Stinkin' Thinkin'

AA Sends Out Its Anonymity Letter

ilse — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 19:23:32 +0000

And Romenesko has picked up on it! A day after a Romenesko reader noted that Roger Ebert was an Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor for reporters, A.A. sent a message to journalists on its email list. It says that “our fellowship does not comment on matters of public controversy, but we are happy to provide information about A.A. to [...]

AA Club Owner Breaks Bad

ilse — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:55:42 +0000

Alcoholics Anonymous Host Allegedly Sold Drugs at Meetings “We took a closer look and realized what we had here was a pretty significant drug operation,” said Sgt. Sean Whitcomb with the Seattle Police Department. [...] “It’s like, show-up early, stay late and get your drugs and in-between,” Whitcomb said. “If you want to learn a [...]

“Why Rehab Fails”

ilse — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 22:26:03 +0000

The New Republic review of Anne M. Fletcher’s Inside Rehab: The Surprising Truth About Addiction Treatment-and How to Get Help That Works Why Rehab Fails: The dogma of AA has taken over My favorite two sentences in the Alcoholics Anonymous literature are: “Alcoholics Anonymous does not demand that you believe anything. All of its twelve steps are [...]

ilse — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:15:07 +0000

AA Is Being Sued by Parents of Murder Victim

ilse — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 02:59:10 +0000

h/t AntiDenial: Parents Accuse AA of Harboring a Predator LOS ANGELES (CN) – Grieving parents say in court that their daughter was murdered by her sociopathic addict boyfriend because Alcoholics Anonymous concealed his history of domestic violence. Eric Allen Earle allegedly strangled 31-year-old Karla Brada to death on Aug. 31, 2011, after Brada asked him [...]

Welcome and Last Post

mark and ilse — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 21:19:05 +0000

From Ilse: Here’s Stinkin’ Thinkin’ in its museum incarnation. All the posts and comments are available to read, but it’s no longer active. We won’t be posting (unless we have a really good reason or feel like it) and the comments have been disabled. You can read our goodbye post here. Again, thank you all [...]

The Jim B. Episode, Revised and Expanded

ilse — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 21:18:17 +0000

If you’ve been a regular, you’ll notice that I took down the last two posts on the subject of Jim Bock and the Sponsorship Group in Chatham, NJ. I want to be clear that the episode detailed in those posts did not drive us to close the blog, so I’m going to tell the story [...]

Hey, Kool-Aid!!!

Mark — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 19:43:12 +0000

Here is a fun story about Sheila “Hey Kool-Aid” Lockhart. A racehorse owner and serenity hornet in the UK: How top racing figure rammed her friend’s car in fury over gossip As the owner of a renowned racehorse named Go Ballistic, Sheila Lockhart might be expected to have an explosive temper. So after she rammed [...]

Progress, Not Perfection for Al U.

Mark — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 20:54:17 +0000

The steps seem to be working for racecar driver Al Unser Jr. Sure, he got popped for a third drunk driving charge a few weeks ago – but this time he didn’t beat up his girlfriend or flee from the scene of an accident. I’d call that progress, and so does he: Unser Making Progress [...]

How You Were Duped, Why You Believed, The Reason You Stayed

Mark — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 18:35:17 +0000

Back in the late 1950s, a couple of researchers designed an experiment that was meant to measure a person’s cognitive dissonance. The subjects were put into a room, where they sat in front of a box full of a dozen spools, each sitting upright in rows of three. They were told to take the spools out [...]