Sunday, August 13, 2000

Prescott Courier

Activist Gets Prison for DUI Wreck

By Linda Ashton

The Associated Press

ELLENSBURG, Wash. ~ The woman who founded a national organization based on the premise that problem drinkers can learn to limit their alcohol use was sentenced Friday to 4½ years in prison for killing two people while driving drunk.

Audrey Kishline, 43, apologized to the family of Richard Davis and his 12-year-old daughter, LaShell, saying she will feel guilty about their deaths for the rest of her life.

Kishline pleaded guilty in June to two counts of vehicular homicide. A third charge of hit-and-run driving was dismissed as part of a plea agreement.

Police said Kishline was driving the wrong way down Interstate 90 on March 25 when she smashed head-on into Davis' car near Cle Elum, 71 miles east of Seattle. Her blood alcohol level was more than three times the legal limit, police said.

Since the accident, Kishline, who started Moderation Management in 1993, has disavowed the movement and removed herself as spokeswoman. She also had undergone treatment for alcoholism.

Kishline said pride and fear of publicity had kept her from seeking help earlier.

Before Kishline's decision to join Alcoholics Anonymous in January, she was a vocal spokeswoman for Moderation Management, which calls itself an alternative to AA, allowing problem drinkers to cut down on drinking rather than quit.

Members of the 50 volunteer-run groups go through a nine-step program, which allows nine drinks per week for women and 14 for men. The group, which considers drinking learned and not a disease, discourages those with serious drinking problems from joining and does not allow drinking and driving.

A six-pack a day is too much for anyone

DEAR DR. DONOHUE: I am 27 years old, married and with one child. When I get home, I normally have a six-pack of beer (a little more on weekends). I believe that his is what the medical profession calls an alcoholic. I enjoy drinking and do not drink and drive. Unless you tell me I am hurting my body with alcohol, I will continue to drink. ~ H.T.

ANSWER: Smokers can cite a relative who smoked two packs a day and lived to be 99. Such a person is an exception. You're the alcohol equivalent of the dedicated chain smoker. Most rational people can see the devastation created by cigarettes, and most would not deny the facts. The same applies to alcohol.

Large volumes of alcohol ~ beer, wine or whiskey ~ can damage the heart, raise blood pressure, wreak havoc on the digestive tract and injure the pancreas.

Six 12-ounce cans of beer combined have 900 calories. There is very little nutritional value in those 900 calories. It is all but impossible for a person to consume 900 extra calories a day and not gain weight ~ make that "fat" not weight.

Putting all of the above aside, consider the liver. A man who drinks six to eight 12-ounce cans of beer every day on a regular basis can almost count on developing liver cirrhosis within 10 to 15 years. Cirrhosis is a scarred, non-functioning liver that bestows a most unpleasant life and an early, gruesome death. A woman, because her body is smaller, comes to the same end with only half the amount of alcohol that spells cirrhosis for a man.

Most people would be staggering if they drank a six-pack every evening. It seems not to faze you. That's not a good sign. It indicates you have developed an alcohol tolerance, one sign of alcoholism.

Bad Mixers

Recent research suggests that a common heartburn medication, taken in combination with alcoholic beverages, can cause blood-alcohol levels to become dangerously high, even with light to moderate drinking.

By interfering with the processes that break down alcohol, ranitidine (Zantac), an acid-reducing drug used to treat ulcers and heartburn, can push blood alcohol to levels that can impair driving in social drinkers. Study author Dr. Satish Arora and colleagues at the Bronx Veterans Affairs Medical Center conclude that patients "treated with ranitidine should be warned of the possibility of developing unexpected functional impairment when drinking amounts of alcohol they might consider safe."
~Reuters

12/13/00 9:25 a.m.
Repealing Alcoholics Anonymous
The courts go too far — again.

By Gov. Frank Keating of Oklahoma

In the fall of 1934, a terminally ill man lay in a New York hospital bed pondering his fate. He knew that there was no effective medical treatment for his disease, and he was resigned to the dire likelihood that he would die within months. As he later recounted it, he asked God to intervene, saw a brilliant burst of light, and felt immense peace. Days later he checked out of the hospital, free of his sickness. When he finally died in 1971, he was considered a saint by millions, and the treatment he devised remains the only widely recognized approach to the disease that almost killed him.

His name was Bill Wilson, and his intensely spiritual experience in that hospital bed soon led him to become a co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, the most successful self-help program in world history. Now, 66 years later, two federal circuit courts have decided to repeal a substantial part of Wilson's work. In separate but essentially identical rulings, courts in Wisconsin and California have said that requiring participation in any Twelve Step program by convicted drunk drivers or incarcerated inmates is a violation of the constitutional prohibition against the establishment of religion. Apparently it wasn't enough to ban classroom prayer and remove Christmas displays from city parks; now the federal judiciary is after Alcoholics Anonymous, which has had the audacity — for two-thirds of a century — to mention God's name as it saved millions of lives.

These are deeply flawed and dangerous rulings, for at least four fundamental reasons.

The first is practical. Alcoholism and drug addiction aren't just components of our national crime problem, they are root causes. A 1997 study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics showed that 51 percent of state-prison inmates and one-third of federal prisoners were under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time they committed the crimes for which they were imprisoned. A staggering 83 percent of state inmates report histories of drug or alcohol abuse. From homicide to shoplifting, drug and alcohol abuse is a primary factor in virtually every crime on the books. Our courts and jails and prisons aren't just clogged with alcoholics and drug addicts; they virtually exist to serve those populations! At bottom, our crime problem is an addiction problem.

Happily, treatment programs based on the Twelve Steps, coupled with probationary or post-release involvement in AA, can dramatically reduce recidivism and restore many former offenders to lawful, productive lives. A Delaware study showed that prison inmates who completed 12-15 months of treatment inside the walls and attended AA and counseling for at least six months after they were paroled were twice as likely to remain drug-free. In my state of Oklahoma, the recidivism rate for parolees who completed 28 months of AA-based treatment was 11.5 percent. Of a comparable group of inmates who had no treatment or AA involvement, nearly one-third returned to prison. In Massachusetts, just 5 percent of a studied cohort had jobs prior to AA-based treatment; after treatment, 41 percent of them were working. Most states can report similar data, on indicators ranging from criminal activity to family stability. It appears that nationally, about half of all alcoholics and drug addicts who complete treatment programs and/or at least a year in AA or a comparable Twelve Step program are clean and sober five years later. As anyone knows who has ever witnessed the AA transformation in a friend, coworker, or family member, sincere and genuine recovery from addiction is the closest thing to a miracle you're likely to see.

The judges who issued the Wisconsin and California rulings apparently disagree — or it may be that they believe it is better that 10,000 perish in misery than that one be offended by a prayer. Their rulings directly attacked the widespread and growing practice of mandating AA involvement as conditions of probation for drunk drivers or of parole or early release for prison inmates.

These are not rare requirements, the kind of singular and unusual "abuse" such court rulings were designed to prevent. The DOJ study showed that a third of all state inmates and a fourth of those in the federal system have participated in some form of prison substance-abuse treatment program — and that was for 1997; such programs have multiplied in recent years. For DUI offenders, AA meetings and some form of AA-based counseling or treatment have become almost standard conditions for probation. The court rulings will have a direct and negative impact on what have become central and promisingly effective sentencing and prerelease practices throughout our criminal-justice system: practices that, if implemented system-wide, promise potential reductions in the national crime rate of up to 50 percent!

It's as if, having discovered a direct link between illiteracy and unemployment, we banned all forms of literacy education that use the alphabet because a single plaintiff objects to the letter J.

Of course the courts said people can attend those AA meetings and treatment programs if they choose to — that it's only a violation of the establishment clause to require it. And that's where the second flaw in the ruling emerges.

As any veteran substance-abuse counselor will tell you, people rarely walk voluntarily through the door and ask for help; most of them arrive unwillingly, forced to AA and treatment by circumstances that have increasingly included orders by courts or parole officers. Judges who deal with drunk drivers, and probation and parole officers who manage freed felons, know that they often have to force early compliance in hopes of achieving long-term recovery. With drunkies and junkies, you usually need a hammer.

Why? One of the symptoms of chemical addiction is a steadfast denial that anything is wrong. An alcoholic's life may be coming apart like a cheap watch, he may be facing jail or prison time, he might even have been told, like Wilson, that his body is about to shut down from repeated abuses — but an alcoholic or drug addict is very likely to respond with a foggy, "Who, me?" The chemicals that do the damage also cloud awareness and judgment. Like the mentally ill — who are subject, under specific circumstances, to involuntary hospitalization — many alcoholics and drug addicts are simply not capable of making rational choices.

That's where courts and parole boards have stepped in. By linking counseling, treatment, AA attendance, and perhaps periodic urinalysis to continued probationary or parole status, they have successfully moved uncounted thousands off the downward spiral of crime, deterioration, and death to the path of recovery. In every community in America, there are people who are clean, sober, productive and law-abiding because a judge or parole officer said, "AA or the slammer…make a choice." In most cases, they are deeply grateful for that forced help, which came at a time when they were usually incapable of making sensible choices. By ignoring this central truth about substance abuse, the courts in these two rulings have effectively disarmed lower courts and parole officials.

The third flaw in the Wisconsin and California rulings lies at the heart of those rulings, the claim that AA is "religion." In fact, from its first years, AA has repeatedly emphasized that it is a spiritual program, rather than a religious one, and that members are merely asked to choose a "higher power" to help them overcome their addiction. Seven of AA's Twelve Steps refer to a "higher power" or "God" or, as AA emphasizes, "God as we understood Him." But in AA, you pick your own higher power, which may be a Christian or Jewish or Muslim God — or not. As Wilson wrote in the AA "Big Book" in 1935, "To us the realm of spirit is broad, roomy, all inclusive…."

There are AA members who rely on higher powers as diverse as a dead ancestor, a tall tree, or the group itself. Some AA groups choose to recite the Lord's Prayer; some don't. Most use the serenity prayer, which has become inextricably linked to AA, but it is significant that they lop off the last half of the prayer as it was originally composed by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. AA intentionally leaves out the "religious part." There is no mention of any specific faith or denomination in AA literature; in fact, the AA traditions specifically prohibit all outside affiliations.

The only AA commandment is to stay sober, the only creed is personal responsibility for recovery, the only doctrine is reliance on others and on the higher power one chooses. Religions — in contrast — have elaborate doctrines, creeds and rituals, which taken together form a distinct set of beliefs to which their adherents are asked to subscribe. In that sense, AA is no more religious than the Diners Club. It is, however, unashamedly spiritual, and that is where the court ruling fails a final, crucial test.

The courts said Twelve Step involvement could not be mandated; they did suggest that courts and parole authorities could continue to require involvement in some form of treatment or recovery program as long as there is a secular, "non-religious" alternative. Pluck out all the references to God or spiritual elements, the rulings said, and you'll be fine. As a result, hundreds of court and prison system bureaucrats across America are busily engaged in sad and ludicrous efforts to rewrite Bill Wilson's Twelve Steps, snipping out any mention of the very spiritual connection that saved his life in the first place.

What the courts failed to acknowledge in their ruling, and what virtually every one of the more than 2 million people who go to AA meetings today, and the millions more who have achieved sobriety through the Twelve Steps, know…is that spirituality is what it's all about!

What worked for Bill Wilson in that hospital bed wasn't a lecture or a textbook. It was his own personal higher power, reaching down to lift him up and make him well. As Wilson wrote, "If a new code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago. But we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us, no matter how much we tried…the needed power wasn't there…. We had to find a power greater than ourselves." What Wilson was saying, and what 66 years of AA experience has confirmed, was that will power, desire, and intellectual knowledge won't keep a drunk sober. It also requires that elusive higher power, as defined by the individual.

The "not AA" recovery programs currently being manufactured to meet the requirements of the court rulings are bound to be like sugar-filled placebos in a double-blind drug trial. They will inevitably lack the central ingredient that works — spirituality, a personal connection to a higher power.

The hard truth is that in the thousands of years before AA, there was no effective treatment for alcoholism; in the 66 years since Wilson got sober in a blinding moment he called his spiritual "hot flash," no other medical, psychiatric, psychological, or academic approach to alcoholism has found an effective answer. In 2000, as in 1935, if you're a drunk and you want to get sober, you go to AA or to a treatment program based on AA's Twelve Steps. God and all, it's still the only game in town, and it is highly unlikely that an army of government factotums, beavering away under court auspices, will come up with a workable alternative.

How, for example, will they find a substitute for AA's elegant third step: "Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." Those 14 words encompass the process of recovery from addiction, and the desired result. AA members are fond of citing the first three words for newcomers, who may have been unwillingly ordered by a court or a parole officer to attend meetings. We came, they say…we came to…and ultimately we came to believe.

But came to believe what? Take away the "power greater than ourselves" and what is left? I can imagine a court-inspired rewrite of the third step: "Came to believe that willing association with our appointed counselor and members of the officially sanctioned non-religious support group…" One doubts there will be much restoration there, and very little sanity.

Not long before he died in 1951, Dr. Bob Smith, who co-founded AA with Wilson in 1935, reminded AA members to "keep it simple." Thank God those two men didn't live to see what two sadly confused federal courts are doing to their creation, and to the millions of alcoholics they sought to help.