Having seen addiction run its course it’s pretty clear that it’s a neurological issue.
Hitchens is an ignorant snob in this video.
Does Hitchens think that a lack of willpower is what has people drink until they lose their job, their home, their family and frequently their life? Does he think they willingly put drinking above their children and spouse?
I don’t claim to know the answer, but Hitchens won that debate hands down.
Perry used appeal to authority, then sarcasm, then condescension and personal attacks, then - when asked what the objective physical evidence of addiction was - Perry closed with “you don’t know what you’re talking about”.
Then, whoever posted the video cut it right there to give Perry the last word.
My guess is Hitchens had a pretty good response - why else cut it there?
I can only speak for me. 34 years off the bottle this past Wednesday. There are people who believe it is moral weakness. I just know I had the old time Bill Wilson fellowship and loving and wonderful strangers who I could call in the middle of the night. In return I got sent into noxious hotel rooms where similar hopeless people smoked and vomited and begged to stop. There were no treatment centers full of licensed fools back then.
Hardest thing I ever did, but also the most wonderful.
It’s a choice. Any addiction can be overcome. It’s mostly habit. Perry said it himself...if he didnt’ have that first drink he would be fine. So he loses his willpower to NOT have that first drink.
While I have some bad habits, insobriety is not one of them. It was revealing to learn from watching a friend, however, how some seem to process intoxicants differently. The euphoria wears off and it’s like being cold for them. The urge to reconnect is primal, like seeking warmth.
For me, it’s not willpower that keeps me sober. I just can’t imagine getting anything done while wasted.
Alcoholism and drug addiction are two “diseases” that are 100% self inflicted.
Such diseases are a function of a weakness of character rather than a physical weakness. For me, I didn’t have the strength of character to be the man God created me to be. So, I wallowed in self-righteous and self-indulgent self-medicating. I wasted a solid chunk of the best years of my life being stoned and stupid. By returning to the Way of My Lord, Jesus, I’ve found peace and strength; the peace and strength I was looking for in booze and dope.
I’ve been straight and sober for nearly 40 years following a 15-year reign of terror as a bat-sh!t, crazy drunk and recreational drug user. All glory to God.
They are the most narcissistic, spoiled, entitled, and selfish people I've ever come across in life. Everything bad that happens to them is someone else's fault, and even their addiction is not their fault.
I worked as a clinical consultant in a triservice alcohol and substance abuse program - ASAP - for 3 years after spending over a decade myself in ACOA and AA. I came to the conclusion there are no addictions, only choices. What I found working for people who remained sober (not using) was a clearly defined reason that meant everything to them.
Users are liars- to themselves, family, friends, God, and choosing not to use wholeheartedly seemed to be what made the difference I saw and experienced myself in deciding to quit smoking after 20 years.
There are no addictions, no addictive personalities, addiction genes, people quit using all the time and stay quit by choice.
JMHMO
If I don’t drink the first drink I can’t get drunk
Addiction is chemical. Propensity for addiction is genetic/ biological. Willpower has very little to do with it. And keep in mind, on some level we’re all addicts. Endorphins trigger your opiate receptors. Anything you do for fun, anything that triggers that endorphins release, especially if you KNOW it’s going to, is, in the strictest sense, an addiction. And being a jerk seems to trigger Hitchens’ endorphins. So maybe he should use his willpower.
It's easy to understand why many people think an alcoholic has no willpower; that's a logical conclusion, but an incorrect one. To the contrary, alcoholics have intensely powerful wills. The problem is the will of an alcoholic is inclined to (i.e. hell bent on) getting drunk. This is why prisoners will smuggle fruit cocktail out of the dining hall to ferment in their cell commode. This is why alcoholics will risk careers, lives, marriages for the opportunity to get loaded.
My experience, and my observation has been that once one finds one's self in that maelstrom, the only chance one has is to learn to subordinate one's personal will to God's will.
People who believe there’s no such thing as addiction to alcohol must ignore all the work done with mice and other animals.
If mice can get addicted to alcohol there’s no reason humans cannot.
(Unless you don’t believe we’re related.)
common sense, moderation in everything.
Matthew Perry was extremely fearful of being alone - by way of abandonment, because of a long period of fear that developed as a result of the separation of his parents from each other.
That period began when Matthew Perry was a mere baby.
He ended up filling the empty space with drugs, booze, and the response he received by his being a comedian - from a very early age. Fame eventually arrived.
At first, he relished that fame; but the responsibility for not letting down, his friends at the production of *Friends,* weighed more and more . . . and thus more cycles of drugs and booze, and “rehab.”
No matter how long he might have a girl in his life, he feared that girl would just walk away - especially at the moment the girl would tell him, that she loved him.
Instead of then, waiting in anxious depression, for the girl to leave . . . Matthew would [somehow] leave.
Overall, he was in a downward spiral that he constantly had to fight in order to control the varying rates of his descent - the net of the downers, instead of the uppers.
He wrote, “There are two kinds of drugs for addicts. Downers and uppers.” And, his choice was downers.
“Just stop it” only works in the imaginations of people who aren’t addicts. But sobriety takes WORK on the part do the addict.