After dealing for years with a toxic mixture of depression and heavy drinking, compiled with a none-too-satisfying post-graduate introduction to the corporate business world, in 2008 I attempted to end my life. This isn't merely a how-I-survived suicide story, however. Following my hospitalization, an extended psych ward stay, and in-patient and out-patient therapy, I was about as lost as I had been before my recovery began. Maybe more so. Believed to Be Seen follows this path, also focusing on my introduction to Alcoholics Anonymous, and my subsequent struggles with the organization's system of spiritual conversion, while also digging deeper into the federal legislation that helped strengthen 12 step recovery's place at the heart of the American treatment system.
The book explores how the disease-concept of alcoholism has been historically warped to create and strengthen new organizational bodies founded on personal religious ideals, ultimately aiding the alcohol and drug industrial complex, and the launch of a multi-billion dollar treatment industry. Along the way, a lack of unified treatment standards has not only aided the creation of some 13,000 treatment centers in the country (where there were only a couple hundred in the 1960s), but promoted ambiguity surrounding which processes can be used to treat those with substance addictions, and who is qualified to administer such treatment; ultimately resulting in an industry littered with inconsistent and faulty processes, all maintaining success rates that would otherwise suggest statistical irrelevance if not for their continued governmental support.
The purpose of Believed to Be Seen isn't to merely uncover why the American treatment industry has evolved as it has, or to suggest complete structural disillusionment. At its core, it is about learning to recognize the system for what it is in determining how to best attain legitimate personal healing. Through my own journey I ...
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