Earth is The Addicted Planet

Addiction Recovery Research Results

The largest current business opportunity is satisfying the pent-up market demand for social media addiction treatment using artificial intelligence-based education methods.

Every year . . .

1. of the world’s 1.5 billion drug and alcohol addicts, 150 million of us hit bottom and decide that it’s time to recover from addiction. No one knows how many more social media addicts there are living with us here on planet Earth;

2. between 40 and 60 percent of addicts who hit bottom AND get treatment end up relapsing (eventually 98 percent relapse); and,

3. at least $100 billion is squandered worldwide by treating relapsers the wrong way by profiteers,

simply because we take an irrational approach to addiction recovery.

My in-the-trenches research concluded that . . .

1. drug and alcohol addiction recovery and relapse prevention are education problems, although they are treated as medical and Christian problems;

2. of the 150 millions addicts who hit bottom each year and decide that it’s time to stop putting whatever it is that they are addicted to into their bodies, at least 90 percent eventually relapse because they never learned how to recover from addiction and why recovering from addiction is worth the effort;

3. most addicts relapse because they don’t seek education from an addiction recovery sponsor on how to avoid relapse; and,

4. addicts who seek medical treatment typically relapse because it’s impossible for an addict to learn what they need to know to actually defeat relapse during a 28-day Old Rehab stay.

Methodology and key findings

For over 6 years, I lived and worked 24/7/365 with thousands of both newbie and successfully-recovering drug and alcohol addicts 1) to gain insights into addicts’ lives during their collective journeys from Hell to Earth to Heaven and sometimes back; 2) to see if there is a better way to help out other addicts like me; 3) to tell addicts’ friends and families why it’s so hard to stay clean and sober; and, 4) to deeply understand the addiction recovery profiteers and Pecksniffs.

I asked thousands of drug/alcohol relapsers “Did you get an addiction recovery sponsor?” and 100 percent of them answered “No.”. When Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) was founded in 1935 and before any Old Rehabs existed, all recovering addicts had was medical detoxification followed by one addict helping another addict which, today, is called “sponsors sponsoring sponsees”. That master/apprentice-style addiction recovery and relapse prevention education method still works better than everything else only on the rare occasion that the sponsor is a willing master teacher who has researched and actually knows he knows–and doesn’t just think he knows–the ins and outs of how addiction recovery really works–and the sponsee is a willing apprentice.

I asked thousands of newbie recovering drug/alcohol addicts “Do you know why you are an addict? and 100 percent of the newbies answered “No.”. During my 6 years of research, I learned that, until an addict knows the root cause of his addiction, he is unable to successfully recover from addiction. It is entirely up to an addict whether or not he decides to try to understand the trauma(s) that led to his addiction. Since 1935, qualified addiction recovery sponsors have educated willing newbie recovering addicts through the process of discovering the root cause of their addiction. Learning how to recover via a qualified addiction recovery sponsor is the most proven and efficient addiction recovery method, because mental health professionals earn more money when they use an unnecessarily-laborious process to identify what normally becomes fairly obvious to an experienced addiction recovery sponsor after a probing conversation or two.

Addiction recovery is a life-long effort that leads to happiness, enlightenment and true satisfaction with life. For recovering drug/alcohol addicts who prefer The God Thing, spirituality and Christianity agenda, the 12 Step-centric addiction recovery sponsors are a proven method for recovering from addiction and defeating relapse. For the remaining recovering drug/alcohol addicts (the overwhelming majority), TheAddictedPlanet.com website’s “6 Secular Suggestions” are an agenda-less addiction recovery alternative for defeating relapse.

The TheAddictedPlanet.com website’s 6 Secular Suggestions work better because they are based on data gained from actual research with a statistically-significant sampling of both suffering and recovering addicts.

The 12-step programs peddle bibles for profit

The 12-step programs are not in the addiction recovery business. The 12-step programs are in the publishing business. More relapsers means more money for the 12-step programs which collect over $10,000,000.00 every year from relapsing addicts for copies of their printed recovery bibles, even though the A.A. “Big Book” is available free online in English, French and Spanish and is the 30th most popular printed book of all time. There is no business justification for the 12-step programs to do anything that reduces addict relapse.

The Oxford Group Christian organization begat Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) in 1935 which, in turn, begat Narcotics Anonymous (NA) in 1953 and, subsequently, all of the rest of today’s many Anonymous 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporations. All Anonymous programs espouse virtually the same 12 Steps, 6 of which mention “God” or “a Power greater than ourselves”. A least half of the addicts who hit bottom and decide to recover are turned off for one reason or another by God, spirituality and Christianity. As a result, every year at least 75,000,000 of the addicts who hit bottom and decide that it’s time to recover entirely avoid getting help from a 12-step program.

Old Rehabs routinely and knowingly violate the law

United States-based Old Rehabs alone collect at least $15 billion every year from relapsing addicts who repeat the same defective medical treatment that didn’t work for them the first time, because the Old Rehabs deceive relapsing patients by promising a different result the next time (i.e., Albert Einstein’s definition of “insanity”). In the United States, the Old Rehabs therefore routinely and knowingly violate Section 5 of the United States Federal Trade Commission Act (15 USC 45) prohibiting unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce–plus State statutes. Old Rehabs would go out of business if it weren’t for their profitable relapse patients who become addicted to repeating the defective Old Rehab medical treatment, based on a deceptive promise.

For an addict to qualify for health insurance- or taxpayer-funded residential drug and alcohol Old Rehab treatment in the United States, a medical professional must diagnose him with severe substance use disorder as the primary mental health diagnosis. Most addicts that become Old Rehab patients are diagnosed with more than one mental health disorder. Countless health insurance- and taxpayer-funded Old Rehab patients clearly suffer from a primary mental health disorder other than severe substance use disorder, particularly the relapsers who the Old Rehabs have already learned are unable to benefit from Old Rehab treatment due to their other, more severe mental health problem(s). Nevertheless, Old Rehabs routinely and knowingly misdiagnose relapsers as having severe substance use disorder as their primary mental health diagnosis because they profit the most from their repeat customers–just like any other business does.

Addiction is a profitable industry

The 12-step programs and Old Rehabs represent the tip of the iceberg of all the addiction money floating around the addiction business. Alphabet (Google, YouTube), Meta Platforms (Facebook, Instagram), ByteDance (TikTok) and the rest of their ilk profit from social media addiction. Amazon (AWS) profits from addiction to everything electronic by tracking who’s been naughty and who’s been nice. The beverages industry profits from addiction by manufacturing and distributing liquor, beer and wine. Book publishers, seminar-givers and all sorts of pundits profit from addiction by telling all sorts of inaccurate stories online and in print. Big Pharma profits from addiction by manufacturing and distributing legal drugs. Churches profit from addiction by selling hope. Dealers profit from addiction by making drug deliveries and operating dope houses. Doctors profit from addiction by telling addicts to “just say no”. The drug cartels profit from addiction by manufacturing and distributing illegal drugs. Half-way houses profit from addiction by providing lodging to recovering addicts. Head shops profit from addiction by selling paraphernalia to addicts. Health insurance companies profit from addiction by selling health insurance to rich addicts. Hospitals profit from addiction by providing emergency room services and detoxification stays to addicts. Jails profit addiction by charging taxpayers for addict detainment. Lawyers profit from addiction by lawyering on behalf of addict clients. Mental health facilities profit from addiction by treating crazy addicts. NIDA.nih.gov profits from addiction by charging taxpayers $1,852,503,000.00 in 2022 for publishing gobbledygook. Police departments profit from addiction by charging taxpayers to arrest addicts. Prisons profit from addiction by selling addicts’ work product produced at slave or no wages at competitive prices and pocketing the difference. Psychiatrists profit from addiction prescribing Big Pharma’s legal drugs to addicts. Sober-living houses profit from addiction by providing lodging to recovering addicts. TheAddictedPlanet.com website is the addiction industry’s first and only resource for evidence-based statistically-significant qualitative and quantitative education on how to recover from drug and alcohol addiction and avoid addict relapse, and why doing so is worth the effort. Therapists profit from addiction by providing addiction therapy to addicts–recovering and otherwise. Video game creators cause addiction to their video games in order to earn a profit from addiction to their video games.

That relapse is inevitable is a myth that’s perpetuated by profiteers

Most addicts who hit bottom and decide that it is time to recover actually relapse because

1. they believe they will relapse because addicts believe the myth–allowed to spread unchecked primarily by the Old Rehabs and secondarily by all the relapsers–that all addicts relapse;

2. they don’t get an addiction recovery sponsor’s help because they believe the myth that all addicts relapse and 12-step program sponsors are free and no one values anything that they get for free;

3. they don’t work the 12 Steps because they believe the myth that all addicts relapse, so they figure it’s not worth the trouble to work the 12 Steps and no one educated them why doing step-work is worth the effort;

4. there is too much God and spirituality and Christianity in the 12-step programs. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), “between 40 percent and 60 percent of addicts who decide to get clean end up relapsing in the first year”, partially because the established recovery programs focus too much on God, spirituality and Christianity. These addicts are turned off by A.A./NA simply because the 12-step programs remind them of church. Far too many children are traumatized by forced Sunday a.m. church attendance followed by witnessing their parents’ Sunday p.m. hypocrisies. Childhood trauma of all kinds leads to addiction later in life. Click on MOMMA TRAUMA and I SUGGEST THAT YOU START HERE;

5. it’s axiomatic that addicts prefer to isolate (loners) and at least 50 percent of addicts are introverts so most addicts avoid social settings like 12-step meetings and Old Rehabs; and,

6. Old Rehabs fail to properly educate recovering addicts on how successfully recover because they profit from the myth that all addicts relapse, and it’s impossible to learn everything needed to recover from addiction during the 28-day period that health insurance and State statues cover for rehab payouts. Recovery from addiction is a life-long reflective pursuit of enlightenment by discovering The Truth. Recovery from addiction is not a 28-day Old Rehab stay.

Somewhere on Earth there is an angel who will help me end the widespread, unchecked addiction recovery business corruption that led me to create the prototype TheAddictedPlanet.com™ website. I can do only so much without help–and what I can do alone is not nearly enough. To make a positive global impact, an online addiction recovery university is needed to capture addicts’ attention away from drugs, alcohol and addictive social media. This new school transforms my strange-looking website that’s just a jumble of boring words (and its associated Q&A on Quora) into artificial intelligence software and a well-organized set of entertaining videos that’s better than Facebook, YouTube and TikTok; more entertaining than anything I have ever seen; and, easier to understand than Sesame Street and Kermit the Frog–because hardly anybody reads words any more and artificial intelligence is the only way to cost-effectively handle millions of students. “Tuition” for the global online addiction relapse prevention school (i.e., a contemporary “addiction sponsor”) would cost less than one percent of the established medical system’s cost for addiction recovery treatment.

“Saving addicts’ lives” is shorthand for “no relapse” and, as a result, addicts do not 1) die early from continued drug and/or alcohol abuse; 2) get sent to jail/prison; or, 3) get committed to a mental institution. So far, it appears that social media and video game addiction consequences will not be so dire; I assume its purveyors are working on some sort of education solution too. I am seeking an investor to help start a secular school to teach the 150 million drug and alcohol addicts worldwide who hit bottom every year how to defeat relapse. I estimate that, until my proposed university gets established, at least 4,000 drug and alcohol addicts (alcoholics) will continue dying unnecessarily every day. My calculator tells me that a school charging $10 annual tuition per recovering drug/alcohol addict adds up to $150 million annual revenue at only 10 percent market share while saving 4,000 addicts’ lives every day, assuming 90 percent of the “students” drop out in a market where the Old Rehabs knowingly sell a defective product for at least $4,500 per patient–plus additional revenue for the social media and video game addicts who are getting desperate for help and have nowhere else yet to turn. Because TheAddictedPlanet.com website is mostly just a jumble of old-fashioned, boring words, it perhaps save between 3 and 30 lives every day. 

Drug/alcohol addiction recovery profiteers and Pecksniffs lie in wait for these unsuspecting newbies like hungry snakes. No one in the addiction recovery business actually helps these distressed humans learn how to defeat relapse, because to do so would reduce their product revenue and profitability. When in doubt, follow the money (and the idiots) down their crooked path paved with misery, corruption and countless unnecessary deaths. The social media addiction recovery quislings are coming soon to a screen near you.

Staying staying clean and sober is an education opportunity not a medical treatment problem, and it’s impossible to learn how to defeat relapse during the 28 days that health insurers and taxpayers authorize for Old Rehab medical treatment, particularly when you’re head is foggy. Until some sort of addiction breakthrough happens, recovery from addiction is, unfortunately, a life-long educational pursuit of The Truth about yourself and everyone and everything around you, so you can be happily satisfied with your life. An addict is a special person who is chosen by the almighty universe–one of universe’s chosen ones–chosen to suffer great traumas and many struggles, in order to recover from addiction and emerge strong enough to pass along his or her learned wisdom and positive energy to the rest of humanity and back into the universe.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, addiction is a mental illness called “severe substance use disorder”. Contrary to addiction propaganda, the higher your socioeconomic status the more likely it is that you are a drug addict and/or an alcohol addict (alcoholic), simply because drugs and alcohol cost a lot of money:

12 percent of the U.S. population are alcohol addicts (alcoholics) = 39,915,851 U.S. alcohol addicts
+
4.7 percent of the U.S. population are prescription drug addicts = 15,633,708 U.S. prescription drug addicts
+
2.5 percent of the U.S. population are non-prescription drug addicts = 8,315,802 U.S. non-prescription drug addicts
=
19.2 percent of the U.S. population are drug/alcohol addicts = 63,865,361 U.S. drug/alcohol addicts

Who knows how many social media addicts there are? Who knows how many gambling addicts there are? Who knows how many video game addicts there are? Who know how many [insert almost anything you can think of here] addicts there are? Earth is The Addicted Planet. (Someone should write a book.) Links on the home page in ALL CAPS are selected answers to actual questions that people asked me on Quora.

Addiction is addiction. The only difference among addictions is the consequences of abusing whatever it is you are addicted to. Until a suffering drug addict or alcohol addict (alcoholic) learns from his addiction sponsor how to become a non-relapsing recovering addict, his addiction will inevitably progress to either jail/prison, a mental institution or an early death; and, somewhere along the way, relapsing addicts always end up losing their jobs, all of their friends and lovers, and, finally, their families give up on them too.

Although drug/alcohol addiction has dire consequences, my addiction to the caffeine in coffee has few, if any, consequences. It took 50 years for the consequences of my addiction to nicotine to result in emphysema. I am able to control my diabetes that is a consequence of my life-long sugar addiction with expensive, profitable drugs–and I can never eat ice cream again.

Although addiction in humans is caused by a genetic mutation, the actual root cause of addiction is something I call “momma trauma“. Science is working on eradicating genetic addiction in humans–not just drug and alcohol addiction but addiction: the whole enchilada–with a therapeutic and/or vaccine that will block the ΔFosB (DeltaFosB) splice variant of the FOSB member of the human FOS gene. That unfortunate genetic mutation occurred at one point during human (or, perhaps, earlier?) evolution.

Blocking the genetic mutation that causes addiction needs all of the scientific attention it can get. Until science gets this thing figured out (or, unless childhood trauma magically disappears), the best way to block the genetic addiction mutation found in every single human on planet Earth (and avoid its consequences) is to get an addiction recovery sponsor (or go to “Recovery University”), particularly because addiction relapse is epigenetic.

Gene therapy is expensive, profitable stuff. It’s gonna be an awfully long time before we actually eradicate addiction for the masses. In the meantime, I’m sure glad I have an addiction recovery sponsor. I really don’t know what I would do without Mike S. Thanks for your wisdom, Mike!

Copyright 2022 GSponsor.org, Inc.