Unfortunately, people who have experienced addition are going to have a hard time understanding your position.
I too do not suffer from these kinds of habits directly or even through close family or friends, so other readers forgive me if I'm falling short of level-headed understanding here.
The question you seem to be asking is "Why isn't moderation an option" and addiction is, in part, the inability to moderate. Maybe you can't relate to that, but for somebody that has that inability, participating in any amount of the activity they have difficulty moderating is flirting with ruin. They use all of their ability to form and practice moderation habits on just avoiding taking the first step.
Their reality is very much different from yours or mine, the risks and rewards are entirely changed. Like airgapping an unpatched OS that's gone out of support and which hosts business-critical data, only an absolute countermeasure will suffice.
It's not a flippant response, but I would certainly consider yours to be. You have never suffered from addiction, therefore your frame of reference is skewed, but forgivable.
Having never suffered addiction you physically and psychologically cannot understand the affliction. It controls your thoughts, your body, your actions and decisions. It has costs well beyond every night drinking- costs paid in broken marriages, lost friendships and worse.
Pointing out that you have never suffered from addiction is not flippant. It is in response to a lot of what you have already written. You don't know the pain of which you are so dismissive, far apart from the 'coldness' of text. You express yourself and your understanding very well, and your words are sharp.
I think you don't understand what "flippant" means. The parent's response was certainly flippant. He displayed a (to borrow the phrase from dictionary.com) frivolous disrespect for my curiosity and questions.
I would absolutely agree that my frame of reference is different (I wouldn't say "skewed"; that's a bit of a weird and disrespectful way of putting it), but I'm asking questions with the intent to try to understand better what people who have struggled with addiction have to go through to get better.
You accuse me of being dismissive, but I am anything but: I am asking questions trying to understand the forces at work here. The parent was very dismissive of me and my effort to understand.
Let's teach by example here.
Dismissive: I think addiction isn't real because I've never experienced it.
Dismissive: I'm going to imply that your questions are stupid and invalid just because you haven't experienced what we're talking about.
Not dismissive: [pretty much everything I've said up till now]
Your attitude continues to be less than stellar. You act like a babe in the woods who has no frame of reference and only innocently asks questions to further educate yourself. From my perspective, you condescend, and continue to do so. You are a member of society, presumably older than sixteen, and so you very well know how pointed this line of questioning can be.
Perhaps my uncalled-for overreaction is due to the loss I've experienced at the cost of addiction, from my own mistakes and mistakes made around me. For me there has been a significant loss of life both in my immediate family and friends.
HN is a pretty weird place to ask these questions, and I understand perfectly well what flippant means- thanks for not being dismissive or condescending.
I admit I may overreact, but only because I find your questions- especially the way you responded to be- to me disingenuous.
Though I should never discourage someone from learning, and judging by my reaction i see why anonymity and text are the right place.
(i can tell that i overreacted, and responded emotionally and strangely. I am bipolar on top of addiction issues and reading this post back to myself it's apparent. I'm being an ass. I'm leaving my post because maybe my broken train of thought can be a bit of a learning experience? i'm sorry i am so rude.)
Thanks for explaining. I'm just trying to get the point across that I just don't understand, but would like to. I happen to think that HN is a pretty reasonable and normal place to engage in discussions about these sorts of things, so it seemed natural to me to ask.
I can only ask you to believe me when I say I'm not being disingenuous here: I am genuinely curious about all this stuff, especially since I have no first- or even second-hand experience with it. I am sorry if I come off as somewhat clinical or detached... as I mentioned and we all know, it's very hard to get tone across via a medium like this.
The problem with alcohol (and a lot of drugs) is that being intoxicated also impacts your judgement. Ever had a few drinks and thought "I can barely feel this", then after you sober up your like "wow, I was actually drunk".
That's why it's hard for an alcoholic to control their drinking. Having only a drink or two is easy to say when you're sober, but easy to excuse after the alcohol has kicked in.
I have struggled with addiction, and I don't understand it either.
A person of the right frame of mind can reduce their intake to a point of normality. There is no difference between an alcoholic and a healthy person other than their temporary blood chemistry and a predisposition to drinking. Framing it as an on/off is a tactic used by those who don't believe in the ability of another to moderate volume.
Addicts are getting a different chemical brain reward from non-addicts. An addict drinking alcohol is not someone who just really really enjoys it, anymore than someone who is depressed is really sad.
I like - very occasionally - to put a few coins in to a fruit machine, or to wager on an event. But I don't get the addictive impulse from it, I don't have to fight the voice in my head, I don't get the rush followed by the shame, and I don't and I don't get the feeling of unstoppable momentum from it that marks an addiction. I'd be willing to bet if I did it more frequently that it'd get that way.
I'm wondering what the point of this reply is. It comes off as accusatory and obvious, given the comment you're replying to. Is having struggled with addiction a point of pride for you? I ask this as someone who's struggled with it. The person you're replying to went through a good deal of trouble to make it clear they weren't trying to be insensitive. It just seems kind of rude to someone who seemed to be genuinely trying to understand a horrible affliction.
I think the person I'm replying to used a lot of flowery language to say "Why can't you people just learn self control?" Invariably - because it's certainly not the first time I've heard it - there's an attached "(like me)" on the end of it. Next up: "I've never really understood why depressed people don't just try and make an effort to be happy"
