Dual Diagnosis Nonsense

I will speak on another issue, one which does not relate directly to AA, perhaps, but which indicts the whole pharmaco-therapy industry, one which induces individuals to depend on others for the source of right and wrong in our lives.

Many people receive the "dual diagnosis" in the AA meetings.

They not only struggle with alcoholism, but they also suffer from a brain disorder or a chemical imbalance. Bipolar disorder, ADHD, or any other host of issues.

The real problem, I believe, is that men and women are forced to give up their sanity, their capacity to make rational decisions.

The program from the very beginning informs individuals who struggle with alcohol that they have a different way of thinking, that they are not normal, and therefore their view of the world is marred by the "disease" of alcoholism.

Rather than bringing people out of bondage and setting them free, this line of thinking creates individuals who are introspective, self-conscious, fearful, induced to look over their shoulders and run to meetings or to a sponsor every time the going gets tough.

They learn that they cannot trust themselves to make decisions, but rather must submit to the direction of another. Can any other lifestyle contribute to the upset and setbacks which plague these individuals?

What power does one hope to ever have in one's life if the person in the meeting lives in the worry that he or she has to submit ideas and directions and choices to someone else?

As a member of Celebrate Recovery, I was sucked into a type of dual-diagnosis nonsense. I found myself so turned up with fear on the inside that I ran almost every decision by someone else.
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I wish that someone had shared the following Scripture with me sooner:

"But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things." (1 John 2: 20)

and then

"But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him." (1 John 2: 27)

THe perversion of seeking advice from others, from "experts", the custom of dismissing another man's capacity to let the pace of Christ rule in one's heart (Colossians 3: 15), this dynamic is creating and exacerbating the very problem which people are trying to escape from.

Like many in these programs, I had believed that I could not trust my intuition on anything, so afraid was of taking the wrong step on anything. A life of abject is not the way to live, simple as that.

To be established in righteousness, to be infused with grace, to know and believe in God's love for me through His Son, these revelations have broken me from dependence on man, from the flesh that cannot arm one against the onslaught of lies and deceit:

"That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;" (Ephesians 4: 14)

How do we escape from this tempest of truth and error? This miasma of mental illness, which in truth has its foundations in the lies which are perpetuated in misapplications of scripture? Hebrews contains the answer:

"For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat.

"For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe.

"But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil." (Hebrews 5: 12-14)

Receive His righteousness, let that be the number one priority (Matthew 6: 33), and everything follows from there -- including the discernment of good and evil, of the proper and improper path to take.

By being established in the gift of righteousness, which in Christ I am called to keep receiving (Romans 5: 17), I finally broke free of the bipolar label which had been forced on me at a young age. Growing up in a dysfunctional home can make anyone crazy, can make one's feelings go up and down, depending on whatever is going through our minds at the time. When I learned that I am not my thoughts, I am not my feelings, I broke free from the bondage that I could not think, that my capacities to discern the right and the wrong were in some insidious way delayed or destroyed.

I quit the bipolar meds once and for all, and now for a little over a year, I have been free of the nonsense that is AA as well as the baseless charge that I needed medication just to keep my mind in line.

Indeed when you know the Truth, that Truth will set you free (John 8: 32).