“A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what’s going on”
–William S. Burroughs

In his 1969 novel The Wild Boys, William S. Burroughs writes “Under pretext of drug control suppressive police states have been set up throughout the Western world…. The police states maintain a democratic façade from behind which they denounce as criminals, perverts and drug addicts anyone who opposes the control machine.”

15 years earlier Dr. Ruth Fox formed the New York City Medical Society on Alcoholism. This organization subsequently became the American Medical Society on Alcoholism and eventually the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM). The organizational goal of this group has always been to convince the medical establishment of the chronic relapsing brain disease model of alcoholism (and subsequently all addictions) and that 12-step spiritual recovery as defined by Bill Wilson and the Big Book as not only a valid medical treatment