Indeed. Such is society.

I wrote a long post, but feel like a lot of it was superfluous. I think a lot of the "don't do drugs and you won't get addicted" mindset is simply a mental construct based on how people assign blame. There are a lot of people who do not like to take the blame for their failures in all walks of life. There are surely mental benefits to this in that it can increase confidence, self-esteem, happiness, stability, etc. However, at the end of the day this is all a mental framing technique used to justify some sort of personal failure.

My mindset is that every success I have is a combination of my decisions and luck. More importantly though, every failure is also my fault and depends solely on my decision making and luck. If I lose my job I don't blame others, I accept it and move on. If I get addicted to drugs I don't blame others, I accept it and move on. If I gain weight I don't blame others, I accept it and move on. If I get sick I don't blame others, I accept it and move on. If I have a relationship fail I don't blame others, I accept it and move on. While luck can play into those things luck is by definition uncontrollable. I can't blame others for bad luck and need to take the blame for the failure on my own.

It sounds like timmay is doing this. He is accepting that it was his decisions that caused the addiction and moving on to better himself and I commend him for this. Beating addiction is hard.

I don't have any confidence at all that I would succeed in beating any addiction, much less a drug addiction, and that lack of confidence is the primary reason I have never so much as touched a hard drug and remove myself from any situation where I learn they are present. I am extremely fearful that I will get addicted so avoid it at all costs.



Note: My belief that people should take responsibility for their personal failures is NOT incongruous with the belief that we should help people who fail. There should be some basic social safety nets provided by the government and I think government funded drug treatment centers are within that net. As far as healthcare goes, I think that is even a clearer cut decision and Universal Healthcare is not only important but an obligation (that we are not currently meeting). With regard to poverty, UBI also seems like a reasonable burden to place on a society as a whole.

Yeah I'll be honest I'm not very empathetic or even sympathetic to addicts. Which is kinda ****ed up given my past and how many people I grew up with who have issues and some are even dead.

If you think you don't have the will power to stop you're simply just in denial about how much you love doing whatever it is youre addicted to and would rather make excuses for yourself.

The fact is that those who habitually relapse or develop problems prefer it. They prefer it over not being lol. If they truly wanted to not drink then theyd stop drinking. But they dont want to stop drinking. They want to keep drinking. They love it. It has little to do with them having a lack of will power or choice.

I did drugs until I didnt want to do them anymore and then I stopped doing them. If I wanted to start doing them again then I could/would.

The key to solving this "crisis" is making peoples lives better so that not using>using.

I think you drastically underestimate how much willpower and desire is necessary to beat an actual physical addiction. junkies literally cannot function without opiates. most alcoholics never get to the stage where withdrawal is necessary. and coke/crack arent physically addictive.

For 90% of addicts, they're not going to get clean unless they truly want to get clean. If internal motivation isn't there, no amount of external motivation will commit them to staying away from the drug.

What was being described was people who get clean and then keep relapsing. Thats not physical dependence. Thats the fact that they really love getting high and make a decision either actively or subconsciously that using>>>not using.

I would go much further and say that addicts are not getting clean unless they want to get clean more than anything they have ever wanted in their life.

Timmay,

Congrats.

I think it might be educational for a lot of posters in this thread to read up on how different an addict's brain works as opposed to someone who has no addiction problem.

Any form of addiction is fueled by the brain's reaction to stimuli and some people got the **** end of the stick, whether it's gambling, online porn, alcohol or drugs. In the case of drugs, it is very easy to end up with physical addiction as well. Sadly, I have first hand experience with that aspect from the use of prescription benzodiazepines (which I was given for a chronic neurological disorder I suffer from. It didn't take that long for the coldsweats, etc. to start happening either.

Benzo WD is no joke. Glad you made it.

Is there a more worthless news item than the doomsday clock?

My responses would be some form of these as well. Thanks for the well wishes everyone and congrats on kicking the benzos. I was always a cocaine guy rather than a pill (unless it was ecstasy lol) guy, but I’ve heard benzo withdrawal can be among the worst.

There is a slight difference between alcoholism and drug addiction imo and reasonable people will surely disagree and that’s fine. For me: I was born an alcoholic. I never once had a choice of would I or would I not become an alcoholic - it was just going to be a manner of how much and when it manifested. I made myself a drug addict due to some poor planning/choices, some already quite obvious addictive tendencies, and through repeated overuse of said drugs. I didn’t start out a drug addict and and can (and have) enjoy drugs somewhat responsibly at times (mostly early in my drug addiction) - which was never the case with alcohol. Both are a disease of the brain and body - but for me, if I made better choices I probably wouldn’t have gotten into harder drugs as much as I did, which I’m still working on. The alcoholism was already predetermined. There’s some disagreement even among alcoholic and addicts here, but it’s what I believe currently.

The fact that we are able to have this convo without anyone having the super hot take of “F ADDICTS THEY’RE WORTHLESS” is encouraging as it’s not something that could have happened probably even ten years ago. I understand why some people can’t feel much empathy for alchs/addicts. I don’t agree with it all - but I get it for sure.

Everyone deserves some empathy since no one chooses to be who they are.

That is the closest I will ever come to 100% agreeing with a pwns political post assuming it’s not in jest which is possible.

I'm sure you can find some news outlets somewhere talking about the text messages of people you've never heard of without too much effort.

Also, literally every WH press briefing that doesn’t have comedic value (so pretty much post Spicey) applies.

A country full of fat people lacking the willpower to lose weight and get healthy whining about drug/alcohol addicts and their lack of willpower to kick their habits is pretty ridiculous.

I'd love to lose 20-25 pounds (current BMI is 26.0) but it's apparently beyond me since I'm unable to give up sugar and empty carbs. That's literally all I have to do because when I'm able to stay away from sugar and empty carb snacks for a couple weeks I lose weight really fast... and then it all comes back just as fast when I fall off the wagon.

It's not just that, but the fact that there's many unknowns. We don't know so much about the brain, development, etc. It's hard to say how at fault someone is for their own issues.

wat

free will is an ILLUSION man

That has been said or implied zero times in the entirety of this discussion. Stay super snarky about serious life or death issues tho.

I personally don't believe in free will but that's kind of outside the fact people are clearly pretty limited in how much they can change who they are, for now at least.

Two different concepts.

And of course just general circumstances of where your born and all that jazz.

While free will is a thing to an extent for sure, pretty much nailed it. These two concepts aren’t really exclusive.

Without speaking to your circumstances, in general if it's not a permanent life change someone wants to make there isn't much reason to do it I don't think (specifically for binge dieting). I do think how to get people to generally be healthier (and I'd argue happier) is a good topic.