http://www.twcnews.com/nys/capital-region/capital-tonight-interviews/2016/03/18/ron-bunce-karin-carreau-031816.html

If you read this article and listen to this interview carefully, you will see that it is the ‘Addiction Treatment Specialists’ who are largely fighting against licensing. Of course they would. Because they will not be able to resolve the contradictions between how they operate now and how they would have to operate with ethical standards in place.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to call them quacks…but…There are any number of providers who may have as little as a high school education… ”

“Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, for instance, said that nearly 300 positions in its Alcohol and Substance Abuse Treatment Services program would need to be licensed to meet the requirement.” OASAS is also exempt.

I commented on the article:

The article mentioned OASAS as being exempt and the Department of Corrections Drug and Alcohol agency being two of the resistant parties. So I wonder if that has to do with:
1. Thinking 12-step membership qualifies you to be a counselor and you don’t need to follow rules.
2. Knowing that working ‘by the rules’ would conflict with a lot of how drug and alcohol treatment is currently done.

I’m all for Ron Bunce and Karin Carreau (who’s blocked me on Twitter, as if anybody even cares that I have an informed opinion)’s push for licensing, because that could certainly improve those sectors of social work that have been most controversial and horrifyingly unaccountable. But I do have another concern.

On my website notpowerless.com I document my attempts to complain to the licensing board (NYS Department of Education, as well as the Department of Health and Human Services) who both responded that there was nothing wrong with some very blatant and unrepentant NASW ethics violations involving 12-step coercion. My question would be: What is licensing really going to accomplish if the licensing board does not acknowledge NASW ethics violations?

Also, violations are even written into DoE law (as here: 12-Step Extortion with NYS License as Leverage Much like Ron Bunce said in his example that an untrained person could provide psychotherapy to HIM, but not vice versa, here a committee with ‘expertise in problems of drug and alcohol abuse’ can hold someone’s license hostage and force them to complete ‘the program’ or kick them out of their job. That’s scary stuff that will need to be addressed.)

There is a follow-up with the 12-steppers’ side of the argument. He basically takes takes the attitude of denying there is a problem with the status quo, saying “we have a solution that doesn’t have a problem”.

What does she mean when she says 2002 was the first time we tried to regulate the spoken word as treatment? Could it be referring to THIS (Local Services Bulletin No. 2002-05: Impact of Recent Federal Court Decision Concerning Alcoholics Anonymous
On Government Funded Providers)? Update:2020 Now this page does not mention that this was from 2002.

This is in response to 9 letters and over 140 signatures and comments from people concerned about 12-step coercion in mental health. Click here to see the petition.

They aren’t going to investigate this particular case. I received this letter from Sarah C. Brown, Deputy Director of Operations and Resources of the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights, for all regions nationwide.

Since then I have continued to file complaints and got a response from the Regional office regarding my complaint about New York State Education Department investigator’s telling me that they “don’t look into the AA thing”, which is what my complaint is all about.

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES

Office of the Secretary

Voice – (212) 264-3313, (800) 368-1019
TDD – (212) 264-2355, (800) 537-7697
Fax – (212) 264-3039

http://www.hhs.gov/ocr

Office for Civil Rights, Region II
Jacob Javits Federal Building
26 Federal Plaza, Suite 3312
New York, NY 10278

January 4, 2017

Thomas Gleason
Oakland, California 94618

RE: Our Transaction Number: 17-255939

Dear Thomas Gleason;

Thank you for your correspondence received on December 5, 2016, by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (OCR).
We are in the process of reviewing your correspondence to decide whether OCR has authority and is able to take action with respect to the matters you have raised.

When contacting this office, please remember to include the transaction number that we have given your file. That number is located in the upper
left-hand corner of this letter. If you have any questions, please contact us at the address and/or telephone numbers listed above.

Sincerely,
Mrs. Neza for
Linda C. Colón
Regional Manager

Axis II: Personality disorders and mental retardation

This is in my medical records, and ‘confirmed’ by the 12-step interventionist LCSW-R James Garrett, because I complained about Alcoholics Anonymous coercion at Samaritan Couseling Center of the Capital Region.

My complaints, however, which led to this diagnosis, have been removed and are not ‘technically‘ a part of my clinical records, so there is not a very good record of why I am so personality-disordered or mentally retarded. I would like my complaints to be included in my medical records but Samaritan Counseling (which is a right to request according to HIPAA law) is not responding to this request.

I spent several weeks being dissuaded from asking for my records from James Garrett to compare them with the ones I had received from Samaritan Counseling. I finally demanded them, and while he had been telling me that it was her decision not to speak to me, for five months I had several indications that she was willing to speak to me but could not because I had not completed the treatment process, which seemed to be never-ending. His records show that I wanted to know what he was telling her, and this one shows it pretty clearly.

This above was the last note related to my ‘progress’.

The final one:

Was my attempt to explain over a year of AA coercion which I found troubling. In this letter I was still trying to give the addiction specialist James Garrett the benefit of the doubt, not yet knowing what was going on and it wasn’t until a year later that I got this record saying that he had been calling me Axis 2 in the meantime and telling Samaritan to keep boundaries. Samaritan then sent me a termination letter saying that since I hadn’t used a stamp (I hand-delivered the letter to the therapist’s office because it was closer than the post office, while mailing the other two to the Clinical Director Jenness Clairmont and Executive Director David Olsen), that I was ‘under no circumstances’ to have any personal contact with any of them anymore.