![Choices... [629x839 - 143KB]](https://pic8.co/sh/s5QVNc.jpg){kind=link}
Society in turn creates the vast majority of the addicts in the first place by refusing to remedy conditions (unemployment, ineffective medical treatment, divorce, sexual revolution giving unattached sex no consequence, pourus border allowing drugs through, the replacement of religion with secular relativism, etc.) As much as it is the responsibility of the individual to not adapt a maladaptive coping mechanism it is the resposibility of the society to maintain an environment that requires less cope and not just pass out anti-depressants so people can be addicted to them instead of hitting the bottle, needle, or becoming permiscious.
Those things incentive substance abuse or addictive behaviors as a short term coping mechanism. It is still a personal failing to give into these, demonstrated by others, in the same society demonstrating an ability to participate, and refrain from participating in vice.
I don't know what sort of half brained bootstraps conservatism you're trying to convey here. If the addiction is temporary but the trigger exists on a societal level then there will always be a percentage of the population experiencing addiction so society's gripe with addicted individuals is the gripe it has with itself. Lessening the trigger at the societal level is the only thing that can be done so fewer addicts are created in the first place so they never are forced to recover from addiction and those who are adicts experience fewer relaspes.
What you're describing is essentially the meme where the drowning person is given a high five instead of being pulled from the water.
Addiction is a disease, not a moral failure. The post you are responding to exemplifies the condescending mindset that is prevalent in those who have no experience with the deep abyss of addiction. Nobody became an addict by choice. I will always remember the conversation I had with an addict years ago. He told me something I'll never forget for the rest of my life:
"I've been to an addiction clinic, and it was then that I realized that everybody there, without exception, had one thing in common. It mattered not who they were, where they came from, or what drug they were addicted to: not a single one of them had any love for themselves."
Addicts will always be looked down upon and scorned. But society's negative attitude pales in comparison to the deep self-hatred addicts have for themselves. The rise of addiction indicates we live in a deeply diseased society. A society where true and false are inverted. A society where there is little love to be found, least of all for the addict.
Lessening the trigger is placing the responsibility in the wrong place. The failing is internal, and does not justify the denial of vice, or an increase in its costs to responsible users. In other words, I can smokez drink gamble, and screw with abandon, AND THEN stop by choice. I don't do any of those things with profligate abandon like a junkie. Addicts create restrictions on those behaviors by their own failings. Its like George Carlin said. "You know how I quit coke?, I stopped doing it"
rent. you could live for years in most of the world what it costs to rent for just a week in "western style modern society"
(post is archived)