I'm sober and have been in that world for several years now, and the most important (and hardest) part of getting sober was accepting that I had a problem and needed help. Macro policy decisions can help with access to an extent, but addicts fundamentally cannot make better decisions for themselves until they first realize they have a problem. And as prohibition taught us, once the demand is there, it can't just be regulated away.
Increasing awareness and creating programs to help people seeking treatment are the way to go.
But yet murder is illegal ;)
I think everyone agrees you can legislate morality, just they disagree where that line is (even the Oldes™ like Aquinas, who argued that prostitution is immoral but the state shouldn't outlaw it because the alternatives are worse for the state).
The no-holds-barred legalization of gambling apps has none of these benefits, and almost everyone I've talked to, no matter how libertarian their instincts, seems to agree we've gone way too far. I think (and hope) we'll see a backlash on the gambling stuff that pushes legal gambling out of the insanely public and accessible places where it currently lives.
These days, if you exclude ‘possession’ and ‘selling’ from weed-related crimes, there’s almost nothing left. Weed is commoditized and is one of the few products that has gotten cheaper over the last 6 years.
There’s very little violence in the weed trade, the profit margins aren’t high enough for people to murder each other like they are for cocaine, heroin, and meth.
Here's the steps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-step_program
We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.The fact is, many people in AA and related programs do have faith, and the program is wise to engage with it and help those people orient themselves in a way that compliments that worldview and strengthens their resolve to get sober.
For the members who don't have faith, my experience with the program has been that it does not impose any Christian worldview onto the actual practice. There's no imposition for non-believers to conform to that belief.
I've never left a meeting and felt like I was being pushed a religious agenda. The vague talk of a "higher power" is a way for believers and non-believers alike to articulate a personal spirituality that will bolster their likelihood of success in the program.
I've been to many meetings over the years to support friends and am heartened by the nature of AA as an organization. It's been a wonderful experience. I often leave joking that I wish I had a problem so that I could come back more often and participate with the community and the program.
I have a lot of positive things to say about the program, but they're beyond the scope of this comment.
HN Anonymous.
Hello, my name is bombcar and I have 50,903 karma.
> God, as we understood Him
AA is 90 years old, practiced all over the world (in many non-Christian countries) and has helped millions of people get sober. It's not for everyone, but I'd ask for an example for a more successful and long-lived organization that has saved as many lives as AA. I struggle to think of one.
If reality and your theory differs, it's not reality that's wrong.