Mailmonkey
Bluelighter
Forgot to mention bandw, I'm out cod fishing on Saturday, early morning, you fancy coming along?
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Gibberings CXV - Documented proof
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Forgot to mention bandw, I'm out cod fishing on Saturday, early morning, you fancy coming along?
badandwicked
Bluelighter
Bahaha bit chilly this time of year mind but if you're game I am. Have oilskins got flies? :D
Mailmonkey
Bluelighter
No flies on me love.
get em necked and stop fannying about woman
badandwicked
Bluelighter
always a bonus.
parttime crackhead
Bluelighter
Scran comes first. Well actually, smoke comes first. Then scran.
That would be because it simply doesn't work. Look into official AA/NA figures and you'll find they're success rate is actually barely half the success rate of people who just quit with no support whatsoever. The whole "I am helpless to my addiction, only a higher power can save me" victim mentality of 12 Step programmes does nothing to solve any issues. In the short term there is plenty of success. See how many of those faces are still attending meetings a few months down the line. According to AA's own figures you'll find 2% still there. Cold turkey with zero support of any kind? Around 5% of such hardcore bods are still "clean" a year later. Am not a fan of 12 Step programmes aas they actively screw your chances of sobriety. They don't tend to publicise that aspect of their model much though funnily enough 8)
Anyhoo. I'd best leave it there. Suffice to say I think you are wise to be looking to other options to achieve whatever goals you have in controlling your drug use
Interesting, certainly I saw a few people I had got close to live and breath the God stuff seemingly on top of the world then use hard, not everyone I was living with is still here
however the one's who don't get so Taliban with it seem to do well, there were a few 'atheists' in the rooms who had nothing to do with God but found helping out at meetings and reading the literature kept them clean.. I always thought there must be better waysnot for me anyway, don't really have much in place to keep me safe just dealt with a lot of shit and feeling much happier, enjoy the odd emotion. Had a few bad days hurt myself a little but not touched any opis and don't join in the ketamine olympics that take place in my little flat every night haha.. just having a structure helps after a while of being on ESA doing nothing with my time but meetings and television I realized things were not right, better off using smack than actively watching screensavers like Made in Chelsea
hey Maxalfie / Acid4Blood
^ Ya. The social side of 12 Step is the only possible benefit I can think of. Even then hanging around with a bunch of addicts going over and over stories of addiction woes probably ain't that helpful either. My peer mentor has very similar opinions of 12 Steps and, unlike me, has been down that road plenty. Most addicts I know have done at some point. I know only one that stuck with it for more than a few months - coupla years max - though. Just keeps you stuck down an addict-mentality cul-de-sac imo.
Sounds like you're doing great though. If you're managing to skip the nightly ket sessions you're a stronger man than I would be :D
That sounds like a far more reasonable approach to me, Knock. I suspect a proper tapering plan and maybe a brief inpatient detox for the final push would still be advisable for the heavier addictions (strong opies, booze, benzos) but from a psychological standpoint I'm fairly sure it would be far more useful to avoid the 12 Step helpless victim mentality like the plague. I know it does work for some but they are very much in the minority over the long term.
Sounds like you're doing great though. If you're managing to skip the nightly ket sessions you're a stronger man than I would be :D
That sounds like a far more reasonable approach to me, Knock. I suspect a proper tapering plan and maybe a brief inpatient detox for the final push would still be advisable for the heavier addictions (strong opies, booze, benzos) but from a psychological standpoint I'm fairly sure it would be far more useful to avoid the 12 Step helpless victim mentality like the plague. I know it does work for some but they are very much in the minority over the long term.
That's not what I'm saying atall. What I mean is that males are wired for competition, look at the natural world for ample evidence of this, and it's competition that produces hierarchy, which is why through human history these hierarchies would naturally tend to be male dominated.
I don't want to prefix generalisations with 'I know this is a generalisation, but...', when it's obviously a generalisation. It doesn't bother me when other people make generalisations either...
no thx.
samhaingrim said:
Maybe they should think of a name for it that isn't femenism then.
samhaingrim said:
I don't, I'm all for removal of gender bias.
I form my own opinions, I'm not a parrot ;P
hhahahaha. nope, not I.
knock
Bluelighter
Why look at the "natural world" when we're discussing human behaviour? When we look at the human world we can see that people are just as capable of co-operation as they are of competition. It's our ability to co-operate that makes large-scale projects possible.
I don't think we are "wired for competition", except by culture, but either way, the thing about people is that we're able to transcend our "wiring" and do things based on reason rather than instinct or culture.
I agree that competition produces hierarchy, but I don't think it's competitiveness that has put men, rather than women, at the top of those hierarchies. Rather it's the historical fact of the sexually-derived division of labour that has created a self-perpetuating cultural division. (I think b&w is right about child-bearing being a key factor in women's historical social position, but I think I'm right too in that men have got their way through physical strength, and indeed the two factors are related, you don't need to be muscle-bound to have a kid, but it helps if you're out hunting).
I've met plenty women who are as or more competitive than men. My ex is one of them.
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Mela
Greenlighter
The problem with taking the hard-nature position is the fact it effectively overlooks cultural and social learning. For instance, cross-cultural studies do show that in matrilineal cultures females are more competitive than men. But, lets take the typical western culture - we could say that men are undoubtedly better at maths (maybe even hard-wired to be so). However, studies demonstrate that much of the observed difference is due to stereotypes and social learning.
Only need to see that girls are kicking boys asses academic-wise at the moment (I assume we could class this as competition). Yet 40 years ago, most girls would have been stuck in classes learning how to be the domestic goddess.
If we define competition as being able to kick seven-kinds of shite out of another individual, then perhaps - but a relatively narrow view of competition. What's interesting is that a difference in competitiveness has been observed in kids as young as 3yrs (way before hormones kick in). Overall, hard to separate nature from nurture. If we can get a sample of kids raised in a gender-neutral environment, we might have a better idea (but I'm sure the PC-sucks brigade would be clutching pearls at such an 'unnatural' idea).
Well humans are animals and like it or not men and women have hardwired biological differences that influence behaviour... and of course we are able to transcend our biology to some extent.
knockando said:
Why do these historical facts exist? Because of our biological wiring...
I'm not being absolutist about that, it is about nature and nurture, unfortunately it's only been a matter of decades since the west got comfortable enough and had the technological means to allow us all to stop thinking about staying alive from day to day and begin the task of collective self-analysis that is so badly needed to improve how people are brought up to think and act - compared to the entire prior history of humans where nature has been the primary driver of these things.
knock
Bluelighter
That's what I said, men are physically stronger and women bear children, those are biological differences, and the way they have affected our social structures are influences on our behaviour. So we are in full agreement. Perhaps we are not in full agreement about what "to some extent" means.
Yes, that's what I said, though I think "wiring" is a bit of a loaded term, and I think the historical facts became self-perpetuating cultural facts. Women still have a monopoly on the bits necessary for bearing children, but there is no reason for them not to do all the other things men are so used to doing, when they are not bearing children, other than "tradition". We've got power tools and shit now.
badandwicked
Bluelighter
There was a couple who had a 3 year old and they claimed no one not even the grandparents knew what gender it was as they didn't want it influenced.
Mela
Greenlighter
But that generally suggests that cultural and social influences were not major factors in the deep past. Here's a recent cross-cultural study which does suggest the power of social and cultural factors.
http://rady.ucsd.edu/faculty/directory/gneezy/pub/docs/gender-differences-competition.pdf
And it's worth noting that the tribes in the study are far from our advanced industrial society (which is rather divorced from our evolutionary past). Love the quotes in the paper:
"We are sick of playing the roles of breeding bulls and baby-sitters."
A Khasi man (Ahmed, 1994)
"Men treat us like donkeys."
A Maasai woman (Hodgson, 2001)
ABE:
Aye, and it was fun reading the sturm-und-drang raised by certain types to such a situation.
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ahhh yes, but we only compete with each other for male attention or for who's most attractive <-- summary of the overall discussion so far
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