These are comments by tendrecroppes, Protagoras, and Hank Vandenburgh on the post “Energy Drinks and Addiction [Infographic]“.
tendrecroppes said:
The first time I quit smoking, I noticed that I had subconsciously replaced cigarettes with coffee — not to the extent that it was dangerous, but still, quite a bit. I’ve also known people to quit smoking and replace that rush with exercise — probably healthier, but after a point it gets a bit ridiculous. Some people have a lower threshold for addiction, and when they try to break one habit they often make up for it with another. Let’s just hope the replacement is a little healthier than what they’ve given up.
Protagoras said:
This is part of the reason I dislike the AA philosophy; to me it is just obvious that the only important question is whether the drugs are disrupting your life, not whether you’re using any drugs at all or whether you are “addicted” according to some arbitrary standard.
People often have a lot more success replacing more harmful drugs with less harmful drugs than they have avoiding drugs all together; drug users are often self-medicating, and giving them safer meds often works a lot better than telling them to tough it out and just put up with the underlying condition they’re trying to medicate.
Hank Vandenburgh said:
Several years of continuous sobriety is all AAs are likely to get, if the truth be told. I was sober (alcohol) for seven years after quitting (through AA) in 1973. I smoked marijuana (never my favorite – but sex was great on it) during that time. I was dumbfounded when late in that period someone told me I had breached my sobriety. I never had any sort of daily need to smoke MJ.
When I went to grad school, I came back to being a very, very spaced out periodic either completely appropriate or occasionally binge drinker. I do think I have the dread alcoholic genes, but I was also a drinker in utero because our mother drank right through all three pregnancies I had the advantage of being her first, so she was not as far gone. My youngest sib, a brother, was very troubled all his life, looked a little strange, and wound up committing suicide. I often wondered if that was fetal alcoholism syndrome.
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Photo credit: Flickr / Fried Dough