Frank’s Personal Hygiene Tips

Posted on 11 Nov 2013 by Frank Moraes

It has been a while since I’ve written about germs and my generally strong feelings about the subject. It’s strange, because I am not what anyone would mistake for a clean freak. But I think I have a good perspective. And I feel even more superior after having read, Everything You Know About Your Personal Hygiene Is Wrong. That’s in reference to you. Not me.

I’m not going to wade through the whole list. If you are interested, I recommend clicking over. There are minor points worth noting like the fact that antibacterial soap is not only bad for your hormonal chemistry, but it’s no better than ordinary soap at keeping you healthy. There is something about how stupid the “5 second rule” is, but you should have already known that. And there is some really interesting information about air dryers and how they are less sanitary because of how long they take; while your hands are wet, they are “bacteria magnets.”

There is also a slide show of things that are dirtier than your toilet. Number 1: your carpet. In fact, the article spends a lot of time noting that just about everything is dirtier than your toilet. It even offers this charming observation, “In most cases, it’s safer to make a salad on a toilet seat than it is to make one on a cutting board.” I’m not sure just how seriously we can take this. For one thing, I wash my cutting board a few times per night. But more to the point: are the worst bacteria really in higher abundances on the cutting board than the toilet seat? I’m skeptical. But it’s probably a good idea to take more care with your kitchen cleaning.

This leads me to an issue that I am absolutely obsessed with: toilet seats. Okay folks, this is so easy. When toilets flush, they spray fecal matter all around the room. The article says up to six feet away, but it really depends upon your toilet. Certainly those industrial ones must spray the stuff out of the bathroom and halfway into the food court. But when you’re out, what are you going to do? At home, you can do something really simple: close the fucking lid! When people use my bathroom at home, I make sure they understand this. Nothing is more important in the bathroom. Also: I would keep your toothbrush inside some enclosure. It isn’t just fecal matter that’s disgusting. Dust is disgusting too. Trust me, you don’t want to know.

Now let’s talk about your body. Your belly button is disgusting! But don’t pick at it; wash it! The same goes for those toes, although the article doesn’t discuss this. Here’s something personally gross: my two feet have different bacteria and fungus growing. I know this because they smell disgusting in completely different ways. Anyway, clean these areas! It’s even more important than your anus, which has been designed by evolution to be in a fairly safe location. Still, clean it too. But what you do instead, is shower every day. You shampoo your hair—some of you fools do it twice! Just stop that. You only need to bathe a couple times a week. So save some time and do it less. But when you do it, get in there and work those disgusting parts. And don’t worry about your hair!

I hope this has been helpful to you. I know it’s made me feel better. There are basically three takeaways here. First, close that toilet lid. Second, clean your kitchen well. And third, wash the disgusting bits of your body more thoroughly less often than you probably want to.

And stay off the floor. It’s disgusting.

Fun With Penises and Inspiration Posters

Posted on 07 Nov 2013 by Frank Moraes

For whatever reason, I am feeling very lazy today. So I was trolling around FARK looking for anything that would relieve my boredom. And I came upon an interesting headline for an NPR story, “Despite the Rise of Electronic Keyboards, the Penis Still Popular Among Aficionados.” Now maybe you are quicker than I am. Actually, it’s almost certain you are. I consider myself a pretty good thinker, but my I/O chip is very bad and I’m often the last person to get something like this. All I could think is that both keyboards and dildos (in the shape of penises) are both made of plastics or rubber or something. It also occurred to me that “penis” was the name of some kind of input device. You know, like a joystick.

So I clicked over. I had to know. I already feel bad about not knowing anyone who who shows up on TMZ. If a penis is a new technology, I wanted to know! It turns out that the penis is not a new technology. Actually, the story was one that I’m very interested in. You see, FARK wrote “penis” when they meant “pen is.” (Or many not; the people at FARK are a bunch of devils!) It was about the fact that people don’t use many pens anymore, but there are still freaks like me who love them. It made me think of Edward Bulwer-Lytton and how maybe he meant, “The penis mightier than the sword.” This is not true, of course. Just ask John and Lorena Bobbitt. (Oh my God! I just saw a picture of “it”; I don’t deal well with that kind of stuff.)

Moving on, I was led to a great article at Buzz Feed, 14 Motivational Posters That Inspire No One. They are mostly very common posters, but the snarky comments are great. I highly recommend clicking over because I laughed a whole bunch. Here is my favorite:

Under this image, the writer offered, “…but I am just a pole, so don’t place too much value on my opinion.” It’s not the funniest by a long shot, but it is a very important perspective on sign admonitions.

That article led me to another, 17 Really Awful “Keep Calm” Things. These are based on the famous WWII British signs, “Keep Calm and Carry On.” Apparently, over in England they love to play with the saying. Unfortunately, they are all just pathetic. Except this one that I know Andrea will like:

A long time ago, Andrea created a cartoon with a vulture dragging a dead deer to an airport boarding gate. The flight attendant at the gate said, “I’m sorry sir, no carrion.” See what I have to put up with?

Judy Johnson and Baseball’s Checkered Past

Posted on 26 Oct 2013 by Frank Moraes

On this day in 1842, the great Russian war painter Vasily Vereshchagin was born. You know all those really cool war photojournalists who we see to this day? Well, before there were cameras, there were men like Vereshchagin. Of course, they were more like the great war poets of old. They were there to document the heroic acts of the men who manage wars. He did really beautiful work. I’m sure he romanticized it. How could you not? But I don’t know that much about him. I just wanted to present the following painting to you. It is called The Apotheosis of War and is dedicated “to all conquerors, past, present and to come”:

The great character actor Jackie Coogan was born in 1914. He is known for two things. First, he was the original Uncle Fester in The Addams Family. Second, he was the title character in Charlie Chaplin’s film The Kid, which he made when he was 7 years old. He was absolutely adorable:

The great singer-songwriter Natalie Merchant is 50 today. I love her work, but she is a bit over-serious. I know, I know, life is a vale of tears. But there are other things: kittens, carnations, and hand puppets. But there is more than enough to be depressed about:

Other birthdays: Baroque composer Domenico Scarlatti (1685); philosopher and popularizer of Kant, Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1757); another mathematician who I don’t understand Ferdinand Georg Frobenius (1849); Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran (1919); actor Bob Hoskins (71); terrible game show host Pat Sajak (67); Hillary Clinton (66); Bolivian President Evo Morales (54); and actor Cary Elwes (51).

The day, however, belongs to the great third baseman Judy Johnson who was born on this day in 1899. Two years ago, I became obsessed with him and to a lesser extent the Negro League. I wrote this at the time:

For whatever reason, I became really interested in the great third baseman Judy Johnson. You can find out more about him at the Negro League Baseball Players Association, if you are interested. Probably the most important thing about him is that he was the first manager to break the color-barrier in Major League Baseball, when he coached for the Philadelphia Athletics. He was later a renowned talent scout, having discovered a number of great players including Dick Allen, who hit 351 home runs in his career.

As much as it is exciting and edifying to learn about Johnson and the many other great black players of his time, it is heartbreaking to read about what these men went through. The opportunity cost of baseball segregation was horrible for black players (and great for marginal white players). And as I think of it now, I suspect that when Judy Johnson was consistently batting over .300 (even though he was most know for his fielding skills) while making just a dollar a day, people were claiming there was no racism in the United States because he wasn’t a slave. It reminds me now of the belief that there is no racism because we have a black president.

Since I was reading about Johnson, this great video about him was posted on YouTube. It is really great to see:

Happy birthday Judy Johnson!

Exact Potato Soup Recipe

Posted on 25 Oct 2013 by Frank Moraes

Almost four years ago, I posted one of my “mom’s recipes” for cream of potato soup. This references the fact that my mother didn’t use recipes. So whenever I would ask her how to make something she would only be able to give the most vague recipe. But over the past year, I have worked out an exact recipe that I would like to share with you all. Now I don’t know how good it is. I love it, but I grew up eating it. My mother was an excellent cook, though; so I think you can depend upon it.

The great thing about it is that it isn’t a terribly rich cream soup—just enough. And it isn’t complicated. You don’t even have to make a roux. It is basically cutting vegetables and putting them in a pot.

Ingredients

6 cups potatoes chopped
2 cups carrots chopped
2 cups onion chopped
10 cups water
2 cloves garlic diced
2 tsp pepper
1-2 tsp salt
1 cup elbow macaroni
1 cube butter
1.5 cups milk

Procedure

Chop the potatoes into roughly half inch cubes. Chop the carrots into quarter inch cylinders. Chop the onions to about a quarter to half inch. Put all of that in a large pot and add water and heat it to boil. Reduce heat. Add the garlic, salt, and pepper. Boil slowly, covered for an hour. Mix it now and then. Add macaroni. Boil for another 20 minutes. Add butter and milk. Heat for another 5 minutes and serve.

It makes quite a lot, but I couldn’t say how many servings. Frankly, I tend to over eat the stuff. But it’s great for the winter and I can eat it for days on end.

There are lots of ways that you can change the recipe. It is very easy to substitute cauliflower for some of the potatoes. But I wouldn’t go too far with that. Cauliflower has a distinctive taste that can dominate if you have too much of it in there. Generally, I think cauliflower works better with a thicker, roux based soup. You can also use chicken stock and bacon grease for flavoring. Also, you can play with the pepper. It works well to have a bit of a bite. I think 2 teaspoons of salt is about perfect; I think you’ll find that 1 is a bit bland. You can also put in whatever kind of pasta you have laying around. But if it is long, make sure you break it up. And remember that it will expand so use about half of what you think you need. Note that it’s also very cheep: maybe around $3.00 for a whole lot of soup. Enjoy!

Malcolm Gladwell Is Interesting But Wrong

Posted on 23 Oct 2013 by Frank Moraes

Malcolm Gladwell is a very interesting writer. He’s published a series of provocative best sellers. And NPR just loves him. I like him too. It’s important to have people like him around. But it’s just as important to remember that he is almost always wrong.

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to Marketplace and there was an interview with Gladwell about his new book David and Goliath. The idea of the book is that hardships often make us better. I agree with that in a moral sense; I think I am a much better person because of the things that have not worked out in my life; I’m glad that I’ am a better person than I once was.

The problem is that Gladwell seems to apply this idea to a very typical notion of success in life. He pays specially attention to dyslexia. This is an issue that I care about a great deal because I suffer from both auditory and visual dyslexia and it has been a real pain throughout my life. What’s more, I do not think that suffering from it has helped me. Yes, as a result of the difficulty I had reading when I was younger, I exercised my analytic abilities to simply figure stuff out rather learning it from books. And glad I am that I had those analytical skills! But I don’t for an instant think those skills came about because of my dyslexia. If I hadn’t had dyslexia, I would simply have had strong analytical and reading skills. What joy!

But Gladwell does think that Dyslexia helps. In the interview, he talks about the great lawyer David Boies. According to Gladwell, Boies’ dyslexia helped him, “He learned how to listen, and he also developed an extraordinary memory.” This is what Boies himself thinks. I don’t accept it. No one wants to admit that their disabilities harm them, but they absolutely do. Boies is brilliant and dyslexic, but he would have been brilliant and not dyslexic.

The truth is that it’s kind of stupid to talk about disabilities in this way. We all have them. We all work in such a way to maximize our strength and minimize our weaknesses. And I’m very pleased with my intellectual skill set. I have a number of friends who read very quickly and I’m jealous of that. But there’s no way I would trade away my dyslexia for a weaker mathematical intuition. And I wouldn’t trade away my empathy for more self-confidence, even though that would doubtless lead to better worldly success.

I got to thinking about Gladwell this morning when I came upon an interesting article at The Economist, Trouble at the Lab. It’s about how we tend to think that science is a gradual process of self-correction, but to a large extent it is a process of going a long way down blind alleys before realizing that we have to back up and take another road. It is very much in the tradition of Thomas Kuhn. But this passage really struck me:

“I SEE a train wreck looming,” warned Daniel Kahneman, an eminent psychologist, in an open letter last year. The premonition concerned research on a phenomenon known as “priming.” Priming studies suggest that decisions can be influenced by apparently irrelevant actions or events that took place just before the cusp of choice. They have been a boom area in psychology over the past decade, and some of their insights have already made it out of the lab and into the toolkits of policy wonks keen on “nudging” the populace.

Dr Kahneman and a growing number of his colleagues fear that a lot of this priming research is poorly founded. Over the past few years various researchers have made systematic attempts to replicate some of the more widely cited priming experiments. Many of these replications have failed. In April, for instance, a paper in PLoS ONE, a journal, reported that nine separate experiments had not managed to reproduce the results of a famous study from 1998 purporting to show that thinking about a professor before taking an intelligence test leads to a higher score than imagining a football hooligan.

I bring it up because this bit of research about priming is one of Gladwell’s favorites, although he usually tells it about a Trivial Pursuits game rather than an intelligence test. And it gets to the base of what Gladwell is all about: finding the cool, counter-intuitive take on the way things are. And as I said, people like him are really important. But don’t mistake his interesting ideas as anything more than that. If Gladwell pushes an idea that turns out to be right, it will be pure chance.

In Which I Am Tested for Personality Disorders

Posted on 10 Oct 2013 by Frank Moraes

Last night, I came upon the word “schizotypal.” I have come upon the word in the past, but I didn’t know exactly what it meant, so I entered it into Google and was offered up “schizotypal test.” I love tests! So I made my way to Personality Disorder Test at 4degreez.com. Given my mood, I can think lots of terrible things about myself, including that I am a psychopath, or as the test would say, that I suffer from Antisocial Personality Disorder. For the record, the way this would work is that I am such a psychopath that I have convinced myself that I have empathy for others when I really don’t. We psychopaths are so clever!

So I took the test and I am please to inform you that I am not suffering from Antisocial Personality Disorder. (Or am I?!) Because my results indicate that I am much more normal than I ever thought, I will present them:

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid Personality:	Low
Schizoid Personality:	Low
Schizotypal Personality:	Low
Antisocial Personality:	Low
Borderline Personality:	Low
Histrionic Personality:	Moderate
Narcissistic Personality:	Low
Avoidant Personality:	Moderate
Dependent Personality:	Low
Obsessive-Compulsive:	Low

I suspect that my results here would be a good deal worse if were in a worse place in my life. Strangely, despite the fact that I’m broke and nobody loves me, I’ve been in a really good mood this year. In fact, I dare say this is on target to be the best year of my life. And yes, I know that’s really pathetic. The strange thing is that when I got a lot of my best work done, I was miserable. And even when life was going well, I didn’t feel a general sense that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. Mostly, I’ve always felt that I was in the process of getting somewhere else. Now that’s not true. Except, I hope I am in the process of making slightly more money so that next year I can buy season tickets to the San Francisco Opera.

But enough about my function; my dysfunction is ever so much more interesting. I was surprised to see that I scored moderate on the Histrionic and Avoidant scales. This is because they are more or less opposites. (Maybe I have a split personality!) Someone suffering from Histrionic Personality Disorder needs to be at the center of attention. Someone suffering from Avoidant Personality Disorder is basically afraid of being the center of attention. That’s me! Well, not exactly. Let me explain.

I have no problem standing up in front of a thousand people and doing my thing. Actually, I relish it. But that isn’t the real world. I think the hardest thing for me is to not have someone’s attention. A common experience of mine is to be at a social function and being in the middle of a sentence and have someone turn away so I’m left talking to no one. These people who just turn away are not critics. They aren’t giving me a bad review. I simply don’t register as important enough to notice. An audience will not do that to you. Being booed is nothing compared to being a non-person.

Regardless, I believe what the test is really noticing is that I am socially awkward but also need social validation. I suspect there are a lot of people who would score like that. But I’m kind of proud to score high on histrionics. It’s a character flaw I can get behind. As for avoidant, what can I say, I’m well aware of that. Hey! Where’d you go?!

Afterword

Andrea took the test too. Man, is she messed up!

Joel LaGrou isn’t on Facebook

Posted on 25 Sep 2013 by William Brown

In my late teen years, my girlfriend Edy and I were not allowed at each others homes. Make of that what you will. So, we spent most of our time hanging out alongside a jogging path and workout course that wound around one of the urban creeks of Rohnert Park.

Among those we met there were Linda and Joel LaGrou. Joel was 7 or 8 years old and Linda was his 30-something mother. Joel’s mom was a student at Sonoma State University and a single parent. She was studying towards a Psych-Tech certificate of some sort, allowing her to work at Sonoma Developmental Center (Sonoma State Hospital).

Joel was whip-smart. I taught him how to play chess (not that I’m much of a chess player, as I don’t use or believe in en passant). In only a few games he was challenging my skill level and soon forcing stalemate and then beating me.

There were some times we lost touch for a year or two, but Linda did become a Psych-Tech and Joel did well in High School and took up saxophone.

We then lost touch for a few years… phone numbers and addresses changed… and I later re-met JL… when he was panhandling in Old Courthouse Square of downtown Santa Rosa. At that point Joel was going by the name of Smiley. I saw and spoke with Smiley over a few months in the summer of 1998 before he, again, vanished.

I’ve looked for my old friend many times. I’ve watched for him every time I am downtown in Santa Rosa. Frank Moraes, my wife, and the aforementioned Edy Giem have all heard me speak fondly of Joel—with not unfounded concern.

My search continued online. I found no record of his death (only that of his mom, Linda)… even looking for familiar descriptions in John Doe listings.
And, of course, there were attempts on Facebook. I was hoping he finally got SSI and was somehow online.

Today, Joel/Smiley/My old friend, found me…in a Dollar Tree store. I spoke to the odd looking person first. The stranger had an unusual assortment of items and I suggested picking up their new pack of mini screwdrivers, which the shopper found of great interest.

At the checkout, he asked me that thing my wife has grown to dread, “isn’t your name Will?”

He’s going by Joel again. He said the street name thing associates him with gangs, in the eyes of the police… and that police is something he has dealt with quite a bit, these past 15 years. Well, those were the intelligible things that were said. Lots of catch phrases and facial contortions I had known his mother to be plagued with… patterns I am familiar with through the multitude of mental patients I have met in my use of public transit. So, when Mr. LaGrou told me he has a place to stay and I am welcome to come over, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Then again, when he led me to his home under a bridge, I was not surprised.

This story has a bi-line of the pending closure of the last of the mental hospitals in California. The facility here in Sonoma County, Sonoma State Hospital, is where Joel’s mother eventually worked and where he has stayed himself, from time to time. Now, those who are not judged dangerous enough to keep locked up (criminally insane) and who don’t qualify for group homes or independent living, may be driven to find their own bridge, gully, hovel, cardboard shanty…

I am not arguing that locking up men, who find themselves as lost in society as they are in their minds, is the answer or even an answer. I don’t think I can provide a weightful opinion in the matter. I just feel that such closures limits the levels and types of support and treatment that can be prescribed.

This writing and photos are included with verbal permission by subject himeself, Joel LaGrou. I love him, miss him and hope someday he is truly found.

…Add Cheese

Posted on 13 Sep 2013 by William Brown

I am mildly curious about my recent ‘fast food’ encounters. Twice, recently, I have been at the final stages of a transaction at a fast food counter… fumbling for those last few coins or an additional bill to pay the total. The first of the two events occurred at Taco Bell, across from Walmart in Rohnert Park, CA. After the morning rush of taking our younglings to their schools, my wife and I found ourselves aimlessly driving and eventually agreeing to try an item from the AM menu and said “restaurant.” We ordered in the facility at the counter and our total was in the 5 or 6 dollar range. At the aforementioned precipice of the transaction, my pocket scurry was cut short by the counter person stating, “It’s okay, don’t worry about a few cents; I adjusted your price for a Senior discount.” I found that odd. (I had just turned a ripe 49, the day before.)

Tonight, I was again at the same Walmart… and I was hungry… and wanting of somethingish… but did not want to complete the purchase of a random chip-bag and reshelved the colorful curiosity… then made a bee-line to the in-store Mickey D’s; ordered the diet edition of a name brand dark liquid and something to wash it down with…. and, once again, found myself in the forlorn fumble of those who still engage in the use of cash. And once again, the (em)pathetic employee bid me assurance that the transaction could be concluded sans the presence of the full monetary amount. This time I stood temporarily firm in my assertion that I did indeed have the funds and would take but a moment to produce them… but was told it was only a matter of a few cents (19 to be exact) and the difference, of that and my contribution, was negligible. Okay, two strikes against me in the karma war.

I can’t help but ponder a few things relating to this phenomena… Are the employees sometimes contributing to the till on my behalf? Are the prices negotiable? Isn’t anyone’s job at risk? Is it bad for me to accept unneeded help? How common an occurrence is this price-fixing and where does management fit into this scheme?

Mostly, I have found myself, in reflection, thinking back to a time when I was a new transplant to Minnesota. Mankato, Minnesota, to be exact. One day, in my first week or so of residing there, I was out on foot exploring and looking for work opportunities. Also, I was lost. I was returning from what I understood to be downtown (later found out it was Old Town or the old downtown) where I had been unsuccessful in both my quest for finding work and in pawning (read selling) an ex-girlfriends ex-husbands gold wedding band. I had not a dollar on me, but I had a pocket full of change. Well, not exactly full. As I happened across a Wendy’s, I decided to go in and find something temporarily filling. In the pre-economic crunch, I found out the coinage I had fell just short of their cheapest item, with tax. In fact, the only item on the menu in my price range was add cheese. Though initially disheartened, I found some assurance in this latter discovery and attempted the purchase, only to be denied. It seems, you cannot purchase just the upgrade. No adjustment or offer was made to the guy with the California accent.

(re-edited for Bob Portlock)

We’ve Always Been Idiots

Posted on 06 Sep 2013 by Frank Moraes

I just finished reading Charles Pierce’s Idiot America. It is an easy and funny read. It perhaps helps that I agree with Pierce on all the specifics. Saddles on dinosaurs are indeed funny. Why else would they have done that in The Flintstones? And I will even yield part of what he’s getting at: America certainly is more stupid than the people in other advanced economies. But there’s a very simple reason for that: Americans are more religious than other advanced countries. I don’t mean just any religion here; I mean “fundamentalism”: the belief that the literal word of God is written down in some book. (Even if it was written down in a language they don’t read.)

But there was something that bothered me throughout the book. It was something I learned from my old pal Chuck Dickens. But let me put it in a more modern context: “Same as it ever was!”

Talking Heads – Once In A Lifetime by hushhush112

This especially came to mind last night when I was watching Ken Burns: Prohibition. And so I was watching as the abstinence movement of the 19th century tried to train kids not to drink alcohol. And what were they doing? Exactly what the modern day sex abstinence movement does to kids: lie! One drop of alcohol will destroy your stomach. Condoms don’t work. Whatever! Lie to the kids, it is for their own good!

Pierce pays special attention to Iganatius Donnelly, the curious fellow who brought us things like the modern myth of Atlantis and the never tiring idea that everyone but Shakespeare wrote all those plays that rubes think were written by Shakespeare. And Pierce clearly admires Donnelly as I do. But he thinks that something is different now. Donnelly was just a crank then but now he would be on television. Fox News would have brought him on to discuss whether the Atlanteans would have preferred Romney or Obama.

The problem is that Donnelly was on the television of his day. He was a best selling author. People the world over paid to hear him speak. So I don’t think that our technologies have made us stupider. They have just made it easier for cranks to make a living. And really, what’s wrong with that? When I turn on the NBC Nightly News, I don’t see anyone saying that the world is only 6,000 years old. The people in America believe that for different reasons. It isn’t because cranks get more exposure than they used to.

So Pierce is right that we are a very stupid and ignorant people. But as my pal Chuck would say:

It was the smartest of times, it was the dumbest of times—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Alcoholics Anonymous is Not Like the Washingtonian Movement

Posted on 06 Sep 2013 by Frank Moraes

I just watched the Ken Burns: Prohibition documentary. I’m going write about it more generally in a moment, but I just want to address a minor point here. The documentary gives the obligatory shout out to Alcoholics Anonymous at the end. And it notes that the founders of AA did not know about the 19th century Washingtonian movement. The implication is that the two are similar. Well, in the sense that they were both (at least at the start) movements of drunks who helped each other to stay off alcohol. But that’s about all that binds them together.

AA was always and still is an explicitly religious movement. In recent years, the group has tried to deny this fact now by claiming that it is a “spiritual” movement and that one’s higher power can be a “bedpan.” But the 12 steps date back to the Oxford Group. According to Wikipedia:

The Oxford Group was a Christian fellowship founded by American Christian missionary Dr. Franklin Nathaniel Daniel Buchman. Buchman was a Lutheran minister who had a conversion experience in 1908 in a chapel in Keswick, England. As a result of that experience, he founded a movement called A First Century Christian Fellowship in 1921, which had become known as the Oxford Group by 1931.

Buchman summed up the group’s philosophy in a few sentences: “All people are sinners”; “All sinners can be changed”; “Confession is a prerequisite to change”; “The change can access God directly”; “Miracles are again possible”; and “The change must change others.”

The Washingtonians, in contrast, were not a bunch Bible thumpers trying to purify themselves. They were just trying to stop drinking. In fact, they were attacked by evangelicals of that time because they explicitly weren’t using God to help them.

For the record, I think groups like the Washingtonians are really good. I have no problem with drug users trying to help themselves in groups. I have three primary problems with the whole 12 Step movement. First, it is explicitly religious and seems more interested in pushing religion in a general sense than abstinence specifically. Second, it isn’t an effective treatment for those who want to stop ingesting intoxicants (and it blames the user for the program’s worthlessness). And third, the program is forced by courts on the vast majority of those who participate. In fact, if it weren’t for the courts pushing AA, it would be a very small group today.

So let us not soil the great work done by the Washingtonian movement by comparing it to the religious Alcoholics Anonymous movement. And please let us not compare it to the bastardized modern movement that would offend even its founders. Drug addition is an important issue to many people. As a society, we choose to ignore it and assume all is well because of this badly studied, paranoid, and anti-intellectual group, which is now little more than an extension of the criminal justice system. People with actual drug problems deserve better. As a society, we should be ashamed.

Update (2 November 2013 11:10 am)

Ingredients

Procedure

Afterword