G21 TRIO: A Series of Voices
AUSTIN, TEJAS - Being addicted, and in recovery, was all the rage of the `90s. If you didn't find some reason to be in a 12 Step Program and/or therapy, you missed the boat, my friend.
Kitty Dukakis, Liza Minelli, Suzanne Somers, Robert Downey, Jr., there were enough people around to keep a talk-show host busy throughout the decade and point the way toward your own personal serenity.
The DYING TO BE COOL -2 Issue: In/Out
 BARE KNUCKLES: JEFF WINBUSH goes in "SEARCH OF SPIKE" - Part One of Two.
 POWERSBOOKS on "KAKUTANI OF THE TIMES."
 POLICY MATTERS: ADAM SMITH, Associate Director of the Beltway's Drug Reform Coordination Network, looks at the "THE 4-20 DEBATE."
 TRIO: THOMAS HART says "ADDICTED? AREN'T WE ALL?"
 LONDON CALLING! FLISS USSHER provides a seering, intimate portrait of young "birds" Dying To Be Cool!
 G21 WORDSOur BOB POWERS extends his critique to film this week with a review of the new Nicholas Cage/Meg Ryan film, "CITY OF ANGELS."
DON'T READ ME FIRST! our Editor and Publisher continues from the cover. G21 REPRISE: Advice for Cool Chicks G21 REPRISE: The First COOL GUYS HANDBOOK. THE HANDBOOK, Volume 2  JENNIFER BLUE's PLANETARY MADNESS looks at YOUR influences!
ANOTHER Great Joke of the Day in THE HOUSE OF CARDS! Hello! Use The Message Board |
("...Just once, I'd like to convince you that Prozac is not THE ANSWER..")
The cure for your "sick" desire to do or be more? Why, the 12 Steps, of course, and finding your High Power.
These three therapists, who unabashedly admit that they are Christian therapists and conclude that all you need is Jesus Christ to cure you of your compulsions, say that the reason that each and every one of you out there is either an addict or in denial is because
" ...Every addiction, every compulsion---yes, we said *every*; this is the one driver that is always present---has behind it a quest for spirituality and more specifically a quest for God and the attributes of God..."On the next page of this marvel book, they explain this further:
" ...Now, through the science of addictionology, we better under the `why.' The addiction---be it alcoholism or drug addiction or a compulsion America applauds---fulfills the addicts need: *to suspend time(the `Stop-the-world-I-want-to-get-off' desire) *to be invincible *to become transcendent *to achieve immortality, and *to find perfect union..."
So now, my friend, thanks to the wonders of the "science of Addictionology" you, too, can be as addicted, sick, and twisted as your favorite celebrity or any of your middle-class American neighbors! You can go into therapy and/or Recovery and talk the same happy claptrap as all of your "emotionally damaged" friends. You don't have to feel left out!
("...BUT JESUS! JESUS IS!... NOW AND FOR ALL TIME!...")
Of course, the Dallas fellows don't take all the credit for finding your very own passport into true coolness. The quote everybody from Bill Wilson, author of the Alcoholics Anonymous "Big Book" to John Bradshaw, who has achieved a certain celebrity status all his own by helping millions of Americans to "re-parent" themselves, giving a whole new meaning to the adage, "the child is the father of the man."
Now before you start clicking onto that Message Board and condemning me as you have other writers at this magazine, or sending more angry mail to our Editor about me, Listen up!
I know there are people out there who are ACTUALLY addicted to gambling, alcohol, and chemicals sold both illicitly and at the local pharmacy. I know these people genuinely need help with their addictions and organizations like AA, NA, et alia, have provided them with a means of living fuller, more sane and healthy lives.
BUT I ALSO KNOW that there are people out there who want to be part of ANYTHING which will make them feel less isolated. People like getting attention after all, and being part of some group therapy scam or recovery industry is sure as hell one way where they can get attention as many nights a week as they can cancel the rest of their damned lives. Books like this one feed into that need, because if you can't find some reason why you are sick on your lonesome, these three fellows in Dallas have fifty-one(51) ways to help you find one.
According to these guys, everyone from Donald Trump to the local sheriff should be in some kind of therapy or recovery program.
Maybe your sickness is perfectionism, or spending too much time at the office, or going on shopping sprees. Maybe it's just something, anything, you do which they can convince you is a "compulsion." If you're willing, this book will help you point your way into the recovery craze.
Then you, too, can be cool. You can reach "serenity."
Now I'll be among the first to say that our civilization as a whole has a very long way to evolve. Our social structure is decaying and in need of a complete overhaul. But I just don't cotton to the idea of putting every man, woman and child on the planet --- or even in this one nation --- into a therapy or recovery program. I don't cotton to the idea of needing to be "re-parented" any more than I do that of being "born again." I have already had one set of parents, and one birth, thank you very much, and I think that's a great allotment for one lifetime.