[Fwd: The Stanton Peele Addiction Web Site]

[Guest guest]

(Unsubscribe instructions are at the bottom of this message)

Recent additions to the Stanton Peele Addiction Web Site:

A National Failure at Moderation

" Efforts to curb excessive drinking on college campuses fall short, "

newspaper headlines screamed. Henry Wechsler, director of the College

Alcohol Studies Program at the Harvard School of Public Health, has been

studying binge drinking on U.S. campuses since 1993. By 1999, he found,

the percentage of student who frequently binged had not declined, but

increased, as had the number of abstainers.

This split or alternation between abstinence and binge drinking is an old

one. It is characteristic of cultures which view alcohol as a tempting

evil. From this perspective, drinking must be avoided. However, once

tasted, it cannot be resisted. This contrasts with those cultures (most

notably Mediterranean, Jewish, and Chinese), where alcohol is seen as an

ordinary part of religious or social celebrations.

<http://www.peele.net/lib/national.html>

In the Belly of the American Society of Addiction Medicine Beast

A first-person description of how the founder of ASAM, G. Talbott,

regularly violates patient rights and standard medical ethics, while

threatening patients and driving many to the brink of despair -- and

beyond. Meanwhile, the ASAM stands casually by.

<http://www.peele.net/debate/talbott.html>

Trends in American Drinking and Drinking Problems

Drinking Less and Suffering More

A remarkable thing has been occurring in the United States. Although

national surveys of drinking practices have found that heavy drinking has

gone down, more people are reporting drinking problems, and particularly

dependence symptoms. The Alcohol Research Group (ARG) conducts National

Alcohol Surveys (NASs) about every five years. Between 1967 and 1984,

heavy drinking increased slightly, but dependence symptoms increased

radically. Between 1984 and 1990, heavy drinking declined somewhat, but

those reporting (3+) dependence symptoms increased somewhat. Between 1995

and 2000, both consumption and problems leveled off. Here is a summary of

the overall changes in heavy drinking and those reporting dependence

symptoms for the years 1967, 1984, 1990, 1995. The point is, contrary to

claims by epidemiologists at the ARG and elsewhere, there is not a good

relationship between drinking levels and heavy drinking and severe alcohol

problems, such that reducing drinking can be expected to reduce drinking

problems and alcoholism.

<http://www.peele.net/lib/trends.html>

Stanton's Book of the Month:

Illegal Leisure: The Normalization of Adolescent Recreational Drug Use

By , Judith Aldridge, and Fiona Measham

In the U.S. and U.K., fully half of high school students have used an

illegal drug (as well as having gotten drunk over the year). This is a

different, unrecognized world -- one that undercuts the entire basis of our

education and prevention programs. After all, telling experienced teen

users that drugs bring only misery and inevitably lead to addiction is a

surefire way to tell them you're square, and that everything you say should

be ignored. In this world, where drug use has been in a sense normalized

among youths, we need a whole other way to think about drugs and

communicating with children about them. Of course, this is not going to

happen in the U.S. and the U.K. (which has increasingly looked towards the

U.S. for its model) any time soon. But, somewhere down the line, we need

to confront this reality -- this book is the boldest attempt yet to do so.

<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0415158109/thestantonpeelea>

Recently, Stanton answered the following questions on-line:

- I am social activist for whom both AA and Jack Trimpey have failed;

what can I do?

- Why do my narcotic addiction proclivity/withdrawal symptoms vary

over my lifetime?

- Can I erase my alcoholism treatment before entering med school?

- Will AA or other approaches dominate alcoholism treatment in the future?

<http://www.peele.net/>

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

This message was issued on the Stanton Peele Announcement Mailing List. To

join this low volume read-only list, send a message to

LISTSERV@... and put in the body of the message the command

" SUBSCRIBE PEELE " . To leave this list send a message to the same address

saying " SIGNOFF PEELE " .

The Stanton Peele Addiction Web Site - <http://www.peele.net/>

-----------------------------------------------------------------------