Don't Quit Drinking. | Hacker News Reader

Don't Quit Drinking.

7 pointsseanhandley5 comments

After reading this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485673), I have some thoughts.

I'm all for taking control of your own destiny but the language often used to describe overcoming bad habits and addictions denotes an attitude of detachment from the core of the problem: yourself.

Alcohol does not make you into a problem. You make yourself into a problem. It's like being stuck in traffic; you're not stuck in traffic, you are traffic.

Whether it's alcohol, tobacco, porn, reading Mills and Boon novels, playing 2048, or watching daytime TV - you shouldn't blame your habits on anything or anyone but yourself.

You don't have a drinking problem. You are a drinking problem.

Grow up. Be accountable to yourself. Don't externalise blame.

No, you aren't "yourself" in any sense that you could meaningfully account for. Whatever substrate lies below yourself is not accountable to you, and in all likelihood neither to itself or to anything else. Yet it is this unconscious substrate that is somehow responsible for most of what you do, without being accountable for what it does--only you may take the blame. There is little sense beating yourself up for biological processes in no sense under your control, though there may be a biological process beyond your control that, for no reason, predisposes you to assume you ought to be held responsible and to blame yourself when you lose control.

"You don't have a drinking problem. You are a drinking problem." - funny way of putting it.

Though I highly recommend Roger Scruton's "I Drink Therefore I Am", one of my favorite lectures in moderation and also a great philosophical exposition.

Sounds like you are externalising your own insecurities.

Can you articulate that any further?

Yes, alcohol is not a problem per se, it's how you use it. So? That's no reason not to stop drinking if that helps.

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