"They have peed on their last couch" Hilarious
Nope, alcoholism is not hilarious. It's pretty sad.
At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death
41–50 of 84 posts
Re: At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death
#42My step brother's uncle was an alcoholic for ~25 years (off and on for 25 years? I don't know how this works). He joined the native American church, where he presumably used peyote, and the alcoholism eventually went away and he is now happy. I am by no means read on the subject, just some first hand experience seeing someone crawl out of a pit of despair. It's unfortunate that this avenue isn't researched or condone…
"It's unfortunate that this avenue isn't researched or condoned much."
Right now MAPS.org is doing an observational study of Pangaea Biomedics, one of the more famous ibogaine clinics in Mexico. Claire Wilkins (who runs it) gave a pretty amazing talk at Horizons this year, which you can watch here:
Re: At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death
#43I don't think I have a problem with it yet, because I'm rationalizing. It somehow makes sense. I'm not sure I would feel the same if someone I cared for decided this would be the solution to their problem though. I suspect many people will feel similarly. If my suspicions are correct, I wonder if we're witnessing a paradigm shift about problems such as alcoholism, drugs and homelessness. Are we as a society beginning…
Try thinking of it like this ...
Every life has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Some lives are very short, a few are very long, and most somewhere in the middle of the curve (something the insurance companies call the actuarial).
Everyone wants to live as long as possible, but how you get from beginning to end varies widely. What works for me, may not work for you. Trying to impress one social groups idea of 'proper lifestyle' is what causes most of the problems in America (possibly elsewhere) today.
There are times, when a little bit of the problem, is a better cure than all the societal enforced behavioral change. For the most part, we really are smart people.
Re: At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just told you I was not trying to be literal. I used the term because the assumption is that HN is for good hackers in the sense that it is employed in the guidelines, intellectually curious people. Obviously this is seriously bugging you. Would you be happy if I remove the term? As far as the article being off-topic. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sp…
Yes, the thinking that "it must be hacker news because lots of people voted for it" bothers me. This thread is worth perusing: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2235206
Looking at that thread, I think I understand what's going on, which was really not very clear from your intervention. I thought you were being petty about terminology.
I could not understand why you were bugging me for my use of the term good hackers, when the obvious main point to be made was, if yes or no the article was, in fact, HN material, which I felt and continue to feel it is.
Many of us haven't been around this site as long as some of the people raising their concerns in the thread you pointed me to. We don't know what it was like in the old days, our only compass for what makes a good HN post is the guidelines, which can be interpreted subjectively in many situations ([...]That includes more than hacking and startups[...], [...]anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity[...]). Some of the best articles that I've found on this site snuggly fit within those characteristics (e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978295). I believe the current one to have some of those same characteristics, because it highlights an out-of-the-box approach to a problem so very uncommon in the mainstream. 4 days ago I was chatting about homelessness with my business partner, and we were discussing hypothetical solutions to fix it, or at least make it less of a problem and reasons why they would or wouldn't work and some of our solutions were pretty much along those lines and also raised some ethical/moral questions. We're both programmers and though this is arguably not hacker material, we're also entrepreneurs and our ideas often stem from these little discussions that help us look beyond the status quo.
It seems from the thread that you posted that some old timers are trying to get HN to fit back into its old box. I'm still unsure if it would have much appeal to the kind of topics I'm referring to. If their veteran status grant them a say in the direction of HN, I can only suggest to push for clearer guidelines.
Btw, I cannot remove the good hackers from the original post to the thread, it appears that the "edit" timer has expired.
Re: At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death
#45My first job in a hospital (I'm an ER nurse ) in 1993 was as an ER tech at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis. After welfare checks came out at the beginning of the months, we would have literally dozens of homeless alcoholics lining the hallways of the ER, sometimes stacked in gurneys along the wall, three deep. The beginning of the month, people would drink hard liquor. Middle of the month, cheap grain a…
Great story; thanks.
Re: At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death
#46I don't like to think anyone is hopeless. That's because to be truly hopeless requires mathematical certainty, which usually isn't possible in the real world. In the real world, we don't know everything; there are always unknowns. Where there are unknowns, there is a chance; there is hope.
Giving love and care and respect to these alcoholics... I would expect that that might help some of them to recover. The article doesn't mention it, but I wonder if some do recover.
It certainly seems economically justifiable. Which doesn't necessarily make it right, since an economic analysis doesn't take into account all the factors. A society that starts to classify some people as hopeless and give up on them, may gradually widen its definition of hopeless. Whereas some of the greatest benefits and victories for society seem to come from goals that seemed impossible, aka hopeless.
If we undermine that, we will be the worse for it.
Re: At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death
#47I wonder how much of the $18K per resident cost is defrayed by taxes on the liquor they are drinking (though Listerine as mentioned in the article as something some drink, would only have sales tax on it).
Note that one of the men has a 20-mile bike route for collecting cans - be interesting to know, despite his alcoholism, what kind of physical shape he is in. Surely he burns off some of the bad effects of drinking via exercise?
Re: At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death
#48Interesting. I can see how it would be appealing to long-time alcoholics (the "endless optimism" would get pretty sickening). Not entirely sure what my stance is on it, though - it's essentially long-term non-profit euthanasia. It's what they want, but it's also what they want because they're addicted and it's re-wired their brain so drastically they'll do just about anything to keep feeding it. On the flip side, reh…
I want to know if someone actually stops drinking being in there. I mean if they viscerally feel death and don't actually wish it...
I seem to recall a story about this place, or a similar one, where a couple residents decided to sober up after "living the dream" (free booze for life!) and still not finding happiness. Many more tho drank themselves to death there.
Re: At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death
#49Why precisely is this Hacker News material?
I see it like this:
I could read this article, about an interesting and unusual approach to a common problem. It seems to cost less than the previous solutions, and help those affected.
Or i could read:
\* 5 Amazing Vim tips (all of which are covered in your average vim tutorial)
\* Why I like $LISP_VARIANT (and you should too!)
\* Usability rant suffering from tragic flaw #1 (giving up power for instant understanding).
\* Some fluff piece about how "our startup is great and unique because we worked really hard and didn't like the big corporate structure!".
for the 10,000th time each. Which is more likely to benefit me?
Re: At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death
#50I find the rationalization that this is a cheaper alternative to be morally abhorrent. Why not make it even cheaper and euthanize them at the door?