Alcoholics (white and black) are powerless over alcohol - which is why their lives are in chaos.
The best remedy for alcoholics (black and white) is to join or form an Alcoholics Anonymous group and to practice AA's 12 Steps of recovery from the compulsion to drink over which they're powerless.
But this is where many 'problem drinkers' baulk. If you're powerless of alcoholism, will-power won't work - so the sufferer needs a Higher Power or God as they understand that word.
That's when (black or white) alcoholics bolt out the AA door convinced it's run by Jesuits or Baptists with conversion on their minds.
Then comes the Rehab Shuffle and then comes Doctor Shopping for a doctor who will say: "You poor darling!" "You're suffering from a severe Valium and Anti-Depressant Deficiency. Take these pills and you won't need AA."
So the black or white 'problem drinker' gets three addictions instead of one!
Then the family chirps in with reasons why he or she cannot be an alcoholic:
"You need Black-Fellah medicine not that religious cult from America."
"You're a Football star. Pull up your socks and you'll soon kick goals."
"Boys who went to Melbourne Grammar do not become alcoholics."
"Nice Jewish girls don't become alcoholics.
"Girls who went to Presbyterian Ladies College don't become alcoholics." And worst of all: "You can't be an alcoholic. "We don't have them in our family."
That's the white equivalent of 'Pointing The Bone' for blacks.
Black or white, ostracised alcoholics walk away - and die in a humpy or in a madhouse from untreated alcoholism.
BUT around the globe, some two million alcoholics are sober (one day at a time) from joining or forming an AA Group and practicing the 12 AA steps of recovery from the killer disease of Alcoholism. Many bad things came out of America, but AA is the best thing and in 2010 55,000 alcoholics held a large meeting despite the recession:
