Over the past day or so, I’ve once again been flooded with mail regarding my Alcoholics Anonymous opus from last July’s Wired. The reason, of course, is Charlie Sheen’s recent decision to come out hard against the organization, which he accuses of being (and I paraphrase) a fraudulent mind-control cult with an abysmal success rate. […]
Tags:Alcoholics Anonymous·alcoholism·Charlie Sheen·drugs·movies·Wired
Apologies for the dearth of posting both today and this week, but we have solid excuses: we’re still doing press for the Alcoholics Anonymous piece (as evidenced by the above clip from today’s The Brian Lehrer Show), and we’re saving our choicest cuts for next week’s guest stint over at Ta-Nehisi Coates’ blog. Yes, we’ve […]
Audio above of our morning appearance on The Takeaway. The other guest was a 14-year member of AA from Kentucky—many thanks to her for coming on. And apologies for a couple of malapropisms strewn throughout—we hadn’t yet gotten our requisite caffeine dose, and the gentle strains of Winnie the Pooh emanating from Microkhan Jr.’s room […]
As a counterweight to the critique offered in the post below, I offer one of the more intriguing pro-AA responses I’ve received this week. It comes from a longtime AA member who offers an unusually harsh take on the organization’s history: I’m 28 years sober…My master’s thesis looked at the influence of James and Jung […]
As noted in the post below, I’ve been absolutely deluged with e-mail responses to the Alcoholics Anonymous piece. I’ve been doing my best to read each and every one, and to respond when appropriate. Apologies to those who don’t receive replies—I’ve only got one brain and two hands. Though the vast majority of the feedback […]
Sorry for the slow start to the day. We’re working on a couple of solid posts, including a great kidnapping yarn from the ’70s, but getting clear of our other chores is taking longer than anticipated. That’s in part because of the five million e-mails that currently sit unopened in our inbox—the Times piece on […]
What little we know about the efficacy of the 12 Steps, the system at the heart of Alcoholics Anonymous, comes from a lengthy study called Project MATCH. As I mention in my Wired piece, Project MATCH confirmed that the Steps perform as well as other therapies when applied in a clinical setting—though, as critics like […]
One of the most controversial aspects of AA’s history is the role that psychedelics may have played in Bill Wilson’s creative process. As I discuss in the Wired piece, when Wilson experienced his spiritual epiphany in December 1934, he did so at a New York City drying-out facility. Part of his treatment there consisted of […]
Tags:alcohol·Alcoholics Anonymous·alcoholism·drugs·LSD·medical science·War on Drugs
When I started working on the AA piece for Wired, I assumed that the nascent organization insisted on anonymity because of a 1930s stigma against alcoholism. But as it turns out, Bill Wilson created the policy for a more pragmatic reason, which he explained thusly: [In the past], alcoholics who talked too much on public […]
Tags:alcohlism·alcohol·Alcoholics Anonymous·Washingtonian movement·Wired
Regular readers know that I’ve been spending the better part of 2010 working on a Wired piece about addiction. Well, the feature is finally live, and now the full truth can be revealed—the article’s central narrative is about the history and science (or lack thereof) of Alcoholics Anonymous, which just celebrated its 75th anniversary. Here’s […]
Tags:alcohol·Alcoholics Anonymous·alcoholism·neuroscience·Wired
