Hacker News Reader

Comment by betenoire | Hacker News Reader

That's not helpful at all. Yes, addiction is "filling" "something" "broken". Now what?

It is extremely helpful. It is very incovenient, to be sure, but it is very helpful. If you want people to not use drugs, then you have to provide them with a fulfilling life or the opportunity for such. If your desire is to operate a society that grinds people down, restricts them in ways that feel burdensome to them, insults them, and also does not have people using drugs? You might as well wish to fly. Because your wish is as realistic, and as worthy of ridicule.

It comes down to whether you want to stop people using drugs because you don't like that they get happy so easy, or whether you want people to stop using drugs of their own accord and have happy lives. If it's the second - help.

Never mind people who get addicted after being prescribed medication for an injury, then? Never mind that the new generations of opioids were marketed as safer/less addicting when they probably were more addicting, and thus prescribed even more out of perception of their safety?

Althogh this has certainly become the narrative of late, TFA seems to discount this fairly strongly;

"To that point, pain treatment is not the most significant risk factor for addiction. Far greater risk comes from simply being young and from using alcohol and other recreational drugs heavily. Ninety percent of all drug addictions start in the teens — and 75 percent of prescription opioid misuse begins when (mainly young) people get pills from friends, family or dealers — not doctors. Opioids are rarely the first drug people misuse."

There's a difference between "is not the most significant factor" and "is not a factor at all". The latter is what's being implied by the comment chain I responded in.

And whether or not it is the most, least, or somewhere in the middle, risk factor, makes no difference in treatment. The article is about effective treatment for that addict and TFA suggests medication. It does not suggest addressing addiction issues, except as mean to getting the addict into actual treatment.

Filling voids and seeking happiness aren't mentioned in TFA.

I don't know that we can say that teenage substance abuse in parties is a symptom of some "void" either.

This is not true in the general sense. If I take a pill that my doctor prescribes, I run the risk of becoming addicted.

Now you put it on me and my happiness? Not helpful either.

You focus on the actual problem rather than the previous false causes of addiction. In the past, we've blamed the addict's moral character and will power and, more recently, we've tried to look at addiction through a purely physiological lens where we believed we only needed to break the dependence. Guess what happened...most people relapsed or fell into some other self-destructive behavior. Human beings are just not able to live in a mostly-detached state.

Our improved understanding recognizes the need for human-to-human connection. We're realizing that substances are serving as substitutes for people who are lacking that genuine connection in their lives. Just removing the substance will create a void that will quickly get refilled, either by a relapse, another substance or something else that isn't productive.

And it's a mistake to think of this as solely a substance abuse problem. There are many other ways that people self-medicate. Television, the Internet and smartphones are all "relationships" that we lean on when we're not getting enough of the genuine kind that we crave. We like to blame this opioid epidemic on overprescription of these drugs, but we're making a huge mistake if we ignore everything about our society that has created so many human beings who are so detached from each other that they become addicted to these things.

Right. I get that and agree. The article is about the effective way to actually help with heroin addiction. The comment I replied to said, "An addiction tries to replace a void in someone's life. Chances are big the environment of the addicted played a role in cerating[sic] the void."

"Chances are" he's identified a vague cause? I'm not saying he's wrong, but that it doesn't help an addict to point that out. And again, the article is all about effectively helping the addict.

I don't think we disagree except for in the intent of my original comment.

Now you address the environmental factors that created the void in the first place, such that the drugs are no longer desirable. See: Rat Park.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

Also, downvoted for needlessly confrontational pedantry.

I'm sorry you felt I was being confrontational. But I stand by it. Telling someone there is a reason for what they are going through, then saying, "now find it and fix it" is NOT helpful.

I sincerely believe that anyone that thinks pointing out the obvious to an addict will help has not actually done it. And I consider "It's something in your environment" to be obvious, true, and totally not actionable.

Furthermore, the idea that addiction is necessarily filling a void is, to be blunt, bullshit.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15243828

I didn't say any of that, addressing the context in which people become addicted is actionable and valuable, and I'm bowing out of this conversation.

I was replying to the second part of your comment, where you accused me of pedantry for some reason. I'm explaining to you why I commented that "it's the environment" wasn't helpful, in spite of your downvote.

peace out :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com