as Bill Wilson's.

RufusACanal

Research by Vaillant and others found that there were no obvious factors or personality differences to distinguish alcoholics from abstainers; “To a large extent, relapse to and remission from alcoholism remains a mystery.” As was observed in the 1940s in patients with tuberculosis—at that time incurable—recovery depended largely on the patient’s own resistance and morale. The same applies to alcoholism, which at present still has no known ‘cure’. As with diabetes, professional help is in training to prevent a relapse and in crisis intervention until patients are strong enough to heal themselves. If natural forces are dominant in the healing process, then treatment should aim to strengthen and support these natural forces, Vaillant argued. The alcoholic needs support in making the required personality change. Thus, achieving long-term sobriety usually involves

1. finding a substitute dependency, such as group attendance;
2. experiencing negative consequences of drinking, such as legal problems or a painful ulcer;
3. new, close relationships and social support;
4. a source of inspiration and hope such as a religious group.

Vaillant argues that an important contribution health professionals can make is to explain alcoholism to patients as a disease, which encourages the patient to take responsibility for their problem without debilitating guilt, in the same way that a diabetic becomes responsible for proper self care when they become aware of their condition.

In the Clinic sample, 48% of the 29 alcoholics who achieved sobriety eventually attended 300 or more AA meetings, and AA attendance was associated with good outcomes in patients who otherwise would have been predicted not to remit. In the Core City sample the more severe alcoholics attended AA, possibly because all other avenues had failed—after all, AA meetings are rarely attended for hedonistic reasons. The implication from all three samples was simply that many alcoholics find help through AA.

bugsworth

I like this...

he says relapse and remission is a mystery, not that aa has the secret.

He states there should be some intervention until patients can "heal themselves" Treatment should focus on using natural forces. Not supernatural.

He labels group attendance as a substitute dependency which is clearly true.

He feels one should form new relationships and support, again absolutely true.

Vaillant recommends a source of inspiration such as aa, a religious group.

The last part is kinda odd. Vaillant wants people to be convinced they have a disease so that they do not have such tremendous guilt, yet the disease they have is called a "spiritual malady." The only disease known to man that has a spiritual solution. I think he might have just looked the other way in regards to this unsettling conflict.

Tommyh

"dry drunks" and "real alcoholics" both program gibberish.

and that is coming from someone not in the program?
that shows you really do not understand alcoholism at all bugsy
Greoge V is not a expert either....close study of the big book proves the disease theory is incorrect bugsy look up malady or illness or allergy and open your mind

bugsworth

LOL bballdad, typical response.

I was in aa for 10 months. I read about aa everyday here at SR and I lived with alcoholism for 15 years, yet because I don't agree I don't understand. Maybe it is you that does not understand.

freya

Well, I don't really see how much it matters whether people with no 12 Step experience or connection know what it means or not. I personally don't have any experience with lots of sports activities, and if people were to be using a term commonly associated with those activities and commonly understood within those communities around me, they might very easily find me giving them some weird looks...that would most likely have absolutely nothing to do with their using a "useless" or "meaningless" term and everything to do with my own ignorance of the subject that they were discussing.

My point, as I believe you know very well, was that, within the AA community, the use of the term "dry drunk" can be metaphorically equated with the use of the term "flu" in the English speaking US. And, actually, if you read closely the list of the symptoms that I indicated might be associated with the term flu, those same symptoms could -- and very often are -- associated with many other illnesses. And, as with a dry drunk, when some people have the flu, they experience some of those symptoms, but not others...and two people could possibly have the flu and exhibit very different symptoms from one another. Yet, I doubt many people consider the flu to be a "mysterious affliction," and it seems that the term remains quite suitable for everyday communication among people within the linguistic community it "serves," which, after all, is the only purpose any term really needs to serve.

...Of course, I suppose that if one were to take serious offense with the term "flu," one would certainly have the right to always insist on describing in exact detail every symptom experienced by any given flu sufferer. But, surely, if one were to choose to do that, one might well get some weird looks for that behavior, too???? ('Geesh, can't you just say friggin' "flu," already???')....And, to take it even further, if one were to go around insisting that, because one did not like the term oneself, it was therefore, meaningless, useless and insulting (thereby subtly ascribing an unacceptable level of ignorance and/or mean-spiritedness to those who use the term as it is commonly used)....Well, I fear that one might very easily get the reputation of being somewhat judgmental and elitist.

freya

bugsworth

The flu is a medical diagnosis, a "dry drunk" is a label originated in aa. The two have no points of similarity at all so to compare them is an attempt to divert attention away from the true issue.

Ones dislike of a disparaging label should not be viewed as judgmental but as a signal for change. There are many words in the english language that have a commonly understood meaning yet should not be uttered, dry drunk should make the list.

miss communicat

one symptom of being a [I]dry drunk,[/I] for me, was being an intellectual bully. i did so just because I can.

Seems like wordplay and AA philosophy-banter is a form of entertainment and self validation for some folks here.

If it were merely that, without the barbs, I could actually fathom the joy, pleasure, and even merits of such a pasttime, but honestly. no true and intellectually secure freethinker that I've known finds it nescessary to be hairtrigger defensive of his or her views. that's called having an agenda.

bugsworth

I absolutely agree miss c...it seems when ones argument does not hold up the barbs come out. Resorting to calling someone judgmental and an elitist because their opinion is different is not a sign of a intellectually secure free thinker.

Thanks for your opinion.

NoelleR

'Addictive Thinking'/'Stinkin Thinkin'/ and 'dry drunk' are all terms that I dislike, and don't use (kinda like the 'n' word, or the 'c' word.)

For the first two (addictive thinking and stinkin thinkin) I found that these terms were usually thrown at fellow AAer's if their thinking didn't fall in line with the powers-that-be in that particular group.....

.....and dry drunk...............yuck!!!!! All I see is some folks in AA using that disparaging term to define folks who aren't sober according to their definitions.....for me, I'm in favor of the sober horse-thief......: a drunkin horse-thief gets sober (well abstinent, anyway), but folks still see him as a horse-thief, and an SOB ta boot; so therefore, he can't be sober, or in recovery acting like that. Well, friends, imho, if that now sober horse-thief is happy with his life as it is, who am I to say he's not sober, or not recovered.....the only person I need to define those words for is ME, and the only person who gets to define those terms for Mr Horse-thief is HIM/HER..... (o:

I'm with you bugs....."... There are many words in the english language that have a commonly understood meaning yet should not be uttered, dry drunk should make the list..." --- I'll second that, and third it, ad infinitum.... (o:


NoelleR

P.S. ...before someone jumps on me cause they may think I'm an 'anti-AAer' or a non-AAer, or.....whatever, just let me say that I got sober through AA, from the first time I walked through the doors of Lambda Center, here in Houston, on June 23rd of 1986.....thru today [8074 days, and counting..... (o: ]

bugsworth

You said it all Noelle.....dry drunk.....yuck!!!!!

Thanks

freya

Actually, I believe that an accurate medical diagnosis would be "influenza" with some letter and/or number to indicate the specific strain. But, as you have pointed out, we are not talking about medical diagnosis here.....We are talking about things people say and the words people -- specifically the members of a given linguistic community -- use in daily speech. And there is a HUGE difference.....You are the one who introduced the concept of medical diagnosis -- I was talking about the commonly used "flu," not the medical diagnosis "influenza." The terms that people use in daily speech are not subject to the same kind of rigorous specificity that medical terms are. So, unless you want to try to make the argument that they should be, I'm not really sure what your point is here....other than, of course, "to divert attention from the real issue."

And, actually, I did not call you "elitist," either. I strongly implied that you were behaving in a manner that might cause you to be perceived as such. Again, there is a HUGE difference. (As a general rule, I do try to take time to choose my words carefully and to try to say what I really mean, so it's probably not a good/effective strategy to think you can divert my attention by deliberately -- or carelessly -- misreading what I've written.)

Now, perhaps you really do believe that people who brazenly label the common use of commonly accepted terms "useless," "meaningless," "gibberish," etc....-- thereby implicitly insulting those who use those terms as they are commonly used -- and who do so with no support other than the implied: "I believe it; I state it as gospel truth; therefore it is so" are behaving perfectly rationally, civilly and respectfully of others and of the topic and of the discussion in general..and that it would be grossly unfair of anyone to consider such behavior elitist and judgmental.......Again, it appears that we are going to have to agree to disagree about that, too.

But, OK, so, you really don't like my analogy with the "flu." (Well actually, I'm kinda giving you the benefit of the doubt that it's my analogy you don't like and not just the fact that I dare to disagree with your pronouncements from on-high and to do so in a way that indicates I am quite willing to support what I say.) No problem. I'm fairly confident that I can come up with many good arguments to support my own position (not to mention quite certain that I would enjoy doing so!).

So, why don't you put forth ONE well developed one to support yours -- I mean, something with thought and development and evidential support from a source other than Humpty-Dumpty -- and I'll work with that instead of the "flu"????

...I guess this is the thing for me: I love good sharing and I love a good debate....but prosteletizing of any kind -- either of a widely held belief or a personal one -- I find to be just plain annoying and insulting. So, tell me your story -- how you came to be so antagonistic toward the term "dry drunk" -- and I can 100% guarantee you that all I'll have to say directly about it is "Thank you for sharing." Or, put together a good, well and fairly reasoned persuasive piece about why "dry drunk" should be considered all of the "negative" things you consider it to be, and I'll read it with respect and give it the respect it deserves by responding back with equal fairness and thoughtfulness......

....but just drop by and assert that "dry drunk" is meaningless, insulting, etc...etc...etc... when that clearly is not the case for many people who use the term -- wrongly or rightly -- on a regular basis..and, as far as I can tell, I've already given that approach way more respect and time and thought than it truly deserves.

freya

AW2486