> Alcoholism seems to run in the males in my family (with the exception of my dad and me, strangely), so this sadly wasn't even really something completely unexpected.
Indeed, familial alcoholism is suspected to be a complex genetic trait (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4056340/). As for why you and your father seem to have been spared by that... if I may ask, did you two have access to mental health care and use it? A common theory in addiction research is the "self-medication hypothesis" (https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/dune-and-the-second-co...) - basically, that people accidentally discover during experimenting with drugs that the drugs help with mental or physical health issues.
Well, we've had health insurance for my entire life so I guess we had "access" to it, but as far as I know my dad never used it, and I didn't see a psychiatrist until I was 26 (and I wasn't drinking much before that, certainly not enough to be considered an alcoholic). He certainly didn't have access to it until he finished school, growing up in a relatively poor family.
I think at least in my dad's case, he saw how much his dad's alcoholism screwed things up, and decided that he was going to try and avoid that fate no matter what, sort of using his dad as an example of "what not to do." As I was growing up, I think I saw my dad drink a grand total of four glasses of wine, all of which were done on different New Years events, and never enough to get "drunk" or anything like that. As he's gotten older (and as his kids have all grown up), he's relaxed on that a bit and I will occasionally see him drink slightly more frequently, but I think that habit of sobriety has been somewhat ingrained into him at this point.
A few years ago I worked a project with a young foreigner who didn't drink and actively spoke out against it as - in his description - the cause of much dysfunction in his country. Politics aside, I was actually inspired by someone significantly my junior to reconsider my attitudes. What if I took a leaf out of the self-improvement culture and just tried it? It might be too much for a lot of people to simply not drink. Life circumstance counts for a lot, but my life no longer includes socializing in venues where alcohol is served so it actually wasn't too hard to stop.
But maybe we can change things on a larger level. Create a society where heroin isn't as appealing by comparison. Where there are spaces for socializing that aren't about social competition, or at least one where there are more distinct and equally good ways to "win". Maybe one where, if you fall, you don't have to carry the guilt that your family will be dragged down with you.
I was lucky enough to grow up with the historical teetotaller community, since my grandfather was a leader of sorts in it. They used to be very adamant on seeing alcohol use (and of course drug use) as a social problem, not an individual one born out of "weakness of will" or genetic factors. They quite deliberately tried to create new social arenas without alcohol, and cultivate a sense of community and common purpose which could make it more than yet another arena for social competition. But they quite literally couldn't keep up with the times. The social venues they made were of types that were extremely popular in their day, but are exotic at best today (e.g. lodges). And along with the rest of society, they gradually embraced AA's medicalized, individualized understanding of alcoholism, turning the message from one of collective self-defense ("we're building this to defend ourselves as a community from the scourge of alcohol") to one of sympathy with the medicalized Other ("We're abstaining out of solidarity with those individuals who will become alcoholics if they touch alcohol").
This is bullshit. People who want to beat their addiction and have the support from their immediate family are the demographic that most readily beats addiction.
When it comes to beating addiction, losing weight and all sorts of other things that require a lot of willpower having some personal motivation to do whatever it is plus a support network who can help you and encourage you is just about the most effective strategy. People care a lot more about doing hard things if they feel their family has a stake in it.
But it can be very costly on a human level, and there's still depressing outcomes.
It's not easy to run such family intervention initiatives. An old friend in my teetotaller org did it for a while, starting up family clubs after the design of a little known Yugoslav/Italian academic, Vladimir Hudolin.
There are things you can do, but they're not very effective and at best they help you and the ones closest to you. I'm saying, I think we should see it as a social problem more than an individual problem, and try to address it at the social level first and foremost. We'll likely always need rehab in some form, for humane reasons, but it's not possible to use it to paper over the deeper problems surrounding drug use. That's like replacing traffic safety with emergency medicine.
Literally every step of the way he could have done something. This is an unusually clear cut case of someone's actions leading to the outcome that they experienced.
There are attitudes that a community can express which will help or hinder, but there is no escaping that in this specific situation, to get a different outcome Jack had to make different choices.
I'm relatively neutral on drug addictions as a character flaw, it is very easy for me to believe there are people out there who would be making a logical choice to turn to a few moments of reliable pleasure in an otherwise miserable existence. I wouldn't touch hard drugs myself for fear that I would enjoy them. But, nevertheless, the only person who was in control of the outcomes here is Jack.
I don't much regret my drinking days because I had fun and met many people. But then I realized I want to do other things than just get drunk and get a hangover.
I think, based on my experience again, that AA with its confess your sins and label yourself an alcoholic may help some people. But I think it's best to think what you want to do and accomplish, in life. Then do that. No need to keep on repeating you are an alcoholic. You're no more alcoholic than anybody else I would say. It's just that you have decided to drink and keep on drinking. It's your choice.
The people at AA are by and large deeply broken, and trying to slowly reassemble their lives without crumbling under the weight of the knowledge - largely gained in sobriety - of the massive damage they have done to themselves and others, and returning to hide in addiction. This harm often includes the repeated abuse of their loved ones throughout their addiction, and their guilt is enormous. If they appear stuck, consider that at least they are stuck in a place where they are not drinking, which in most cases is an enormous improvement.
If you do not prefer the religious component what I would say to you depends on whether you are an addict or not. If you are an addict I would say you are in dire need of a serious dose of humility: admitting you are powerless and that you need the help of a higher being fits that requirement. If you are not an addict, you should really not attack an institution whose sole purpose is to help addicts. Just smile and nod.
For that to work, you have to suspend your critical faculties. There are no telepathic aliens. Angels don't exist.
I‘m fortunate enough to be able to keep my drinking level at a point that helps me socialize and enhance enjoyment (the occasional bottle of wine with friends and peers), but not above.
I‘ve also experimented with drugs in the past because I was just too curious, but in the end, I was lucky to not end up some place I didn‘t want to.
By now I’ve experienced that ability wasn‘t just personal strength, but also my predisposition and experiences.
That does‘t excuse anyone from not trying harder, but it was a sober reminder for me to see that addiction is a way steeper slope for some of us.
That's kind of the dividing line, though, isn't it? If it's your choice and you could choose otherwise, then you're not an alcoholic. Some people don't feel like it's a choice.
I think alcohol, tastes disgusting in general. It's fun to mix with other things to have a stronger effect, but I've always enjoyed everclear to accomplish that, which basically is just pure ethanol.
I never understood alcohol culture, bars, going out, etc.
And I always related that to not being "popular" or feeling calm in a new city or such. I think it's so strange to go to a place, have to wait in line, pay admission/cover, to talk to a bar tender that expects tips, and then pay extravagant costs for something that can be purchased cheaply anywhere else (yes, I understand the transaction/food/beverage/hospitality.)
Never will get it.
It is very obvious. It lowers inhibitions, causes euphoria, thus increasing the enjoyment of social interactions for many many people.
(1) https://drugabuse.com/featured/drug-and-alcohol-abuse-across...
He wasn't taken. He took himself. Exercise: Everytime you remove agency, reintroduce it.
"I am depressed". No, you are depressing yourself. "I am helpless". No, you are making yourself helpless. These are active processes. Let's get more controversial: "I am being bullied". No, you are letting people bully you.
I know this is harsh. I know the societal memes and phrases are the warm place. A sigh, the Soma of "Nothing can be done" or "Somebody needs to do something!!" is not a solution but paralysis.
You can read it in the article: The parents did everything for the addict, he did nothing himself. It didn't work out now, did it? Never does.
(Not absolving the Sacklers of their guilt, that is a separate issue)
You say you know it is harsh—that's already a reason not to do it here. Maybe "harsh" can do some good when there's already a strong relational connection with the other person. (Emphasis on maybe, because people who take harsh stances generally are paying more attention to their own ideas than to the person they're commenting on—but no doubt it does happen sometimes.) Here, however, you're broadcasting to thousands of people over the internet, with zero relational connection. In such a context, it's merely provocative and destructive, and one could even say selfish.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
I feel as if I did that. Maybe my writing comes across way differently, maybe my comments are not as direct as they could be - but if that is already too upsetting for this crowd, you will never get any actual critical comments. You will never arrive at any traction, at any truth. Too bad, I expected more here. My error.
Case in point:
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says
Nobody replying to me did that. Amazing.
I'm sorry - I don't mean to pile on! - but I don't think you did that. The comment didn't include interesting specific information; it was a moral hectoring. Those do not come across well on the internet.
> Nobody replying to me did that. Amazing.
Not amazing—quite predictable, given the provocation. In cases like this, the root comment bears the most responsibility. Here are some further explanations of what I mean by this, in case you or anyone want more:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28953253
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28932445
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27162386 (<-- long discussion with a user about a similar thing)
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
> Nobody replying to me did that. Amazing.
You worded everything in absolutes. If you ask people to take the strongest interpretation of that, you're asking them to just concede that you're right.
I think you actually seem to get it that there's something dangerous about identifying with the problem (e.g. I am depressed) but you're jumping to conclusions about agency from there. No one who replied wanted to make that leap, nor did you offer any compelling reason to do so.
Another argument against it, why not turn the mirror on yourself. Why are you not richer, stronger, more popular, happier? Maybe you are somewhat of all those things already, but a wild guess is that your not the strongest, richest, most famous and happiest person in the world. So why not, are you weak, lazy and shallow? Or, perhaps is the truth a bit more complicated?
I let a homeless man sleep in the hallway of my building. He took a shit in front of my door.
Now if I had seen the homeless as what they actually are, maybe weak, maybe helpless, but still people with agency who can be absolute assholes, that wouldn't have happened.
And I hate that this is overlooked. Maybe if the parents in the article wouldn't have fallen into this trap, their son would still be alive.
The assumption everyone downvoting seems to make is that I don't have compassion or as you do, I see them as "weak", "lazy" or "attention seeking" (notice how you are seeing them as that, not me).
I can have compassion and ask them to do their part. That actually solves the problem.
To be honest I'm not even sure how this new example relates at all. You're simply saying that people can do bad things, which I guess is true, though I don't see how that supports your argument. I don't think anyone was suggesting people have no agency, and can't possibly make any changes in their life, the suggestion is they don't have complete agency, and their life will always be governed by factors beyond their control. Taking your point, yeh, people can be assholes, but why? "Just because" isn't a proper answer, and if it is the same can be used to dispel your argument just as easily.
> notice how you are seeing them as that, not me
Hmmmm, not quite. Your whole argument rests on people refusing to make changes in their life for no apparent reason, and these are typically the words used. You didn't use them yourself, no, but I think it can be quite easily inferred, not least by the fact you called another commenter a coward. Again, following my argument, ask yourself why I thought you would think of them in those terms.
> That actually solves the problem.
Maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong. I suspect you're right in part, but things tend to be more complicated. Either way, thats not my point. My point is asking why they don't do their part, for example.
And there are people who make a good living keeping it exactly this way, making bank in the wake of the moral outrage of the "helpers".
They are. They also tend to have high rates of mental illness, which often is what leads them to live transient lives. Leaving them in your hallway unsupervised, though well intentioned, isn't the way to help them. It didn't backfire because people are assholes, it backfired because you operated on a faulty understanding of the situation
Have you actually done this, and did it solve the problem?
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
There is a reason every single person in their life abandoned them to sleep in the cold.
Not is it productive to misinterpret his comment as perpetuating a tired trope and then launch into an emotional rant against something that literally nobody here is supporting.
GP did make a fair point - learned helplessness does nothing but exacerbate your suffering, and taking agency and responsibility for your own mental state is the most effective way to improve things.
Whether the solution comes through lifestyle changes (leaving toxic environment), a simple change in viewpoint or SSRIs, labelling yourself as depressed or burned out and then succumbing to your new fate is never productive. I know this because I've experienced both.
Which everyone who reads it can clearly see, and understand that I saw that kind of language as a possible response to my question of "why?". I wouldn't say thats any kind of trickery on my part.
> Not is it productive to misinterpret his comment as perpetuating a tired trope and then launch into an emotional rant against something that literally nobody here is supporting.
Theres an irony to saying I "misinterpreted his comment" and then immediately doing the same to mine. It wasn't an "emotional rant", maybe a bit of a rant, but I'm not going to apologise for that. I'm not sure which tired trope I'm perpetuating.
> and the rest...
I think you're missing my point. Perhaps, to use your own words, I could even go further and saying your misinterpretting it and launching into an emotional rant.
My point isn't that people can't change their circumstances, or that self improvement is pointless. Its that so many factors govern these things that its a fantasy to believe anyone is in complete control.
You're not depressed because you just are and theres nothing more to be done, nor are you depressed because you make yourself depressed. Hence why I argued to keep asking why, if you truly believe that your depression is caused by yourself, ask why you would do that to yourself, and keep doing so until you find the true reason.
most people are social animals. it's easy to be an individualist if you have the trait and nigh impossible if you don't.
My background is a recovering asshole, partially failing, aka the son in the article.
What about Bipolar and Schizophrenia, do you think about them same as depression?
> "I am depressed". No, you are depressing yourself.
You're assuming a brain that's in good working order. It's difficult to imagine a different one. Consider that not everyone's window into consciousness works like yours does.
Are you asking why would they bring up a disease in a talk about what is commonly thought of as diseases, or are you asking something else?
> why are you deflecting
This is funny, because you are deflecting in your comment as well. If you feel like folks should not deflect, you should engage with what they say and then tell them to not deflect. Then it becomes more relatable, because it is not hypocritical :)
> chemical imbalance (it isn't)
Depression is a catchall term for many different problems. Some are well understood to be purely chemical (depression unrelated to thoughts, circumstances or environmental factors such as season or food), some are well understood to be environmental: That means "just stop removing agency" could be a way to tackle it, although it famously does not work for most people. Why do you suppose your answer does not suffice for most? Do you feel this is evidence of yet more weakness?
It seems to me you do not enjoy one-dimensional answers to your own thoughts, so why do you insist on having them about other people?
> who sells that pill
You might say the same thing about the smallpox vaccine: Someone sells it. Following your implied point: Perhaps this means that it is not a problem, clearly money changes hands so perhaps there is a profit motive (and potentially this means it is the only motive and potentially that means the requirements are fabricated. That is quite a leap!). While it is reasonable to follow such a thought process, perhaps in this case it does not suffice to follow it, recognise a potential problem and dismiss the original solution entirely. Mostly because if you talked to even-handed professionals (many of whom have similar concerns as yours, if a bit more nuanced by practical experience and what I would hesitantly call empathy), you might find that folks have considered these questions (and do every single day) and to this date they have not been answered in a way that provides a solution for every single case.
> He wasn't taken. He took himself. Exercise: Everytime you remove agency, reintroduce it.
I used the term "taken" as a rhetorical thing to ask a deeper question about cosmic unfairness. It makes no claims of level of responsibility and I feel like you knew this and just wanted to make a bizarre ramble about something you read in a bad self-help book.
> "I am depressed". No, you are depressing yourself. "I am helpless". No, you are making yourself helpless. These are active processes. Let's get more controversial: "I am being bullied". No, you are letting people bully you.
The hell does this have to do with my post exactly? I told a story about my cousin dying from a heroin overdose and you go off on (not even) a tangent about bullying or something.
Also, that's a pretty ridiculous thing to begin with. How are bullied people "letting themselves" be bullied? A kid that's bigger than them decides to physically hurt a kid smaller/weaker than them. What exactly is the smaller kid supposed to do? This isn't the god damn Karate Kid, life isn't a cheesy eighties movie, most of the time the kid just has to be bullied. It's not fair, it sucks, and victim blaming is not helping anything.
> Let's say depression is a purely biological problem, the chemical imbalance (it isn't), take a pill and be be healed! Right?
Depression is a blanket term for a lot of things, and is somewhat overloaded. Sometimes people just feel sad, and maybe telling them to get over it will work, but for people like myself with manic depression, it really isn't that simple. You can do any amount of exercise or dieting trying to suck it up, and everything will still feel hopeless, you'll still blame yourself for everything, you'll still catastrophize everything, you'll still yell at people who don't deserve it, and you'll still have to talk yourself out of bed every morning [1]. When that's the case, what exactly are you supposed to do? Are you disputing that those people exist?
Also, your hypothetical is completely absurd, there are plenty of things that have physiological causes that we can't just take a pill and be healed with. Do you think cancer is just an attitude problem? How about amputees? Are they just so stupid that they don't take a pill and be healed? What a strange and completely misinformed take.
I honestly feel bad for you. Whatever sequence of events led to this strange pseudo-edgelord hardass chud persona must have been tough.
[1] Not all depressed people and not all manic depressives. Describing my symptoms.
However, there are a lot of cases where things are out of someone's control and they're really helpless.
Like depression. Take a pill? No, it's wade through the medical system trying to find a doctor who will graciously grant you the magic paper. And if you don't find one, tough shit.
Then there's the case of a girl being chained and dying of dehydration, for which the accomplice wife of the ISIS piece of shit who did it got 10 years in prison. Not only was the girl helpless, she wasn't even helped by someone who could.
These two things made me reply. I probably shouldn't have, but whatever, we're all shitposting here.
Fast forward eleven years, on my twentieth birthday, and I had a realization: my cousin was the first person I had known that I outlived, and I felt this sudden sinking feeling. Why had I been spared when my cousin had been taken so young? Why did I get to spend more time on earth then he did? It's not like I was some sort of cosmically better human than him, I had been a dumb teenager who was just lucky enough to not have friends who were willing to talk me into doing drugs.
I started asking my parents about my cousin, and it made me somehow feel even worse when I found out that my cousin had a bit of a downward cycle with drugs throughout the tail end of high school, tried joining the army in the hope that it might straighten him out, it didn't, and just fell deeper and deeper until he eventually died. Alcoholism seems to run in the males in my family (with the exception of my dad and me, strangely), so this sadly wasn't even really something completely unexpected.
Addiction is tough, I feel really fortunate to have dodged that bullet. I can't even pretend to know what addicts to hard drugs are going through.