Product Description

From the author of Women, Sex, and Addiction, a timely and controversial second look at 12-Step programs, helping all readers to draw on the steps' underlying wisdom, adapting them to their own experiences, beliefs, and sources of strength.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26228 in Books
• Published on: 1992-06-17
• Released on: 1992-06-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

About the Author

Charlotte D. Kasl is a social activist and a psychologist at the forefront of the empowerment movement sweeping the recovery field. She lectures and leads workshops in the United States and abroad and lives near Missoula, MT.

Customer Reviews

Loved this book
I'm in recovery and loved this book. I've been looking for *more* and this book provided it. Recommend it to all my 12-step friends.

THE WORLD OWES ME A FAVOR, BY CHARLOTTE KASL
I attended my first meeting back in 1991. I hated "the program" then, and I hate it now. I have been cautioned that if I don't get a sponsor and start doing step work NOW, that I will relapse and yet, here I am, still sober. One word: GOD.

What bothers me about meetings is that many of the people who attend them are mentally ill and there is no one with any sort of mental health training overseeing their little gatherings. In that context, exploitation of new members, dominance of the group, inappropriate behavior and contact between members is inevitable, not just an unfortunate occurance. I became so fed up with being hit on during "fellowship breaks" that I just stopped attending meetings.

As a woman, I feel extremely uncomfortable when I hear female members talk about being "of service," as if women have not been trained since the dawn of time to be "of service."

I am also familiar with SOS, Rational Recovery, Moderation Management, Women For Sobriety and a number of other alternatives. Considering my personal history, I was excited to get my hands on Kasl's book, figuring it would be an articulation of all the things that have "bugged" me over the years about 12 Step programs and meetings.

Instead I found myself being subjected to Kasl's seething rage toward white males. Page after page after page, she continues on with her acrimony. "We are all victims," her story goes. "Nothing will ever change," "Look at what they have done to us," whine, whine, whine, as the violins play in the background. She rails away, pounding her readers instead of "patriarchy" (this word must appear 450,000 times in the course of her book). After finishing it, I threw her book in the trash. I wonder if she has begun work on her autobiography -- "Victim of the Universe," by Charlotte Kasl.

I spent some serious time dealing with my own issues regarding "white males" and "patriarchy." Yes, there is a priviledged class in this country and a great number of its members are white males. Yes, there are plenty of rapes and murders and acts of sexual abuse and domestic violence, committed largely by men, some (many? most?) of whom are white. The key to freedom from their "oppression" (another word that appears half a million times in this book) is to realize that NOT ALL OF THEM ARE LIKE THAT. The "patriarchy" of today is nothing like the bleak, Victorian picture Kasl paints.

I got sober so that I could enjoy my life and participate in reality. I did not get sober to immerse myself in cross-dragging martyrdom, or to catalogue all the ways I have been "oppressed" and mistreated by "patriarchal white males."

Kasl writes at length of a life-altering battle she had with caffeine. Apparently, caffeIne ruins lives and destroys families the same way alcohol does, and what we all really need to do is watch less television and eat more lentils.

Her supposed subject matter (recovery from alcoholism) is used to lure in an audience, then trivialized in favor of trite, man-hating diatribes.

Grow up.

Interesting stuff clouded by prejudice
Kasl does a good job of painting a broad picture which posits the pathway to spiritual enlightenment is broad and that there arwe many roads that can get us there. Unfortuantely, too often she falls back on that pseudo-intellectual - new agey - warrior princess stuff that died out in the early 90s.

Her critique of AA and 12 step methodology is spot on in places, although she fails to acknowledge the diverse ways the 'program' is practiced by its membership. Furthermore, issues of dogma, power and control are just as prevelant in feminist organizations as in AA. One senses she's a bit blinded by her own loyalty to her postion.

Ultimately, its the excess of that 60s-postmodernist-femist tripe that kinda swamps the good parts of her message. Definiately written for a different era. Not sure how relevant it is to recovery/spiritual development these days.



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