4/ Certain elements of AA, such as apologising and making amends, are actually likely to increase shameful feelings. I hate people apologising to me. It’s a form of indirect manipulation. Let’s save the apologies & forgiveness for God.
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15/ This is also the Dr Johnson approach, which holds that giving up completely is easier than moderation. “I’m not doing that any more.” People sometimes describe epiphanies likes this when they feel they’ve smoked every cigarette they had to smoke. They had 10k in them.
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16/ Anyway, the Nietzsche-Johnson approach is the opposite of cultivating a moralised identity as an “addict” where you secretly get off on the shame-confession dynamic of falling off the wagon. You dirty little Puritans.
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17/ But it’s also possible that, really, people need their vices & that the vices are in them. “Self-improvement” is a very American* democratic notion. The other vaguely Nietzschean angle is to accept people need these things to be what they are, even if the results are fatal.
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