The Uselessness Of Addiction Treatment (Illustrated)

Thursday, May 18, 2006 - Illustrations by Al Jaffee and extra text by dr.bomb

It was an interesting day when someone hooked me up with new fuel cans to store my grandmother's gasoline for her mower. It wasn't so much as the design of the cans but the over-designed nozzles. They claim to be "spill-resistant" yet were some of the most over-complicated contraptions I've ever had the displeasure of using.

You know how it is: Some idiot over-designs something and, wouldn't you know, causes more problems. In this case I never had any problems with spilling gas with good ol' non-mechanized all-American nozzles. But, get a few recovery groupers together to claim that a problem exists and these morons with waaaaaaaaaay too much time on their hands and you wind up with a national tragedy. From wasted gasoline to wasted time.

These nozzles are one of the bad ideas which should have never got off the drawing board. This spring-loaded contraption requires that I use one hand to hold it open while I have to use the other hand to try to manhandle the gas can into position. While a regular all-American non-mechanized nozzle would have resulted in no mess whatsoever I wound up with spilled gasoline EVERYWHERE where I didn't want gasoline (on my hands, ON and not IN the mower, on the sidewalk, etc.). Spill-proof my ass!

Being that I'm cleaning up my physical archives, the experience reminded me of an illustrated tale by Al Jaffee of how useless a design can be in only two-pages. This tale was to be found within a book from my youth known as "Al Jaffee's Mad Inventions" so, realizing the connection between my bad nozzle day and especially the Buchmanism-based addiction recovery system, I dug deep and found it.

With a quick scan and some slight alterations (gotta give a shout out to Rational Recovery as always), the uselessness of 12-Step addiction "recovery"is humorously presented:

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