Just A Gentle Reminder....

100th post




...well move on

 

i'm not taking anyone to a liquor store. i don't even have a car. but if someone wants to kill themselves, that's their business, not mine.
more room in this world for the rest of us if more people did.

is that selfish? if they die happy and i live happy. besides, i'll be dead sooner or later too. we all will.

i'm really much more interested in the kind of world our behavior statistically creates, for ourselves and each other, to have to live in.

i just find places and the crafting of places and things, and i don't mean about owning them either, the only things i'm interested in owning are things i can make things with, more interesting then human personalities.

what i care about is the kind of world people have to experience living in, and how all of us are always part of making that world.

and really, we do far more good by not causing harm, then all the good we like to think we are doing, other then by just mutual consideration and how we treat each other.

 

I agree that if people have addictions to hard drugs or alcohol they would be better off quitting. The problem is that it's not easy, and in this country at least, not much real help is available these days unless you can pay to go to rehab.

I'd also point out that people engage in other types of activity which are dangerous, even life threatening such as hang gliding, riding motorcycles and so on, and society doesn't have a problem with that. I wonder if fucking yourself up by falling from a horse ridden only for pleasure is any more in tune with any alleged purpose of life.....

 

Are their friends and relatives wrong to want them to survive a while longer?

Addiction is a form of mental illness, not a lifestyle choice. Being a casual alcohol or drug user is a lifestyle choice. Addicts have lost control of the normal decision making process that the rest of us use.

 

An addict still has to choose to stop though, no one can make that decision for them.

 

Weird situation; hard to understand. They've lost the ability to make rational decisions about that one thing, yet they have to decide that something has to change, and that they need help doing it.

Both my family and my husband's family has lost somebody to addiction.

When I was a bartender, there's no way I would have served somebody who was known to me to be an alcoholic. I'm sure I served some, but I had no way of knowing, so I feel no responsibility. I've done a lot of questionable and controversial things in my lifetime, but none involving life and death issues, as far as I know.

Every bartender is made to understand that if you serve somebody too much and they go drive a car and kill a family of five, the bar can be liable for millions of dollars in damages, in addition to the moral responsibility. Most of us will flex the limits a little if we know the person isn't going to be driving for at least a few hours. It's all about what we know, and when we know it.

 

I'm sympathetic to the struggle

High risk behavior should perhaps be more discouraged by society.

There is, however, a fundamental difference between taking a risk and having an ongoing, and in most cases, worsening disease. Unnceccesary risk is bad, but if one survives the risk, there's no harm done. The harm of addiction is manifest in itself.

If someone had an infectious disease and didn't get it treated, or had a vampire bat attached to their neck that kept sucking their blood until they were dead, I'd feel the same way about it as I do about addictions.

 

You just can't make anyone do anything and, you may feel rightfully good about not enabling them...but that shouldn't be confused with actually stopping them or even helping them. It just means you feel like your hands are clean. I am very well aware of this from both sides of the fence and...you can't make them better. They have to want to be better or it won't work.

 

I think all addicts really want to get better, but the urge to feed their addiction in the present moment often supersedes their desire to be well in the future.

With many addictions, the only thing on the addicts mind is how to get more of what they are addicted to. They don't think like they would have had they not become addicted.

 

every bar has those few people that are just there drinking half the hours the bar is open. i don't think any of them are non-alcoholics. how do you avoid serving them?

 

i don't try to judge if a story is true or not. i just consider it a form of entertaining for donations. if its true, and it all could be, life happens. all of us are only passing through. whatever situation we're in at one time, and another one some other time. and if its not, well a story is still an art form. if i have to be somewhere or something it can be annoying. but when i have the time, and i usually do, then its better then television. i'm not a great fan of drama though, and i try not to get to involved emotionally. and if someone wants to rob me of thinking my own thought and believing my own beliefs, and dreaming my own dreams, that's the same if they're rich, poor or whatever they're angle might happen to be. so if it happens a lot, that's annoying.

 

Agreed. From my perspective though, it's similar to suicide. If someone is determined to kill themselves, my not handing them a loaded gun isn't going to keep them from killing themselves. I'm still not going to hand them a loaded gun.

 

It's put in a context. If you single that line out it can perhaps look quite inhumane and void of empathy but it actually isn't.

 

I guess people explode like that because, they think they are using money for other things that wouldn't benefit them in a way the doesn't involve getting intoxicated.
When I was younger, I didn't know that this is what people on the street often do.
I'm still unsure time it's really something that happens often. I mean, I'm sure it happens though.

Hopefully you cheated that man up

 

That's a good alternative way to make a point I was trying to make the other day. Not being in a position to solve a problem doesn't give us a moral free pass to actively participate in making it worse.

I've been in civic meetings where there were speakers from various downtown charities, the police, and city government, who all said, "PLEASE don't give cash to street people! It's undermining everything we're trying to do downtown!"

The classic dysfunctional pattern in America is that a city spends millions to improve a few decaying blocks downtown, trying to make it a nice area where ordinary people will want to go and do things. The homeless alcoholics and long-term drug addicts figure out that's where the money is, and they invade in numbers. Success makes them bolder; more aggressive and confrontational. That chases off a lot of middle class people. Shops and restaurants close up, and the area goes back to being a worthless, mostly empty crime area. And... none of those homeless people are any better off than they were before.

I wish more people would seek out experienced workers who deal with the homeless in their town on a daily basis, and find out what's really going on, and what's needed to make the situation better. They have a lot of stories to tell.

 

it doesn't give us an obligation to participate in it in any manor.

but whatever you do or don't, everything you can imagine, and at least as many as you can't, someone somewhere is going to do anyway.

sorry, but as long as we're talking about facts of life, that just plain happens to be one of them.

we are all influenced, usually without realizing it, by each others example.

the best thing you can do, for the most people you can, is to set what you consider to be, the best example you can.

messing with people's beliefs isn't that much different then handing them a loaded gun.

but i would like people to be a little more honest with themselves, whatever wonders or horrors they may have personally experienced,
and that doesn't mean what those who worship economic hierarchy, among other things, try to convince us to pretend that it does either.