Coercion

Gay Doctor coerced by Physician Health Program (PHP) into mandated 12-step treatment and monitoring for sex addiction: The slippery slope begins

mllangan1 24 Comments

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State Physician Health Programs -coercion, control and abuse.

This anecdote concerning  a gay doctor’s revelation he liked his non monogamous lifestyle leading  to a forced acceptance of a “sex addiction”  diagnosis, mandatory inpatient treatment and indoctrination into 12-step recovery was just posted on the physician social network SERMO.    If the pattern looks familiar it is.

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Physician Health Programs (PHPs) are non-profit NGOs that exist in every state ostensibly to help impaired doctors and protect the public from harm.  PHPs have no regulation or oversight and have essentially removed all accountability. Under the ruse of protecting a doctors anonymity and providing confidentiality they have built barriers of opacity.  Most doctors are unaware how they work unless they become involved with them and they are not on the radar of the public at large–they need to be.

Organized under the Federation of State Physician Health Programs, (FSPHP),  state medical boards have abdicated their responsibility and consider them expert authority on all things related to physician health–a logical fallacy that has placed illegitimate and irrational authority in professional control of medicine once again proving that knowledge isn’t power and ignorance often reigns.

PHPs encourage confidential referrals for “warning signs” such as those on the list below from the Massachusetts PHP, PHS, Inc. and guarantee  the reporters anonymity.  All semblance of due process has been removed.  Medical boards have given state PHPS complete and absolute managerial control over  assessment,  treatment and monitoring.  PHPs are not healthcare providers but monitoring agencies.  If a PHP recommends an “assessment” of a reported doctor there is no choice in the matter.   No allowances for a second opinion,  outside support or appeal exist.Screen Shot 2015-03-06 at 7.33.17 AM

This doctor was apparently reported to his state PHP because a patient thought she smelled alcohol on his breath.  As it turned out, the accusation was bogus but by being honest and forthcoming about his sexual orientation in the interview the PHP mandated an “assessment.” for unrelated issues.  A not uncommon scenario as reports of behavioral issues often end up with hair tests for alcohol and other substances resulting in mandated assessments for “substance use disorder” followed by a five-year monitoring contract with the PHP and weekly urine tests.

The PHP provides  a list  of three or four facilities drawn from the same pool of “PHP-approved” assessment and treatment centers. However, an audit of the N.C. PHP found no written objective criteria or quantitative measurements existed on how these assessment and treatment centers are “approved” by the PHP.  The common denominator seems to be that these facilities are  (1) 12-step ASAM directed, and (2) willing to “tailor” an assessment to support a predetermined diagnosis. It is, in fact, a rigged game.  Unfortunately the medical boards have been duped into mandating assessments at these centers under threat of loss of medical license and specifically exclude non “PHP-approved” assessments.

This scaffold  is also the unspoken and hushed major contributor to physician suicide—It is the elephant in the room no one speaks of out of fear of being targeted.    Doctors who really need help for mental health, substance abuse or other issues are afraid to get it for fear of being reported to the PHP.  Those already monitored are subject to all sorts of psychological, financial and emotional abuse.

The Federation of State Physician Health Programs (FSPHP)  has a relationship with Pine Grove.  It is one of the “PHP-approved” facilities and two of their staff, Phillip Hemphill, PhD and James C. “Jes” Montgomery, MD are are listed as Program Faculty at the FSPHP annual educational conference and business meeting on April 24-27, 2015 in Fort Worth Texas.

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Political Abuse of Psychiatry

Political abuse of psychiatry is the “misuse of psychiatric diagnosis, detention and treatment for the purposes of obstructing the fundamental human rights of certain groups and individuals in a society.  The coercive use of psychiatry represents a violation of basic human rights in all Cultures.Screen shot 2013-05-13 at 1.29.38 PM

What has occurred in the medical profession is no different from China or the Soviet Union under totalitarian rule where dissent is disapproved, often punished, and those perceived as threats to the existing system can be effectively “neutralized with trumped up psychiatric illness” and by this stigmatization reputations were ruined, power was diminished, and voices were hushed.

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Political abuse of psychiatry involves the deliberate action of diagnosing someone with a mental condition they do not have as a means of repression or control and if you do not believe it is occurring right here today then take a look here and here to see how they are colluding with commercial drug testing companies to engage in forensic fraud and the assessment and the treatment centers to fabricate data to support non-existent diagnoses.

“Sex Addiction” used as a tool to Discriminate

There has been a lot of “chatter” in PHP circles concerning “sex addiction” and I knew they had been aligning themselves and setting up specialized programs at certain facilities.  It seemed unusual as many of the key players who erected and run this scaffold have themselves been involved in sexual misconduct.   Screen Shot 2015-01-09 at 5.22.34 PM

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One of the architects of the current system, Dr. Robert Walzer, M.D., J.D. who was instrumental in tinkering with administrative and medical practice laws to remove the due process and appeal rights of doctors surrendered his license in 2001 due to inappropriate sexual relationships with patients.  He was the co-author of the current physician health program paradigm.

  Dr. Margaret bean-Byog, M.D, Chairman of the credentialing 7109298-Mcommittee for the first certification exam and ASAM president surrendered her medical license after being accused  of sexually abusing one of her patients, a Harvard medical student who subsequently died by suicide.

Somehow, I don't think this is quite what they had in mind!And the FSPHP seems to treat doctors involved in sexually related misconduct in a favorable light.  Take for instance, Dr. James Peak, M.D., a child psychiatrist who was sent to prison on a federal child pornography conviction taken under the wing of the Montana PHP.  After “proving” he only ‘”looked” at pornography of young boys but never abused any using a polygraph “lie-detector” test his license was reinstated in no time at all.  His treatment includes going to one AA meeting and one 12-step sex addict meeting per week.  My guess is they need more staff at the PHP or one of the assessment centers.

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I had been wondering what the motivation was behind this focus on “sex addiction” and my suspicions seem to be correct.

  I have since heard of a second case of a gay doctor being forced into his state Physician Health Program (PHP) in Alabama.

Once under the control of the PHP most doctors are afraid to come forward because of the “swift and certain” consequences imposed on them.  All they have to do is say the doctor was “noncompliant” to the medical board and it is over.  They lose their license and there is not a thing they can do about. it.  I have heard from doctors in multiple states going to law enforcement,  the Attorney General,  the media and the ACLU only to have the door slammed in their faces. Myself included.    .

 The coercion, control, ethics, and civil and human rights violations remain hidden.  The crimes remain hidden. So too will this.

It appears the FSPHP is following the same pattern they have with the “impaired” and “disruptive” physicians–to discriminate.    The targeting of gay, lesbian or transgender doctors for what they do in their private lives is predictable.  It is an inevitable part of this well oiled slope of coercion, control, obedience and abuse.

The import of this can not be overestimated.

References:

Position Statement on Political Abuse of Psychiatry. Paper presented at: Global Initiative on Psychiatry2005.Birley JL.

Political abuse of psychiatry. Acta psychiatrica Scandinavica. Supplementum. 2000;399:13-15.

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The Plan to introduce non-FDA approved drug and alcohol tests into the Healthcare system and require doctors drug-test ALL PATIENTs including students and kids!

mllangan1 28 Comments

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The Plan to introduce non-FDA approved Laboratory Developed Tests (LDTs) into the Healthcare system and require doctors drug-test ALL PATIENTs including students and kids!

The ASAM plans to introduce non-FDA approved “forensic”  Laboratory Developed Tests (LDTs) into mainstream healthcare via a loophole.    This same group introduced most of these tests through a loophole and now they want to drug-and alcohol TEST EVERYBODY including STUDENTS AND KIDS through another loophole!   These tests are of unknown reliability and accuracy.  The LDT pathway does not even require proof that the test is even valid  (i.e. that the test is actually testing for the substance it claims to be testing) but with no FDA oversight or regulation the labs can claim anything they want in marketing it and they do.

If a doctor collects a test on a “patient”  the test is rendered “clinical” rather than “forensic” and by deeming this drug-testing  “clinical” rather than “forensic”  they can then call the consequences of a positive test “treatment” rather than “punishment.  ” It is via this loophole they plan to introduce and unleash the panoply of junk-science tests currently being used on other groups who have no say in the matter (probationers, parolees, private professional monitoring groups, etc. ) onto the general population at large.    A boon for the Drug and Alcohol Testing Industry Association and the assessment and treatment industry but a bane to the rest of society.    And to prevent this from happening more people need to be talking about this.

Physician Suicide, the “Impaired Physician Movement” and ASAM: The Dead Doctors at Ridgeview Institute under G. Douglas Talbott

mllangan1 49 Comments

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“Gentlemen, it is a disagreeable custom to which one is too easily led by the harshness of the discussions, to assume evil intentions. It is necessary to be gracious as to intentions; one should believe them good, and apparently they are; but we do not have to be gracious at all to inconsistent logic or to absurd reasoning. Bad logicians have committed more involuntary crimes than bad men have done intentionally.”–Pierre S. du Pont (September 25, 1790)

“It is easier to believe a lie one has heard a hundred times than a truth one has never heard before.” –Robert S. Lynd

Ridgeview Institute was a drug and alcohol treatment program for “impaired physicians” in Georgia created by G. Douglas Talbott, a former cardiologist who lost control of his drinking and recovered through the 12-steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Up until his death on October 18, 2014 at the age of 90, Talbott  owned and directed a number of treatment facilities for impaired professionals, most recently the Talbott Recovery Campus in Atlanta, one of the preferred referrals for physicians ordered into evaluation and treatment by licensing boards today.

G. Douglas Talbott is a prototypical example of an “impaired physician movement” physician–in fact in many ways he may be considered the”godfather” of the current organization.  He helped organize and serve as past president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) and was a formative figure in the American Medical Association’s (AMA’s) Impaired Physician Program.

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G. Douglas Talbott (center), with sons Mark (left) and Dave (right). (image: Ham Biggar)

The cost of a 28-day program for nonprofessionals at Ridgeview in 1987 was $10,000 while the cost was “higher for those going through impaired-health professionals program,” which lasted months rather than 28 days.1

In 1975 after creating the DeKalb County Impaired Physicians Committee for the Medical Association of Georgia, Talbott founded the Georgia Disabled Doctors Program for the assessment and treatment of physicians. Founded in part because “traditional one-month treatment programs are inadequate for disabled doctors,” and they required longer treatment to recover from addiction and substance abuse.   According to Talbott, rehabilitation programs that evaluate and treat the rest of the population for substance abuse issues are incapable of doing so in doctors as they are unlike any other of the inhabitants of our society. Physicians are unique. Unique because of their incredibly high denial”, and he includes this in what he calls the “Four MDs,” “M-Deity”, “Massive Denial” “Militant Defensiveness” and “More Drugs.”2   And these factors set doctors apart from the rest.

According to Talbott, “impaired doctors must first acknowledge their addiction and overcome their ‘terminal uniqueness’ before they can deal with a drug or alcohol problem.” “Terminal uniqueness “ is a phrase Talbott uses to describe doctors’ tendency to think they can heal themselves.

“M-Deity” refers to doctors “being trained to think they’re God;”3 blinded by an overblown sense of self-importance and thinking that they are invincible-an unfounded generalization considering the vast diversity of individuals that make up our profession.   Although this type of personality does exist in medicine,  it is a small minority -just one of many opinions with little probative value offered as factual expertise by the impaired physician movement and now sealed in stone.

Former Assistant Surgeon General (Ret) Admiral (Ret) John C. Duffy

Former Assistant Surgeon General (Ret) Admiral (Ret) John C. Duffy

This attitude, according to some critics, stems from the personal histories of the treatment staff, including Talbott, who are recovering alcoholics and addicts themselves. One such critic was Assistant Surgeon General under C. Everett Koop John C. Duffy who said that Ridgeview suffered from a “boot-camp mentality” toward physicians under their care and “assume every physician suffering from substance abuse is the same lying, stealing, cheating, manipulating individual they were when they had the illness. Certainly some physicians are manipulative, but it’s naïve to label all physicians with these problems.”1

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LeClair Bissell

American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) President (1981-1983) LeClair Bissell was also highly critical of Talbott’s approach. Bissell, co-author of the first textbook of ethics for addiction professionals4 when asked if there was any justification to the claim that doctors are sicker than other people and more vulnerable to addiction replied:

“Well, based on my treatment experience, I think they are less sick and much easier to treat than many other groups. I think one reason for that is that in order to become a physician…one has to have jumped over a great many hurdles. One must pass the exams, survive the screening tests and the interviews, be able to organize oneself well enough to do examinations and so on, and be observed by a good many colleagues along the way. Therefore I think the more grossly psychotic, or sicker, are frequently screened out along the way. The ones we get in treatment are usually people who are less brain-damaged, are still quite capable of learning, are reasonably bright. Not only that, but they are quite well motivated in most cases to hang on to their licenses, the threat of the loss of which is frequently what puts them in treatment in the first place. So are they hard to treat? No! Are they easy patients? Yes! Are they more likely to be addicted than other groups? We don’t know.”5

“I’m not much for the bullying that goes along with some of these programs,” Bissell commented to the Atlanta Journal and Constitution in 1987.3

The constitution did a series of reports after five inpatients died by suicide during a four-year period at Ridgeview.6 In addition there were at least 20 more who had killed themselves over the preceding 12 years after leaving the treatment center.1

Bissell, the recipient of the 1997 Elizabeth Blackwell Award for outstanding contributions to the cause of women and medicine remarked: “When you’ve got them by the license, that’s pretty strong leverage. You shouldn’t have to pound on them so much. You could be asking for trouble.”3

According to Bissell: “There’s a lot of debate in the field over whether treatment imposed by threats is worthwhile…To a large degree a person has to seek the treatment on his own accord before it will work for him.”3

A jury awarded $1.3 million to the widow of one of the deceased physicians against Ridgeview,7 and other lawsuits initiated on behalf of suicides were settled out of court.6

The Constitution reported that doctors entered the program under threats of loss of licensure “even when they would prefer treatment that is cheaper and closer to home.” 8 The paper also noted that Ridgeview “enjoys unparalleled connections with many local and state medical societies that work with troubled doctors,” “licensing boards often seek recommendations from such groups in devising an approved treatment plan,” and those in charge are often “physicians who themselves have successfully completed Ridgeview’s program.”8

In 1997 William L. White interviewed Bissell whom he called “one of the pioneers in the treatment of impaired professionals.” The interview was not published until after her death in 2008 per her request.   Noting that her book Alcoholism in the Professions9 “remains one of the classics in the field”, White asked her when those in the field began to see physicians and other professionals as a special treatment population; to which she replied:

“When they started making money in alcoholism. As soon as insurance started covering treatment, suddenly you heard that residential treatment was necessary for almost everybody. And since alcoholic docs had tons of money compared to the rest of the public, they not only needed residential treatment, they needed residential treatment in a special treatment facility for many months as opposed to the shorter periods of time that other people needed.”10

Talbott claimed a “92.3 percent recovery rate according to information compiled from a five-year follow-up survey based on complete abstinence and other treatment.”11 A 1995 issue of The Federal Bulletin: The Journal of Medical Licensure and Discipline, published by the Federation of State Medical Boards, contains articles outlining impaired physician programs in 8 separate states. Although these articles were little more than descriptive puff-pieces written by the state PHP program directors and included no described study-design or methodology the Editor notes a success rate of about 90% in these programs and others like them 12 and concludes:

“cooperation and communication between the medical boards and the physician health programs must occur in an effort to protect the public while assisting impaired physicians in their recovery.” 12

No one bothered to examine the methodology to discern the validity of these claims and it is this acceptance of faith without objective assessment that has allowed the impaired physician movement through the ASAM and FSPH to advance their agenda;  confusing ideological opinions with professional knowledge.

“There is nothing special about a doctor’s alcoholism,” said Bissel

“These special facilities will tell you that they come up with really wonderful recovery rates. They do. And the reason they do is that any time you can grab a professional person by the license and compel him or her into treatment and force them to cooperate with that treatment and then monitor them for years, you’ll get good outcomes—in the high 80s or low 90s in recovery rates—no matter what else you do.”10
“The ones I think are really the best ones were not specialized. There were other well-known specialty clinics that claimed all the docs they treated got well, which is sheer rot. They harmed a great many people, keeping them for long, unnecessary treatments and seeing to it that they hit their financial bottom for sure: kids being yanked out of college, being forced to sell homes to pay for treatment, and otherwise being blackmailed on the grounds that your husband has a fatal disease. It’s ugly.”10

Stanton Peele’s “In the Belly of the American Society of Addiction Medicine Beast” describes the coercion, bullying, threats and indoctrination that are standard operating procedure in Talbott’s facilities.13  Uncooperative patients, “and this covers a range of sins of commission or omission including offering one’s opinion about one’s treatment,” are “threatened with expulsion and with not being certified-or advocated for with their Boards.”13

The cornerstone of treatment is 12-step spiritual recovery. All new patients are indoctrinated into A.A. and coerced to confess they are addicts or alcoholics. Failure to participate in A.A. and 12-step spirituality means expulsion from the program with the anticipated result being loss of one’s medical license.

In May 1999 Talbott stepped down as president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) as a jury awarded Dr. Leonard Masters a judgment of $1.3 million in actual damages and an undisclosed sum in punitive damages for fraud, malpractice, and the novel claim of false imprisonment.14

The fraud finding required a finding that errors in the diagnosis were intentional. Masters, who was accused of overprescribing narcotics to his patients was told by the director of the Florida PHP that he could either surrender his medical license until the allegations were disproved or submit to a four-day evaluation.

Masters agreed to the latter, thinking he would have an objective and fair evaluation. He was instead diagnosed as “alcohol dependent” and coerced into “treatment under threat of loss of his medical license. Staff would routinely threaten to report any doctor who questioned any aspect of their diagnosis or treatment to their state medical boards “as being an impaired physician, leaving necessary treatment against medical advice,”14  the equivalent of professional suicide.

Masters, however, was not an alcoholic.

According to his attorney, Eric. S. Block,  “No one ever accused him of having a problem with alcohol. Not his friends, not his wife, not his seven children, not his fellow doctors, not his employees, not his employers, No one.” 15

He was released 4 months later and forced to sign a five-year “continuing care” contract with the PHP, also under continued threat of his medical license.

Talbott faced no professional repercussions and no changes in their treatment philosophy or actions were made. They still haven’t.  They have simply tightened the noose and taken steps to remove accountability.

Up until his recent death, Talbott continued to present himself and ASAM as the most qualified advocates for the assessment and treatment of medical professionals for substance abuse and addiction.16

ASAM and like-minds still do.

In most states today any physician referred for an assessment for substance abuse will be mandated to do so in a facility just like Ridgeview.

There is no choice.   In mechanics and mentality, this same system of coercion, control, and indoctrination has metastasized to almost every state only more powerful and opaque in an unregulated gauntlet protected from public scrutiny, answerable and accountable to no one.  Laissez faire Machiavellian egocentricity unleashed.    For what they have done is taken the Ridgeview model and replicated it over time state by state and tightened the noose.  By subverting the established Physician Health Programs (PHPs) started by state medical societies and staffed by volunteer physicians they eliminated those not believing in the mentality of the groupthink.   They then mandated assessment and treatment of all doctors be done at a “PHP-approved” facility which means a facility identical to Ridgeview.  This was done  under the scaffold of the Federation of State Physician Health Programs (FSPHP).  They are now in charge of all things related to physician wellness in doctors.

  1. Durcanin C, King M. The suicides at Ridgeview Institute: Suicides mar success at Ridgeview with troubled professionals. Atlanta Journal and Constitution. December 18, 1987, 1987: A13.
  2. Gonzales L. When Doctors are Addicts: For physicians getting Drugs is easy. Getting help is not. Chicago Reader. July 28, 1988, 1988.
  3. King M, Durcanin C. The suicides at Ridgeview Institute: A Doctor’s treatment program may be too tough, some say. Atlanta Journal and Constitution. December 18, 1987a, 1987: A12.
  4. Bissell L, Royce JE. Ethics for Addiction Professionals. Center City, Minnesota: Hazelden; 1987.
  5. Addiction Scientists from the USA: LeClair Bissell. In: Edwards G, ed. Addiction: Evolution of a Specialist Field. 1 ed: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated; 2002:408.
  6. Durcanin C. The suicides at Ridgeview Institute: Staff members didn’t believe Michigan doctor was suicidal. Atlanta Journal and Constitution. December 18, 1987, 1987: A8.
  7. Ricks WS. Ridgeview Institute loses $1.3 million in suit over suicide. Atlanta Journal and Constitution. October 11, 1987, 1987: A1.
  8. King M, Durcanin C. The suicides at Ridgeview Institute: Many drug-using doctors driven to Ridgeview by fear of losing licenses. Atlanta Journal and Constitution. December 18, 1987b, 1987: A1.
  9. Bissell L, Haberman PW. Alcoholism in the Professions. Oxford University Press; 1984.
  10. White W. Reflections of an addiction treatment pioneer. An Interview with LeClair Bissell, MD (1928-2008), conducted January 22, 1997. Posted at http://www.williamwhitepapers.com. 2011.
  11. Williams c. Health care field chemical dependency threat cited. The Tuscaloosa News. January 16, 1988, 1988: 16.
  12. Schneidman B. The Philosophy of Rehabilitation for Impaired Physicians. The Federal Bulletin: The Journal of Medical Licensure and Discipline. 1995;82(3):125-127.
  13. Peele S. In the Belly of the American Society of Addiction Medicine Beast. The Stanton Peele Addiction Website (accessed March 28, 2014) http://web.archive.org/web/20080514153437/http://www.peele.net/debate/talbott.html.
  14. Ursery S. $1.3M verdict coaxes a deal for doctor’s coerced rehab. Fulton County Daily Report. May 12, 1999b 1999.
  15. Ursery S. I was wrongly held in alcohol center, doctor charges. Fulton Count y Daily Report. April 27, 1999a 1999.
  16. Parker J. George Talbott’s Abuse of Dr. Leon Masters MD ( http://medicalwhistleblowernetwork.jigsy.com/george-talbott-s-abuse-of-leon-masters ). Medical Whistelblower Advocacy Network.

    There is enormous inertia—a tyranny of the status quo—in private and especially governmental arrangements. Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.-Milton Friedman

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The High PROFITS of the 12 Step Cult Religion and Bain Capital

mllangan1 7 Comments

“The belief that there are such things as witches is so essential a part of the faith that obstinately to maintain the opposite opinion manifestly savors of heresy.”

So begins Malleus Maleficarum , a witch hunters manual published in 1486 that launched a new paradigm for all those concerned with the identification and extirpation of witches. Used as a judicial case-book the Malleus set forth definitions of witchcraft, rules of evidence and the canonical procedures by which suspected witches were tortured and put to death. Written by Inquisitors for Inquisitor, the Malleus construct came to be regarded as irrefutable truth and contributed to the identification and execution of as many as 60,000 “witches”, predominantly women. The 29th and last edition was published in 1669.

Because of the nature of the enemy the evidentiary standard was lowered and any witness, no matter what his credentials, could testify against the accused.

Using the nebulous “witch label” anyone with a grudge or suspicion could accuse anyone of witchcraft .

From the 15th century through the early 17th century a confederacy of “authorities” calling themselves “demonologists” existed and made money off the misery of others.

Identification of witches was detailed in the Malleus including both physical and behavioral clues. Physical signs included things such as bushy eyebrows and thin lips. The Malleus declared that witches have a “Devil’s mark (stigmata diaboli) or Devils seal (sigilum diaboli) which was usually a scar, birthmark, or blemish. An extra nipple (polythelia) was a tell-tale sign. Behavioral manifestations included living alone, cultivating strange herbs in the garden, public singing or dancing and saying hello to a neighbors cat.

Physician oversight of witch persecution was standard.  So too was the involvement of “witch-prickers” who were able to provide their expertise and “medical” testing in the assessment and diagnosis of the witch.

Pricking them with needles, awes, and bodkins to prove they were indeed nefarious and non-human was a surefire way to line one’s pockets but for the pedophiles and pervs there was an added bonus—a thorough searching for that stigmata diaboli on someone else’s dime.

Through the witch trials clerics, doctors, and lawyers used their expertise as witnesses to increase their prestige. Witch hunts developed into a means of economic profit. Some gained a lot of money from the witch trials. The witch or her relatives paid for the salaries of those who worked the witch trials including judges, court officials, torturers, physicians, clergymen, scribes, guards, attendants.

Even the people who made the stakes and scaffolds for executions gained from the conviction and death of each witch.

“Witch hunting,” wrote the historian Rossell Hope Robbins, “was self-sustaining and became a major trade, employing many people, all battening on the savings of the victims.” The costs of a witch trial were usually paid for by the estate of the accused or their family.

And what my friend Laura Tompkin’s describes here in no different; except in place of “demonologists” we now have “addictionologists.”

Both faulty paradigms with a lot of people making money hand over fist.

In 1592 Father Cornelius Loos wrote:

“Wretched creatures are compelled by the severity of the torture to confess things they have never done and so by cruel butchery innocent lives are taken; and by new alchemy, gold and silver are coined from human blood.”

And this is no different. No different at all.

12 Step Cult Religion Exposed

The following article will educate you on the annual profits made by the 12 step industry.  Whenever steppers claim that their cult is free, you now have proof that it is most certainly not in any way, shape or form, free.  Just because people are too lazy, ignorant and/or brainwashed, is no excuse for perpetuating dangerous lies.  Please note that anything in parentheses is my addition and anything bolded is also mine.  This author is misinformed, as is the general public, and classifies alcohol disorders as diseases.  However, this misinformation does not disqualify the facts here about rehab profits and Bain Capital.

Bain Capital’s grip on addiction – The profit of 12-step treatment

By Jamie Wendland

Last year nearly 2.5 million people 12 years of age or older sought treatment for substance abuse in the U.S., according to the National Survey on Drugs and Health. 2.3 million Americans…

View original post 1,696 more words

Disrupted Physician 101.1: The “Impaired Physician Movement” and the History of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM)

mllangan1 20 Comments

Disrupted Physician 101.1: The “Impaired Physician Movement” and the History of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM).

Henry David Thoreau

“With one arm around the shoulder of religion and the other around the shoulder of medicine, we might change the world.”—Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, AA World Services, Inc (1953).

In 1985 the British sociologist G. V. Stimson wrote:

“The impaired physician movement is characterized by a number of evangelical recovered alcoholic and addict physicians, whose recovery has been accompanied by an involvement in medical society and treatment programs. Their ability to make authoritative pronouncements on physician impairment is based on their own claim to insider’s knowledge.”

The American Society of Addiction Medicine’s mission is to “establish addiction medicine as a specialty recognized by professional organizations, governments, physicians, purchasers, and consumers of health care products, and the general public.”  

In this they have succeeded.images-4

And in the year 2014 Stimson’s characterization of the “impaired physician movement” remains as accurate and apt as it was in 1985. But the “number of evangelical recovered alcoholic and addict physicians” has increased dramatically  (outnumbering Addiction Psychiatry by 4:1)  and their involvement in “ medical society and treatment programs” has been realized and enforced through the state Physician Health Programs and their “PHP-approved’ assessment and treatment centers.

Their “ability to make authoritative pronouncements on physician impairment…based on their own claim to insider’s knowledge”  has become public policy and sanctified by Regulatory Medicine -essentially the Word of the Lord.

And the 1953 Alcoholics Anonymous prophecy that “With one arm around the shoulder of religion and the other around the shoulder of medicine, we might change the world” is also coming to pass.

But the world is not changing for the better as that arm around the shoulder of religion has its fingers deep in the pockets of the multi-billion dollar drug and alcohol testing and assessment and treatment industries.  And the arm around the shoulder of medicine has its fingers clamped tightly around its throat; a stranglehold in full throttle suffocating the Profession of Medicine with no meaningful opposition I can see.

A Golden Age

mllangan1 4 Comments

Golden Age

BY TIMOTHY STEELE

Even in fortunate times,
The nectar is spiked with woe.
Gods are incorrigibly
Capricious, and the needy
Beg in Nineveh or sleep
In paper-gusting plazas
Of the New World’s shopping malls.
Meantime, the tyrant battens
On conquest, while advisers,
Angling for preferment, seek
Expedient paths. Heartbroken,
The faithful advocate looks
Back on cities of the plain
And trudges into exile.
And if any era thrives,
It’s only because, somewhere,
In a plane tree’s shade, friends sketch
The dust with theorems and proofs,
Or because, instinctively,
A man puts his arm around
The shoulder of grief and walks
It (for an hour or an age)
Through all its tears and telling.

Timothy Steele, “Golden Age” from Sapphics and Uncertainties: Poems 1970-1986. Copyright � 1986, 1995 by Timothy Steele. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Arkansas Press, www.uapress.com.

Source: Sapphics Against Anger and Other Poems (1986)

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Disappointed that his grandiose proposal to test the urine of half the U.S. population for illicit drugs was declined in the 1980’s, Bob realizes such a large swath was too tall an order. Acknowledging that his dream of lifelong urine drops for each and every one of the riffraff at least once a fortnight will take time, he decides to focus his attention on specific subsets of the great unwashed such as school-children, welfare mothers, the unemployed and whatever they are calling Hippies these days.

The Addiction Medicine Control Machine

mllangan1 6 Comments

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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.    The goal has always been to convince the medical establishment that 12-step recovery is the one and only treatment for alcoholism and drug addiction.

Unable to convince the medical establishment of this they decided that a better tactic would be to impose it on them.

And through propaganda, misinformation, lobbying, misleading public relations, and myriad other machinations used to promote a static ideology and suppress anything that contradicts, detracts, or otherwise not fit their world view as a product of themselves, they have admittedly succeeded.

This  includes creating a  “medical specialty” that requires neither knowledge nor competence.  Like Grimm fairy tale number 98, Doktor Allwissend (Doctor know-All) in which a poor peasant becomes a famous medical expert by declaring himself so ( by dressing like an expert, brandishing an ABC book with a rooster on the front, and having a sign painted with the words ‘I am Doctor Know-All’ and nailing it above the door to his house), the ASAM has “faked it til they made it.”

To make this point I sat for the exam with absolutely no preparation in 2010, passed by a respectable margin, and was “board certified” in addiction medicine. ABAM “board certification” is not recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS).  It is a “self-designated” medical specialty which means exactly what it sounds like.  “I hereby declare myself..”

Except for a year of psychopharmacology research, some MRO work, and “moonlighting” at local mental health facilities I have no education or training in addiction yet I was able to join the ASAM fold—–an exercise somewhat like showing how easy it is to buy a gun at Walmart.  The analogy does not end there however as they can both be “licenses” to kill.

Like  an NRA wallet card I never intended to use it.  I let it lapse so there is no need for the ASAM to revoke it.    It was in effect an  “academic exercise” to make a point-and that point being that I am no “expert” in addiction medicine and neither is 4000 of me.

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By proclaiming themselves the cream of the crop, bestowing phony “board certification,” and creating the myth of expertise at the expense of the real experts and lobotomizing evidence based thought and critical thinking they have created a monopoly of despotism in addiction medicine treatment.  The ASAM and FSPHP  have created a tyranny in regulatory medicine that is unsupervised and opaque.  Moreover, they have grand plans for the rest of the population. They have influenced the DSM-V, are trying to gain control of MRO education and regulation, and pose a great danger to all of us.  This front-group for the 12-step assessment and treatment centers and the drug and alcohol testing industry is indeed fulfilling Burrough’s prediction of a police state.

They have money and and a monopoly of force by number (they outnumber Addiction Psychiatrists by 4:1) and the risks of this unqualified authoritarian control and influence involve all of us as a society.  And it impacts freedom, life, and liberty.

Alarmist call to arms about the dangers of drugs and hidden addicts protected by others and posing danger to create untrue hype is propaganda and misinformation to further the ASAM drug-testing 12-step inpatient rehab agenda and gain control. Drug war sloganeering designed to get everyone aboard. Logical fallacy, deceptive facts, pseudoscience, and misinformation is obvious if anyone cares to look a little deeper. The conflicts-of-interest are immense. The ASAM and FSPHP are front-groups that use ends-justifies-the-means coercion and deception to get public recognition of the righteousness of the twelve steps of recovery.

Neither doctors nor US citizens should be subject to the whims of a religion based political group composed of unqualified, inexperienced, paternalistic and biased individuals who are truncheons of dogmatic ideology and refuse to accept evidence based treatment, transparency, and accountability as important. ASAM board certification is not recognized by the ABMS. These are self-proclaimed specialists–great pretenders.   Underneath is a Potemkin village.  The emperor is bereft of all clothes.

The problem is that regulatory agencies, politicians, medical boards, and others have bought into the lie. Most people take them at face value resulting in the perception that they are indeed experts in addiction medicine and they are well on the way to becoming the only experts in addiction medicine. Within the next couple of years this will become a reality. The ASAM will shortly gain ABMS specialty certification. They are well funded.

The addiction psychiatrist subspecialty has already being pushed into a corner. Some have even joined in in rather than fade away–kind of like what happened to the proctologists as the gastroenterologists moved further up. But that analogy doesn’t quite work  as gastroenterology swallowing proctology represents an advancement in science.  Medicine, like all of science is fluid. What they represent is frozen.  Additionally it’s a lucrative gig.

This situation is more like the anti-vacciners parading themselves as experts in immunology and gaining enough support to run out the real McCoy.

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 Pseudoscience, groupthink, deception, and coercion. A framework not built on the scientific method, evidence based decision making, autonomy and benevolence; but based on unproven ideological dogma, righteous inflexible worldview, rigid rules, obedience, and control. Drug testing of all physicians will be done by ASAM, FSPHP physicians. They will demand prohibition, testing, and treatment and will be in complete control. Even with 100% specificity and sensitivity there are valid arguments against this. But if you throw in the corruption and other issues that are obvious if one looks, then medicine as we know it is going to be lobotomized by dabblers and clowns.

It will come in a whimper not a bang and by then it will be too late. The goal of the ASAM has been to be recognized as the “experts” in addiction medicine ever since The American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) was started by Dr. Ruth Fox in the 1950’s to promote AA and the 12-steps to doctors as a treatment for alcoholism.

PHP’s function to monitor and control. . Mandating coercive 12-step ideology onto physicians is SOP. The marked rise in physician suicide over the past decade is directly correlated with the FSPHP taking over state impaired physician programs. And the “kill em all let God sort em out” logical fallacy of saving doctors and protecting patients is propaganda with no evidence base.

This system, that encourages referring doctors confidentially for evaluation, is a nearly foolproof means to silence any physician they feel the need to. An accusation of substance abuse is made relatively easy. Then recommend an evaluation to one of your own people who will confirm the problem and force them into a 5 -year monitoring program where you must abide by the twelve step road to salvation.

By colluding with a short list of inpatient drug treatment centers such as Hazelden, Talbott, Marworth, Farley, and others where co-conspirators there will engage in “confirmatory bias” and “confirmatory distortion” to make the assessment fit the diagnosis they have a nearly perfect system to remove any physician from practice. It is “political abuse of psychiatry.”

 

In the former Soviet Union during the Khrushchev-Brezhnev era, the KGB used its forensic psychiatric institutions to brand, arbitrarily and for political reasons, large numbers of political dissidents as suffering from “schizophrenia” and “paranoid psychosis” and then incarcerated them for long periods in “special psychiatric hospitals.” In 1976, the Soviet Union was severely censured on this account by psychiatrists from all over the world at a conference in Hawaii of the World Psychiatric Association. Only after Gorbachev’s rise to power were these errors rectified. We have now discovered that similar practices have also occurred in certain parts of China.”1– Jia Yicheng (China’s top forensic psychiatrist), 1998

 

 

Well to quote Zoolander “Earth to Mathilda” it’s occurring right here in the U.S. of A. but they have substituted “substance use disorder” for “schizophrenia” to delegitimize, marginalize, and ignore.

The ASAM claims an 80% success rate. If you look at the data they are basing this on it is illusory–sloganeering and propaganda with no substance.

The biggest obstacle is that this system allows them to throw the normal rules of conduct under the imperative of a higher goal assumed to trump all other consideration. Those outside of the FSPHP, ASAM system either defend or ignore the reports of ethical and criminal violations, complacent in their trust of these “experts” claiming they are just helping sick doctors and protecting the public.

The ASAM and FSPHP are gaining power and expanding in scope. They have effectively muscled forth the “war on drugs’ agenda to further their goals by establishing a system that of coercion, control, secrecy, and misinformation. The first wave was substance abusers, they then added any psychiatric diagnoses, then the disruptive physician”, and the next target is the “aging physician”.  Goodbye Dr. Welby.

The testing of physicians will inevitably include EtG and PEth—tests that Alabama PHS Director and ex-felon Greg Skipper introduced, proselytized, and brought to the drug testing industry like a carnival huckster. Introduced as  Laboratory developed tests (LDTs) to bypass FDA approval and regulation this junk science was commercialized, marketed, and paraded as scholarship.  Introduced with an arbitrary cutoff point of 100 it ruined countless lives.  God knows how many suicides were caused by this prohibitionist profiteer.

A 2011 study revealed that hand sanitizer alone can result in EtG levels c lose to 2000 ng/ml.

Dr. Skipper and Robert Dupont, are now recommending PEth as a confirmation test for an elevated EtG.

The evidence base is empty. Anecdotal reports supporting these tests and mostly done with Skipper as a co-author are essentially all that exist.

The June 2013 journal “Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research”contains an article coauthored by Skipper and DuPont , Greg Skipperand Robert Dupont looking at 18“subjects” who tested positive for EtG and concluded that “positive PEth testing following positive EtG/EtS results confirm recent drinking.”Although they were unaware of it, these “subjects” were physicians enrolled in the Physician Health Program.

This is a system that oppresses physicians and is about to enter the domain of individual freedom, destroy the Bill of Rights, force 12-step philosophy and erode freedom of religion, stifle freedom of speech, and take us back decades.. They have convinced medical societies, medical boards, regulatory agencies, parole boards and others to not only accept them as experts, but to write legislation in states to declare them “the” experts in addiction medicine. They did this with a torrent of strategic lobbying efforts on behalf of the 12-step addiction treatment industry towards the AMA (and indirectly through the FSPHP towards the AMA), ABMS, APA, FSMB, ABIM, JCAO, CSAT, consumer groups, presidential candidates, state medical societies, congress, corrections agencies, social service agencies, faith-based community centers, the media and many other targets.

By convincing others of their expertise they have strategically placed themselves in a position of power that includes the ability to remove any doctor from practice.

“With one arm around the shoulder of religion and the other around the shoulder of medicine, we might change the world.”-Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, AA World Services, Inc (1953).

And unless something is done soon, every physician in the US will be at risk of losing everything at the whim of of a 12-step front group that places ideology above evidence base and dogma above virtue.

Claiming success they now want to bring it to you. Take a look at Robert Dupont’s keynote speech before the Drug and Alcohol Testing Industry Association.  Prohibitionist profiteers euphoric about the future bumper crop of clear cups and urine. “Test em all” Dupont wants to include schools and children in the net.  Reminiscent of the Nuremberg rallies he received a a thundering standing ovation.    And for this to happen all you have to do is one thing-nothing.

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