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I'm an addict in long term recovery, and I hang out with lots of addicts trying to get or stay clean. Obviously this crowd has problems! But what's interestin

I'm an addict in long term recovery, and I hang out with lots of addicts trying to get or stay clean. Obviously this crowd has problems! But what's interesting is that as I've been making friends who aren't addicts, they have problems that are every bit as messed up as the recovery crowd. There are two main differences, though: "normal" people are much more committed to hiding their problems (I feel as though I only learn about them because people assume I won't judge them), and normal people don't recognize that their unhappiness is a solvable problem. Furthermore, most of them aren't really into the solutions: a leveling of ego and pride, humility, rejection of desire and attachment, and living for something greater than themselves. Addicts, of course, have no choice -- we either develop the skills and tools needed to be happy enough to stay clean, or wallow on in the misery of drug addiction, often to an untimely death. It's kind of sad, but I have no idea how to convince normal people that they can be happier by changing themselves instead of acquiring things or relationships or any other external thing they think will finally make them happy. I feel as though erikpukinskis' comment about capitalism is a big part of the problem, but I'm not sure how to use that observation to help more people be happy. Edit: C'mon HN, we're smart -- ideas on solutions to these problems are better than upvotes :-)

late2part 11y ago
Makes me think that everybody's journey deserves respect.
- onetwotree 11y ago
  Indeed.
firebones 11y ago
Answering your edit: don't people have to come to this conclusion on their own, rather than be "convinced"? Doesn't someone have to pass through some period of anhedonia, and the realization that "things" aren't going to make them happier, before they can start to see the structure that will help? If so, and if your desire is to help normal people, I guess your choices are to a) find a strategy that sells anhedonia against the formidable marketing budget of pretty much everyone, everywhere in this culture, or b) capture them on the other side and offer them the structure they need to build a life after anhedonia. 75% of these Robert Pirsig quotes [1] seem relevant, in some way. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10799124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10799124
- dasyatidprime 11y ago
  Which Robert Pirsig quotes did you mean again? That link seems to be for this article itself.
  - spooningtamarin 11y ago
    “The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.” “The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself.” “Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships.” These talk a little bit about self-improvement, or that knowledge is not understanding. Telling someone that new relationships aren't going to help, that acquiring new stuff won't help, is just giving them your personal knowledge/wisdom but you can't give them understanding.
- onetwotree 11y ago
  This is certainly how most people reach happiness, a conclusion supported by more than a few thinkers (Kierkegaard comes to mind). But is this really the only way? In AA we like to emphasize that there's no such thing as "hitting rock bottom". That is, even if you haven't lost everything, you can have the foresight to stop drinking and get your shit together, and recognize the necessity of changing yourself. That said, most people, myself included, have to hit quite a few rock bottoms before we get the point.
p4wnc6 11y ago
I don't mean any offense when I say this, but I kind of resent this type of perspective. I can't say for sure but I suspect if we knew each other, I would fall into the "non-addict friend with problems" type category. You do correctly point out that a lot of people worry whether they will be judged for revealing a problem. This has happened to me and my family quite severely. Long-term, deeply close friends have abandoned me; extended family scatters like roaches when the lights turn on; goodly people of the working class like pastors or coworkers just brush you off with annoying platitudes. Human beings seem pretty hard-wired to pass judgement on other people due to their associates and circumstances. We absolutely are a "blame the victim" species through and through. If we can't even stop ourselves from blaming the victim in matters of rape or child abuse, how can we expect people to see others' problems clearly? So, yeah, for people who aspire to some of the fruits of their working class labor, and who feel great pressure from "blame the victim" thinking, they sure as shit are paranoid about not coming off as though they "have problems" -- and it's pretty disingenuous for you or me or anyone else to judge them for this and roll our eyes while we say they should be more zen and stop "wanting things" or "clinging to their pride" or whatever. The other big thing though is that people really, truly can be victims of circumstance. People can have depression, for example, not because they are genetically predisposed to have depressive reactions to mostly-normal circumstances, but because they have normal, sane, healthy reactions to insane circumstances. Reacting to something by being depressed about it can be, and often is, totally healthy because it represents your body's correctly calibrated response to a circumstance that cannot be "lived with" and must be purged out of your life for survival. I bring this up because I feel like a lot of people give extremely little thought to the problems other people have. We rationalize and look for one or two ways that it might "be their fault" (i.e. blame the victim) and if we can't find those, then we revert to Plan B which is to rationalize one or two ways that they could "get better but they won't" (e.g. they aren't currently seeing a counselor; they aren't currently on anti-depressants; they aren't currently in a support group; they refuse to have a less materialistic outlook on life; etc. etc.). Our brains are wired to find or invent short-circuits out of actually empathizing with suffering people. Just like we want our shit to be flushed down the toilet bowl and to Just Stop Being Our Problem, we think along similar lines about the problems that others tell us, even close friends and loved ones. What I can say for sure is that letting go of ego and pride has almost nothing to do with it; having humility has almost nothing to do with it; "reject desire and attachment" sounds nice on a poster, but that's just so thoroughly not human that I don't even know where to begin, let alone that it too has almost nothing to do with anyone's extrinsic circumstances. I guess what I am saying is that a lot of people who have problems already are well aware that there is no "thing" that's going to make them happy. They aren't searching for that. And yet, being embedded in the life circumstances they are in causes real, visceral pain, and they have no choice but to try to find a way to not be in pain. There is no amount of perspective shifting that's going to just poof make a painful circumstance into a pain-free one. And, to be quite blunt, for a lot of people, money absolutely would solve a huge number of their circumstantial problems. I don't want to make this comment any longer than it already is, so I'll just provide a link to a past comment that I made. It was on a thread discussing the semi-recent self-aggrandizing post from DHH about his magical foresight to know that wealth was never going to "truly" make him happy. < https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10628129 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10628129 > Money is just one dimension of all this, sure. But I bring it up because one of the first things we all rush to bash is someone's "materialism" in the face of their problems. I have to believe this is some kind of Hansonian signalling dealie that's secretly about taking stuff from others, because it really is the case that money can solve a lot of problems in life. And instead of indoctrinating people with feel-good mantras about being less materialistic, we ought to be teaching them when and how to strategically employ their materialism when it is for their own benefit and when to avoid letting it become excessive. Heuristics that are too sweepingly general, like "never be materialistic" frankly do more harm than good and probably lead people to worse living circumstances that feedback into the pressure to look like you're not having a problem and just magnify the whole thing. We can probably make similar claims about love and relationships, health and beauty, intelligence, credential, and status within organizational or social hierarchies. All of these things, like money, have a slippery slope aspect to them: you can really fuck yourself over by caring about them too much, but you can also fuck yourself over by believing some zen bullshit mantra about how you can "transcend" them and they don't matter at all. Like most things, the answer is somewhere in the middle, and it's exceedingly hard to get it right, and it's different for every person, and no one has any magic answer for how it's going to work out for you or me or any other given person.
arjie 11y ago
What are some examples of problems normal people have that are as bad as the ones addicts are having? I promise I am asking this question in good faith.
- jon-wood 11y ago
  Here's a few off the top of my head: Remaining in dysfunctional relationships because they can't bear to be alone. Continuing to work a job which they're losing money on because its their identity. Crippling debt, and its associated stress, accrued paying for things they hope will make the happy. (In the US at least) medical bills. All of those could easily have equal, or even more, negative effects on someone's life than an addiction, particularly an addiction they're able to support financially.
  - onetwotree 11y ago
    A few more: Worshiping beauty, and always feeling ugly as a result. Worshiping their own intellect, and always feeling like a fraud. Being crippled with self-doubt and skepticism. Constant anger at the world for wrongs, real or imagined. Being underemployed and hating oneself for it. Really, there are as many variants and flavors as there are people.
- m_fayer 11y ago
  Jumping from one relationship to another with barely any time (if any at all) in between, each relationship failing the same way as the last and doing ever more damage, convinced the next one will work even though no fundamental changes were made. I've seen this a lot.
reitanqild 11y ago
> It's kind of sad, but I have no idea how to convince normal people that they can be happier by changing themselves instead of acquiring things or relationships or any other external thing they think will finally make them happy. Welcome to the club :-) I'm happy, with a few exceptions, since the late 90ies. Don't know what to do since talking about what sorted it for me seem to scare off people.
- simonswords82 11y ago
  Go on I'll bite :) What sorted it for you?
  - reitanqild 11y ago
    Christianity. It got me a head start[0] and I think I was lucky to start with friends who explained that forgiveness is just the start and that I was supposed to be living a new life. That said, like other believers here I don't usually mention it as it can effectively derail discussions. [0] I'd tried for a 2/3 years before admitting I couldn't do this on my own, -I was so impulsive I didn't recognize I was doing something stupid until I had done it.
    - littletimmy 11y ago
      Is it easy to go back to believing once you not are non-religious? I've only seen it going one way, and I find it really hard to go back to religion even if I want to (because of the whole "it's irrational" aspect, sincerely no offense meant). How did you do it?
      - reitanqild 11y ago
        >sincerely no offense meant Thanks! Guess it depends. Once you see it working it is hard not to. As for the irrational part, my take is that once I believe in a almighty / close-to-almigthy God (close-to because of the free will part) everything falls in place. I don't argue about creationism or not etc, I accept science as very useful models and don't make a fuzz of it, I actually don't even think about because it is counterproductive and any decent almighty God could do it whatever way. Anyway, why would you want to go back?

late2part 11y ago

Makes me think that everybody's journey deserves respect.

onetwotree 11y ago
Indeed.

firebones 11y ago

Answering your edit: don't people have to come to this conclusion on their own, rather than be "convinced"? Doesn't someone have to pass through some period of anhedonia, and the realization that "things" aren't going to make them happier, before they can start to see the structure that will help? If so, and if your desire is to help normal people, I guess your choices are to a) find a strategy that sells anhedonia against the formidable marketing budget of pretty much everyone, everywhere in this culture, or b) capture them on the other side and offer them the structure they need to build a life after anhedonia. 75% of these Robert Pirsig quotes [1] seem relevant, in some way. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10799124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10799124

dasyatidprime 11y ago
Which Robert Pirsig quotes did you mean again? That link seems to be for this article itself.
- spooningtamarin 11y ago
  “The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.” “The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself.” “Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships.” These talk a little bit about self-improvement, or that knowledge is not understanding. Telling someone that new relationships aren't going to help, that acquiring new stuff won't help, is just giving them your personal knowledge/wisdom but you can't give them understanding.
onetwotree 11y ago
This is certainly how most people reach happiness, a conclusion supported by more than a few thinkers (Kierkegaard comes to mind). But is this really the only way? In AA we like to emphasize that there's no such thing as "hitting rock bottom". That is, even if you haven't lost everything, you can have the foresight to stop drinking and get your shit together, and recognize the necessity of changing yourself. That said, most people, myself included, have to hit quite a few rock bottoms before we get the point.

p4wnc6 11y ago

I don't mean any offense when I say this, but I kind of resent this type of perspective. I can't say for sure but I suspect if we knew each other, I would fall into the "non-addict friend with problems" type category. You do correctly point out that a lot of people worry whether they will be judged for revealing a problem. This has happened to me and my family quite severely. Long-term, deeply close friends have abandoned me; extended family scatters like roaches when the lights turn on; goodly people of the working class like pastors or coworkers just brush you off with annoying platitudes. Human beings seem pretty hard-wired to pass judgement on other people due to their associates and circumstances. We absolutely are a "blame the victim" species through and through. If we can't even stop ourselves from blaming the victim in matters of rape or child abuse, how can we expect people to see others' problems clearly? So, yeah, for people who aspire to some of the fruits of their working class labor, and who feel great pressure from "blame the victim" thinking, they sure as shit are paranoid about not coming off as though they "have problems" -- and it's pretty disingenuous for you or me or anyone else to judge them for this and roll our eyes while we say they should be more zen and stop "wanting things" or "clinging to their pride" or whatever. The other big thing though is that people really, truly can be victims of circumstance. People can have depression, for example, not because they are genetically predisposed to have depressive reactions to mostly-normal circumstances, but because they have normal, sane, healthy reactions to insane circumstances. Reacting to something by being depressed about it can be, and often is, totally healthy because it represents your body's correctly calibrated response to a circumstance that cannot be "lived with" and must be purged out of your life for survival. I bring this up because I feel like a lot of people give extremely little thought to the problems other people have. We rationalize and look for one or two ways that it might "be their fault" (i.e. blame the victim) and if we can't find those, then we revert to Plan B which is to rationalize one or two ways that they could "get better but they won't" (e.g. they aren't currently seeing a counselor; they aren't currently on anti-depressants; they aren't currently in a support group; they refuse to have a less materialistic outlook on life; etc. etc.). Our brains are wired to find or invent short-circuits out of actually empathizing with suffering people. Just like we want our shit to be flushed down the toilet bowl and to Just Stop Being Our Problem, we think along similar lines about the problems that others tell us, even close friends and loved ones. What I can say for sure is that letting go of ego and pride has almost nothing to do with it; having humility has almost nothing to do with it; "reject desire and attachment" sounds nice on a poster, but that's just so thoroughly not human that I don't even know where to begin, let alone that it too has almost nothing to do with anyone's extrinsic circumstances. I guess what I am saying is that a lot of people who have problems already are well aware that there is no "thing" that's going to make them happy. They aren't searching for that. And yet, being embedded in the life circumstances they are in causes real, visceral pain, and they have no choice but to try to find a way to not be in pain. There is no amount of perspective shifting that's going to just poof make a painful circumstance into a pain-free one. And, to be quite blunt, for a lot of people, money absolutely would solve a huge number of their circumstantial problems. I don't want to make this comment any longer than it already is, so I'll just provide a link to a past comment that I made. It was on a thread discussing the semi-recent self-aggrandizing post from DHH about his magical foresight to know that wealth was never going to "truly" make him happy. < https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10628129 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10628129 > Money is just one dimension of all this, sure. But I bring it up because one of the first things we all rush to bash is someone's "materialism" in the face of their problems. I have to believe this is some kind of Hansonian signalling dealie that's secretly about taking stuff from others, because it really is the case that money can solve a lot of problems in life. And instead of indoctrinating people with feel-good mantras about being less materialistic, we ought to be teaching them when and how to strategically employ their materialism when it is for their own benefit and when to avoid letting it become excessive. Heuristics that are too sweepingly general, like "never be materialistic" frankly do more harm than good and probably lead people to worse living circumstances that feedback into the pressure to look like you're not having a problem and just magnify the whole thing. We can probably make similar claims about love and relationships, health and beauty, intelligence, credential, and status within organizational or social hierarchies. All of these things, like money, have a slippery slope aspect to them: you can really fuck yourself over by caring about them too much, but you can also fuck yourself over by believing some zen bullshit mantra about how you can "transcend" them and they don't matter at all. Like most things, the answer is somewhere in the middle, and it's exceedingly hard to get it right, and it's different for every person, and no one has any magic answer for how it's going to work out for you or me or any other given person.

arjie 11y ago

What are some examples of problems normal people have that are as bad as the ones addicts are having? I promise I am asking this question in good faith.

jon-wood 11y ago
Here's a few off the top of my head: Remaining in dysfunctional relationships because they can't bear to be alone. Continuing to work a job which they're losing money on because its their identity. Crippling debt, and its associated stress, accrued paying for things they hope will make the happy. (In the US at least) medical bills. All of those could easily have equal, or even more, negative effects on someone's life than an addiction, particularly an addiction they're able to support financially.
- onetwotree 11y ago
  A few more: Worshiping beauty, and always feeling ugly as a result. Worshiping their own intellect, and always feeling like a fraud. Being crippled with self-doubt and skepticism. Constant anger at the world for wrongs, real or imagined. Being underemployed and hating oneself for it. Really, there are as many variants and flavors as there are people.
m_fayer 11y ago
Jumping from one relationship to another with barely any time (if any at all) in between, each relationship failing the same way as the last and doing ever more damage, convinced the next one will work even though no fundamental changes were made. I've seen this a lot.

reitanqild 11y ago

> It's kind of sad, but I have no idea how to convince normal people that they can be happier by changing themselves instead of acquiring things or relationships or any other external thing they think will finally make them happy. Welcome to the club :-) I'm happy, with a few exceptions, since the late 90ies. Don't know what to do since talking about what sorted it for me seem to scare off people.

simonswords82 11y ago
Go on I'll bite :) What sorted it for you?
- reitanqild 11y ago
  Christianity. It got me a head start[0] and I think I was lucky to start with friends who explained that forgiveness is just the start and that I was supposed to be living a new life. That said, like other believers here I don't usually mention it as it can effectively derail discussions. [0] I'd tried for a 2/3 years before admitting I couldn't do this on my own, -I was so impulsive I didn't recognize I was doing something stupid until I had done it.
  - littletimmy 11y ago
    Is it easy to go back to believing once you not are non-religious? I've only seen it going one way, and I find it really hard to go back to religion even if I want to (because of the whole "it's irrational" aspect, sincerely no offense meant). How did you do it?
    - reitanqild 11y ago
      >sincerely no offense meant Thanks! Guess it depends. Once you see it working it is hard not to. As for the irrational part, my take is that once I believe in a almighty / close-to-almigthy God (close-to because of the free will part) everything falls in place. I don't argue about creationism or not etc, I accept science as very useful models and don't make a fuzz of it, I actually don't even think about because it is counterproductive and any decent almighty God could do it whatever way. Anyway, why would you want to go back?