MG and Anovagrrl both wrote some interesting facts about alcoholism which I can really relate to as a standard "Family" disease. You know, in the news today, there's an article about J Lo and Ben splitting up. J Lo stated that Ben has an "addictive disease" and has an inclination to go gambling and use alcohol and has been in some sort of treatment center before (CNN). Anyway, the types of symtoms you describe for a "dry alcoholic" seems to describe people I lived with in the past.
Some people seem to "thrive" on deadlines, "pushes" and goals to reach. Living in the Family provides you with enough adrenalin-type of situations to keep those type of people eternally "thriving". The self-righteous ones just love to ride the wave of the latest "push" or spirtual goal and push it in the flesh and promote it to the point of making the rest of us weaklings feel so humiliated, weak, unrevolutionary and ready for God's scrap heap!
This type of person is often full of their own sins and weaknesses, is often single (I wonder why????) and loves to report to "Mama" or the VS's.
I went nuts in many a situation living with those type of "addicts". I have my own pride of course, so I strived to live up to "their" standard. I got an ulcer and had a nervous breakdown. It just drove me nuts.
And to top it off, that type of person is "used" so much more than the rest of us. A person like me just felt useless and a failure and just so unrevolutionary. Plus, the adrenilin gives a person so much energy and some people just love to work... no matter what they're doing! It's the age-old works religion!
That kind of addiction is wide spread and when the YA's and SGA's get it, too, then it's even sadder. The youth have a wonderful zeal and mixed with a utopian goal, it's almost unstoppable! Sad to say, they're in the wrong group!
Sometimes I think... oh well, at least they're serving Jesus the best they know how, and they are naive to the truth of the Family... but it's NOT true. All the SGA's and YA's know the truth and they each have to either numb themselves to it and hope that one day the Family will change, or they just have to leave it.
The Family cannot change... it's a putrid, ugly, sick garment that cannot put on a new garment to look new. It has a stinking past and with it's new age doctines that keep rolling in with the "mailings", it will never never change. Maria doesn't want it to. The only way it can change is to totally disband and declare it was wrong!