I don't know if you'll see this, but I hope you do.
I've struggled with addiction and I've made decisions that I'm ashamed of and disgusted with. There was a period of my life when I was also hopeless. I thought that I had lost everything. In a sense, it was true. (Rather, I destroyed most of what I had and subsequently lost the remaining pieces.)
Despite all of that, it does get better. It took me far too long to accept that.
The fact that you are posting here tells me that on some level you are ready to get better. Recognition of the problem begets hope.
Maintaining an attitude of "it doesn't get better" turns out to be a recursive function. Since lives are finite, the base case turns out to be total self-destruction.
At each time step, each recursive call, sustained hopelessness only begets more hopelessness.
Not only do the effects of addiction and hopelessness compound, but you get a first row seat. You watch the function expand, you see every call. You literally destroy yourself in a slow, humiliating, dangerous, and deliberate fashion.
A friend of mine liked to quote a man named Albert J. LaChance, he wrote: "Addiction is a slow form of suicide- suicide on the installment plan."
Whichever metaphor you choose, one thing is clear: changing your attitude is a necessary (but not sufficient) prerequisite for recovery.
You are obviously intelligent, so it should go without saying, there is no avoiding the fact a chemical addiction is a uniquely difficult problem to solve. Fortunately, it is a problem that a great deal of science is expended upon. And there are many ways to receive medical treatment.
Tedious self-help meetings and hollow platitudes are NO substitute for scientifically validated medical treatment. In your case, it is essential that you have medical intervention while you detox.
(Self-help is very helpful to some, and it does have a reported effectiveness of (last I heard) 10 - 50% (surely, a study carried out with utmost statistical rigor!)
Self-help meetings aren't right for me, but I will vouch for their occasional effectiveness.
Should you choose to follow the self-help branch of your recovery timeline, be aware that the self-help phase comes after the detox branch. All future recovery branches of your recovery timeline form after the medical detox node.)
You need medicine and science right now!
Alcohol withdrawal can kill late stage addicts. You wrote six months ago that you attempted a cold turkey solo-detox and experienced DTs. Those suck. They are also a sign that you need to be extra cautious in your recovery.
When you go to detox, go to a licensed recovery center where a doctor can monitor you. Usually this means a hospital equipped with mental health facilities. An ER will suffice if you are out of other options or are having seizures. You can also go to a rehabilitation center (with a competent medical staff)! The last option might start your detox and then segue into a 28 day (or longer) program.
Alcohol is perhaps the most dangerous drug to detox from. (Perhaps surprising to some, you won't die from heroin withdrawals.)
You can (and should) get medical leave from your employer for treatment. I'm fairly certain it's illegal for them to deny that. (Since you are a competent developer, I'm assuming you work at a company with benefits.)
If you do not have health insurance, please contact your local medicaid office.
Please do this. For your the mother of your child, for your kids. For the person in the future who you will come across who needs help with their addiction. But most of all, for you.
This last part is my favorite aspect of hacker news. I get to tell someone that they are wrong.
I used to have your attitude. I even attempted suicide. By the grace of faulty nylon, I'm still here.
"It doesn't get better." <- That quote is factually incorrect. I'm just one instance of its disproof.
Now, to break Hacker News guidelines with extreme prejudice:
IT DOES GET BETTER. PLEASE, PLEASE SEEK MEDICAL TREATMENT. IT DOES WORK. YOU ARE WRONG. NA NA NA NA NA.
If you don't post an email in your profile in the next few hours so that I can talk to you. Via email, skype, phone, whatever. I will reply to my comment with an email address so that you can contact me when you are ready to talk and/or seek treatment.
> He means drinking doesn't get better, so stop drinking. He doesn't mean "life itself."
I feel like you either didn't read my comment or you didn't read OP's comment history. It's not as easy as "...so stop drinking." Someone who has gotten to OP's stage in their addiction has a tough road ahead. It's a road that takes more than rote Hacker News pedantry to traverse.
It's reasonable to assume that anyone who would write the OP or the comments in their history, could use some perspective on stopping drinking and the machinery of recovery life.
You can't possibly know what the OP meant. But I strongly suspect that it wasn't a casual: "Hey everyone, drinking is not so hot down the line, so stop now!" It is a request for help. I could be wrong, but maybe someone else might realize that it is possible to recover from the point where you might think that "drinking doesn't get better."
> ... He doesn't mean "life itself."
I'm not smart enough to know what you mean by that or what the OP actually meant with their post. This leaves me wondering: Someone has a cry for help, and this is the best comment you can come up with? I hope we aren't going to argue whether or not it's a cry for help. Though, that's probably the real issue here. I can retract my comment if you find that it is not up to spec. Pedantry above all else.
Okay, fair enough. I can't claim to know his precise meaning, unless he personally clarifies. That's my interpretation of his words, in the form of: {
var it = "drinking";
corollary(it, "stop ${it}, because ${it}, doesn't get better");
} ...but you certainly could be equally right, given his reference to Phil Katz.
My hopes are biased towards OP trying to make the statement: "do stop drinking", but hopefully not living in such a state where he believes, and proclaims a statement such as: "life is not worth living"
This is correct and very very important. Your brain is physically changed. Alcohol's primary effect is the increase in stimulation of the GABAA receptor, promoting central nervous system depression. With repeated heavy consumption of alcohol, these receptors are desensitized and reduced in number, resulting in tolerance and physical dependence. When alcohol consumption is stopped too abruptly, the person's nervous system suffers from uncontrolled synapse firing. This can result in symptoms that include anxiety, life threatening seizures, delirium tremens, hallucinations, shakes and possible heart failure.[55][56] Other neurotransmitter systems are also involved, especially dopamine, NMDA and glutamate.[12][57]. Please do it with professional help, in a hospital setting. An addition recovery/psychiatric hospital, not a "normal" hospital. Search online or in the yellow pages. You may have to travel some to get there. I've seen many addicts withdraw and some have no problem, but some have life threatening seizures and other absolutely terrible physical symptoms. I heard one person say "this is the worst pain I've ever experienced in my life!" Also, not being able to leave prevents you from drinking to stop the symptoms, they are locked facilities, when you sign yourself in you agree to be there for at least 3 days. The hospital will provide you with proper aftercare as well, tailored to your needs. They will also control your symptoms with medication, depending on what the symptoms are. You get checked up on constantly. Getting the psychiatric care from the hospital (and followup) will help you get to the root of the problem - why you drink - and you can treat that, instead of just treating the addition itself.
All this care is generally covered by insurance.
If you aren't very religious, please skip AA and all the twelve step programs. They are really offensive to atheists and non believers. (I have read part of the AA "big book" and had to stop because I couldn't take any more. The section on "what if I don't believe in God" was especially offensive) Seek CBT or other non-twelve step treatments. Again, the hospital will help with finding a program for you and referring you there, often taking care of the paperwork for you.
You have acknowledged you have a problem and wish to get help. This is the most important step. Please note: this will not be an easy journey, this will be difficult. You will have to work for it. You probably will have to change many things about yourself, including your thinking.
Good luck and I truly wish you the best. I am always happy when addicts get better, I grew up with an addict parent, and I know what it can do to yourself and others around you.
It says throughout their books + literature that the only reason it uses the word "god" sometimes is because it's an already well-known concept of what a 'higher power'.. or 'power/force greater than yourself' can be. That entire concept, and the basis for one of their steps, is essentially getting you to stop trying to control the things in your life that you have absolutely no control over (i.e. I can't control what your response will be so therefor I shouldn't worry about whether or not you understand what I'm trying to convey).
There ARE christian based recovery programs but unless you're already a very STRONG christian I'd stick to any number of organizations like AA or S.M.A.R.T recovery.
Btw there is no section on "what if I don't believe in God" in any AA literature... so i'm confused with why you're making shit up when this guy clearly needs real help & not just your speculation. AA worked for me, S.M.A.R.T recovery worked for a close friend, and I'm sure other programs out there have their success stories too.
Using wikipedia as a source for how someone should treat a medical condition (alcohol withdrawal) is not only misleading but in this case dangerous.
Think of addiction like LSD. For those who have experienced it there is no explanation necessary..for those who haven't there is no explanation possible (loosely paraphrased from "Be Here Now" by Ram Dass).
> Atheism and other devout believers in a purely physical, meaningless and non-spiritual reality are pretty susceptible to things like alcoholism and born-again Christianty.
[citation needed]
Here's some nonsense I just made up:
"Christians and other devout believers in a purely spiritual reality are pretty susceptible to things like alcoholism and becoming atheists."
See how easy it is!
>I bet half of these atheist middle class kids running amock on Reddit are married and church-going by the time they hit 40. As soon as their own mortality starts catching up with them they'll have questions that image memes and front-end frameworks just won't answer.
Oh cute, the old "there are no atheist in foxholes" argument. Oh and it's gotta be church-going, you know Christan. My husband was shot at plus watched two friends die in Iraq and still remains an atheist.
>If you're in tech and you're feeling the lonely, empty void, well, for fucks sake, that's what the entire industry is banking on the future being like.
Um, no.
>AA is very effective.
[citation needed]
Can it work for some people? Yes. Is it effective as a whole for everyone? No. Is it better than other treatments? Probably not.
A good point, put as offensively as possible, loses it's luster.
I believe that spirituality has a place, but that spirituality is pointed toward more by Goedel Escher Bach than the Bible, or the Koran, who's description of God is so filled with contradiction (a just loving God that will burn you for eternity no matter how you lived your life, if you don't mouth certain words?!), I'm not really sure what people even mean when they say "I believe in God."
Spirituality in practice, to me, means meditation. And meditation is a wonderful exercise in culling down one's experience to an absolute minimum. If your mind is an organic computer, then meditation is an intentional starving of input. This extreme, austere environment reveals details about the low-level operation of your mind that is fascinating to discover. Empirically, it's useful too, because you can view your experience with ever greater objectivity. And it's mostly inexplicable, in the way good spiritual experiences are. Highly recommended.
Thank you so much for taking the time to write this comment. This is effective actionable advice for the OP with a positive attitude. HackerNews comments from low karma kids aren't dead!
I've struggled with addiction and I've made decisions that I'm ashamed of and disgusted with. There was a period of my life when I was also hopeless. I thought that I had lost everything. In a sense, it was true. (Rather, I destroyed most of what I had and subsequently lost the remaining pieces.)
Despite all of that, it does get better. It took me far too long to accept that.
The fact that you are posting here tells me that on some level you are ready to get better. Recognition of the problem begets hope.
Maintaining an attitude of "it doesn't get better" turns out to be a recursive function. Since lives are finite, the base case turns out to be total self-destruction.
At each time step, each recursive call, sustained hopelessness only begets more hopelessness.
Not only do the effects of addiction and hopelessness compound, but you get a first row seat. You watch the function expand, you see every call. You literally destroy yourself in a slow, humiliating, dangerous, and deliberate fashion.
A friend of mine liked to quote a man named Albert J. LaChance, he wrote: "Addiction is a slow form of suicide- suicide on the installment plan."
Whichever metaphor you choose, one thing is clear: changing your attitude is a necessary (but not sufficient) prerequisite for recovery.
You are obviously intelligent, so it should go without saying, there is no avoiding the fact a chemical addiction is a uniquely difficult problem to solve. Fortunately, it is a problem that a great deal of science is expended upon. And there are many ways to receive medical treatment.
Tedious self-help meetings and hollow platitudes are NO substitute for scientifically validated medical treatment. In your case, it is essential that you have medical intervention while you detox.
(Self-help is very helpful to some, and it does have a reported effectiveness of (last I heard) 10 - 50% (surely, a study carried out with utmost statistical rigor!)
Self-help meetings aren't right for me, but I will vouch for their occasional effectiveness.
Should you choose to follow the self-help branch of your recovery timeline, be aware that the self-help phase comes after the detox branch. All future recovery branches of your recovery timeline form after the medical detox node.)
You need medicine and science right now!
Alcohol withdrawal can kill late stage addicts. You wrote six months ago that you attempted a cold turkey solo-detox and experienced DTs. Those suck. They are also a sign that you need to be extra cautious in your recovery.
When you go to detox, go to a licensed recovery center where a doctor can monitor you. Usually this means a hospital equipped with mental health facilities. An ER will suffice if you are out of other options or are having seizures. You can also go to a rehabilitation center (with a competent medical staff)! The last option might start your detox and then segue into a 28 day (or longer) program.
Alcohol is perhaps the most dangerous drug to detox from. (Perhaps surprising to some, you won't die from heroin withdrawals.)
You can (and should) get medical leave from your employer for treatment. I'm fairly certain it's illegal for them to deny that. (Since you are a competent developer, I'm assuming you work at a company with benefits.)
If you do not have health insurance, please contact your local medicaid office.
Please do this. For your the mother of your child, for your kids. For the person in the future who you will come across who needs help with their addiction. But most of all, for you.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This last part is my favorite aspect of hacker news. I get to tell someone that they are wrong.
I used to have your attitude. I even attempted suicide. By the grace of faulty nylon, I'm still here.
"It doesn't get better." <- That quote is factually incorrect. I'm just one instance of its disproof.
Now, to break Hacker News guidelines with extreme prejudice:
IT DOES GET BETTER. PLEASE, PLEASE SEEK MEDICAL TREATMENT. IT DOES WORK. YOU ARE WRONG. NA NA NA NA NA.
If you don't post an email in your profile in the next few hours so that I can talk to you. Via email, skype, phone, whatever. I will reply to my comment with an email address so that you can contact me when you are ready to talk and/or seek treatment.