Category Archives: Social Work Ethics
What Anti-Psychotic Drugs Did to Me
After being terminated by Samaritan Counseling Center of the Capital Region for not wanting to go to AA or any more 12-step rehab, I went to a psychiatric hospital. They gave me anti-psychotic drugs (Geodon, Risperdal, Haldol, Zyprexa) to ‘help me stop obsessing about it’. The doctor who prescribed me these drugs told me “You’re fucked, and you need AA, man” (nevermind the fact that I had been in AA daily for a year and a half).
Then I woke up one day to find my eyes looking like this. It was really horrifying, and it made me start to wonder why someone would be given anti-psychotic drugs just because they don’t want to have to pay $17,000 to become an Oxford-Group-style Protestant Christian in order to talk to a therapist. My therapist who pushed me into AA for over a year, David Olsen (the Executive Director of Samaritan Counseling Center of the Capital Region), and the Clinical Director (who is on the NYS Office of Professions) will not acknowledge this at all. I later found that the extreme shakiness and flickery vision I was feeling is called drug-induced Parkinsonism.
These anti-psychotic, anti-schizophrenic drugs are used as ‘mood stabilizers’, like lithium. They are also known as “neuroleptics”, or “major tranquilizers”. I was given Haldol, Zyprexa, Geodon, and Risperdal to help me stop obsessing about the fact that the state-licensed therapists at Samaritan Counseling do not acknowledge that most people do not benefit from going to Alcoholics Anonymous and constantly stating that they are powerless, insane, selfish, defective, and dishonest.
To me, it’s clear that there is a pattern of treating people who don’t find AA helpful as if they are insane. This is evidenced by vague “Axis 2″ diagnoses, social shunning (refusal to discuss the matter), and here most clearly, prescribing anti-psychotic drugs.
Letters and Petition Sent to NASW-NY, NYS EDUCATION COMMISSIONER, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, SAMARITAN INSTITUTE
update Jan 20 2020: Samaritan Institute is now called Solihten Institute.
We have over 140 complaint notes, petition signatures, and letters asking health workers to acknowledge the problems with 12-step coercion in therapy, the rehab industry, and Alcoholics Anonymous itself as the ‘preferred mode of treatment’. It has proven all too often to cause psychological damage. Samaritan Counseling Center of the Capital Region has not acknowledged any of this. The worst part is that there is seemingly no way to complain about it, which reinforces a sense of powerlessness and is actually part of the 12-step so-called treatment. The tactic of ‘professionals who are also members of Alcoholics Anonymous’, also known as ‘two-hatters‘ is to go silent and refuse to respond, much like AA itself tried to do in response to requests for safety guidelines and transparency about third-level sex offenders being plea-dealed to the meetings, the same meetings where honest people are unknowingly sent after paying big money to rehabs for ‘treatment’. A recent lawsuit brings the problems into legal focus.
Petition to Health Workers and Academics About Alcoholics Anonymous (148 current signatures and comments)
Here are the letters we sent, and we will send these, and more, to more and more government agencies, law firms, and health workers until this is resolved completely.
Here’s a very brief description of the case this blog is based on (by me):
Here is a letter explaining the legal issues with Samaritan Counseling coercing AA attendance:
Here is a letter from a Pilot whose license been terminated because he voluntarily entered into the HIMS program and found no real help, but a lot of bills:
Here is a letter from a woman who has pinpointed AA as a retraumatizing influence:
Here is a letter from a nurse being extorted into AA to keep her medical license:
Here is a letter from someone who found AA completely incompatible with his religion and it took him 13 years to escape the AA ‘treatment’ system.
Full PDF
Here is a letter by a woman who found 12-step rehab unhelpful and made her suicidal, and like me, she feels compelled to tell about it:
“Didn’t have the right God”
Here is a letter from an Operation Iraqi Freedom combat veteran who found AA worsened her PTSD:
Here is a letter from someone who, like me, found it impossible to complain about the abusive treatment he was getting (ARISE Intervention):
Here is another example of the AA extortion contracts that have been revealed in the HIMS program, Physicians Health Programs, and in therapeutic contexts (this last link is to a book about the emotional extortionist method devised and promoted by my own ARISE interventionist and related to one letter above).
Check out, especially, the admission to 4 days of drinking that led to 3 more YEARS of “monitoring” (meaning any positive test would result in ‘consequences’)
Here is a letter that Silver Damsen sent to Samaritan Counseling requesting to have a discussion, including my signature. It was completely ignored.
Here is a letter from someone who grew up with the 12-steps and saw disaster all around him, and started connecting the dots:
Growing Up In a 12-step home (PDF)
140 petition signatures and letters like this should not be ignored. There are more, and the complaints will continue to be collected, sent, and documented.
Here is the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights’ response.
Alcoholics Anonymous and Occupational Licensing
The first wave of lawsuits was against mandated AA. This continues.
The next wave is coercion within the professions, as seen started here, and with the Physician’s Health Programs, and EAPs.
And that will prepare for the third wave of lawsuits for coerced AA by two-hatters in state-licensed therapy and health services.
And it will happen. Many hospitals have already changed their ways based on science.
But so-called ‘faith-based’ places like Samaritan Counseling are the ones who will get sued eventually.
Please sign this Petition
This petition was initiated because we saw a pattern with LCSWs and healthcare workers sending people to AA even when it was completely inappropriate, and even claiming it was their right to do it. Organizations like Samaritan Counseling Center of the Capital Region seem to force even their Clinical Director (who’s also on the state licensing board), who said she was not a fan of the 12-steps, to refer people to coercive 12-step interventionists, no discussion allowed, even after the client told them repeatedly this is not helpful. There are three possible causes for this:
1. Pure ignorance and blind faith – No longer acceptable because they have been notified.
2. Coercion within the industry / financial conflicts of interest (‘do it this way because I run this counseling center’) – Also not legal to intimidate licensed trained professionals in their job duties like this
3. As a way to blame mishandled transference on the client – Which would be the sickest explanation for a sex therapist / supervisor / pastor/ Executive Director to prefer 12-step coercion among both clients and supervisees.
Samaritan Counseling Center’s 12-step ‘preference’ seems to be based on a combination of 2 and 3.
Not exactly the response I was hoping for
Here’s my latest letter from David Olsen who still refuses to acknowledge any problems with the 12-step ‘treatment’, which includes getting people to detail their sex lives and then going no-contact if they think this did not help resolve an alcohol problem.
This is not exactly the response I was hoping for. I was hoping that they would acknowledge my complaints and concerns about 12-step coercion, the problems with the rehab industry, and tell me that they would be looking into this. That would make me happy and make me feel like they listened and that they might not do this again to someone else.
I’m concerned about the people getting psychologically and financially abused, extorted, raped, murdered, mistreated, etc, and I don’t like this concern to be treated as ‘denial’, belligerence, ‘bullshitting’, ‘taking them for a ride’, ‘harassment’, or however else they want to attempt to undermine and invalidate my attempts to communicate.
They should acknowledge a systemic problem that led to my therapist fearing for her job security and me becoming suicidal, all because this stupid cult religion which is ‘treatment’ that is ‘not treatment’ cannot be criticized.
Instead, they estimated an invoice for $9.75 for copies of my complaints, which I had asked to be amended (after they were removed) according to my right to request that via HIPAA laws.
FOIL Appeal to MaryEllen Elia New York State Commissioner of Education
Does the Delmar Reformed Church in Delmar NY really not want me on their property just because I complained about 12-step coercion in therapy (which they provide an office to as a ‘sponsor church’)? If so, that doesn’t seem like such an open minded church at all. I wonder if they know that their sponsee counseling center is banning people from the property for writing a letter about 12-step alternatives. I find it hard to believe that they would approve of that, but you never know.
My Own Letter to Mental Health Professionals
update Jan 20 2020: Samaritan Institute is now called Solihten Institute.
Here’s my own letter which will go on top of the packet I’m sending to the New York State Department of Education, Samaritan Counseling Center, NASW, Samaritan Institute, and the US Department of Health and Human Services.
I don’t think I’m ‘personality disordered or mentally retarded’ (Axis 2) for being concerned about Alcoholics Anonymous coercion in mental health care.
Resources in 2006
This page in the ARISE book, from 2006, shows the acknowledged options for ‘treatment’ through coercive ‘interventions’, not just for drug and alcohol abuse, but for pretty much everything. Yet, as early as the mid-eighties and early nineties, there was such strong criticism of the 12-step approach, enough so to form alternative organizations and strategies and activist organizations. Instead of acknowledging the failure of 12-step coercion initiated by EAPs and similar programs, and exploring this feedback, the 12-step organizations devised new tactics for extortion, information control and fear-mongering, which grew their industry to the $35 billion dollar ‘rehab’ industry that it now is, even though they cannot prove that their ‘treatment’ is any more effective than no treatment at all, while censoring complaints that this kind of ‘treatment’ is even counterproductive, using failures as a reason for more of the same.
I am also including some of the contracts that coerce people into treatment. The book also contains payment plans for ARISE interventions.
Another Letter to Health Workers and Academics Against 12-Step Programs
This is Silver’s message. She, like me and many others feel there is a pattern of abuse, anti-intellectualism, and willful negligence doing more harm than good in 12-step programs, and was compelled to speak out about it. We are writing these letters because we want people to understand, care, and realize how much most people (even mental health professionals) don’t really know about the 12-step programs and how inappropriate this kind of ‘treatment’ can be for (we think most) people.
Many who’ve experienced this spent a lot of time being afraid to say these things, and feeling very alone and ‘crazy’… but we slowly connected anonymously on blog comments, then as people in the real world or through social media, and now we’re organizing to let others know that we are not powerless and we won’t be tolerating the shunning, shaming and censorship that keeps this cult alive, especially not by our state-licensed professionals.