Posted on 08/01/2017 3:51:14 PM PDT by evangmlw
The problem of alcohol and drug addiction has reached epidemic proportions in the United States and around the world. Alcoholism runs rampant across the globe, drug abuse continues to consume its victims, and addiction to prescription drugs appears to be at an all time high. Many rehabilitation facilities have waiting lists for admittance, detoxification centers abound, the morgue slabs are full, and funeral homes continue to profit on the crisis of addiction stalking both old and young alike. Is there an answer? Is there a remedy to this destructive force that has been unleashed upon our planet?
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I am of two opinions on this.
I can feel sympathy for the loved ones of the overdose victim, and the victim themselves. I don’t think is is wrong to feel sympathy and sadness for someone who has made bad choices.
On the other hand, I feel that in many cases, this is the result of a personal choice, so my sympathy only goes so far. I believe there is a vector of personal responsibility. I know people on this very forum will likely castigate me, saying I have never had to overcome a debilitating sickness or injury and become dependent on opioids. I understand why some will take that stance in an attempt to relieve the victim of the stain of abdication of personal responsibility.
But I would like to see the statistics, compiled from actual victims, which I feel cannot be that difficult to do.
I would like to see an examination of the medical prescription history of every victim, to see what this history is of multiple prescriptions of painkillers. Not just one. I don’t believe you can become physically addicted to one prescription, such as those given after knee surgery, etc.
It is my belief that a large percentage of these people overdosing are people who have become hooked by being recreational drug users of prescription pain killers. The CDC has some statistics at https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/overdose.html which do have some data on this. I find this telling:
In the provided CDC information, among those who died from prescription opioid overdose between 1999 and 2014:
Overdose rates were highest among people aged 25 to 54 years.
Overdose rates were higher among non-Hispanic whites and American Indian or Alaskan Natives, compared to non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics.
Men were more likely to die from overdose, but the mortality gap between men and women is closing.
This indicates a behavioral vector. The age group, the race, and the sex all indicate that. (it says the difference is narrowing between men and women, which isn’t surprising given an increasing acceptance (and even approval) of females pursuing risky behaviors that in the past mostly men had followed...though this is my opinion)
As I said, I cannot help but feel compassion. But given the choice between demonizing the medical profession (as is often done on this very forum) and the drug companies who provide these drugs (ditto) or placing the responsibility on the users who forfeited their lives by engaging in the abuse of the drugs, I place a greater responsibility on the users.
Doesn’t mean I cannot feel compassion or sadness for them, though.
The medical field refers to “addictive personalities”.
If they are correct, that’s not a choice, it’s some kind of a hardwire in the brain.
People are oversimplifying this problem.
Which is not a surprise.
And virtue signaling is not confined to liberals.
I've gone through four major surgeries. Got off the pain meds.each time. I wisely sought help from professionals each time, as well.
I think what the author is getting at is whether theism or naturalism/materialism is the right world view and whether God or something else is the cure.
“If it’s not contagious, it’s not a disease.
Some physical diseases are genetic”
So based on your moronic logic Charlie Gaurd did not have a disease... or possibly he did, but damn those Ebola kids to hell?
You are as dumb as a box of hammers, As bright as the burnt out bulb in the Marquee, And as sharp as a spoon in the knife drawer.
Remember holier than thou, judge not lest ye be judged.
>>...these are choices on giving in to temptation...God makes it clear that He always gives us a way out...<<
Nearly all children sexually abused by someone they trusted fall into some sort of dysfunction. It is a symptom of masking emotional distress. Drugs/alcohol/pornography/hyper-sexualism/self mutilation/suicide...you name it.
Were these children able to discern “The Way Out”? Other peoples sin wounds these folks and they often spend a lifetime reconciling/healing/trusting/breaking the chains of addiction.
Sorry fella...it’s not always so cut and dry.
I disagree.
Maybe from their perspective, but I think it can be a sin issue and not a physical, hardwire issue.
My late sister-in-law had an addictive personality. She was addicted to everything you could think of, and not just drugs. Shopping, smoking, eating, whatever. She was one really messed up individual and I mean that as in mentally and emotionally.
BWAHAHAHAHA!!!
Look who's talking about being judgmental.
Physician heal thyself.
Spinal cord stimulators are effective at relieving back pain. Might be an option. I might be getting one.
https://www.spine-health.com/video/spinal-cord-stimulator-implant-video
Bump for later.
Were these children able to discern “The Way Out”? Other peoples sin wounds these folks and they often spend a lifetime reconciling/healing/trusting/breaking the chains of addiction.
Sorry fella...it’s not always so cut and dry....
...
Sorry I implied it was...unintentional...disagree with everything y our say...brokenness welcomes more sin...I don’t agree however when people call such things diseases...people in various states, physical or mental can be more susceptible to addictions...trauma, genetic like native Americans, etc.
It's not a disease, unless you twist language the way liberals do. Dr. Silkworth did not call it a disease. He called it an allergy. If you have an allergy to poison ivy, it means you have a reaction to it. Most people can understand that since most people are allergic.
With the boozehound, it's like a reverse allergy. Instead of breaking out in hives - which make you try to avoid the thing you're allergic too, he breaks out in cravings. This is why he doesn't stop when he has one.
Drunks DO process booze differently, very differently. I guarantee it.
Also keep in mind that it's ultimately Sugar Addiction. Alcohol is sugar -> except that it's SuperSugar. So for most people - they get something for alcohol. For the boozehound, it's just a much more 'heavy' drug.
If it were something that didn't cause intense desire, boozehounds would say 'hey this stuff is different with me, I can't eat it' just as people with shellfish allergies avoid it like the plague.
But, desire being what desire is, when a mans feelings and emotions are brought into the fray, he tends to lie to himself, because being honest means an end to the thing he desires.
It's neither a sin nor a disease. It IS AN ALLERGY ... or you could even say 'an abnormal reaction.' How many of you, when you wake up with a bad hangover, your first thought is 'oh, I could take care of this with a shot of vodka' rather than 'I need asperin I'll never do that again.'
Many of you would really really have to try to even drink enough to get a bad hangover. Not us! Our PROBLEM was partially that we could handle our booze. We could stay up many many hours with our central nervous system taken out of the equation whereas most of you would have been asleep and or choking on your vomit 20 drinks ago.
It's a combination of character and a biochemical allergy.
How quickly is someone willing to be honest with themselves in the face of negative consequences to self and other? How negative is the problem booze is solving. Usually the boozehound has a problem which is very painful but which he has given up (faith) that it can be solved. In such a situation, boozing, even despite the consequences, is a rational choice. I didn't say a good one -> but given his assumptions (lacking faith, his assumptions are incorrect,) that the pain will never end, it's rational.
In life, we will be faced with challenges. Some people are born without a foot, or an eye. But some overcome that.
The booze hound is born with a predisposition to experience alcohol the way some overweight people experience a donut. But multiply that times 100.
Now, the interesting thing is that once you're a year away or so from having a drink, and then really at three years - mostly at a year (this is a physical phenomena) -> the biochemical karma is gone, the craving is gone.
When drunks don't take the first drink ... they are fine. The allergy is only set off by the chemical.
However if you take a person who is merely born with the allergy, he won't necessarily take to booze the way many do. USUALLY there needs to be the presence of something negative, stressful, ongoing, and unsolvable.
That's why so many drunks come from dysfunctional families. The whole chain requires some serious negativty, because in order to endure the costs of being an early drunk, the cost benefit analysis has to work out. The costs are high - but if they are less than the problem the booze is solving, then the drunk will continue to develop the allergy into an addiction to the sugar.
Then one day, as he's been telling himself 'I drink too much but I'm not an alcoholic' ... one day he says ... 'uh oh, no I realize I'm f*cked and I can't quit.'
At THAT point he better have enough humility to reach out for help ... and enough humility to admit to himself 'I am not the most powerful thing in the world' ... or he will die, or at the very least, is going to cause almost as much misery in the world and to his family as a liberal voter.
Now I can't take my experience and generalize it all alcoholics ... and in some ways I know the best of them because I know the ones who got through it.
I also know I have zero desire for a drink ... may that continue! ... but it supports the notion that the original problem is an allergy to the substance. That is ... if you never take the first drink again ... you're probably fine.
It is obviously more complex than that.
But no, it's not a disease, unless you twist the language. It BEHAVES like a disease, and if you TREAT it like a disease ... that's smart. But, it's an allergy. And, it's not a sin of overindulgeance. It IS likely a sin of pride -> in that you can be moronic enough to think you are more powerful than alcohol for so so so long despite all the building evidence in your devolving life to the contrary.
Is it a SIN? we're all sinners - that's built into us. In Buddhism it's the same as saying we're given to delusion. It's just a manifestation of sin itself, of delusion, and we all have it. It's at the basis of all the named sins - delusion, not seeing the world as it is.
So, for example, to call a drunk a sinner, is a little bit like a retarded child calling the kid sitting next to him a dummy. It's TRUE maybe ... but ... in context ... it's kind of silly.
I have been addicted a few times. Each time I overcame addiction it was by God’s grace. My will was never able to overcome.
Very well said.
A friend of Bill.
The enemy uses sin/sinful lust to alter a person's perception of God. By attacking a child, stealing innocence, teaching a child to distrust.
Example: A child being sexually abused by a pastor or priest. Children look up to these people as being advocates or intercessors on earth. Obviously a child wouldn't use these words, but you get the point. When the child suffers sexual abuse at the hands of a person of trust, particularly a supposed man of God, what happens to the child's impression of God?
This sort of psychological wound goes about as deep as anything one could imagine. They will often fall into substance abuse to mask the pain, but worse than this..they'll run from anything God. Many times decades will go by before they attempt to trust their creator.
Tellin ya, it's easy to stand in judgment of others. Easy to point a finger at others without looking deeper at the source of the wounds. Addiction: Sin or Disease?
I submit, Addiction: satanic snare or pshycological prison?
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