"The Common Sense of Drinking"

[Robert Dye]

Couple of days ago, we were reading p. 32 of the BB, & someone commented they thought the bottle and carpet-slippers guy was Roebuck, of Sears & Roebuck.

(It wasn't.)

I have been looking into this a bit, just out of curiosity.

Pulling threads, I happened upon this:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071JWHLZY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Which is sort of interesting. (Ted W. should probably not bother, as it goes against his "curable" notions.) There are comments online that Bill probably drew the carpet-slippers guy from this book, which espoused many principles incorporated into the BB.

Have any of you heard of this book? It was a first for me.

[jimbo]

Richard Peabody was treated for alcoholism in the Emmanual Movement. He set up shop in New York
to treat drunks and his contribution to the BB was the expression "once an alcoholic". He proved it by dying drunk.

[Socrates]

On 5/25/2022 2:48 PM, jimbo wrote:
> On Wednesday, May 25, 2022 at 4:52:12 PM UTC-4, Robert Dye wrote:
>> Couple of days ago, we were reading p. 32 of the BB, & someone commented
>> they thought the bottle and carpet-slippers guy was Roebuck, of Sears & Roebuck.
>>
>> (It wasn't.)
>>
>> I have been looking into this a bit, just out of curiosity.
>>
>> Pulling threads, I happened upon this:
>>
>> https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071JWHLZY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
>>
>> Which is sort of interesting. (Ted W. should probably not bother, as it goes against
>> his "curable" notions.) There are comments online that Bill probably drew the carpet

>> slippers guy from this book, which espoused many principles incorporated into the BB.
>>
>> Have any of you heard of this book? It was a first for me.

> Richard Peabody was treated for alcoholism in the Emmanual Movement. He set up shop in
> New York to treat drunks and his contribution to the BB was the expression "once an
> alcoholic". He proved it by dying drunk.

Do you think he had any lingering resentments?

[jimbo]

The market crash would have cleaned out his client base. His office was in Manhattan.
His method was that people used time cards to live on a tight schedule and kept notes.

[Fred Exley]

Then there's this American tragedy:

Audrey Conn Kishline Commits Suicide December 19th 2014

http://nadaytona.org/2015/01/16/audrey-conn-kishline-commits-suicide-december-19th-2014/

[Robert Dye]

Egad.

I didn't know that's how it ended.

[Socrates]

On 5/25/2022 5:11 PM, Fred Exley wrote:

> Then there's this American tragedy:
>
> Audrey Conn Kishline Commits Suicide December 19th 2014
>
> http://nadaytona.org/2015/01/16/audrey-conn-kishline-commits-suicide-december-19th-2014/

Maybe just me but I found that a difficult read. Did a Google and found
this:

Addiction, Drunk Driving, and Suicide: The Struggles of Audrey Conn,
Founder of ‘Moderation Management’

https://www.thedailybeast.com/addiction-drunk-driving-and-suicide-the-struggles-of-audrey-conn-founder-of-moderation-management

Snippet:
A few days before Christmas, in a Portland suburb, Audrey Conn committed
suicide in her mother’s house. Her death, like her life, was immediately
seen as something larger in a vituperative debate over whether all
problem drinkers need to entirely abstain. Conn, 56, was a founder of
Moderation Management, a behavioral program for non-dependent drinkers
who seek to change their habits.

She came into national headlines in 2000 after a tragic accident. In
January of that year, Conn, who then used her once-married name,
Kishline, announced to MM members that moderation wasn’t working for
her, and that she was leaving the group to attend Alcoholics Anonymous
and other abstinence-based programs.

Two months later, with a blood alcohol level three times the legal
limit, Conn drove the wrong way down a highway in Washington State. She
plowed into an oncoming car, killing Danny Davis and his 12-year-old
daughter, LaShell.

The story ignited a huge controversy. Omitting the fact that
Conn/Kishline had been attending AA at the time of her accident,
prominent abstinence-only proponents used the tragedy to attack
moderation. The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence
(NCADD), which is widely considered A.A.’s mouthpiece (A.A. does not
comment publicly on what it calls “outside issues”), released a
statement that said the incident “provides a harsh lesson for all of
society, especially those individuals who collude with the media to
continually question abstinence-based treatment for problems related to
alcohol and other drugs.” Journalists seized on the news, and
condemnatory articles and television segments followed.