Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Most People with Addiction Simply Grow Out of It

substance.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 166 posts

Re: Most People with Addiction Simply Grow Out of It

#71

Post by wuliwong »

wuliwong wrote: post #62
lnanek2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen some ministries report a 50% success rate re curing addiction for people who join. So social recovery forms of drug treatment are very successful and might include things like exorcism and whatnot as part of belonging to the flock, I suppose. Sure, we know from science and Occam's razor that devils and gods probably don't exist, but that doesn't mean participating doesn't show proven benefits. Although the…

The problem with using Occam's razor to disprove the existence of some sort of god or spirit of the universe is that there isn't any explanation. Remember it's "the simplest explanation is usual correct." We really don't have any explanation, ultimately as to origins or what is really happening at a fundamental level. What are photons? What are electrons? What is space-time? This pesky big bang thing. And then you ha…

BTW, I feel like I always come across as a crazy person when I say this stuff but I really don't see a flaw in this. The basic premise is that there isn't going to be a logical explanation of "the universe." So, that seems to lead to the conclusion that any complete explanation will have to contain some illogical portion. I feel like once you accept that, all bets are off as far as feeling comfortable in our cozy little science bubbles.

Re: Most People with Addiction Simply Grow Out of It

#72

Post by Dylan16807 »

wuliwong wrote: post #56

Isn't it possible that the issue is in the difficulty in classifying people as "addicts" instead of concluding that most addicts just grow out of it? The alcoholics in my family do not grow out of it. To a man (or woman) they just deteriorate over the years and it is a very sad thing to watch. It seems possible that what the author had and what my family members have are two different afflictions. >Moreover, if addic…

There may be different fundamental types of addiction but what the author described sure sounded like 'addiction' to me.

Re: Most People with Addiction Simply Grow Out of It

#73

Post by wuliwong »

pessimizer wrote: post #37
andyl wrote: post #17

Yet another HN article that minimizes the perception that drugs can cause harm. Yes it is true that most people grow out of addiction. But many do not. In my circle I count four dead, many more damaged by drugs.

I can count 7 or 8 dead. I know more that died from things other than drugs, though.

Yea but there are a lot more "things other than drugs" than drugs, right? So, your stats make drugs sound very dangerous.

Re: Most People with Addiction Simply Grow Out of It

#74

Post by wuliwong »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #72
wuliwong wrote: post #56

Isn't it possible that the issue is in the difficulty in classifying people as "addicts" instead of concluding that most addicts just grow out of it? The alcoholics in my family do not grow out of it. To a man (or woman) they just deteriorate over the years and it is a very sad thing to watch. It seems possible that what the author had and what my family members have are two different afflictions. >Moreover, if addic…

There may be different fundamental types of addiction but what the author described sure sounded like 'addiction' to me.

Right, like the fundamentally different types being:

1. The kind that goes away. 2. The kind that just keeps getting worse.

for instance?

Re: Most People with Addiction Simply Grow Out of It

#75

Post by vacri »

By age 35, half of all people who qualified for active alcoholism or addiction diagnoses during their teens and 20s no longer do

And half don't. That's still a huge number, and they're not "simply growing out of it" two decades later. "Just wait a couple of decades, you might get better" is a crappy position to take.

And "chronic" means "recurring", not "permanent for the rest of your life". You can have a chronic problem that goes away after a while.

Re: Most People with Addiction Simply Grow Out of It

#76

Post by wuliwong »

Mz wrote: post #11

FYI: I don't entirely agree with this article. But I posted it in part because I seriously loathe the AA "disease" model. My dad drank heavily when he was in the army. He fought in the front lines of two wars. I think he did it at least in part so he could sleep because alcohol helps suppress dreams (and, thus, also nightmares). About four years after he left the army, he swore off alcohol and basically never touched…

It's not AA's disease model. AA isn't a medical organization.

Re: Most People with Addiction Simply Grow Out of It

#77

Post by Dylan16807 »

benbreen wrote: post #13
calpaterson wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's explicitly named in Philosophy of Mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_theory_of_mind

Thanks for the link - although I'm referring more to the (potentially false) analogy with present-day digital computers as opposed to the claim that the brain is a type of computational instrument, which is hard to find fault with. It's interesting how different eras apply their own en vogue technologies to understanding the mind. (I.e. Descartes and other late 17th and 18th c. thinkers visualized mental functions as…

I don't think these analogies really go that far. It's more along the lines of switches and wires, which as far as I'm concerned is a simpler model than clockwork, or the hydraulics gmarx mentioned.

The analogy doesn't really go into mechanism, it just talks about routing and activation.

Re: Most People with Addiction Simply Grow Out of It

#79

Post by Mz »

DanBC wrote: post #68
Mz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting. If you or anyone else wants to do the math, the only thing I tolerate okay is Kahlua. So I was generally having either mudslides at Applebee's or Kahlua Cappuccino at Red Lobster (often with an extra shot -- two drinks with an extra shot each is four shots of alcohol). According to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahl%C3%BAa : Since 2004, the alcohol content of Kahlúa is 20.0% (21.5% alc. i…

I was using Wikipedia to get the size of a US shot of 89 for a double and 44 ml for a single. The sum to get UK units is: Serving size in litres * ABV value So 44 ml * 4 shots * 26.5 abv / 1000 conversion from ml gives 4.5 units per day. A doctor (and obviously I am not a doctor) might ask you to cut back a bit, but that level of drinking is normal. Did you feel urges to drink other than those shots? Did you experien…

Like I said, I wasn't struggling with alcohol. I was struggling with a health crisis. I never thought of myself as alcoholic. But I was drinking daily for a while there, which is part of why I say I think some folks would view it as alcoholism.

It was a long time ago. I was also sometimes on medication, I was in a whole lot of pain, horribly sick, etc. So my memory of the details isn't exactly perfect here. Thus, I can't say how often I had the equivalent of four drinks per day vs 1-3 drinks or how long the 4 drinks level lasted (in terms of weeks/months). I do know it started at one drink and went up over time, which is another thing that would make a lot of folks go "Yup! Alcoholism!" I just know that for about a year, it was relatively rare for me to not drink alcohol at some point during the day because when I didn't, I was in tremendous pain and could not sleep. I did try different things, including vodka, and I vaguely recall getting seriously drunk at one time with some ... liqueur of some sort. (Again, I imagine that would look damning to some folks.) But what ended up working for me was Kahlua, usually with dinner.

Thank you for doing the math.

Re: Most People with Addiction Simply Grow Out of It

#80

Post by Dylan16807 »

wuliwong wrote: post #74
Dylan16807 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There may be different fundamental types of addiction but what the author described sure sounded like 'addiction' to me.

Right, like the fundamentally different types being: 1. The kind that goes away. 2. The kind that just keeps getting worse. for instance?

If I get H1N1 flu with pneumonia, I might get worse and die or I might get better, but there's only one fundamental type.

You can't reliably classify based on outcome.

Post reply on HN