I am a recovering addict. It’s no secret. I will have been sober for 4 years on April 8th of this year. I know Charlie Sheen hates the word “sober” because he associates it with 12-step.  I however find it suitably descriptive so I will use it.  I’ve gone through addictions to alcohol, coke, sleeping pills, steroids, and even Tylenol P.M.  Throw in an eating disorder and I was once officially a certified Charlie Sheen mess minus the hookers and porn stars.

What turned me around?  I had a blackout.  My 1st and only one.   I  acted like a public and private idiot during the blackout.  No one got physically hurt. No DWI.  No car wreck.   That was my low point.  The next morning I looked in the mirror and decided that I was no longer having fun.  I was doing damage to my body.  I was doing damage to my relationships.  Changes needed to be made.  I did not have the “strength of will” that Charlie Sheen claims to have.  I am not a warlock.  With all deference to my dad and brothers, I don’t have “Adonis DNA”.  I knew I needed a starting point even though at that point I did not know what the term “help” actually entailed.   The next day I walked through the doors of….. I know I am not supposed to say it,  AA otherwise know as Alcoholics Anonymous.

We are not supposed to talk about being in AA.  That is why I almost always  refer to it as 12-Step.  It is called the principal of anonymity.  The 11th Tradition.  I however, already outed myself.   I believe I have that right despite what the hard core AA fundamentalists preach.  I am sure I will get hate mail and called narcissistic, arrogant and self-absorbed.  Don’t care.  It’s my life to talk about as I see fit.   What I do not have  is the right to do is out anyone else.  That can ruin lives, careers, relationships.  On that front, Charlie Sheen is a scumbag for outing Chuck Lorre for being in AA.  I do understand why he did it.  When we get angry on such a personal level, we often take personal shots we know will hurt the most at the expense of reason and compassion.   Addicts are notorious for taking shots like that.  When an addict’s self worth is completely stripped, ad-hominems are often the weapon of choice to make us feel better.  I have seen it in myself.  I have seen it in other addicts.  Sheen is no different.  Strip away the fame, money and bizarre statements and its an insecure guy with a a problem doing coke  and using porn stars and rhetoric to pump himself up because he/she is afraid to face the reality of the situation.  That’s what addicts do.  Charlie may think he is unique but strip the last name away and the song and story is the same one told since addictions entered the human condition.

Breaking down Charlie’s rant with regards to AA, he has not said anything that has not been said before by other disgruntled addicts.  I agree with some of it.

Charlie says AA is a cult.  AA certainly has some cult-like qualities.  I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.  Group-think is fundamental to the AA recovery process.   Many people need to embrace the group-think mentality to get sober and stay sober.  That works for them. More power to them.  Some don’t need it or want it.   We are simply not wired for group-think and push back against it on all levels.  This is where I break.  I do not think getting over addiction is a cookie cutter, one Big Book fits all scenario.  Individuality is ok.  It is when other members try to force group-think on people who may need a different road, those people start screaming cult.  I have rejected much of 12-step group-think philosophy. I took the aspects that I felt worked for me and embraced those.  I made the program mine.  I feel that has worked for me.  Of course there are those in AA who are threatened by anyone who does it differently. They dismiss us as as “dry drunks” and doomed to failure. That drives people away. That’s a cult.

Charlie infers that addicts can cure themselves through strength of will.  I absolutely agree that it is possible to look in the mirror, say “enough is enough”  and never look back.  I know some of those people.   I would also say that it’s the acute minority that can do that.  Most need support.  Support from people similarly situated is a great thing.  I love that about AA. Those people are my friends. Many are my confidants outside of the setting with regards to my struggles.

There are those that argue that if you can quit without AA you must not be an addict.  I view that as again, AA standardized “Catch 22″ circular logic semantics.  They tell you that if you follow the steps odds are good you will stay sober but if you relapse you must not have followed the 12-Steps.  When I hear that I always feel a little like Capt. John Yosaarian.

That is not to say that Charlie can’t beat it with will like he says he has. He could be that rare guy.   I would say however that the facts of his past speak for themselves.  Despite whatever semantic label he wants to put on it to make himself feel better, his history demonstrates that he does NOT have “Adnonis DNA”.  It demonstrates that he is not one of the chosen few that can cure themselves with mind over coke.  Why?  He has tried and failed before.  Because he now chooses to semantically call it something else to justify his actions does not change the fundamental nature of those actions.

Finally, Charlie says he is having fun.  Money and fame can buy a lot of fun in the moment.  I did not have the money and fame but I would be lying if I said that there were not fun moments.  The problem was that eventually the bad moments substantially overshadowed the fun moments which came less and less frequently.   It is a complex formula that is different for every addict eventually totaling out at our low point.  Charlie has not hit his low yet.  It is different for everyone.  He also has a high, “low threshold.”  I had a low  “low-threshold” relatively speaking to many others.  It did not take much for me.  The problem with a high “low-threshold” is that those more often than not, they do not end well and often end tragically.  You do not have to simply deal with and evaluate the low like I did.  You have to survive them.  With each new low, Charlies chances of  surviving his new low change dramatically for the worse.   That is not about Charlie.  This has been proven time and time again in addicts around the world. Charlie is not exempt from the laws of physics as they apply to addiction. The other high probabilities are prison or permanent physical incapacity.  I am not a doctor but the notion that Sheen has not shortened his life dramatically regardless seems preposterous to me.

This was another reason I found the strength to not look back.  My family does have “Adonis DNA” when it comes to living long, healthy lives.  Why fuck with that. Too many other random chance events that can take that away in a heartbeat. Too much fun to have once I learned that fun did not have to involve altering my mental state and shorting my life.  Hope Charlie learns the same and lives though the learning process.  Too much to live for.

The new definition of insanity: Raising 50k or more in a city with the 6th highest crime rate in the nation to erect a statute of a fictional crime-fighting Cyborg movie superhero.  A superhero that starred in a movie that was filmed somewhere else(Dallas, Texas) generating no revenue but plenty of negative recognition for that crime-ridden, blighted city.

Welcome to Detroit, Michigan. An online fund-raising campaign has raised $50,000 in less than a week to erect a statute of RoboCop.  For those unaware, RoboCop was a 1987 movie set in a crime-plagued futuristic Detroit. It’s about a police officer who is supposedly murdered, but brought back as a party human/most machine cyborg haunted by residual memories of his past.

Hey Detroit! Real people are being mugged raped and murdered on your streets at record levels making it a real life “Old Detroit”. Why would you want to glamorize that?  You should be raising statutes to real cops who have given their lives to keep you safe in a city where your chances of staying safe are at the low end of the probability curve. Don’t raise money for fake robot heroes from movies that did not even bring revenue to your city from the filming but profited off it’s reputation as one of the most murderous cities in the country. We in the city of Dallas thank you for allowing us to do that.  It was great for us.

I do have a proposal to the city of Detroit.  I will go to people behind the original RoboCop and ask them to donate some of the profits towards your statue if you promise to take Kwame Kilpatrick back off our hands when he gets out of prison.  More realistically, donate the 50k to organizations that support real cops. You could even donate it in the name of RoboCop. If he were real, he’d appreciate that. That’s keeping it real.  Detroit needs that type of realism a lot more than a monument to nothing at all.

While I did not read it,  I found the title of the  book, The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover’s Code of Conduct listed for sale on Amazon. com offensive. You probably do as well. Given the title, it’s a safe bet I would find the content offensive.   I also find the fact that Facebook allows groups that deny the Holocaust on it’s site offensive. You may or may not. Many don’t. I find the current play of the Dallas Cowboys  offensive.  If you’re a Cowboys fan, I know you do.

I find many things over a wide spectrum of content and speech offensive. It’s human nature. It is also human nature for people to disagree on what constitutes offensive content. Call me crazy but I suspect there are those who are not pedophiles and who also do not find the book in question offensive.  It can be difficult for companies like Facebook and Amazon to strike a balance in such content when it is not in itself illegal and when they claim to emulate free speech values in  the content they allow on the site.

That being said, I find it offensive that Amazon would publicly state a “free speech platform” in defense of the pedophilia book and then bow to consumer pressure and threats of boycotts removing the book in blatant contravention of that statement.  Assuming that Amazon removed the book and not the author, I find the hypocrisy offensive.  This was about money, not morals.  This was about being on the brink of their biggest profit season of the year. If this was March, in my opinion,  they cite that free speech policy and don’t pull the book. This was “shopping season censorship”. That’s fine. That’s their right. Amazon can arbitrarily  remove whatever content they want regardless of their policies. I wish they would simply cite that right without reason and not pretend they emulate free speech values.

Amazon’s statement about the book when the controversy arose:

“It is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable,”

“Amazon does not support or promote hatred or criminal acts, however, we do support the right of every individual to make their own purchasing decisions”.

Amazon has now pulled the book. From an “offensive” standpoint good for them.  It was offensive.  From a “what we just said about censorship and individual rights is bullshit”  standpoint, it was also offensive.  Shame on Amazon for pulling it.  If they want to change their  “free speech emulation” policy fine, change it and post it.  Until then, spare us the hypocrisy when removing the book was really all about shopping season censorship…

I came across an interesting piece about cyber-bullying of  gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender teens on Facebook and the steps the social network was taking to combat it.  This is nothing new.  As long as their are people, there will be hate speech.  It’s the human condition. As a representative correctly point out, Facebook is just as vulnerable to this condition as other cross-sections of society.

What I found interesting was the hate speech/free speech discussion. When does free speech become hate speech in social networks like Facebook?”  I was at first confused.  Is not  hate speech for the most part free speech?   That is unless it incites others to imminent violence, threatens the President Of The United States and some other narrow exceptions.  Why make the confusing distinction?  The reason the distinction was valid in this article was that it was specifically referring to Facebook and not the brick and mortar world.  Facebook is a community that attempts to emulate 1st Amendment ideals of free speech but that’s where it ends. It ends there because Facebook is a private company.  As such, the 1st Amendment and traditional free speech values have no practical bearing.  Free speech and hate speech are just terms of art within the network to be adjusted by the network to best suit the interests of the network.  Translation? Free speech and hate speech are whatever Facebook and other social networks say they are at any given moment.

So what are they?  Two years ago, I debated this very issue with Facebook representatives relating to Holocaust Denial.  I felt that Facebook Groups promoting Holocaust Denial were in themselves “hateful content” as outlined in Facebook’s Terms Of Service and should have been removed from the site.  Facebook felt differently.  I even presented my thoughts  to a group of employees at Facebook corporate offices.  While not agreeing with their position,  I came to understand their point of view about having internal standards to which employees can look at content and not have to make value judgments about a particular type of speech. Without such standards Facebook employees assigned to deal with these issues would be overwhelmed with disputes over content that one person may find “hateful” and another felt was legitimate expression. They could not hire enough employees to deal with these types of disagreements.  As one employee put it, Facebook was  looking for “binary certainty” in making these decision on “hateful content”.

There is the rub.  What is the binary standard?  To this day, to my knowledge, Facebook has never released or publicly stated how they evaluate “hateful content”.  Where and how do they draw the line?  I have an idea how they do it because I was privy to internal exchange with their employees.  Why not tell everyone.  Why not some transparency.  The same transparency many employees acknowledged was lacking  when I spoke there.  Two years later, nothing much has changed with regards to “free speech” and “hate speech”  The general user perception is that it is whatever Facebook says it is.   At least in the brick and mortar world I can pull up The Constitution and Supreme Court opinions that guide me.  That standard does not represent the beliefs of all Facebook users across the world but for better or worse that is the standard Facebook uses. It’s transparent.  Emulate that aspect as well.