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.