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Public Intox and AA
JPArbiter
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Ok I got arrested for Public Intox four weeks ago. Finally got a hearing going and the judge told me if I wanted to get the incident stricken from my record, I had to attedn AA meetings for a month. what is the problem?
AA is a cleverly disguised religous institution rather then an actual recovery agency. small subproblem is that I do not have an addiction to alchohol, just had a wild night.
the twelve steps as I see them are as follows
admit your an asshole, and can not change the fact
start believing in God
Ask God to stop making you an asshole
make a list of all the reasons you are an asshole
confess to the world and God of your asshollishness
Admit you want to stop being an asshole
ask God to forgive you being an asshole
make a list of all the people you have been an asshole too
Apologize to said people for being an asshole
continue to keep track of your asshole inventory
thank God for helping you not being an asshole
Stop being an asshole and encourgae other people to stop being assholes as well. hang out with former assholes.
a lot of God in there and I am an Athiest. I objected to the judge that she can not give such a reccomendation to me on constitutuional grounds. Offered community service or even going to a different group called "Rational Recovery" which teaches you self discipline and science instead of cop outs and religon. the judge will not have it though.
I have two options, I have a local ACLU guy willing to take the case pro bono, or I can walk around with a public intox arrest on my record. I REFUSE to attend AA
what should I do?
AA is a cleverly disguised religous institution rather then an actual recovery agency. small subproblem is that I do not have an addiction to alchohol, just had a wild night.
the twelve steps as I see them are as follows
admit your an asshole, and can not change the fact
start believing in God
Ask God to stop making you an asshole
make a list of all the reasons you are an asshole
confess to the world and God of your asshollishness
Admit you want to stop being an asshole
ask God to forgive you being an asshole
make a list of all the people you have been an asshole too
Apologize to said people for being an asshole
continue to keep track of your asshole inventory
thank God for helping you not being an asshole
Stop being an asshole and encourgae other people to stop being assholes as well. hang out with former assholes.
a lot of God in there and I am an Athiest. I objected to the judge that she can not give such a reccomendation to me on constitutuional grounds. Offered community service or even going to a different group called "Rational Recovery" which teaches you self discipline and science instead of cop outs and religon. the judge will not have it though.
I have two options, I have a local ACLU guy willing to take the case pro bono, or I can walk around with a public intox arrest on my record. I REFUSE to attend AA
what should I do?
Sinning since 1983
JPArbiter on
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What kind of time do you have, and how willing are you to go through with this? Personally, I'm fairly familiar with the issue, and I'd like to see less of AA being thrown around in cases like this (so would AA, actually) because of the religious indoctrination issue.
The easy way out is just to take it and show up for the meetings.
Atheist and not even an alcoholic.
You just have to drop pretenses and make it about the people around you, you will get
NOTHING without participation. If nothing else, its an excercise in meeting new people
with generally colorful and varied backgrounds (you'd be surprised)
One other thing. It works. You may not be an Alcoholic at all, but I know that
this program saves lives. Its not for everyone, but it DOES work.
Also I don't know what AA meetings you are going to but the "higher power" concept
can be entirely transcendental of normal religion, but it can certainly be read too far into.
Keep an open mind
No one here is qualified to give legal advice, so this is all just people's personal opinions - so i would weight what an actual lawyer says over one of us.
That said, by far the easiest thing to do is to take the AA. But this is a public intoxication charge - not as far as I know, a big deal. If it was a DUI i'd say to take the AA in a heartbeat. If you're not worried about employment issues (this should be minor, but i don't know what MO is like or wha tfield you're in i.), i say fight it and see if you can get good any good precedent on the books - at least allowing the rational recovery option. if you can do AA but not RR it sounds like its also an equal protection claim versus a traditional establishment claim. But you should be doing this not to get rid of the AA charge but because you want to improve constitutional law.
IMO, don't bother messing with findlaw - let the ACLU guy do the legal work. Choosing to fight it given who has been making judicial appointments will almost certainly not result in the charge being stricken, and if you win it will certainly not in be the near term. Lawsuits take a long time to wind their way through the federal district and appellate court process. Luckily your role in this thing seems fairly limited - you probably wouldn't have to make a lot of court appearances of whatever.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
And JP, according to Wiki, the two court rulings it listed were by appeals courts, and both were in favor of the person not wanting to attend AA. The Supreme Court denied certiori on both, meaning that they couldn't get 4 justices who thought it was non-religious enough to hear the case. Based on that, if it's accurate, I'd say you'd win.
I'll also point out that if you talked to judge the way you phrased your OP, you fucked up. "I objected to the judge that she can not give such a reccomendation to me on constitutuional grounds." Never ever ever tell a judge what he or she can or cannot do, and especially don't try to appeal to your constitutional rights. It just pisses them off. Let your lawyer argue with the judge, that's what they're there for. If you must address the judge personally, ask nicely and politely if you can please have alternate arrangements. Pretend you're Oliver Twist asking for gruel. "Please sir, may I have community service?"
Anyway, take the ACLU lawyer. The worst that could happen is that you'd have to go to AA anyway.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
How is the judge doing him a favor?
Having the arrest stricken from his record is a pretty good favor.
I mean, that's pretty much par for the course for someone getting hit with public intoxication who has a clean record. It's not really a "favor" so much as "to be expected."
I agree with you, the only thing I think AA probably has over other recovery methods is the raw number of groups. Obviously the OP is not in a position where AA is the only game in town, but I can certainly imagine there being places in the US where if you don't want to use AA you have no other options. If you're an alcoholic seeking help I think you should basically find help any way you can. But not every system works for everybody, and refusing AA (or any other system, really) without trying it doesn't make a lot of sense to me if you need help. That's not to say that every alcoholic should try AA first, but I would at least leave the option open if I were in that situation, and I'm extremely uncomfortable with religion in general.
Question to the OP - what is the schedule of sessions you would have to attend? Once weekly for a month? Every day? The frequency might impact advice, since 'suck it up and take it' is a lot more reasonable for four hour-long classes than it is if the judges wants you to go twice daily for a month.
and in my hometown public intox is merely a violation, I just would like it striken because of my work involving the finnacial universe