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CodingJeebustoday at 3:00 PM2 repliesview on HN

12 Step recovery and adjacent programs fill this niche quite well, and new communities are popping up all the time to deal with more modern addictions, like internet/technology addiction.

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.


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bombcartoday at 3:23 PM

That's certainly part of it - but there's some distance between prohibition and infinite alcohol dispensaries in everyone's pocket (which is what gambling has become).

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nekusartoday at 3:24 PM

12 step recovery is just bullshit christian religionism wrapped in some psychobabble. Id much rather have a program that doesnt use "scary man in the sky" doing bad stuff to you.

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.
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