I like this one, Morty:

24. It is both true and sad that some people do in fact buy books based on the color of the binding.

For several years I arranged the 500+ books in my office by size and color. Size so more would fit on the shelves, and color so I could see the titles better: not all red together and all black together, but each book a different color from the one next to it. No other order whatsoever, but I could usually find any book within a few seconds. This drove my girlfriend out of her gourd (she arranges by genre, then nationality, then alpha by author). I eventually pulled some sort of order out of it (sections for fiction, poetry, baseball), but contrasting colors still persist.

I should say, while I have been having fun with true stories of book addiction, that I have had close relationships with alcoholics and gambling addicts over the years (not my current girlfriend; she like me has mild reading addiction, no substance or gambling issues.) As many here have noted, these problems are real and they are not (or rarely) addressable via sheer cold-turkey willpower. It does no good to say "it's not like a beesting, you have to drive to the casino and it's 45 minutes away." Driving there is an integral part of the addiction.

Back in the Golden Age of book collecting**, from roughly 1900 to 1925, it was a fairly standard practice to fill one's library with leather sets of authors that one had no intention of ever reading, arranged by color of the binding. Back when there were still many private mansions along 5th Avenue in New York, the Yankees' owner Jacob Ruppert had a library like that, undoubtedly filled with beautifully bound sets of Thackeray, Scott, Anatole France and possibly even Turgenev or Dostoevsky. 5th Avenue shops such as Scribner's, Doubleday and Brentano's had entire sections devoted to author sets, all to be custom bound to match the decor of the customer's library.

Given two of the other great passions of the Social Register set in those days, I can also picture those libraries of Scott and Thackeray being intermingled with a Rembrandt or two, and carefully arranged rows of lions' heads, exotic parrots, and stuffed zebras. These folks weren't like the beancounting hedge fund managers who make up today's Forbes 400. These dudes knew how to live large.

**"Golden" from the POV of their dealers, anyway.

it was a fairly standard practice to fill one's library with leather sets of authors that one had no intention of ever reading, arranged by color of the binding.

My parents have books like this. I was rearranging their furniture a few years ago, and they requested that I bring all the leatherbound author sets out into the living room so that they could be shown off. They know that they've never read those books (although they've read paperback versions of some of the same works), and they know that all guests know that they haven't read the books. So I am really puzzled by the idea that this confers some sort of prestige. I had previously brought out all of the interesting and attractive hardcovers they owned, first editions and such, books that I would want to show off, and arranged them in an aesthetically pleasing way. That was vetoed in favor of the leatherbound sets.

Given two of the other great passions of the Social Register set in those days, I can also picture those libraries of Scott and Thackeray being intermingled with a Rembrandt or two, and carefully arranged rows of lions' heads, exotic parrots, and stuffed zebras. These folks weren't like the beancounting hedge fund managers who make up today's Forbes 400. These dudes knew how to live large.

It does seem that flaunting your wealth in today's time has diminished greatly, to the point of embarrassment. Thoughts on why that is? Modern Democrats waging war against the rich using mass media? Are there fewer exclusive social institutions today compared to yesterday, resulting in more intermingling the very wealthy with the merely working rich?

Modern Democrats waging war against the rich using mass media? Exposing the GOP's hypocrisy on the deficit?

FTFY

It does seem that flaunting your wealth in today's time has diminished greatly, to the point of embarrassment.

Contrast with the African-American community.

My parents have books like this. I was rearranging their furniture a few years ago, and they requested that I bring all the leatherbound author sets out into the living room so that they could be shown off. They know that they've never read those books (although they've read paperback versions of some of the same works), and they know that all guests know that they haven't read the books. So I am really puzzled by the idea that this confers some sort of prestige. I had previously brought out all of the interesting and attractive hardcovers they owned, first editions and such, books that I would want to show off, and arranged them in an aesthetically pleasing way. That was vetoed in favor of the leatherbound sets.

My favorite variant on this was when a local Hollywood ghostwriter was helping a friend decorate his Watergate hotel suite with "good" books. My instructions were to pick out 500 hardbacks that wouldn't embarrass his friend, but he would only pay two bucks apiece. I managed to scrounge around to some of the other shops and filled the order without too much trouble (hey, it was an easy 500 buck profit), but the kicker was that the books were there for one night only, and the next day his friend, mission accomplished, just threw the books all into the dumpster.

------------------------------------

It does seem that flaunting your wealth in today's time has diminished greatly, to the point of embarrassment. Thoughts on why that is?

It's not very complicated. Parody and mockery is the currency of our time, and anyone who would basically advertise in public that's he's a clueless moron is leading with his chin. Not that there's anything particularly wrong with advertising that you're a clueless moron---we all do it from time to time---but when you subject yourself to the scrutiny of the outside world, you're not going be able to expect everyone to buy into your idea of what constitutes "class". If you can't stand the heat, etc....

It does seem that flaunting your wealth in today's time has diminished greatly, to the point of embarrassment.

The premise of is simply wrong. It's not like the millionaires of the 20's invited the public to their libraries. They didn't flaunt their wealth for the hoi polloi.

It does seem that flaunting your wealth in today's time has diminished greatly, to the point of embarrassment.

Donald Trump?

Not that he has any real net worth but still...

In the world of the Real Housewives, the various celebrity magazines, and Donald Trump, political actor of inexplicable importance, it's just crazy to say that wealth-flaunting isn't an integral part of our popular culture.

It does seem that flaunting your wealth in today's time has diminished greatly, to the point of embarrassment.

The premise of is simply wrong. It's not like the millionaires of the 20's invited the public to their libraries. They didn't flaunt their wealth for the hoi polloi.

Of course not, but what of it? Jake Ruppert wasn't trying to impress Babe 'Roots' on his day off. He was trying to put the shine on his fellow beer barons and other social magnates---IOW his peers.

-------------------------------

In the world of the Real Housewives and Donald Trump, political actor of inexplicable importance, it's just crazy to say that wealth-flaunting isn't an integral part of our popular culture.

Of course it is, but it's also subject to popular derision when it lapses into self-parody, as Trump's usually does. Just look at the reaction to his endorsement of Romney---Is there a single person on Earth besides Trump himself who thinks it's going to get Romney even ten additional votes?

Books--this was a few years before I started drinking regularly, and I remember signing up for a Lit class, Hardy and Lawrence, and the way I approached it was to buy all eight novels that constituted the required reading and read one each day. I was off the week before the semester started and every morning over coffee started, say, Tess of the d'Ubervilles, and paced myself over the next 17 hours, making copious notes along the way. Eight days, eight novels, all the required reading for an upper-level lit course. That's not normal.

Second, after the meeting, when making small talk with other participants, one guy learned that it was my first meeting. "Well, then, I'm your sponsor, here, take my number," he said. He then insisted that I come to another meeting with him scheduled for the very next morning. I didn't like how this guy try to force himself into my life the way he did. I understand that he just meant well, but I also wanted to feel things out and try a few meetings before diving head-first and committing myself. And if I was going to get a sponsor, I wanted someone I knew a little better. Frankly, his enthusiasm only discouraged me from going to another meeting. I didn't drink for four months (including my birthday) before I ordered a whiskey on a date.

BAE says a lot of good things about this in 162. I've heard of this kind of thing happening. Fortunately it doesn't happen too often, as far as I know. I can only pass on my experience and understanding; those tell me you had the misfortune to run into a proselytizer, the kind of thing that can send someone screaming from AA, the kind of thing that is entirely contrary to some of the solid fundamentals of AA as a 'program of attraction, not promotion'. I had a similar, albeit less 'in your face' experience. I felt pressured into getting a sponsor, so of the meetings I was attending regularlly I picked the guy closest to me in age. As I discovered later, while he had been sober for eight years, he was still an emotional wreck. He was no help at all and did a few things I viewed as breaches of confidence. The whole experience did nothing to help me get sober, and it was probably a year before I tried again. AFACT, though, most meetings are pretty good about this kind of thing. I've often heard such as, 'it's recommended but hardly required that someone get a sponsor within 90 days of their first meeting'. The best way to treat a newcomer, imo, is to explain what sponsorship is about, what it entails, then back the eff off and let the newcomer make his/her decision and respect it. This doesn't always happen, of course, but someone coming up to a new person and saying 'I'm your sponsor"? That's out there. That's someone who has thoroughly misunderstood the very basic tenets of AA.

That said, I was very fortunate in my next AA sponsor. An older guy, who over the course of several years turned into a surrogate father. I only approached him because I had tried to do AA alone, just with the help of meetings, and couldn't stay sober. AA is big on the "confessional" aspect of one alcoholic confiding in another in an atmosphere of complete confidence. One of the cliches is, "you're only as sick as your secrets". So I asked "Dan" to help me out, temporarily of course. That lasted several years and was a wonderful relationship. Dan never once told me what to do--if I was recalcitrant on some point he had the sense to let my pain argue with me. He never did.

All of which is to say, a good sponsor can be an actual lifesaver, while a bad one can utterly sour someone on the AA experience.

Donald Trump?

Not that he has any real net worth but still...

That's a pretty short list. Seems I hit another bulls-eye!

In the world of the Real Housewives, the various celebrity magazines, and Donald Trump, political actor of inexplicable importance, it's just crazy to say that wealth-flaunting isn't an integral part of our popular culture.

Real Housewives? I think it is called fronting, or faking it. The real housewives fall into the McMansion's category (I would love to see their books), not true wealth. I think you should give the topic greater thought. Not sure if you are referring to me, but I never said anything about wealth flaunting being an "integral part of pop culture". I hope you are literate enough to read what I wrote and understand what it means.

It does seem that flaunting your wealth in today's time has diminished greatly, to the point of embarrassment.

Who gives a ####?

.
Looks like the thread is expiring, but does anyone know the origin of the phrase used with regard to Hamilton's situation, "accountability partner"? It has an odd sound to my ears. A little googling tells me it's commonest among Christians, "where the accountability partner helps a person adhere to a moral commitment, such as refraining from viewing a pornographic internet site". It sounds like the Rangers hire that person, presumably with Hamilton's approval--that it's a quasi-official position with the club, what with the position currently being "open", according to a couple of articles. An "accountability partner" isn't an AA term. A little more reading suggests that it's a relationship of equality, and not at all like the sponsor-sponsee relationship in AA.

By the way, if anyone is interested, while AA still uses the term that was used in the program's early years, namely "sponsor", I believe "guide" is much more accurate. "Sponsor" came into being when membership in AA was very small, and it was typical for one man (no women in the first AA meetings, though that quickly changed) to put up another man for membership, to sponsor him for membership, in effect.

A sponsor is simply someone who is familiar with the program and is there to advise the newcomer. Working through the 12 steps of AA is considered an all-but essential part of getting and staying sober, and having a more experienced hand helping you through those steps (especially the fifth step which, like many spiritual programs, has at its root the power of confession to change us and thus requires someone to confess to) makes the going much easier.

The thread may be expiring, but I thought that I would put my two cents in while they're worth a damn:

As I write I've got a whopping total of 10 days sober. I've been in recovery for about 18 months now, and have so far managed to celebrate my 90-day milestones by getting well and truly shitfaced.

I don't have much to add to the (mostly, and surprisingly, excellent) discussion thus far, except that, as one who has recently relapsed, I feel for Josh right now. It's not a fun place to be. Good luck to him.

And thank you -- very sincerely, thank you -- to the other BBTFers in recovery, or with friends or family in recovery, who've shared their stories. I'm grateful.

Sincere best wishes, Dudefella.

hello boys
i come from a family of drug addicts and alcoholics, both sides. i've watched the death and destruction it has caused during my whole life. i lost my uncle, who i ADORED, to alcohol - the week before he died he told me and i quote "i'd rather be dead than sober." i can still hear him saying that. i couldn't never get a straight (hahaha) answer about why exactly sober = unliveable or why drunk = liveable. and, mind, he was a minister and truly thought that he was going straight to hell for his drunkenness. and he was one of the most loving, kind persons i've ever known.

i've never had even one drop. not even one puff. not even 1 pill. i refused to take any pain meds EVER because i'm afraid that taking ANY substance will turn me into an addict because i don't know what turns someone into an addict or why someone decides that whatever the substance does, he/she has to have more regardless of the consequences.

best i can tell, alcohol doesn't lead to "fun" but it leads to a LOT of fights, arguments, and people doing things they regret. and they sure don't seem more "fun" when they are drunk. and there is DEFINITELY nothing whatsoever "fun" about being with someone high on coke or junk. i sure have been told by a bunch of people who are drunk/high that having a sober person around them ruins the "fun". it sure don't look like "fun" to me

i don't know what exactly it is that addicts use the substances to treat - i don't guess i'll ever know that. but i do know that some people manage to deal with it without having to use those substances and that some people never can

oh yeah
and that ray has got to be one of the most un-understanding human beings i have ever known. he hears "walk a mile in my shoes" and says - but they aren't the right size...

as for "sex addiction"
- i think it is 2 things

1 - a bull poopoo piece of crap excuse that MEN use when they are caught cheating on their WIFE/partner. you never hear it used when WOMEN are caught cheating on their husbands and they don't have any sort of "rehab" for it.

2 - a genuine kind of obsessive compulsive behavior that the males who have it really suffer from and can't stop like any other sort of obsessive compulsive behavior

i don't believe that ANY "addiction" that only occurs in males is a real addiction. apparently, females have to have been raped/molested as kids to supposedly have it, so sorry, i disbelieve in calling this an addiction

Best wishes indeed, dudefella.

I know roughly zero about the subject, but I've never heard or thought of sex addiction as an exclusively male thing.

They didn't flaunt their wealth for the hoi polloi.

Saying "the" hoi polloi makes you sound dumb and pretentious. Sorry.

As I write I've got a whopping total of 10 days sober. I've been in recovery for about 18 months now, and have so far managed to celebrate my 90-day milestones by getting well and truly shitfaced.

Seems counter productive, but good luck!

Saying "the" hoi polloi makes you sound dumb and pretentious. Sorry.

Wait, what? Knowing to drop the "the" requires a knowledge of what the phrase actually means in Greek, and is a product of the type of pedantic mindset that proudly ignores common usage. Saying "the hoi polloi" just makes you sound like a normal person.

Dudefella:

I know this sounds weak (not patronizingly so, I hope, however) but ...just hang in there. Keep at it. It's hell to drink after being sober for a good while (90 days of sobriety is a hell of an accomplishment for an alcoholic, though). You're back on that horse. Hang on. And good luck.

Wait, what? Knowing to drop the "the" requires a knowledge of what the phrase actually means in Greek, and is a product of the type of pedantic mindset that proudly ignores common usage. Saying "the hoi polloi" just makes you sound like a normal person.

This is all in my opinion:
Hoi polloi is not common usage. Using it is a claim to a prestige marker. Using a prestige marker incorrectly is pretentious.

I am aware that correcting usage on the internet is the lowest form of pedantry. It's the only error of grammar that I mention. It sets my teeth on edge for some reason. Sorry.

Saying "the" hoi polloi makes you sound dumb and pretentious. Sorry.

Jimmy Durante said "the hoi palloo" and that's good enough for me.

tshipman, I think you're wrong about everything. I KNOW you're wrong that saying "the hoi polloi" makes you sound dumb, and I know this because it is the overwhelmingly preferred form. I also think you're wrong about how it ought to be used. If you google "hoi polloi usage" you'll find that the very first English writer to employ the term used the article, and that the logic that would have one drop the article is not consistent with the way the language generally works.

Also, apologies for sullying this thread.

tshipman, I think you're wrong about everything. I KNOW you're wrong that saying "the hoi polloi" makes you sound dumb, and I know this because it is the overwhelmingly preferred form. I also think you're wrong about how it ought to be used. If you google "hoi polloi usage" you'll find that the very first English writer to employ the term used the article, and that the logic that would have one drop the article is not consistent with the way the language generally works.

I strongly disagree, and I don't know how to advance a convincing case. I don't think that hoi polloi is typical to other loan words, in that it was originally an allusion to Thucydides, which was something taught in schools at one time. Typically, English does not borrow phrases with an article attached, unless it does so unwittingly. Wikipedia points out that Arabic loan words function the same way, however, Arabic loan words are not used as part of an appeal to status or sophistication. If I were making reference to something, and used a word like "Algebra" allusively, then I would avoid using the article there as well.

PreservedFish, I think you're wrong about everything.

I think the usage is an open question. Your argument might be the best one. But you're wrong about how it comes off. You have peculiar ears for this to set your teeth on edge.

Webster on "hoi polloi" in English

The Three Stooges on "hoi polloi"

Their use is at about 17:15 or following as they exit the party.

As I write I've got a whopping total of 10 days sober.

Congratulations. If we let it, every relapse gives us more information, shows us that a given course of action is a dead end for us and suggests we try something different. How's it going this evening? One of the beautiful things about recovery for me was learning viscerally that I never had to do anything more than stay sober today.

i don't believe that ANY "addiction" that only occurs in males is a real addiction. apparently, females have to have been raped/molested as kids to supposedly have it, so sorry, i disbelieve in calling this an addiction

What makes you think sex addiction is exclusive to males? Genuinely curious, as I've never heard it put that way. Also, sex addicts anonymous seem to have plenty of female members.

edit: iirc, I believe the OED has said it defers to the Stooges in all matters of usage. I myself prefer the phrase, "Infrequent Bathers."

I'd guess that the societal idea that females aren't supposed to want or enjoy sex plays a role in the idea that sex addiction would be exclusively male, even for a person who doesn't buy into the larger societal idea that's influencing him or her. A lot of people think anorexia is exclusive to females, too, for the similar societal reason that females are "supposed to be" thin, whereas males are "supposed to be" strong and muscular..

From TFA, Hamilton had this to say:

But other than that, guys, knowing this was going to get out in social media, Twitter, people get excited … There was no pictures taken of me having a beer with somebody or anything like that, but I did take pictures with people. … It was just wrong. That’s all it comes down to.

I don't know what Hamilton is supposed to do, or how he's supposed to think; I'm just glad "wrong" never really came up when I was getting sober. I remember the first time I confessed to a sponsor I had slipped. He chuckled. I recall feeling awfully indignant at the time. Didn't he realize how earthshaking this was? But his response took the sting out of it. I hadn't done something "wrong", "awful", or "evil", I was just another drunk who did what he knew how to do best in times of stress, and now it was time to get back to the work of being sober, if that's what I wanted to do.

Guilt and regret can be useful emotions, but I'll bet that in general they don't making getting sober easier. I know they didn't for me.

Viewing note: There's a .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) of Jeff Allison's reaction to Hamilton's struggles.
While not Hamilton's caliber as a prospect, he was a tremendous prep - in TFA, Gammons calls him "best high school pitcher I've ever seen in New England". (I know I made a point of attending his first return to pro ball in '05). Anyway, Allison appears to have retired this offseason (elbow problem) and claims to have been clean for 62 months (I'm not up on his story, but he's struggled with heroin, Oxy, and alcohol, at minimum.)
Hope that guy will be okay... hope everybody will be okay.

This is all in my opinion:
Hoi polloi is not common usage. Using it is a claim to a prestige marker. Using a prestige marker incorrectly is pretentious.

A-HOI, polloi ... where'd you just come from, a scotch ad????

One of the beautiful things about recovery for me was learning viscerally that I never had to do anything more than stay sober today.

I've often wondered, is it easy for someone in recovery to fall into the mindset of looking forward to the day being over so it can be chalked up as a sober day and thus a success? By that I mean, do the waking hours become more enjoyable not as they're unfolding but rather after they have been chalked up as another day without surrendering to urges? Genuinely curious about that.

the thing is that you can't control whether a bee stings you, like you can control whether you pick up a drink.

Just wanted to reiterate what I wrote earlier in a different thread: You have a choice whether or not to do something--but you can't always see that you have a choice.

235:

This isn't addressed to me, but I will say that after 17 years without a drink I find that I don't think, I am not obsessed (finally) about drinking or not drinking anymore, or even being an alcoholic or not being an alcoholic, much at all any more. There are days when I don’t think about it at all—unless, maybe, there’s a situation that calls for me to think consider it.

We’re all different, of course, and some people are very much more active in recovery than I am, but I know, and have known through these almost 30 years of trudging through this thing, a lot of these people and they claim that they don’t see themselves going back to drinking as an issue anymore—and some claimed this really early in their sobriety. Which used to just floor me. (Of course, the trick is not to fool yourself—that’s where a person needs to have a place for the input of others.) They were never like I was in my early sobriety. I did worry about it—for years, even though I didn’t have the craving anymore. This was because my history had been that the craving always came back, and when it did, I simply drank. And it was a while before I could muster the energy to give it my all one more time. I see now analogies in other areas of my life that correspond to this. This shows me something about the way I am and the way my mind works. Like sweets, which I mentioned earlier, for instance. Or, arguments on the internet—they follow such a strict pattern and overall protocol it’s almost laughable if I stop to think about it.

It took me a long time to be at ease in sobriety—to trust its authenticity. In fact, the realization that alcohol and alcoholism no longer absorbed my every waking moment was something of a shock when it came. It seems like most of my adult life I was either thinking about drinking, working it so I could drink, figuring out how to drink and where to drink, and then later I was trying not to drink, figuring out ways not to think about it, ways to ward off that urge that would lead me back to it. One of the greatest results I have received from staying sober, and I've only realize this fairly lately, is that freeing myself from existing in that all-consuming vortex every waking moment where the only issue for me was drinking/later-not-drinking has,...well, just freed me. Mentally. It doesn’t absorb most of my thinking any more.

The worst thing about being an alcoholic (and I think I saw this same thing in many pubic figures, say, like Mantle) is that it destroys any sense of integrity (and I mean this in the sense of an integrated self). Oh, you have opinions, you have views, and you voice them, especially if you’re me—as a matter of self-defense, if nothing else—but you are left with an craven angry puny mindset that always feels and fears it is somehow in the wrong in some way and that it will be found out. Found out how? Who knows? The alcoholic seepage pollutes everything. You’re so wrong with regard to that one consuming thing, how you can you be right about anything else—that’s the foundation of that fear. With sobriety, after a while, comes the sense of that you’ve finally shucked yourself of all that. You find you can entertain views, allow your mind to go places, perhaps only experimentally or provisionally, that you wouldn’t have had the courage or equanimity to allow yourself to entertain or encourage before. I really envy those who beat this when they were young. They’ve started on that journey of discovery much earlier than I. They have a chance to venture far beyond what I will.

One of the beautiful things about recovery for me was learning viscerally that I never had to do anything more than stay sober today.

I've often wondered, is it easy for someone in recovery to fall into the mindset of looking forward to the day being over so it can be chalked up as a sober day and thus a success?

My experience was that early in sobriety, some days, absolutely. In fact, I'd say eighty of the first ninety days of my current sobriety were, mostly, awful. I wasn't going to live more than a few months if I went back to drinking, so just getting through a day sober was a tremendous accomplishment; and looking forward to getting through the remainder of a day sober gave me something to aim for.

There's a cliche in the program that any day sober is a good day. "It's been a good day: I stayed sober today" is something heard often at meetings. At the same time, it isn't unusual for people to talk about being 'sober but stuck', in the sense that they'd stopped making progress because they had become content just being sober, or had otherwise stalled. Getting through a day sober when you've got ten days or ten weeks is a big deal. Sometimes anything else, anything at all, is gravy. Just being sober when you've got ten years sobriety, though, isn't enough, any more than just shuffling through the days for normal people ("normies") is particularly satisfying. The drawback for alcoholics, though, of not making progress, can be a reversion to drinking. The price of just staying sober can be emotional regression, drinking, then death.

By that I mean, do the waking hours become more enjoyable not as they're unfolding but rather after they have been chalked up as another day without surrendering to urges? Genuinely curious about that.

Do you mean this in the sense of, as I'm falling asleep, do the good things about the day feel that much sweeter because in addition to whatever pleasure they brought at the time I also spent them sober? If yes, not so much, these days. We're cautioned against taking sobriety for granted, but at this stage of my life I do take it for granted. I haven't had a serious urge to drink in years, so satisfaction at the end of the day comes from things other than not having taken a drink: progress on a project, a promising step taken in a relationship, finally getting around to mopping the bathroom floor, whatever it might be.

For several years I arranged the 500+ books in my office by size and color.

A bookstore in San Francisco's Mission District grouped its entire inventory across the spectrum for a little while, as a kind of art project. Very cool-looking.

Nice. I knew an architect who designed a private library so that from one direction only the part of each book opposite the spine was visible (think bookcases without backs). It was startling, to see the pages of thousands of books at once. Kind of awe-inspiring, being reminded of all those pages in all those books. Pretty inventive.

[227] Wikipedia points out that Arabic loan words function the same way, however, Arabic loan words are not used as part of an appeal to status or sophistication. If I were making reference to something, and used a word like "Algebra" allusively, then I would avoid using the article there as well.

Here's another analogy ironically relevant to this thread, also from Wikipedia:

Some linguistic prescriptivists argue that, given that hoi is a definite article, the phrase "the hoi polloi" is redundant, akin to saying "the the masses." Others argue that this is inconsistent with other English loanwords. The word "alcohol," for instance, derives from the Arabic al-kuhl, al being an article, yet "the alcohol" is universally accepted as good grammar.

:)

This is a great and valuable thread. Thanks all who have contributed.

As an adult child of a semi-recovering alcoholic, I want to thank a number of the participants of this thread who have shared their personal stories. I'm not exactly ready to forgive the anger, occasional violance, theft from a trust account, etc., but it has helped me with some context for the battles Dad faces.

Back in the Golden Age of book collecting**, from roughly 1900 to 1925, it was a fairly standard practice to fill one's library with leather sets of authors that one had no intention of ever reading, arranged by color of the binding. Back when there were still many private mansions along 5th Avenue in New York, the Yankees' owner Jacob Ruppert had a library like that, undoubtedly filled with beautifully bound sets of Thackeray, Scott, Anatole France and possibly even Turgenev or Dostoevsky. 5th Avenue shops such as Scribner's, Doubleday and Brentano's had entire sections devoted to author sets, all to be custom bound to match the decor of the customer's library.

That one scene at the party in the beginning of Gatsby always made me sad, where he was in the huge library full of books, none of which have ever been cut open by the binders.

On the other hand, if you have a book by Sir Walter Scott, not reading it is just about your best possible course of action. So maybe it's not all bad.

@243: Just a thought--are you familiar with Al-Anon, the support group for friends and relatives of alcoholics? I had a close relative who was an alcoholic and I found Al-Anon meetings extremely helpful. I don't think I went to more than twenty of them but they gave me a more solid grasp than I'd had of how to deal with an alcoholic while preserving my sanity.

Hoi polloi is not common usage. Using it is a claim to a prestige marker. Using a prestige marker incorrectly is pretentious.

So you're saying that the hoi polloi aren't allowed to use the term "hoi polloi" to describe themselves?

Just a thought--are you familiar with Al-Anon, the support group for friends and relatives of alcoholics?

Whose name is yet another Arabic loanword, apparently.

@245: Thanks. I've thought about it, but never gone. It might be good for me. But I've reached a point of equilibrium that is acceptable even if not ideal. We talk (very superficially) occasionally and see each other once in a while. He will never be left alone with his granddaughters or in possession of anything I value. And in return, I really don't dwell on what has happened in the past. I don't think I can move beyond that until he realizes he has something to appologize for -- during some of his many attempts at AA and similar programs he has done a ritualistic "I'm sorry if I've hurt you" but never understands that he has, in fact, been the source of a lot of pain.

Anyway, I don't mean this to change the positive tone that most of this thread has taken, I really admire the efforts a couple of posters have made to turn around their lives, and wish each of those who have shared the absolute best. Maybe I'm even better able to know how important your successes are then you yourselves.

I move that we hereby refer to Al-Anon as "Freedom-Anon".

A bookstore in San Francisco's Mission District grouped its entire inventory across the spectrum for a little while, as a kind of art project. Very cool-looking.

And if the owner were looking for free publicity, it was a move that could only be topped by an appearance of either Paul McCartney or the president of the United States. Gimmicks like that are about the only thing that ever attracts / attracted the local media's attention.

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I knew an architect who designed a private library so that from one direction only the part of each book opposite the spine was visible (think bookcases without backs). It was startling, to see the pages of thousands of books at once. Kind of awe-inspiring, being reminded of all those pages in all those books. Pretty inventive.

In Elias Canetti's Auto-da-Fe, the main character placed each and every one of his tens of thousands of books just like that---spine in the back---because he didn't believe in any sort of "rank" or "privilege". He wanted all his books to be considered "privates" in his democratic "army". I haven't read that book for 30 years, but that one description will stick with me forever.

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That one scene at the party in the beginning of Gatsby always made me sad, where he was in the huge library full of books, none of which have ever been cut open by the binders.

On the other end of the spectrum, there was a shop in Kensington (MD) in the 70's whose stock consisted almost entirely of decaying leather books and sets that the owner had bought on the cheap from the almost unlimited number of New England "book barns" that littered the rural landscapes from upstate New York to Maine back then. The universal name given to this shop was "Broken Binding Books".

.....from the almost unlimited number of New England "book barns" that littered the rural landscapes from upstate New York to Maine back then.

The five floor-to-ceiling wooden bookcases I bought this summer to finally put my library together were from one of these, the Berry Hill Book shop.

Nice to know that that Berry Hill is still there, because the great majority of shops like that aren't. When you're as maniacal as I am, you often remember shops by your highlight purchases, and I still have my two favorites from that place: A first edition in dust jacket of James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain for $16.00, and a first edition in dust jacket of Graham McNamee's You're On the Air for all of $2.80. (Love those dealer discounts.) The Baldwin book is worth a hundred times as much, but OTOH since McNamee was the first national broadcaster of sporting events, and the book was never reprinted, that was the one that really made my day. It's wonderful to be able to go online today and find books like these in a matter of seconds, but it's taken the thrill of discovery out of book scouting, and when you find books like those two in a shop today, they're almost almost going to be priced for the national market rather than the local one. As another book dealer I know put it, a dealer's knowledge has been devalued to the point where any semi-literate with an app can become an instant "expert", and the only way a dealer can parlay his lifetime of knowledge today is by concentrating almost exclusively on the high end market. (Or by going into posters.)

As I write I've got a whopping total of 10 days sober. I've been in recovery for about 18 months now, and have so far managed to celebrate my 90-day milestones by getting well and truly shitfaced.

I don't have much to add to the (mostly, and surprisingly, excellent) discussion thus far, except that, as one who has recently relapsed, I feel for Josh right now. It's not a fun place to be. Good luck to him.

Dude, congratulations on getting your 10 days. Hang in there, it gets better. Many of us in the program have gotten through a relapse. I spent a lost weekend ten days after finishing a five week outpatient rehab program. I snapped out of it and went 9 months without a drink and then spent an entirely hellish week+ on a bender that several friends thought I might never snap out of. By the end it was all I could do to make it around the corner to the liquor store to buy more vodka, whiskey and beer and drag it and my sorry ass back home. For whatever reason on Day 8 or 9 I picked up the phone when it rang instead of ignoring it as I had the rest of the week and it was a fellow alky who persuaded me NOT to buy more booze when I finished what was left but to meet him and go to a meeting instead. He spent the next 48 hours with me, dragging my butt to meetings, making sure that I ate something and reminding me that things would get better. That particular detox was hell. I thought I'd scrape my skin off.

That's a bit too much like a drunkalogue, sorry about that. Someone with a lot of time told me this after my first relapse, which has stuck with me. Welcome back. Get over the shame and guilt as quickly as you can. That's what will send you back to drinking. You're not the first to have slipped, and it doesn't make you the worst alcoholic or the worst person ever. You're not unique, it happens to the majority of us. Get back on the horse and thank whomever or whatever that you're still around to give it another go. Get back to working the steps, and don't waste time thinking about them. One day, one step at a time. It gets better.

For those who don't have this affliction, understand that there's no logical reason to a relapse. It doesn't happen for any reason beyond that you're an alcoholic who is obsessed with drinking, and once you have that first drink a powerful compulsion to continue kicks in, so powerful that it overwhelms everything else. I relapsed because for about one minute the desire to have a drink was there and I didn't do anything to deal with it. I didn't call someone. I didn't wait five minutes for the feeling to pass. I gave in to a momentary impulse and that was that. I wasn't using the tools that were there, I wasn't following a program, I didn't ask for help. There's no tortured explanation about deeper issues. I drank because I'm an alcoholic and that's what I do UNLESS I do the things I need to not to drink. Something frustrated me and I gave in to a momentary impulse.

I want to thank Something Else, Morty and the others in the Fellowship for contributing to this thread. Your stories are important to me, they help me stay sober as much as telling my own keeps me there. I'm a lucky man.

Among the other book-related stuff in my office, I have a corkboard covered with bookmarks from independent bookstores: not all defunct, I am happy to say, but enough of them that it has a kind of cenotaphic quality. And like Andy, I remember books I bought at some of the outer-of-the-way places: Balzac in New Lebanon NY, Gail Hamilton and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps in Bismarck AR. Fortunately some of these businesses subsist in antique-mall booths. In downtown Bangor ME, in the bottom of an antique mall, is a sprawling, wonderful "booth" that is about as big as a lot of old used-book stores. Invisible and unadvertised except in antique brochures, but places like that can keep you occupied a while.

Another of my bizarre traits is that I can remember where various books are located in most of the bookstores I've been in, which is to say a whole lot of bookstores that don't exist. Why I can take a detailed mental walk through the Astor Place Barnes & Noble, but I can't find my way to the hardware store in a city where I've lived for 17 years is one of the mysteries of the human mind. But again, I imagine that obsessive and addictive personalities will record mentally what most matters to them, like an alcoholic knowing the floorplan of a liquor store by heart. Except I don't even drink much, and I know liquorstore floorplans too ...

Anyone else thinking they are addicted to the internet? I'm getting really concerned about my decline in attention span, my decline in work ethic, the fact that my dissertation is dragging on and one and on. I love information and I can easily spend 6-7 hours straight on the internet reading about baseball, politics, college football, restaurants, movies, astronomy, etc.

I've been considering trying to get a prescription for adderrall from a psychiatrist, at least until my dissertationi s done. Anyone have any experience with this?

In Elias Canetti's Auto-da-Fe, the main character placed each and every one of his tens of thousands of books just like that---spine in the back---because he didn't believe in any sort of "rank" or "privilege".

Kind of impractical though, don't you think? First, how do you find anything. Second, what if a friend comes over and wants to browse?

I think it's a good idea to display what you read. It gives people who see your books an opening for conversation. I loan books to friends all the time, often after they see one in one of my bookcases and their interest is piqued.

However, I think it's vulgar to buy a book you have no intention to read. I've bought books and never read them but I've never bought a book just to sit it on a shelf so it would impress someone who saw it.

In Elias Canetti's Auto-da-Fe, the main character placed each and every one of his tens of thousands of books just like that---spine in the back---because he didn't believe in any sort of "rank" or "privilege".

Kind of impractical though, don't you think? First, how do you find anything. Second, what if a friend comes over and wants to browse?

Well, sure, but this is a somewhat surrealistic novel, not real life.

I think it's a good idea to display what you read. It gives people who see your books an opening for conversation. I loan books to friends all the time, often after they see one in one of my bookcases and their interest is piqued.

However, I think it's vulgar to buy a book you have no intention to read. I've bought books and never read them but I've never bought a book just to sit it on a shelf so it would impress someone who saw it.

My books are just there on the shelves, loosely arranged by category, and by this time few people we have over pay much attention to them. Everyone knows I was a book dealer, and if they're interested in a particular subject they'll ooohhh and aaahhh the first time they see the books in a category they're interested in, but since the living room isn't well lit and the rest of the books are on different levels, they'd have to actively search out to see more than a few hundred titles to begin with.

I have several hundred books and I live in a studio that is less than 500 square feet, a non-insignificant percentage of it spent on three closets, a foyer and a bathroom. I do not want the place to feel cramped (if anything, I want a minimalist place) so I have color-coordinated my books and have placed them strategically around the apartment. I like the way they look, and I've never had a hard time finding anything.

Anyone else thinking they are addicted to the internet? I'm getting really concerned about my decline in attention span, my decline in work ethic, the fact that my dissertation is dragging on and one and on

If it's a consolation, Journalist, dissertations dragged on long before there was an Internet. I think what you're experiencing is more endemic to the dissertation experience than to a culture distracted by media. Many people disagree with me, but I think that the Internet has made most writing better-informed, more comprehensive, and rhetorically sharper than it was in the 20th century.

Not that I don't worry about this myself. I wrote three books in pre- or very-early Internet days, and I barely write articles anymore; instead I write 250-1,000-word reviews and blog posts (and for that matter BBTF comments, which aren't helping my publication CV very much :) But as my comments about reading above indicate, I am as fanatical about intellectual work as ever, and the Internet doesn't distract me from carrying out vast reading projects.

Don't despair: something will click and you will write your dissertation fairly quickly at that point. I have been at a halt on many projects over the years, thinking that the absolute last thing I ever wanted to do was work on the important thing at hand. Then all at once, often spurred by some little thing I read or see (or pull up on the Internet), I start writing and don't stop till I'm done.

Thanks for the note Bob. It did actually cheer me up.

I'm not sure, Bob. I can relate to what WJ is going through. Once the internet came along, my work ethic changed for the worse and I feel I am plagued by a constant distraction.

My recommendation to WJ is to periodically remove oneself from electronic media, even the radio. If the need for information consumption arises, satisfy it with a good book or magazine. If that fails, then perhaps pharmaceutical intervention may be an option. But it should be an option of last resort, IMO.

It's the removing onesself from electronic media that is the problem. Every single aspect of the academic life is now intertwined with the internet, whether it's posting things for my students on blackboard, grading papers electronically, reading journal articles (I haven't read a hard copy journal in years), or sitting at the computer to write the dissertation itself.

I do think that living alone in peace and quiet with no electronic media would be wonderful, but at this point it might slow the dissertation down more than anything. I have no skills for internet-less research and writing. I actually marvel at the old timers who did serious scholarly work before the internet.

Pretty soon Nieporent is due to come along and blabber about how it's a cult that shows no statistically significantly different success than chronic masturbating as a cure does, blah, blah, blah. I find his outspokenness on the topic admirable, if similar to that of a lifelong virgin discussing the joy of butt sex; just a lot of ass-talk. Most alcoholics care much less about the means than they do the end. As the old alkys cited by SE say, do whatever you think will work. If it doesn't then AA will be there to help if you want it.

Heh. People know me so well.

The only thing you forgot to include was that I would point out that it's not merely that science doesn't back up its results, but that there's no science behind it in the first place.

For instance, right now I could be working on my dissertation...writing, reading an article, even just tinkering with my footnotes. Instead I've got six firefox tabs open...one to Facebook, one to a Rutgers football forum, one to a political blog, one to the ny times, one here, and one to gmail. Maybe tabbed browsing was my downfall.

And if the owner were looking for free publicity, it was a move that could only be topped by an appearance of either Paul McCartney or the president of the United States. Gimmicks like that are about the only thing that ever attracts / attracted the local media's attention.

This was Modern Times Bookstore, a collectively-owned multicultural literary emporium.
McCartney could potentially show up, but if the President ever does, I'll eat a copy of the NBJHBA. "With A-1 Steak Sauce," as James himself put it.

It's the removing oneself from electronic media that is the problem. Every single aspect of the academic life is now intertwined with the internet, whether it's posting things for my students on blackboard, grading papers electronically, reading journal articles (I haven't read a hard copy journal in years), or sitting at the computer to write the dissertation itself.

Yeah, one all too easily says to oneself, I'll just check to see what's going on in my favorite thread on BBTF, then I'll get to work, and next thing you know three hours have gone by and all you've done is bloviate about coffee and donuts. Or, for the umpteenth time, Barry and steroids, or "Obamacare" and the great white way where libertarians shuck and jive the utopian night away. 'Tis very like a cloud methinks, milord. 'Tis very like an addiction, too.

But, I, too, think that computers and the net have increased writing skills, and general language communication skills, for many many people That doesn't mean it's been a uniform and unvarying blessing for everyone--it's probably also increased the tendency to be sloppy in those skills for some, especially for those at the top end who are now sacrificing studied quality for addictive quantity. When I was a kid, adults in general and teachers in particular would often complain that because of the telephone and television people didn't write letters anymore, and they worried that writing skills were being eroded and would diminish further. Well, many many more people write letters now (emails) than at any time in history. Those letters may not be flawless, but they are a big step up from the fear that writing would become vestigial.

I have a friend who is a renowned psychitrist who agrees with Ray -- there are no mental illnesses or addictions, or use what label you choose. People make choices that refelct and suit there needs, including the choice to be schizophrenic. he's the smaretest preson I know, but I also think that he is batshit insane.

You're friends with Thomas Szasz?

And I do have these issues with non-chemicals, too. Beyond food, I've had moderation issues with collecting, gaming...you name it. I'm aware of this, so again either I find ways to force moderation or I avoid altogether.

I can empathize with this. I don't think that I'm more strong-willed than an alcoholic so much as I think that I've never really enjoyed alcohol enough to become addicted to it. I like it enough to have a good time every once in a while, but I've never really understand having any desire to get blackout drunk.

Maybe that's one good thing about depression: no single thing can possibly be good enough for long enough to become a habit. Even the most wonderful things quickly become stale, and so if there are any negative side-effects, it doesn't take long for me to stop doing them naturally and find something else to do. If I could find that one thing that remained pleasurable over time, I'd probably become an addict.

Funny, but HP never really showed up for me. I made the effort though, prayed every day my first few years. I never quite got past the feeling I was praying to air, though. The effort was there, and I'm sure finding the openness to the possibility helped me stay sober.

Isn't there an AA-equivalent that removes the idea of a higher power, but is otherwise quite similar? I seem to remember someone telling me about it, but I don't recall the name.

People make choices that reflect and suit there needs, including the choice to be schizophrenic.

What if one half chooses and the other half doesn't?

You think, why can't he stop for me? For someone he loves? The problem is you're assigning your own rationality to him, and your own feelings. In that moment this person isn't rational. They aren't feeling anything. You might as well argue with a computer program. They're not the person you know, even though they look like them. They're a machine whose job it is is to find something to drink. They can't choose to stop because that part isn't in the software.

I feel this way about binge eating. I'm around 5'10, 265. I have a pretty large frame, but even the most generous estimate would put me around 75 pounds overweight. Two years ago, I was around 300 pounds.

It's been about six months at the current dosage of Concerta, a medication that dramatically reduces my appetite. I often eat my first food of the day as late as 8pm; right now, I've been up since 9AM and I've had nothing to eat all day. If I were not going to a Super Bowl party, I'd probably just order a salad and a grilled chicken sandwich for dinner, and that would basically be all I eat for the day. And that's pretty normal for me; maybe once a week I have what I'd consider a pretty excessive meal but it's my only meal of the day, and it's not like I order two entrees or eat a whole pizza. I've also all but completely cut out regular soda.

So how is it that I'm so big? It's mostly binge eating when I suffer a depressive episode. I might eat three giant-sized cookies in one sitting or a half-gallon of ice cream or three candy bars. If things are really bad, I'll eat all three of those things at once. I'll eat until my stomach is in pain from eating, and then keep eating. It's not at all pleasurable when it's a really bad binge. I won't be able to eat quickly enough and I'll bite my fingers as I try to get the food in.

That's not doing it because I like it so much. If you don't agree, perhaps you don't realize what it's like to eat a half-gallon of ice cream in one sitting. Here's what happens about halfway through. Your mouth starts to hurt. You aren't tasting anything any more; your tongue is just numb. The cold spoon is uncomfortable. Perhaps you're generating some nasty phlegm from all of the dairy. With each bite, you become aware of how disgusting your behavior is, and that doesn't stop you. If anything, it pushes you to keep going, because you deserve to be this miserable. Make no mistake, you knew this was happening from the beginning. You bought the half-gallon for the purpose of eating it all in one sitting.

It's not about will for me. I can certainly not eat ice cream. It's about an unconscious (and sometimes conscious) desire to destroy myself. Most people can't even fathom that sort of thing because they've never felt that impulse. We'll all at least a little self-destructive, but this is something that most people are lucky enough never to have to experience.

Anyone else thinking they are addicted to the internet? I'm getting really concerned about my decline in attention span, my decline in work ethic, the fact that my dissertation is dragging on and one and on. I love information and I can easily spend 6-7 hours straight on the internet reading about baseball, politics, college football, restaurants, movies, astronomy, etc.

My wife thinks I am. I don't comment much anymore because I feel compelled to check if anyone replies to my posts. It doesn't really effect work anymore, because they blocked most fun sites. I channeled my energies into writing my memoirs. I'm up to 30,000 words or so.

WRT alcohol, I used to get cocked all the time when I was single. But now that I'm married, I may have a drink or two once a week. Despite alcoholic genes in my family and hangovers that got worse as I got older, it wasn't the alcohol itself that worried me. It was the driving. Even if I went out and only had one or two, there were others on the road that time of the nite that had more. When I was single, if I got hurt or worse, it would only effect me. Now I have to be concerned with her as well.

Nah, she probably took out an insurance policy on you.

Some things that we do that are not good for us don't progress pass a certain point, so we may never deal with them, and often with time our relation with these things sort of resolves itself, We get tired of doing it and quit doing it (maybe switching to doing something else), or are never driven to ratcheting it up to the point it becomes dire.

However, if there's something that I'm obsessing about, doing compulsively and hating myself for doing, wanting to stop but being driven to continue (either in a periodic or chronic fashion), that's hard to overcome. The only chance I have of coming to terms with this thing is probably just to stop. That's really hard to do. It will take all I have to do that. Contrary to some popular messages, we can't do it all or have it all. In fact, my experience has finally led me to conclude that we really have time and scope to only do one or two things well and thoroughly, once we do what we must in order to get by--work, family, a close relationship with someone. That's about all we're good for. Imitate the athletes--for a while at least. Sacrifice all your efforts and energy and talents to that one thing. It's all you can do and the only chance you have. That may not be a good recipe for living a wholesome balanced life, but it may be necessary to do until you get handle on it. Of course, as difficult as that is, that's the easy part. The hard part is summoning and maintaining the will sufficient to persevere. For that, we need help.

People in AA say that getting sober and staying sober is not nuclear science : it’s simple, but it is also hard. The rules are clear, but it depends on your willingness, and there’s something in you, and me, that has a tendency to always want to default to old behavior. That’s perfectly understandable, but it’s also what you must not do. A young man, much younger that myself, once said something I’ve always carried with me: being an alcoholic is not my fault; but it is my problem. That applies to other stuff besides alcoholism. Things that really drive us in some way don’t magically resolve themselves of their own accord. You must direct yourself to root causes in order to enjoy long term success; in the meantime, while you’re doing that, you treat the symptoms so they don't do you in.

This has been a very moving thread and I really appreciate so many primates offering their firsthand experience with the varying manifestations of addiction. It's especially intriguing to me because I've lived my entire life in deathly fear of any sort of addiction; I don't drink (well, that is to say I don't drink much - averaged 4-6 drinks a year for the last decade, usually at weddings, and never more than two drinks at a sitting. Yes, I really kept track), never smoked, grew up in 1980s Miami with cocaine about as ubiquitous as Pixie Stix and never sniffed a grain, don't gamble, you name the vice and I've made every effort to abstain. I am honestly, legitimated scared of any sort of addiction, to the point of skipping coffee for a week at a time if I think I'm getting a little too casual with its use. I don't think I have an "addictive personality", just that I'm overly self-conscious, I guess.

I'm not sure what the opportunity cost was for my straight-arrow obsession and as I get older I lose the certainty in the righteousness of my actions that had previously motivated me. I don't think I'm any sort of moral weakling but who knows, maybe I've dodged a hail of bullets or maybe I've just deprived myself of some good times and a fat score on Buster Douglas over Mike Tyson. Maybe fixating on the addictive potential of so many things is an addiction in itself.

This was Modern Times Bookstore, a collectively-owned multicultural literary emporium.

I just walked by this place, and the location's now an art gallery or something. Now that I check the internet I see that it's moved down 24th street, half a mile from its original location. I never loved it. They devoted too much of the stock to gender studies, socialist tracts, etc.

Nearby, on Valencia between 16th and 17th , was the worst bookstore I've ever been to. It was only open for a year or so. This was 5 years ago or so. Huge floorspace, very few bookshelves, and those shelves were very very sparsely filled. A lot of the space was reserved for couches and comfy chairs. Now, if this store only had excellent books, this would have been an interesting proposition. But it only had shitty books, really shitty books. It was like the entire stock had been filled in a single visit to the Salvation Army. It must have been some sort of hipster experiment, which thankfully failed.

Bookstoreman has always been one of my "what if?" careers. A couple years ago, when I was unemployed around the holidays, I emailed a bunch of rare book sellers to try and see if I could pick up some seasonal work. No dice. It's not clear to me if rare books will become more or less valuable as we plow forward in the age of iPhones and Kindles. Thoughts?

Bookstoreman has always been one of my "what if?" careers. A couple years ago, when I was unemployed around the holidays, I emailed a bunch of rare book sellers to try and see if I could pick up some seasonal work. No dice. It's not clear to me if rare books will become more or less valuable as we plow forward in the age of iPhones and Kindles. Thoughts?

What's happening is that the market is now separating the sheep from the goats when it comes to "rare" books. And the outcome has been mirroring much of the rest of the economy, in that a handful of dealers are doing very well, and are positioned to do even better when the economy recovers, whereas most of the rest of them are dropping by the wayside. The internet has simply exposed too many of those "rare" books as being plentiful, and the prices have dropped accordingly.

A good friend of mine, John Thomson of Bartleby's Books, is a rare book dealer who's scheduled to become the head of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA) in April. He had to close his Georgetown shop last July when a restaurant took over his space, but prior to that he was doing quite well in spite of the economy, and he continues to thrive by driving with his wife to over a dozen book fairs a year. One or two big sales at those fairs can make a bookseller's month, and he's got the stock.

And yet....he began his business in late 1984, just a few months after I opened my own shop, and for most of that time he and his wife drew a salary which was just enough to live on for them and their two children. They got one lucky break when another bookseller's widow sold them a small house at well below the market rate, but they were always taking their profits and reinvesting in inventory, the very model of what a dealer needs to do to make it in the long run.

So now that they're in their 60's, they're doing exactly what they love, they're making good if not great money, and when they retire for good the sale of their inventory will give them a nice retirement income for life. They've earned every penny of it.

But here's the kicker: Their 30 year old son earns a six figure income---inventing and marketing designer cocktails. You know, the kind that they sell for $15 to $25 at those upscale bars where the patrons light their cigars with $100 bills. He's been sent by his company to bars all over Europe to show them how to do it, and don't think that his parents don't enjoy the implicit irony of it all.

And the double irony is this: He got his inspiration for his career by rummaging through a bunch of old cocktail recipe books from the prohibition era, which his dad had in the cheap books part of his shop. Who says that reading doesn't pay off?

To be fair, there are extremely few American people in their 60s right now whose 30-year-old son has a better job than they ever had.

Nearby, on Valencia between 16th and 17th , was the worst bookstore I've ever been to. It was only open for a year or so. This was 5 years ago or so. Huge floorspace, very few bookshelves, and those shelves were very very sparsely filled. A lot of the space was reserved for couches and comfy chairs. Now, if this store only had excellent books, this would have been an interesting proposition. But it only had shitty books, really shitty books. It was like the entire stock had been filled in a single visit to the Salvation Army. It must have been some sort of hipster experiment, which thankfully failed.

Do you remember the name? There was a bookstore on Valencia between 16th and 17th which didn't have comfy chairs, but had one of the more interesting selection of books I'd ever seen. They had an incredible baseball section, full of nothing but rare and out of print books which they sold for about $4. I picked up a 1955 Mutual Almanac, Dan Shaughnessy's book on the 86 Red Sox, Jerry Izenberg's book on the 86 Mets and a Fireside Almanac there. Totally unsustainable model, so they closed after about a year, but cool bookstore.

Isn't there an AA-equivalent that removes the idea of a higher power, but is otherwise quite similar? I seem to remember someone telling me about it, but I don't recall the name.

Long, drawn out reply: I'll bet in good-sized cities there are more, but the one I've heard of is AAAA. (Atheists/Agnostics in Alcoholics Anonymous). I got sober in the small town midwest, right around the bible belt, so most meetings were oriented around the christian god, even though an effort was often made in many meetings to lessen that emphasis.

When I was leading meetings I also tended to keep it oriented towards a Higher Power rather than a god. There's a fair amount of difference, and almost an infinite amount of latitude in the definition of a Higher Power. I've often heard people refer to "the group" as their Higher Power, simply in the sense that this combination of people working towards a common purpose were able to help them accomplish something (staying sober) they couldn't accomplish on their own.

That was a useful concept for me, and helped me navigate the god stuff without being put off so much that I left the program. At the first meeting I attended I was warmly welcomed. I got comfortable in my chair, scoped the attractive women, and glanced over at the twelve steps posted on a wall. The moment I finished reading step two and began registering step three my heart sank. I felt literally as though it had dropped into my solar plexus because, of course, this was just another shuck, another bill of goods someone was selling. AA, which I had often kept in my back pocket as something I could ulimately try if I couldn't stop drinking on my own, was founded around yet more bullsh!t--at least, that was my thinking at the time. If there was a god, one of the reasons I was an alcoholic was because that superpowered assh@le hadn't been doing his job. I also found what I saw as the bait-and-switch between steps two and three vastly irritating, even insulting:

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

Today it's not that I have an aversion to god. Those in AA who got sober with the help of their god, well, more power to them. I mean that unreservedly. I just haven't found it helpful to go to meetings where 16 of 20 people talk about their relationship with an active, loving god who keeps them sober. Readings at discussion group meetings are often on that topic, too (a short passage is read from the Big Book or other literature, then we go around the room and each person has the option of talking for a few minutes on what was read), so there's just not much for me at meetings. It's routine to hear someone talking about how they're "turning their will and their lives over to god". That's fine, but when I go to a meeting and 47 of 50 minutes are devoted to that kind of thing, there just isn't much in it for me. People in meetings will talk about how atheists and agnostics can substitute x for god and manage just fine, but when the talk of god is of a god who is active, who does things for you, and with whom you have an active relationship, there isn't a substitution that works, so I sit in meetings as something of an anthropologist. Yes, these are fellow travelers and sufferers with whom I have a lot in common, but what they do doesn't do much for me. I might as well be at a meeting of Mormons. I have much more in common with, say, a childhood friend I've been close with for forty years, or the terrific old man who's my neighbor to the east.

It's also common at meetings to run into people who feel that any kind of atheism or agnosticism is just a phase that folks pass through on the way to becoming believers. Those people aren't shy about saying things like "keep coming back!", as though you just weren't quite there, yet. The Big Book talks about a high up in the American Atheists Society who, as an alcoholic, came to his senses, came to believe in god, and was able to get and stay sober. Speaker meetings, where the bulk of the meeting is given over to an alcoholic who tells his or her story, often draw from the pool of locals who have been sober for at least a year, and regularly attend AA meetings. That makes sense, but the speakers then tend to be "traditionalists", alcoholics who came to AA, found or rediscovered their god, and tell that particularly story. Again, I'm genuinely happy for them, but their recovery isn't particularly helpful to me.

I learned at meetings that what worked for me, when a reading and topic, as they so often do, describes sobriety following from a belief in god (or a higher power, who is not often anything other than god), to say without rancor, briefly, that that isn't the way it works for me, then go on to talk about what does work for me. I'm not some genius rebel standing up to the man, I just tend to feel rather cowardly if I leave a meeting where the subject of an active god is a significant topic and I've just gone along with that. Too, I've found it can be heartening to others when I mention being an agnostic (I don't describe myself as an atheist simply because I can't conclusively prove there's no god, and can intellectually imagine a god consistent with the universe I perceive) who has stayed sober nonetheless, just as I was heartened and stuck around meetings by a couple of people who came up to me after my first meeting and in response to my saying I was an atheist (at that point) and the god thing wasn't going to work for me, they replied that so where they, and there were ways to stay sober without a god. Which there are, fortunately.

Early AA was built and organized around the conversion experience of its earliest members, and that experience remains the focus of the program, although I have to say, that has become the subject of much debate within AA, and it's much more welcoming towards people who haven't had and aren't pursuing that experience than it was three decades ago.

But, yes, I could make more of an effort, if I felt I needed the company of other alcoholics in recovery to stay sober. While I've never taken any real time to look, I could certainly find less "active god" oriented meeting on the internet.

Anyone else thinking they are addicted to the internet? I'm getting really concerned about my decline in attention span, my decline in work ethic, the fact that my dissertation is dragging on and one and on. I love information and I can easily spend 6-7 hours straight on the internet reading about baseball, politics, college football, restaurants, movies, astronomy, etc.

I've been considering trying to get a prescription for adderrall from a psychiatrist, at least until my dissertationi s done. Anyone have any experience with this?

No experience with Adderrall. I don't know if you have a time frame, but can you make working on the dissertation one of the eight things you're doing on the net? It's probably not how you want to work on the final draft, but when I did my version of a dissertation a lot of getting it done was simply grinding out the research and blocking out rough drafts (nothing you don't know, I'm sure), which meant just putting in the hours. I wound up spending a lot of time in a noisy, very sociable college town coffee shop. I probably worked 30% of the time I was there, which wasn't great, but was than the 5% of the time I would have worked had I stayed home, plugged in.

@270: That was an extraordinarily moving story. I have my own version, doing things (or more often not doing things) that put a regular rumble of anxiety in my stomach when it wouldn't take me long at all to address those things. I can be perfectly well aware of this and still not walk the 12 feet to the phone, pick it up, and make a routine phone call I should have made several days ago. I know it started when I was very young and it was probably in response to the numerous double-bind situations my parents were regularly putting me in, but it's still incredibly frustrating and unless I've been able to get up a lot of momentum I feel so often like I'm walking against a strong current. Still, I've been struggling with it for decades and knowledge of the source of it probably keeps my life from going down the tubes, but it sure doesn't make it easy.

I don't describe myself as an atheist simply because I can't conclusively prove there's no god, and can intellectually imagine a god consistent with the universe I perceive

Atheism is about belief, and agnosticism is about knowledge.

I self-describe as an atheist (I believe that there is no god or gods), an agnostic (I do not know if there is a god or gods; in fact, I think the very question is framed in such a way as to be unknowable), and anti-religious (I think religion is a net evil that we'd be best off as a species shaking off).

"I don't know" or "I can't prove" isn't a belief, so it really has very little to do with atheism. I honestly don't believe that one can be anything other than atheist or theist with even the smallest bit of self-reflection: belief is binary. For example, do you believe that your mother loves you? It's entirely unprovable (how do you KNOW that she doesn't actually hate you, but pretends to love you out of a sense of obligation), but you still almost certainly reach a positive or negative belief. Nobody says "I'm agnostic on the idea that my mother loves me."

I have my own version, doing things (or more often not doing things) that put a regular rumble of anxiety in my stomach when it wouldn't take me long at all to address those things.

I do all that too, sadly.

unless I've been able to get up a lot of momentum I feel so often like I'm walking against a strong current.

This a great description of what it feels like to be depressed. Everything is hard. I've had days where my throat hurt from dryness but I wasn't able to motivate myself to walk the ten feet to the kitchen to get a drink. There are plenty of things that I don't do that are simply a result of laziness, but there are also plenty of things that have nothing to do with laziness at all.

Another way that I describe it is like looking at the world and feeling like all the color has been drained away. Everything just looks sort of gray. Not literally, of course, but emotionally.

You're friends with Thomas Szasz?

Hadn't heard of him before but at first glance seems to be an interesting fellow:

Psychiatry actively obscures the difference between (mis)behavior and disease, in its quest to help or harm parties to conflicts. By calling certain people "diseased", psychiatry attempts to deny them responsibility as moral agents, in order to better control them.

People who are said (by themselves or others) to "have" a mental illness can only have, at best, a "fake disease." Diagnoses of "mental illness" or "mental disorder" (the latter expression called by Szasz a "weasel term" for mental illness) are passed off as "scientific categories" but they remain merely judgments (judgments of disdain) to support certain uses of power by psychiatric authorities.

I think the Higher Power-less group that is on the tip of peoples' tongue is Rational Recovery, which got a name change at some point. From what I remember when I looked into it long ago there was some imbroglio about trademarks and what not. That was the path I initially planned to take if needed because of my atheism/agnosticism. It didn't work for me, however. From what I read it seemed to spend too much time focusing on philosophical objections to AA's approach and not enough time on what I needed, which was a way to get sober.

I live in a big city, so there are lots of meetings. Many of them are quadruple A, or Atheist/Agnostic AA. From what I've heard big city sobriety is easier because of the diversity of meetings available. There's almost always one happening, and they vary quite a bit. I've had friends get sober in small towns where you see the same five people every night. They said it got challenging.

Each meeting has a personality. Some you take to and some you don't. I'm lucky in that I can go to different meetings with different formats and emphases that fit my mood at a given time. A lot of others don't have that option.

Regarding Higher Power, you do hear a lot about God at some meetings. You hear a lot of what sounds like directionless group therapy at others. The latter tend to drive me kinda nuts, but part of the challenge for alcoholics is learning to accept what is before you and learn from it even when it drives you right up the wall. Alkys tend to be intolerant, perfectionist, know it all control freaks who don't play well with others. Learning to put up with other peoples' foibles in meetings is an object lesson in missing life skills that are important for work, family, friendship and so forth.

I came into the program a sort-of agnostic. I believed in some sort of central organizing principle or powerful force of pure good that existed (thank you, LSD and mushrooms, for that insight; before that I was stone-cold atheist). But I didn't believe in an anthropogenic God as described by most of the major religions and I certainly didn't believe in a God that could intercede in my life in any meaningful way. It took some doing to accept that the same force that created the universe wanted me to live sober rather than drink myself to death, but I came to accept it. I had to accept that everything has a reason to be even if it's beyond my comprehension, and that includes myself. I had to accept that my intellect, perceptions and rational thought were limited in their capabilities. I had to accept that I wasn't omniscient. Like the AA program emphasizes, I had to accept a little humility, and this was one area that I especially needed to learn it.

So that's how it worked/works for me, and I offer it as one man's way out of the bottle. Your mileage may, and most certainly will, vary. What matters is the endpoint of sobriety. How one gets there is less important than that.

It's entirely unprovable (how do you KNOW that she doesn't actually hate you, but pretends to love you out of a sense of obligation), but you still almost certainly reach a positive or negative belief. Nobody says "I'm agnostic on the idea that my mother loves me."

The classical skeptics suspended judgment about literally everything*, they would have no problem uttering that last sentence and many other in that vein.

*) including whether any of the skeptical cornerstones were true, they must have been maddening to debate against, it's a wonder we don't have more stories about them being beaten up for being smartasses.

"I don't know" or "I can't prove" isn't a belief, so it really has very little to do with atheism. I honestly don't believe that one can be anything other than atheist or theist with even the smallest bit of self-reflection.

But in the case of "Is there a God?", you can easily say "I don't know and I don't care", and live your life based on reflection, acquired knowledge, and personal experience, all informed by the philosophy laid out in the golden rule or by Rabbi Hillel. AFAIC questions about the existence of God are way too abstract, and just get in the way. But then I'm also not much into UFO's, fantasy or science fiction, either.

Of course that's just for me. I can see the importance of religion in some people's lives, and to the extent that "God" (or Jesus or Allah or Whoever) helps guide them through life in a positive way, more power to them. As to whether organized religion is a net positive or negative, that kind of depends on the particulars, and I don't see how you can come up with a one size fits all answer to a question like that. My only reaction is to say that an infinite number of forms of organized religion exist, and you have to judge each one of these forms independently by its actions in the here and now, and act accordingly, depending on your own personal values. And while I can respect a person's religious views, those views at some point have to stand on their own, without invocations of the Deity to back them up.

Alkys tend to be intolerant, perfectionist, know it all control freaks who don't play well with others.

So you're pretty much describing everyone at BBTF.

I find the problem with the stance that you don't care and it doesn't matter is that many people care, and care a lot, and it matters very much to them. And a lot of those people may be out to get you if you don't believe like they do. Too, you can't claim this as an abstract universal and then say abstract principles don't matter to you. That's just a way of getting out of not justifying yourself and your beliefs and why they should be allowed to have any weight at all in our shared life. Intellectually, if you're going to play, you aren't allowed a hole in the wall where you and your gang can take respite at will. Although as a matter of having your way without justifying why you should get your way, there’s a lot to be said for trying to occupy that niche. But it's intellectual welfare-queenism.

Alkys tend to be intolerant, perfectionist, know it all control freaks who don't play well with others.

So you're pretty much describing everyone at BBTF.


This applies to everyone everywhere. Some are more insistent in a more insistently incompetent and ineffectual way.

But in the case of "Is there a God?", you can easily say "I don't know and I don't care", and live your life based on reflection, acquired knowledge, and personal experience, all informed by the philosophy laid out in the golden rule or by Rabbi Hillel. AFAIC questions about the existence of God are way too abstract, and just get in the way. But then I'm also not much into UFO's, fantasy or science fiction, either.

That's why I added the caveat of taking a bit of self-reflection on the issue. "I don't care" is a fine position to take, but it's a bit of a dodge to the question of "what do you believe?"

I don't see how "maybe" can be an answer to "Do you believe in X?" I could see "I've never thought about it carefully enough" or even "on some days I believe and on some days I do not."

The classical skeptics suspended judgment about literally everything*, they would have no problem uttering that last sentence and many other in that vein.

Suspending judgment is different than possessing a belief. I don't think it's even possible to have a neutral position: either you believe something, or you don't believe it. I don't even think there's anything you can do to intentionally create or destroy belief. You can add knowledge that influences belief in much the same way that you can jump off of a building, but you can't actively change your own belief any more than you can will yourself to fall or not fall.

That isn't to say that you can't fake it. You don't have to believe something to act as if you do. I don't believe we have free will at all: we're biological machines that respond to environmental input. I live my life as if I do not hold that belief.

just finished going through this thread and i'm glad i did. incredibly better than the last one like this a few years back.

i know i've said before that both sides of my family are full of substance abusers and i've never touched even a drop/sniff/pill/smoke because i still don't know if i have all the addict DNA which needs only one drop to turn it on and i don't want to have to do what i would have to do to turn it off and i don't want to live an addict's life.

i've lost too many people i love to substance abuse.

i never understood the "have fun" thing ESPECIALLY having seen how people are when they are not sober. especially the fights. and the regretted later sexual activity and or illegal activity - you know, the "i wouldn't never have done THAT if i was sober" excuse/speaking the real truth. and the withdrawal. and the vomiting. and the diseases. i don't believe i have missed out on anything GOOD. kind of reminds me of the people who tell me i was stupid to get married at 19 because look at all the guys i didn't get to screw and hey maybe i could have found someone better/richer/hotter and my life could have been better. why is it never that you life could have been WORSE? or unhappier?

i especially really appreciate the stories about AA from those of you who went and stuck. it helps ME to hear them because i have never understood - still don't really, why use in the first place and why not stop when it controls you and you don't control it. and bout everyone i know who tried out one meeting and didn't go back got stuck on step 3, way before they had to worry about god/God.

i like how BAE put it:

part of the challenge for alcoholics is learning to accept what is before you and learn from it even when it drives you right up the wall. Alkys tend to be intolerant, perfectionist, know it all control freaks who don't play well with others. Learning to put up with other peoples' foibles in meetings is an object lesson in missing life skills that are important for work, family, friendship and so forth.

and what is true is that most people, alcoholics or not, can't bring themselves to put up with other peoples' foibles. maybe those who can use the alcohol to drown the others out.

also, that i think meetings are like dates - sometimes they work out right away, sometimes they are a disaster, but it is not sensible to say that if your first ever date fails that you can't ever have a date again with anyone ever. i went to only one alateen meeting - too overwhelmed with TMI and too much emotion - and i left early and never gave it another chance.

as for the other "addictions" - like overeaters/porn addicts/video addicts - i wonder if they are really an obsessive/compulsive thing - kind of like monk without the twitching (i don't know what else you could call a guy who can't stop masturbating even though it makes his penis bleed.) for sure they are real and lots of people just can't figure out how to stop/not do it even in the face of overwhelming disaster. sort of like having a seizure when you have the kind that you know you are having while you are having it. you can't stop it and something else has to.

- by the way, i DO think there is a huge difference between the famous MAN who excuses his cheating on his wife/partner by explaining that he is a sex addict, and the guy who masturbates even though his penis hurts so bad it bleeds or the tip is so swollen it gets sealed shut. to me, that is like the person who can't stop using a substance even though they wake up almost dead from it and immediately use some more. i never hear famous WOMEN, or any women, explaining that they cheated on spouse/partner because they are a sex addict and can't help it and have to go to rehab. i would also guess that there are not many/any females addicted to porn because, at least from what i've seen, and it ain't much, the guys are not hot and, well, it's just not, um, that interesting unless you are into other women. but there sure are a lot of females who are, shall we say, playas...

i think that is how ray is kind of right about rehab - i mean the kind you are not forced into legally. you don't want to be sober but then again, you can't deal with the problems that not being sober is - and maybe if you break the cycle then things will be different. but i know it's not exactly like just taking a different route to get to work if there is construction or something, like ray and david like to portray it. people are not like an on/off switch, like ray says it is.

although i do believe that the ol' debbil cain't tempt you to do something you don't WANT to do and are trying to not do.

I appreciate everyone in this folder who has shared their experiences with addiction.

For me, the kinds of stories written here explain in the most direct way I can think of why I am a prohibitionist when it comes to addictive substances (by 'prohibitionist' I am referring to ends more than means -- I am flexible enough to agree that blanket banning is not appropriate in all circumstances). I say this not to spark a flame war -- I am well aware that many on both sides of the political spectrum, particularly my fellow liberals, are strongly opposed to the idea, and I respect that position. I say it mostly because the prohibitionist viewpoint is often mischaracterized as being about "controlling other people's lives", when, for me at least, and I think others as well, it is about liberation. Over and over again in this folder we have heard people tell how they became enslaved to one substance or another. I am for freeing people from that enslavement by any available means. The damage to society is severe, pervasive, and too often tolerated because it happens out of our sight.

Again, I don't really want this to turn into a debate about the drug war, etc.; that's not my intention. I just wanted to say my piece because it's rare that we as a society confront the issue as squarely as those posting in this folder have done.

What's happening is that the market is now separating the sheep from the goats when it comes to "rare" books. And the outcome has been mirroring much of the rest of the economy, in that a handful of dealers are doing very well, and are positioned to do even better when the economy recovers, whereas most of the rest of them are dropping by the wayside. The internet has simply exposed too many of those "rare" books as being plentiful, and the prices have dropped accordingly.

I was wondering about even longer-term forces here. The book is heading towards obsolescence. (I don't know if it will ever get there, but it certainly might) Will this make the physical book as artifact more or less valuable?

but i know it's not exactly like just taking a different route to get to work if there is construction or something, like ray and david like to portray it.

I'm not sure why people are linking David and I here. Is this some addiction people here have, to link his views with mine? Perhaps we can come up with a clinical diagnosis for it. I sincerely doubt he subscribes to my thoughts on addiction. Actually, I haven't the foggiest clue what his views on this subject are. I know absolutely nothing about what he thinks on this other than what he posted in #263.

The book is heading towards obsolescence. (I don't know if it will ever get there, but it certainly might) Will this make the physical book as artifact more or less valuable?

I'm not smart enough to answer that question, but anybody who wants to get rid of their first or second edition Principia now that the printed book is obsolete are welcome to send it to me.

Nobody says "I'm agnostic on the idea that my mother loves me."

I might be in that situation. I certainly was not smothered with love; in fact, in my early twenties when I counseling, I challenged my parents about the attention I was paid growing up. My mother said that I never complained, so they thought I was happy.** Apparently it started in the cradle -- I wouldn't cry but stare them awake for a feeding***. The only thing I can think of that she did that would show the sort of unconditional love of a parent was when I worked second shift at the same place she did, she would occasionally leave me leftovers in the work fridge. We had grandkids #1 and #3; she never ever volunteered to watch them or do anything with them. Never. She was in her early 60s when they were born -- not too early nor too late. Dad did take them once in a while. We would ask them to babysit once in a while and they would. Dad would be the one to take them to the playground.

** Granted I was one of 6 kids, there's only so much attention to go around. Mom and Dad have had problems all through their 65 year marriage. I'm glad I didn't have their parents. My folks came into parenting with limited skill sets (as have I, of course). I get all that.

*** In the words of Cool Hand Luke, I'm sure I'm a hard case. I remember choosing that I would not kiss my Mom good night when I was 7.

I say it mostly because the prohibitionist viewpoint is often mischaracterized as being about "controlling other people's lives", when, for me at least, and I think others as well, it is about liberation. Over and over again in this folder we have heard people tell how they became enslaved to one substance or another. I am for freeing people from that enslavement by any available means.

I don't know that you really would accept "any available means." We could absolutely stop drug use with daily drug screenings and imprisonment on the first failed test, but I don't think you'd support that as a policy.

I can see an argument that certain things are so dangerous to those people who, for whatever reason, cannot or will not use them responsibly, that they should be banned. (For example, I don't favor the position that private citizens should be permitted to own nuclear weapons.) I'm not convinced that drugs and alcohol represent that sort of threat that demand prohibition, but you could make an argument, I suppose.

bbc: First, only my own experience talking here. When it comes to alcohol, I'm broken. I drank even though I knew it was killing me, and that it had cost me damned near everything that I loved. And by it, I mean my inability not to drink. Drink didn't make me do anything, I drank. I couldn't stop. I understand that it is difficult to understand, this inability to stop something that you know is killing you. Believe me, I tried with every ounce of my being to stop. Every time I promised someone I loved that I'd stop, I meant it 100%. But I was mentally obsessed with drinking and would eventually have that first drink. Once I had one I had to drink until I was out of booze, money, consciousness or all three. The closest thing to describing it is the feeling you have when your car starts to hydroplane and you have no control over where it's going. You see the oncoming car, the concrete divider, whatever it is and you know that disaster looms but you can't do anything about it. THAT is what it's like.

And it's not alcohol that's the issue. Plenty of people can have a cocktail or two and be fine. It isn't life, I've had ups and downs like everyone else. I'm not a victim, but I'm not inherently immoral either. I'm an ordinary person who can't drink alcohol because I can't stop once I start, and without help I'll start even knowing full well what's going to happen. That's it, nothing more fancy than that.

I went to rehab because I needed someplace to go to learn what it is I needed to do to stay away from alcohol for more than an hour. Left to my own devices I would've kept drinking. There I learned about the nature of my condition and what I needed to do to stay sober. I had other people like me around to talk to. I learned different things to do, and how to tell when I was moving towards the bottle and pretending that I wasn't. I learned how to avoid alcohol. Simple stuff that I never knew before. Like I've said, I'm lucky. I'm alive, I'm sober, and I'm capable of boring you all to tears. I'll take it.

ray

because i have read what david has to say on pretty much everything he has had to say something about. which is pretty much everything except his friends/family/wife/co-workers - except that is isn't EVAH disrespectful to them. i don't agree with him on lots of things, agree with him on lots of things, but i always want to hear what he has to say (at least the first time...)

you and david have some ideas/beliefs in common but, in my opinion, you are very VERY different PEOPLE. i don't never get the 2 of youse confused.

I can see an argument that certain things are so dangerous to those people who, for whatever reason, cannot or will not use them responsibly, that they should be banned. (For example, I don't favor the position that private citizens should be permitted to own nuclear weapons.) I'm not convinced that drugs and alcohol represent that sort of threat that demand prohibition, but you could make an argument, I suppose.

The problem is that, while drugs might be dangerous to some people, prohibition is definitely dangerous to many more people.

filp