1) we admitted we were powerless over alcohol/the addict/ the disease and our lives have become unmangeable.

2) we came to believe a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. (The constitution!!)

3) Turned our will and our lives over to the loving care of our constitution.

4) made a fearless and searching moral inventory.

Etc…it could do a country good.

One, lies and secrets. All alcoholic families internalize dishonesty. The alcoholic lies about how much they drink and the harm it does. The coda lies about her dependence on the alcoholic and the damage being done, lies to self about facing fears, refuses confrontation or independence. Dances the spiral dance of death with the addict, getting as sick and as unmangeable as the addict. cognitive distortion become prevalent and dichotomous thinking grows. The children lie to themselves about the parent the parent is ALL bad one day and ALL good the next. Lies and cognitive distortions lend themselves to anger and resentments which feed the disease and desire to drink and or depend on others (people, places and things) for comfort. The ability to accurately asssess the self and the environment for effective solutions becomes impaired.

Two, power and control. Almost all alcoholic families are desperate to maintain the lies. The lies allow the addiction to continue while power and control is used to keep the lies and cogntive distortions in place. By power and control, I mean fear. The addict blows up and gets angry when confronted with consequences. Consequences are given for telling the truth. The truth speaker is the one who is punished. As the truth is denied cognitive distortion related to the constant invalidation are developed. If you see a tornado coming and no one else believes you what do you do?? You get louder, you start to exaggerate, you appeal to emotion. Children in this setting develop a reliance on the emotional part of the brain, they become unable to accurately develop emotion regulation. The family becomes an emotional mess. Tempers flare, yelling, consequences, resentments, cognitive distortion and paranoia develop.

Isolation: The isolation occurs because all family members as they dance this spiral dance of death begin to engage in behaviors that are not socially acceptable. Like a cult, or the mafia, family members act out and begin having their own shame about the behavior they engage in. They don’t have friends over to the house, they don’t tell people about what is going on, they overly defend the addict or get overly angry. They themselves yell at the addict, when punished lash out at the addict. They do things that go against their values and look the other way. This starts to put others off. The emotionality creates some of the isolation. The addict actively discredits outsiders. The addict makes it difficult to leave the home or be with others because of the paranoia. The children of alcoholics don’t know how to interact socially without drugs or alcohol, they have cognitive distortions about the world that make them more likely to associate with other addicts and co addicts. They attract each other because it is a world others cannot understand.

There is a reason why sex addiction runs rampant in the alcoholic er republican party. Not that addiction does not exist in the dem party. The dems are the coda’s “taking care of” and “enabling” the addicts. “We understand them”, we don’t want to “be like them”. So we fix, we enable, and we coddle. Underneath most dems is an addict as well of some sort. Hence my obsession to these blogs. But at least I know what it is!!

The solution is a rigid adherence to truth and flexibile thinking. Consequences and rule of law. Love and discipline.

Yes we are a nation of addicts and our disease is showing to the world.

I suspect that Mr. Parry is now part of the story… and he will be of no use to The Pugilist.

He’s not going overseas, apart from Paraguay.

He’d either end up in the Hague on war crimes, or the French would finally push the EU to prosecute him for corruption while he was at Halliburton. Going back to Halliburton would only make the latter more likely.