“These outcomes are a testament, I think, not to the power of a simplistic compulsion, but to the complexity of the enigmatic internal forces that lie beneath the stereotype.”
“I had spent four years in the meritocracy chasing awards, but now, between college and medical school and with nothing to improve, I had no more frantic activity to medicate the internal critic who told me I wasn’t enough.”
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“A definition of addiction ‘from tside,’ one that requires no self-report, allows others to diagnose you with it. It allows for interventions, mandated treatment, and entire systems of control for people with substance use problems. This kind of addiction definition, in various forms, has long served as a foundation for punitive approaches to addiction.”
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“As many critics have noted, AA was created by and for those in power - namely, white, Protestant, middle-aged, professional men - and it wasn’t easy for women in AA in those early days… Dr. Bob in Akron was particularly notorious for distrusting female alcoholics… a common saying of the era warned members, ‘Under every skirt there’s a slip.‘”
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“Just like all the other best parts of rehab, it was nothing more than the experience of being around people who understood.”