The crazy lady strikes again

I thought of this concept only after I'd written my last entry. Oh, brother. Most addiction centers - particularly the ones which seemingly sprang up like weeds during the recovery fad in the late 1980s and early 1990s - use something called the Minnesota Model. It's called the Minnesota Model because it seems to have been developed at Hazelden in Minnesota. Treatment centers using this model rely heavily on 12-step philosopies and group meetings for their patients. Inpatients at these centers,... Sign in to see full entry.

Just before starting this blog entry, I checked the "view new comments" link on my Write page. (Look at the top of your Blogit window. You'll see the word Write near the top. Click on that word, and you'll be taken to the page listing all your blogs, if you wrote any. At the bottom of that page, there is a hyperlink which says "view new comments." That's what I'm referring to when I talk about that link.) I noticed that Jemmie211 (I've mentioned this Blogit member in one of the entries I wrote... Sign in to see full entry.

Sometimes, it happens that someone in a 12-step group is going to do (or perhaps has already done) something ill-advised, or perhaps even relapse into his or her former addictive behavior patterns. The first instinct of many of us is to want to intervene in that person's life, perhaps lovingly confronting the 12-step member in question and presenting a plan of action so that this person can recover or develop healthy ways of relating to the world again. This worthy goal - intervening in the life... Sign in to see full entry.

AA and Al-Anon/Alateen (Alateen is the division of Al-Anon geared toward teens) have what they call Conference-Approved Literature. This is literature actually produced by anonymous members of Al-Anon and AA, respectively. For example, the book Alcoholics Anonymous (called the Big Book by all 12-steppers) is the official text of AA. Although Bill Wilson, the co-founder of AA, authored most of the book (the stories at the end of the book are authored by the alcoholics who lived those stories),... Sign in to see full entry.

The comments I got on my last post caused me to think about what the commentators said. Yes, there is some merit to their viewpoint, and it is a shared viewpoint; two different people said essentially the same thing. That "thing" was that most people are so preoccupied with the opinions of others that they simply have neither the time nor the emotional energy to devote to censuring the behavior of others. This is particularly true nowadays. Most of us really are so busy trying to pay the bills,... Sign in to see full entry.

All right. I had what I routinely call a "brain spasm;" I thought of something else to add to my observations of earlier today. Those of you who read my first post of the day are aware of my observation that straight women, at least, seem (at least to me) to be more willing to admit that we love each other if we share very close friendships with our metaphorical sisters. In fact, we seem to be even more eager to admit our true feelings about our female friends than we are when we deal with the... Sign in to see full entry.

This morning, while lying in bed and listening to the radio, I was doing a lot of thinking. One of the things that I thought about was an observation I've made over the years. What I've noticed is that the gay people I've heard about - especially gay men - tend to have deeper and closer relationship with members of the opposite sex. For example, Gay Games founder Tom Waddell (whose story was featured posthumously in the Oscar-winning documentary Stories From the Quilt ) had a very close... Sign in to see full entry.

After writing the post entitled Beam me up, Scotty! this morning, I started thinking about why some homosexuals prefer to stay in the proverbial closet - to put it in plain English, why do some gays keep their sexual orientation secret? I discussed one reason when discussing my reaction to Greg Louganis' announcement of his sexual orientation. Some keep their orientation secret out of fear of the experience of violence. Sometimes, especially if a gay person lives in a very conservative town... Sign in to see full entry.

In my last post, I mentioned my trip to the Protestant bookstore located in a local strip mall. (I won't tell you the name of the Protestant bookstore, because it's the only outlet of the national chain of bookstores bearing that name. There are no other bookstores affiliated with that chain anywhere close to us. Suffice it to say that it's affiliated with a "Christian" - read: Protestant - publisher which owns or franchises out a chain of affiliated bookstores.) I used to like shopping at this... Sign in to see full entry.

We pay for Comcast Cable services every month - digital basic and Internet broadband service. (I can safely say this because Comcast is the official cable service provider for most all Chicago suburbs, at least the suburbs with which I am familiar. Years ago, when cable TV - CATV, as it was known in its very early days - first became widely available, cable companies signed exclusivity arrangements with each individual suburb. In other words, if Continental Cablevision signed such an agreement... Sign in to see full entry.