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I hate this idea that addiction is someone just getting high so they don't have to feel bad feelings, which seems to be the underlying assumption of most discus

I hate this idea that addiction is someone just getting high so they don't have to feel bad feelings, which seems to be the underlying assumption of most discussions. My dad drank heavily for a lot of years. I grew up hearing tales of his legendary drinking. Mom would buy him a case of beer on Sunday and if he ran out mid-week, he would drunkenly accuse her of drinking his beer -- which makes no sense because mom is a tea totaller. He would go on a bar crawl on nickel night and hit dozens of bars with his buddies. Etc. He was in the army and he fought in the front lines of two wars, WWII and Vietnam. He retired when I was three and apparently began tapering off. I don't recall him having the DTs. I don't recall him drinking heavy in my lifetime. I recall him having a beer as part of dinner when I was four or five. When I was seven, he was diagnosed with a heart condition. He blamed it on the alcohol and never touched the stuff again (except for a few sips when my brother hit drinking age while talking to him about what made for a good beer, I think). By then, he had been out of the army for four years or so. He had time to taper off for a few years before making his dramatic announcement that he wasn't drinking again. I think he drank to suppress his nightmares from serving in two wars. I think he didn't need to actively suppress his nightmares anymore after he dropped his retirement papers and no longer had to live in fear of being sent back. I think people drink and drug for a reason. We just mostly don't bother to try to figure out what the reason is for this specific person and we just act like "You are a badly behaved child who needs a spanking and you need to just try harder." And then blame them when that stupid idea consistently fails to be an effective solution to their problem. Edited. Cuz typos and auto-corrupt.

runawaybottle 5y ago
I think he drank from the pressure of having children and a family. Think about the reasons why he quit, his family, and he never showed much of it to his children. The reasons for quitting are often the reasons for starting. Sorry for getting all Freudian.
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  I think the opinion of a random stranger who never met my late father likely has less merit than my own.
  - runawaybottle 5y ago
    I agree, just a discussion.
    - DoreenMichele 5y ago
      Stick to discussing the idea I'm suggesting and don't tell me and the world what I should think of my own father. While I am making this follow up comment, I will add that no one ever once characterized him as an alcoholic, he never attended AA or any kind of treatment, and my mother did not care that he drank heavily because "he was never a mean drunk and there was always enough money." All the stories I heard growing up about his legendary drinking were told as humorous stories that my parents laughed about from the good old days. I'm the youngest of three children. My father never hid his drinking from anyone. I just didn't happen to personally witness it because he largely stopped after he left the military even before he officially announced that he was quitting.
      - runawaybottle 5y ago
        Again, I’m not here to fight you. I still struggle with addiction, so I’m seeing if I have any insight to offer. The reasons are often so damn simple, but the solutions are the slipperiest of slopes. That’s how we slide into it, for literally the simplest reasons. Yeah, it could be the nightmares, or it could be something even simpler.
        DoreenMichele 5y ago
        Alcohol is known to suppress dreams. It's a physical mechanism impacting brain function in that regard. I'm not suggesting "suppressing nightmares about the war" is the reason other people drink. Just that was the reason I believe my own father drank. It's a conclusion that took me a long time to make and it's based on an analysis of the facts of his life. If you are still struggling with addiction, maybe you don't yet have the answers you need. Maybe the pat answers you are parroting are part of the problem. They are answers that actively promote a sense of helplessness and actively discourage pinpointing a specific cause. I'm suggesting that's exactly the problem with our current mental models. Edit: I will also add that suppressing nightmares is about being able to sleep through the night so you can do your job the next day, not necessarily about avoiding negative feelings per se. Plenty of people take sleeping pills and are not characterized as addicts for trying to address their sleep issues so they can function.
GordonS 5y ago
My grandfather was similar - he started drinking after he returned home from WW2. He kept the outward appearance of an old-school hard guy, but he was plagued by nightmares and was obviously very disturbed by some of the things he'd seen and done. As kids, we used to love listening to his war stories, but every now and then he had to stop and wouldn't finish a story. As kids, we didn't understand how this seemingly invincible man, who we basically idolised, could have such demons. He drank heavily for decades - vodka and super-strength lager. As a kid, I don't think I ever once saw him without a can of beer at his side. One day when I was 16 or so, he ended up in hospital because of his drinking. He decided he would stop drinking - and he just did, having only a single hiccup in the 10 years or so before he died. It was really quite incredible - that must have taken incredible strength and will power after decades of abuse. I've had my own brushes with drink a long time back, and I fully agree with your reasoning - I think most people that use drink and drugs are able to do so safely and responsibly, and most of those that don't sink into habitual drink or drugs for a reason; trying to ease pain (physical or psychological), make life more bearable, or to escape it altogether.
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  Someone once told me that just up and quitting alcohol or other things without treatment, drama, etc. was kind of the norm for the generation that fought in WWII. I have also read that Vietnam vets did a lot of drugs while in Vietnam but most of them quit when they returned to the US and did so without any kind of treatment. Vietnam was really ugly. Women and children were acting as suicide bombers and it was an unpopular war, so we did one-year tours and most people going were about 19 years old (compared to mid twenties for average soldier age in WWII) and you are most likely to die in your first battle. If you survive your first battle, your odds of surviving the war go up. So there were a lot of people seeing their first battle at a young age and it was a meat grinder. It was ugly even for a war.
  - RobertoG 5y ago
    >>"I have also read that Vietnam vets did a lot of drugs while in Vietnam but most of them quit when they returned to the US and did so without any kind of treatment." I have read elsewhere that something that makes a big difference when quitting drugs is change your environment totally. That means, the group of people you spend time with, but maybe, also, work and even home. Moving away to another city or country probably helps. Frequently, we don't realize to what point we are our environment.
sys_64738 5y ago
Alcoholism in one person isn't contained to just one person. It affects everybody around them as they need to live with the fallout. An alcoholic will do anything to get their next drink and restricting cash access leads to horrendous consequences sometimes. When you live with that in childhood then you make sure you don't get exposed to it in adulthood. I drink socially but made sure to marry somebody who hates alcohol. Living with an alcoholic as an adult isn't good for your mental health.
dkersten 5y ago
Reminds me of this TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY9DcIMGxMs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY9DcIMGxMs "Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong", where he asserts that addiction isn't caused by the things we typically correlate with it. I was going to try to summarize, but I don't think I can do it justice. Its not long. > I think people drink and drug for a reason. We just mostly don't bother to try to figure out what the reason is for this specific person Absolutely. This is totally in line with what that guy says in the video too. One thing he says: "The opposite of addiction is connection." I know that personally, when I have problems that I struggle with and don't feel like anyone in my life can help me with or talk to about them (sadly has happened once or twice in my life), I have a tendency to binge, with anything that provides a brief escape, be it alcohol, drugs, video games, TV series', chocolate. Of course, its never been too bad, severe or long lasting for me, so it hasn't been too much of a problem and I wouldn't claim it comes close to what an alcoholic or heroin addict goes through, but I can at least see how someone might slip into such things, as a distraction from reality. And its usually coupled with a feeling of isolation and loneliness, feeling like you're alone with problems you don't know how to solve. So you hide from them instead. That's the impression I got after thinking about my past situations at least.
- webmobdev 5y ago
  > One thing he says: "The opposite of addiction is connection." Makes a lot of sense - I once read that a defining parameter to determine addiction is how it affects relationships. Addicted people often fight and eschew relationship in favour of their addiction. I am reminded of this often when I see kids fight with their parents about how much time the spend on their phones / tablets / computers instead of doing other activities.
  - dkersten 5y ago
    That's interesting and now that you mention it, yeah, that totally makes sense.
  - tacocataco 5y ago
    "I am reminded of this often when I see kids fight with their parents about how much time the spend on their phones / tablets / computers instead of doing other activities." To be fair, some parents arent worth connecting with. I'm really happy for you if this isn't your personal experience.
treeman79 5y ago
I have a clotting disorder. Factor 5. My blood clots much to easily. Alcohol is a blood thinner. Think long term covid symptoms. My personal opinion is that many relatives in the family drink themselves to death in effort to feel normal. On Normal prescription blood thinners my symptoms go away quickly and come back whenever I stop them.
papito 5y ago
There is truth to that. We abuse substances without understanding why. Getting to the root cause of that existential angst is not easy. And I say "abuse" to distinguish between that and physiological dependency. I think the word "addiction" is overused, as most addictive behavior is overindulging and a chronic, negative habit loop.
phkahler 5y ago
I'm confused. You wrote both of these: >> I hate this idea that addiction is someone just getting high so they don't have to feel bad feelings... >> I think he drank to suppress his nightmares from serving in two wars. I mean... I thought the dad story was going to contradict that first thing. I agree with you (I think) that many people use addictions to sooth or avoid unpleasant feelings. I know some people who even admit that's why they do it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  I think my father needed his sleep. I think that was his main goal: Getting enough sleep so he could function. There likely were other benefits. As another comment here notes, alcohol is also a blood thinner. My father was on blood thinners for many years after being diagnosed with a heart condition and did have a large clot at one point that he could have lost his leg over. But I think the fact that he apparently began winding down his drinking when he left the military means his primary reason for drinking was likely to manage his fear of being sent back to the front lines. That's not the same thing as avoiding bad feelings per se. It's more like moving stage fright out of your way because your paycheck depends on your performance and you need to perform in the here and now regardless of how you feel.
blakesley 5y ago
You say: > I hate this idea that addiction is someone just getting high so they don't have to feel bad feelings, which seems to be the underlying assumption of most discussions. But then the rest of your comment is a story about your father seemingly doing exactly that. What have I misunderstood here? Not trying to be flippant, I'm genuinely confused.
- jatins 5y ago
  Yeah, I also found it slightly conflicting. I think the author is probably saying that those bad feels are probably not an answer in themselves but have an underlying cause that often gets overlooked.
  - afarrell 5y ago
    I believe the word people generally use is "trauma". - nightmares and insomnia - intense negative emotion both can be caused by trauma.
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  I have already clarified this detail: I will also add that suppressing nightmares is about being able to sleep through the night so you can do your job the next day, not necessarily about avoiding negative feelings per se. Plenty of people take sleeping pills and are not characterized as addicts for trying to address their sleep issues so they can function. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28106688 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28106688 My father worked long, hard hours for a lot of years. He needed his sleep to do so.
  - deadalus 5y ago
    suppressing nightmares = avoiding bad memories or past experiences being able to sleep through the night = experiencing peace artificially not necessarily about avoiding negative feelings per se = its about avoiding past experiences and not being able to face the 'issues' because you think they will break you or annoy you
Spooky23 5y ago
I’m glad you shared this. A colleague early in my career was badly wounded in Vietnam and was a heavy drinker into the late 90s. It was an escape from physical and mental scars afaik. The experience out a heavy toll on his kids, his 4 wives, and coworkers who had to deal with some of the side effects. When I met him in the early 2000s, he had turned that aspect of his life around and moonlighted as an addiction counselor. His thought was that he could tell you within 2-3 days who would make it out of a group program — they had to have a reason. For my friend, his granddaughter’s birth was a wake up call that lit up his motivation. It sounds like for your dad, leaving the army was the trigger. Several members of my extended family struggled with alcohol - at the time growing up I saw it as a weakness or failure, which I regret. Growing older and gaining more understanding led me to a conclusion similar to yours in the subject.
gnicholas 5y ago
Not sure if it was an autocorrect, but teetotaling is unrelated to tea.
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  Nope, not autocorrect. My personal deficiency. Thanks for bringing that up. I love learning new things from the many pedants who hang here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teetotalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teetotalism
  - gnicholas 5y ago
    Yeah almost closed with a /pedantic tag for a lighter feel. I have enjoyed learning from you also!
junon 5y ago
"Auto-corrupt" wow I'm somewhat upset I didn't think of that first. Unsurprisingly autocorrect tried to autocorrect it to "autocorrect".

runawaybottle 5y ago

I think he drank from the pressure of having children and a family. Think about the reasons why he quit, his family, and he never showed much of it to his children. The reasons for quitting are often the reasons for starting. Sorry for getting all Freudian.

DoreenMichele 5y ago
I think the opinion of a random stranger who never met my late father likely has less merit than my own.
- runawaybottle 5y ago
  I agree, just a discussion.
  - DoreenMichele 5y ago
    Stick to discussing the idea I'm suggesting and don't tell me and the world what I should think of my own father. While I am making this follow up comment, I will add that no one ever once characterized him as an alcoholic, he never attended AA or any kind of treatment, and my mother did not care that he drank heavily because "he was never a mean drunk and there was always enough money." All the stories I heard growing up about his legendary drinking were told as humorous stories that my parents laughed about from the good old days. I'm the youngest of three children. My father never hid his drinking from anyone. I just didn't happen to personally witness it because he largely stopped after he left the military even before he officially announced that he was quitting.
    - runawaybottle 5y ago
      Again, I’m not here to fight you. I still struggle with addiction, so I’m seeing if I have any insight to offer. The reasons are often so damn simple, but the solutions are the slipperiest of slopes. That’s how we slide into it, for literally the simplest reasons. Yeah, it could be the nightmares, or it could be something even simpler.
      - DoreenMichele 5y ago
        Alcohol is known to suppress dreams. It's a physical mechanism impacting brain function in that regard. I'm not suggesting "suppressing nightmares about the war" is the reason other people drink. Just that was the reason I believe my own father drank. It's a conclusion that took me a long time to make and it's based on an analysis of the facts of his life. If you are still struggling with addiction, maybe you don't yet have the answers you need. Maybe the pat answers you are parroting are part of the problem. They are answers that actively promote a sense of helplessness and actively discourage pinpointing a specific cause. I'm suggesting that's exactly the problem with our current mental models. Edit: I will also add that suppressing nightmares is about being able to sleep through the night so you can do your job the next day, not necessarily about avoiding negative feelings per se. Plenty of people take sleeping pills and are not characterized as addicts for trying to address their sleep issues so they can function.

GordonS 5y ago

My grandfather was similar - he started drinking after he returned home from WW2. He kept the outward appearance of an old-school hard guy, but he was plagued by nightmares and was obviously very disturbed by some of the things he'd seen and done. As kids, we used to love listening to his war stories, but every now and then he had to stop and wouldn't finish a story. As kids, we didn't understand how this seemingly invincible man, who we basically idolised, could have such demons. He drank heavily for decades - vodka and super-strength lager. As a kid, I don't think I ever once saw him without a can of beer at his side. One day when I was 16 or so, he ended up in hospital because of his drinking. He decided he would stop drinking - and he just did, having only a single hiccup in the 10 years or so before he died. It was really quite incredible - that must have taken incredible strength and will power after decades of abuse. I've had my own brushes with drink a long time back, and I fully agree with your reasoning - I think most people that use drink and drugs are able to do so safely and responsibly, and most of those that don't sink into habitual drink or drugs for a reason; trying to ease pain (physical or psychological), make life more bearable, or to escape it altogether.

DoreenMichele 5y ago
Someone once told me that just up and quitting alcohol or other things without treatment, drama, etc. was kind of the norm for the generation that fought in WWII. I have also read that Vietnam vets did a lot of drugs while in Vietnam but most of them quit when they returned to the US and did so without any kind of treatment. Vietnam was really ugly. Women and children were acting as suicide bombers and it was an unpopular war, so we did one-year tours and most people going were about 19 years old (compared to mid twenties for average soldier age in WWII) and you are most likely to die in your first battle. If you survive your first battle, your odds of surviving the war go up. So there were a lot of people seeing their first battle at a young age and it was a meat grinder. It was ugly even for a war.
- RobertoG 5y ago
  >>"I have also read that Vietnam vets did a lot of drugs while in Vietnam but most of them quit when they returned to the US and did so without any kind of treatment." I have read elsewhere that something that makes a big difference when quitting drugs is change your environment totally. That means, the group of people you spend time with, but maybe, also, work and even home. Moving away to another city or country probably helps. Frequently, we don't realize to what point we are our environment.

sys_64738 5y ago

Alcoholism in one person isn't contained to just one person. It affects everybody around them as they need to live with the fallout. An alcoholic will do anything to get their next drink and restricting cash access leads to horrendous consequences sometimes. When you live with that in childhood then you make sure you don't get exposed to it in adulthood. I drink socially but made sure to marry somebody who hates alcohol. Living with an alcoholic as an adult isn't good for your mental health.

dkersten 5y ago

Reminds me of this TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY9DcIMGxMs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY9DcIMGxMs "Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong", where he asserts that addiction isn't caused by the things we typically correlate with it. I was going to try to summarize, but I don't think I can do it justice. Its not long. > I think people drink and drug for a reason. We just mostly don't bother to try to figure out what the reason is for this specific person Absolutely. This is totally in line with what that guy says in the video too. One thing he says: "The opposite of addiction is connection." I know that personally, when I have problems that I struggle with and don't feel like anyone in my life can help me with or talk to about them (sadly has happened once or twice in my life), I have a tendency to binge, with anything that provides a brief escape, be it alcohol, drugs, video games, TV series', chocolate. Of course, its never been too bad, severe or long lasting for me, so it hasn't been too much of a problem and I wouldn't claim it comes close to what an alcoholic or heroin addict goes through, but I can at least see how someone might slip into such things, as a distraction from reality. And its usually coupled with a feeling of isolation and loneliness, feeling like you're alone with problems you don't know how to solve. So you hide from them instead. That's the impression I got after thinking about my past situations at least.

webmobdev 5y ago
> One thing he says: "The opposite of addiction is connection." Makes a lot of sense - I once read that a defining parameter to determine addiction is how it affects relationships. Addicted people often fight and eschew relationship in favour of their addiction. I am reminded of this often when I see kids fight with their parents about how much time the spend on their phones / tablets / computers instead of doing other activities.
- dkersten 5y ago
  That's interesting and now that you mention it, yeah, that totally makes sense.
- tacocataco 5y ago
  "I am reminded of this often when I see kids fight with their parents about how much time the spend on their phones / tablets / computers instead of doing other activities." To be fair, some parents arent worth connecting with. I'm really happy for you if this isn't your personal experience.

treeman79 5y ago

I have a clotting disorder. Factor 5. My blood clots much to easily. Alcohol is a blood thinner. Think long term covid symptoms. My personal opinion is that many relatives in the family drink themselves to death in effort to feel normal. On Normal prescription blood thinners my symptoms go away quickly and come back whenever I stop them.

papito 5y ago

There is truth to that. We abuse substances without understanding why. Getting to the root cause of that existential angst is not easy. And I say "abuse" to distinguish between that and physiological dependency. I think the word "addiction" is overused, as most addictive behavior is overindulging and a chronic, negative habit loop.

phkahler 5y ago

I'm confused. You wrote both of these: >> I hate this idea that addiction is someone just getting high so they don't have to feel bad feelings... >> I think he drank to suppress his nightmares from serving in two wars. I mean... I thought the dad story was going to contradict that first thing. I agree with you (I think) that many people use addictions to sooth or avoid unpleasant feelings. I know some people who even admit that's why they do it.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
DoreenMichele 5y ago
I think my father needed his sleep. I think that was his main goal: Getting enough sleep so he could function. There likely were other benefits. As another comment here notes, alcohol is also a blood thinner. My father was on blood thinners for many years after being diagnosed with a heart condition and did have a large clot at one point that he could have lost his leg over. But I think the fact that he apparently began winding down his drinking when he left the military means his primary reason for drinking was likely to manage his fear of being sent back to the front lines. That's not the same thing as avoiding bad feelings per se. It's more like moving stage fright out of your way because your paycheck depends on your performance and you need to perform in the here and now regardless of how you feel.

blakesley 5y ago

You say: > I hate this idea that addiction is someone just getting high so they don't have to feel bad feelings, which seems to be the underlying assumption of most discussions. But then the rest of your comment is a story about your father seemingly doing exactly that. What have I misunderstood here? Not trying to be flippant, I'm genuinely confused.

jatins 5y ago
Yeah, I also found it slightly conflicting. I think the author is probably saying that those bad feels are probably not an answer in themselves but have an underlying cause that often gets overlooked.
- afarrell 5y ago
  I believe the word people generally use is "trauma". - nightmares and insomnia - intense negative emotion both can be caused by trauma.
DoreenMichele 5y ago
I have already clarified this detail: I will also add that suppressing nightmares is about being able to sleep through the night so you can do your job the next day, not necessarily about avoiding negative feelings per se. Plenty of people take sleeping pills and are not characterized as addicts for trying to address their sleep issues so they can function. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28106688 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28106688 My father worked long, hard hours for a lot of years. He needed his sleep to do so.
- deadalus 5y ago
  suppressing nightmares = avoiding bad memories or past experiences being able to sleep through the night = experiencing peace artificially not necessarily about avoiding negative feelings per se = its about avoiding past experiences and not being able to face the 'issues' because you think they will break you or annoy you

Spooky23 5y ago

I’m glad you shared this. A colleague early in my career was badly wounded in Vietnam and was a heavy drinker into the late 90s. It was an escape from physical and mental scars afaik. The experience out a heavy toll on his kids, his 4 wives, and coworkers who had to deal with some of the side effects. When I met him in the early 2000s, he had turned that aspect of his life around and moonlighted as an addiction counselor. His thought was that he could tell you within 2-3 days who would make it out of a group program — they had to have a reason. For my friend, his granddaughter’s birth was a wake up call that lit up his motivation. It sounds like for your dad, leaving the army was the trigger. Several members of my extended family struggled with alcohol - at the time growing up I saw it as a weakness or failure, which I regret. Growing older and gaining more understanding led me to a conclusion similar to yours in the subject.

gnicholas 5y ago

Not sure if it was an autocorrect, but teetotaling is unrelated to tea.

DoreenMichele 5y ago
Nope, not autocorrect. My personal deficiency. Thanks for bringing that up. I love learning new things from the many pedants who hang here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teetotalism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teetotalism
- gnicholas 5y ago
  Yeah almost closed with a /pedantic tag for a lighter feel. I have enjoyed learning from you also!

junon 5y ago

"Auto-corrupt" wow I'm somewhat upset I didn't think of that first. Unsurprisingly autocorrect tried to autocorrect it to "autocorrect".