JAJT
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While your intentions are great, let me assure you that you can't fix a drinking problem with external goals/factors. Period.
It's an internal struggle that requires internal discipline and any external assistance needs to be externalized in a very intentional and purposeful way.
You're talking about giving drinkers $350 a year but your average addict is spending at least that per MONTH (if not significantly more) and usually from funds they don't have to begin with. Right there they can put THOUSANDS of dollars per year into their pockets without your help and they KNOW this. Then you have health improvements to consider, which are significant, and addicts also understand this.
The benefits of quitting are already significant, but it doesn't matter - because knowing isn't enough and external motivation doesn't work on addicts because that's not how addiction works.
This is why "Rock Bottom" is so important to many addicts - they need some external event to hit them so hard that it causes a wake up call on a scale they never knew they could experience. The thought of continuing to drink needs to scare the F*cking shit out of them, if you'll excuse the language.
And even then, at rock bottom, with an extreme desire to quit, it's often not enough. The most likely thing a person will do after being told by a doctor that they will literally die if they keep drinking is... keep drinking.
You can certainly take a drinker's money with a service like you suggest. Drinkers very often WANT to quit much like folks trying to lose weight, so they'll subscribe and buy and whatever else, but it's not really offering any real value because it's not an effective way to combat the issue.
Alcohol Anonymous works by giving people community and accountability and a group of folks to relate to. Forget the steps and belief and all the rest - the psychology of why it works is simply the support system that it formalizes around the addict.
Rehab works by removing the addict from the negative reinforcing environment they live in. The problem is that once they return to their old environment, old habits die hard. Rehab needs to be followed up by a drastic change in lifestyle and environment for it to have any chance of working.
Your goal is great, but your approach is ineffective. If you REALLY want to help drinkers, you need to help them identify why they are failing and provide them with various support systems and tools that addresses the underlying psychology of addiction.
I would honestly go so far as to say that unless you've been an addict yourself (or have spent significant time with them) you have very little chance of actually helping one, because the experience of addiction is almost indescribable to an outsider and logic, reason, and good intentions just aren't enough to crack this issue.
It's an internal struggle that requires internal discipline and any external assistance needs to be externalized in a very intentional and purposeful way.
You're talking about giving drinkers $350 a year but your average addict is spending at least that per MONTH (if not significantly more) and usually from funds they don't have to begin with. Right there they can put THOUSANDS of dollars per year into their pockets without your help and they KNOW this. Then you have health improvements to consider, which are significant, and addicts also understand this.
The benefits of quitting are already significant, but it doesn't matter - because knowing isn't enough and external motivation doesn't work on addicts because that's not how addiction works.
This is why "Rock Bottom" is so important to many addicts - they need some external event to hit them so hard that it causes a wake up call on a scale they never knew they could experience. The thought of continuing to drink needs to scare the F*cking shit out of them, if you'll excuse the language.
And even then, at rock bottom, with an extreme desire to quit, it's often not enough. The most likely thing a person will do after being told by a doctor that they will literally die if they keep drinking is... keep drinking.
You can certainly take a drinker's money with a service like you suggest. Drinkers very often WANT to quit much like folks trying to lose weight, so they'll subscribe and buy and whatever else, but it's not really offering any real value because it's not an effective way to combat the issue.
Alcohol Anonymous works by giving people community and accountability and a group of folks to relate to. Forget the steps and belief and all the rest - the psychology of why it works is simply the support system that it formalizes around the addict.
Rehab works by removing the addict from the negative reinforcing environment they live in. The problem is that once they return to their old environment, old habits die hard. Rehab needs to be followed up by a drastic change in lifestyle and environment for it to have any chance of working.
Your goal is great, but your approach is ineffective. If you REALLY want to help drinkers, you need to help them identify why they are failing and provide them with various support systems and tools that addresses the underlying psychology of addiction.
I would honestly go so far as to say that unless you've been an addict yourself (or have spent significant time with them) you have very little chance of actually helping one, because the experience of addiction is almost indescribable to an outsider and logic, reason, and good intentions just aren't enough to crack this issue.
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