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Comment by sliverstorm | Hacker News Reader

Nobody is trying to protect people from themselves- they are trying to protect themselves, those close to them, and those unable to protect themselves. You may try to argue drugs are a purely personal experience, but anyone who had an alcoholic for a parent will tell you otherwise.

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Nobody is trying to protect people from themselves- they are trying to protect themselves, those close to them, and those unable to protect themselves.

It's not too often you see such a blatant contradiction in the same sentence.

This is why we have laws against murder, theft, rape, etc.

And note how little prohibition did to stop the existence of alcoholic parents. They were still around, but you had to deal with Spatz Columbo running around too, shooting up the place.

If you want to fix the alcoholic parent problem, create a society that reacts to them in a compassionate manner instead of throwing people in prison.

"If you want to fix the alcoholic parent problem, create a society that reacts to them in a compassionate manner instead of throwing people in prison."

Why, so we can continue to enable them? If you coddle someone and are compassionate, people will never stop.

Perhaps, dear sir, you could recognize that there is an entire spectrum of possibility that falls outside of the choices "coddle them" and "stomp on their necks with boots until they stop".

"Perhaps, dear sir, you could recognize that there is an entire spectrum of possibility that falls outside of the choices "coddle them" and "stomp on their necks with boots until they stop"."

The only way people ever stop is when they hit "rock bottom" and realize the terrible choices they are making. This usually means going to jail for at least a little while.

Yes, but you can still start by being compassionate. Being kind and loving isn't necessarily enabling. It may very well become it, but it isn't always enabling. Tough love is not generally the first step, and every single case is different and must be treated as such. Please remember this.

"Tough love is not generally the first step, and every single case is different and must be treated as such. Please remember this."

If you look at any documentary about addicts (or hear real doctors talking about it), it's the step families are FORCED to take because every other method just results in the addict thinking they can continue.

"Being kind and loving isn't necessarily enabling."

If I tried to be kind to my addict friends and tell them in a sweet voice that what they are doing is hurting themselves, they would tell me to fuck off. People aren't stupid. They know that being addicted to Meth, Coke, or Heroin is shitty and unhealthy.

Tough love is the kindest and most loving thing you can do for an addict. It just might save their life. If they know that the result of being an addict will mean that you might not talk to them again, they will think twice about shooting up.

These are details I did not know. I suspected it would come to that point in most cases, but perhaps not all. It was because of those "not all" cases that I wanted to give some people the benefit of the doubt, at least for the first. If it's an "all", or at least very close to it, as you're suggesting, then I understand the need and revoke those parts of my statement.

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