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Grainger Hines... is a guy from Greenwood, SC, who now lives in Hollywood and reads the index journal online daily. He starred in a few shows such as MTV's Protocol, The Fall Guy and is a long time soap star on, One Life to Live. He was really defensive and the article motivated him to defend the 12 step program. He and I went back and forth because I was determined to make him understand my views. The 12 Step Breakdown By Angela Abbott wrote on Dec 17, 2007 11:59 AM: Press release in The Index Journal http://www.indexjournal.com/articles/2007/12/10/news/news06.txt I have to explain why I have the views that I have about the 12 step program. So I have expressed a view on each one of the 12 steps Maybe this will help the readers understand. The Questions are based on a comment made by Grainger Hines on an article printed in the Index Journal titled, "South Carolina Underground Entertainment Industry Fights Drugs with Film" 1. Granger Hines Said: The first step in AA is, to admit that you are powerless over alcohol (it could also be pot, cocaine, sex or whatever - -it seems there is a 12 step program for everything these days I said: I agree that they have created a 12 step program for everything. When you watch the movie (One Love Addiction ) You will gain a knowledge of the profit that is being gained from teaching people that over-eating, molesting children & more is due to a disease and not their choice. People pay really good money to feel relieved of their responsibility for the actions that they are ashamed of. I say forgive yourself for not being perfect, accept responsibility for your own actions and learn to love yourself again. 2. Granger Hines Said: the point is... to admit you are powerless... when you do this , you empower yourself, thus making yourself stronger rather than weaker. I said: I have honestly tried and just cannot understand this statement.. If You admit that you are powerless over anything but God, you are expressing a lack of faith in God's power. Faith in God can move mountains. If one has undying faith in God then anything is possible. Believing to create your reality = FAITH. 3. Granger Hines Said: I do not know about the success rate and the numbers that have been mentioned but I do know AA works. I have attended AA meetings all over the world and the message I have (personally) walked away with is a very positive one. I said: I do know the success rate. Yes AA does work for 5% and I would like to humbly congratulate you on being a part of that 5%. You are certainly a positive man for it and I'm sure your faith is strong. But please consider the other 95% who didn't strengthen their faith in the meetings and walked away feeling doomed (like me) and thought that things were never going to get any better & I was going to have to deal with it.
4. Granger Hines Said: In addition to the 1st Step mentioned I would like to say that there are 11 (eleven) other steps. They are: Step 2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. I said: Yes God can and will restore us to sanity but we must have faith and thru our faith we will be guided to be who we (believe we are) I don't think that believing that our choices are in fact a disease that we will always have is true faith in God.
5. Granger Hines Said: Step 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of GOD as we understand Him. I said: Yes as we understand him. We can gain a clear understanding by detoxifying the mind from all of the garbage accumulated during your heavy drug use. Do the 12 steps teach you how to clean the mind up & let the worst part of your past go? To think or talk about anything good or bad is to affirm that you still want it in your life. You choose all of your thoughts and all of your words, two of the very few things you really do have control over. This program will teach people to love themselves. You can only love God or another human as much as you love you. Truly loving & forgiving our self will help us learn how to love. A man who got drunk and molested his own daughter has a harder time forgiving him self than the daughter had forgiving him. Not everyone did things so horrible in their (active addiction) but many did. Can you see yet, how detrimental the program could be to a person like this and their victims? If this person truly believes that he has no control over those actions, he is just an addict with character defects that he has to live with how likely is it that he does it again? We will ALWAYS be what we really believe we are and we control what we believe. 6. Granger Hines Said: Step 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory. I said: Again focusing on the garbage, writing it down, feeling the agony, forcing yourself to remember as much pain as possible. Negative thoughts are pouring therefore feeding the negative energies that make us feel less human or like abnormal people. A brainwashing tactic used in many cults of the past.
7. Granger Hines Said: Step 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. I said: Again, dwelling on the negativity of the past. The part of our past that we feel is the worst. Beating our self up. Coming from a very long history of terrible abuse that is how my abusers would always control me. By making me think of myself as different and not at strong as other "Normal" people.
8. Granger Hines Said: Step 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. I said: Again, claiming our defects of character. Putting faith in them to a point that we ASK GOD to remove them. Again . Thru faith all things are possible. Can we just look up at God and say thank you God for giving me the power of choice in a country where choice is in abundance. If we truly believe (have faith) that we don't posses character defects but rather made conscious choices that we can choose at any point to stop making then we have claimed our power. Can you see how strong that can make a person? Just claiming your own power & knowing that God didn't leave you out when granting us that power.
9. Granger Hines Said: Step 7. Humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings. I said: Again Claiming failure. Asking God to do something is a lack of faith. Everything that we need to be happy was here before us. Our happiness is our own birthright and our own responsibility. It is thru our faith that we create our lives as adults. What do you believe you are? You will be that! 10. Granger Hines Said: Step 8.Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. I said: AGAIN More food for thought. Focus on the negative. What you feed will grow. If you focus on the negative it will grow, if you focus on positive it too will grow. These steps can actually hurt. When I was going to the rooms for meetings I could not tell you how many times I heard them say that it sometimes takes YEARS to complete the steps!!! So that means that people are holding onto the garbage for that long!!! Detrimental!!! To a person like myself who thinks deep inside myself and evaluates everything (a very common practice among humans, not a character defect) I would feel so doomed thinking that this was due to my disease which was going to be a part of me forever. (and to think this is the 8th step) This can be years of focusing on the garbage to get to this step when do they let it go?
11. Granger Hines Said: Step 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. I said: Does "Injure" include mental anguish? Still focusing on the past. When do we let go of it. It is not until then do we really grow. I was told in a 12 step recovery program by a counselor once that *we people, with this disease of addiction were like little kids who at some point in our lives our mind stopped growing like normal people and we were little kids driving an adults body. Wow, what a thing to tell someone who is there because they feel hopeless. 12. Granger Hines Said: Step 10. Continued to take a personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. I said: WHOA!!! Jeez, can you believe it? STILL focus on the past! The bad past! 13. Granger Hines Said: Step 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understand him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. I said: I almost agree with this step entirely! Yet I do not ask god for the power I appreciate and thank him, or just tell him that I am grateful for this power he gave me and will use that gracious gift wisely. I CLAIM IT!!
14. Granger Hines Said: Step 12. Having had a Spiritual Awaking as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. I said: And now we spread the disease in its full blown state. "
We can get a grip on the drug problems in our community. The solution is simpler than you may think. Did you know that when a towns economy gets really bad and jobs become scarce, that the town's drug stores flourish? Did you know that the 12 Step Recovery Program yeilds a 95% to 97% failure rate? That's no surprise when you consider what it teaches. It teaches that you are born an addict and will die an addict. They tell their victims that they have this disease called addiction and that they have no choice but to abuse their bodies. They tell them that they are hopelessly self destructive and always will be. They tell them that they have character defects and are not like "normal" people. Now, I teach people that we create our own reality thru what we believe we are. I mean you can bank on the fact that you will always be what you truely believe you are. The good thing is that you control your beliefs. You control your affirmations. An affirmation is everything you think and everything you say. So by saying, "Hi, I'm Angie and I'm an addict" I have affirmed that to be true. Did you Know that 1% of the world controls 100% of the world's wealth? Have you ever listened to your favorite rapper talk about how the system is holding it's poor people down into poverty? We heard a lot of that when Katrina hit. The crazy thing is the next week I saw the same rappers on MTV cribs showing off how much money they spent on gold, silver & diamonds. Wow, do they not realize that, that makes them a very valuable asset to the system that they are complaining about. Who do you think controls the precious metals and gems? Do you think that their community aquires benefits from the sale of gold and diamonds? Nope the commercialism and the sale of those things is keeping the power in the hands of the people who are currently in control. They talk you into foolish spending. Media, with the help of it's ignorant celebrities makes it seem cool to spend spend spend and the system we are talking about, love it.
One Love Addiction will shed a light on the following questions and will have you thinking about some things that you already see everyday. Some things that have made no sense up to this point will become very clear to you. This is to raise awareness about drug use in an effort to help those who care make a diffence in their communities where drug use is a problem. The documentary targets illegal and legal drug abuse. The results of this documentary is quite shocking. If the 12 Steps of recovery is a failure then why does the governmenrt still fund it? Why do probate judges sentence addicted mothers to facilities like Morris Village and others based on the 12 steps? Are there other programs out there that are not based on the 12 steps? Who are they? What concept are they based on? What are their success rate? Does the government fund them? Do judges send people to them? What kind of tax money does the government recieve from drug dealers? Why does the government allow the media to advertise depression? Are the commercials that advertise depression an effort to help the legal drug pushers to sell their drugs? What's the difference between legal drug dealers and illegal drug dealers? Has the medical field gotten outta hand in our country? Why are their such strick laws against the practice of natural health care? If every one stopped using drugs and alcohol tomorrow, what would that do for our governments economy? How much does our government's economy rely on our drug addicts and people staying sick? How can we change these issues to result in a positive outcome? |
