Seems to be about general IT/computing addiction (too), which seems even better than a group focusing only on "AI Addiction". Seems like a very active effort (online calendar has multiple events per day), across multiple countries and languages.
I haven't participated (or even seen this before) myself, but as far as I can tell, it's basically a fork of AA and their methodology, but I've also not participated in AA so maybe they're different in some major way? Otherwise it seems like a good approach, take something that is somewhat working, make it more specific and hopefully people into that specific thing can get the help they need.
This addition is not new or unique to ITAA, as I understand it was pioneered as the "three circles" model by Sex Addicts Anonymous and has been adopted by other recovery fellowships where the definition of clean/sober is not so binary or universal.
But chatgpt for example showers the user with compliments. I'm sure this encourages user engagement, but it is eerily similar to the "love bombing" of cults from the 70s and 80s. I don't know how to reconcile the long-term risks with the huge short-term gains in productivity.
Are there any technologies or apps that are worse than others, particularly for people with obsessive/compulsive tendencies?
No, my simple and obvious statement was not "a deep and insightful point". No I am not "in the top 1% of people who can recognize this".
The other thing that drives me crazy is the constant positive re-framing with bold letters. "You aren't lazy, you are just *re-calibrating*! A wise move on your part!".
I don't find it ego stroking at all. It's obviously fake and patently stupid and that verbiage just mucks up the conversation.
I've never had an AI respond to me with this kind of phrasing. General psychophancy, sure, but nothing that obnoxious. I haven't used ChatGPT much in the last year though, does it speak that way?
Sycophancy. I don't usually correct misspellings, but this one is pretty unique.
Hmm i answered almost all of them with Yes, but i'm also a developer using AI and developing AI apps. So not sure what to make out of it.
But what if the thing we do is good?
Addicted to eating vegetables, addicted to healthy living, etc.
If a developer is using AI for example and they spend a lot of time doing it, and they're feeling fulfilled and happy, then that's fine.
And that's what it has to come down to: does it have a net benefit or net detriment?
"Does my use of AI lead me to neglect my personal hygiene, nutritional needs, or physical health?"
(compare with: "Does my eating of vegetables lead me to neglect my personal hygiene, nutritional needs, or physical health?")
"Have my digital behaviors jeopardized my studies, finances, or career?"
(compare with: "Have my healthy living behaviors jeopardized my studies, finances, or career?")
All questions are about negative impact on your life. To me it doesn't matter whether you label it "addiction". If you answer yes to most of these questions, whatever the subject, it is severely affecting your life.
I have met people who are so deep into healthy living that it becomes unhealthy, and their hyper focus on what is healthy - often, these days, fed by TikTok influencers, but when I was younger, fed just as much by books - leads to obsessing over what they can eat to the point of malnourishment.
So the answer to this question very much can be "yes". Humans can get addicted to all kinds of things. Healthy eating is only a few steps away from an eating disorder, in the same way that going out for drinks with friends is only a few steps away from alcoholism. Most people will never take those few steps, but for those who do, it can become a serious problem.
Doing anything "too much" is bad for you.
This used to happen on Wikipedia all the time back in the day. It was called going down a rabbit hole. Actually a cool phenomenon IMO.
With AI usage I actually find I spend less time on the internet or going down rabbit holes than I used to without it.
I was pretty skeptical initially, but it turns out I also have a ton of fear and resentment that I never thought existed. My stubbornness strikes again! But if you're able to deal with and process your fears and resentments and then switch bad coping mechanisms to good ones—that will improve your life substantially.
A lot of it has been surprisingly eye-opening to me.
The main exercises related to my comment are writing out resentments as they occur—who/what wronged you, why that hurt and what part we may have played. Same with fears—what they are, how do they affect us.
Honestly, a lot of it is so simple, but it really forces you to think about these things.
The more they talk about it, the more it just sounds like repacked Stoicism.
To be a stoic you have to be minimalist, have intense will power, and high tolerance for pain. How many people do you know that fall into that criteria?
The Apple Watch is a good compromise: some ability to get calls and text messages, but not a very ‘addictive device.’
> AI addiction is the compulsive and harmful use of AI-powered applications. It can involve AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT, video or image generation apps, algorithm-driven social media platforms, AI-powered gaming, AI companions, AI roleplaying, AI-generated pornography, or any other
The youth is not ready. Infinite pictures of whatever you want to see. Downloaded models have _no_ restrictions.
Make of that what you want.
Nobody is ready, and ever will be. Like it or not, we thrive on the scarcity of information. But our instinct to collect it has overpowered that scarcity in a big way, and that will lead to a high degree of neurosis no matter who you are.
The issue with discussion of 12-Step programs, is that folks that are members, are explicitly enjoined from getting involved with these types of public discussions, so almost everything that you hear and read, doesn't reflect what the actual deal is.
intellectronica•5h ago
n4r9•5h ago
VladVladikoff•4h ago
lompad•4h ago
Generally: While suppressed memory of trauma exists, the vast majority of people are aware of trauma and there is no evidence suggesting otherwise. And there is clear evidence that lots of mentally well people get addicted as well, so just claiming "it's always some underlying condition" is probably not a great idea. It can, often even, be, sure. But that doesn't make it mandatory and especially doesn't allow the "I struggle with addiction, so there _must_ have been a problem beforehand" conclusion.
So honestly, I'd just not search any deeper to not risk inducing any false memories.
Aurornis•2h ago
Like the comment above said, many “repressed memories” are actually false memories or, in rare cases, false stories that get constructed and encouraged by a misleading therapist who is convinced that some repressed memory exists and pushes too hard to get the patient to “remember” something. When the only way to satisfy the other party is to come up with a story, many people will eventually come up with a story and even believe it themselves.
The same thing happens with false confessions.
shkkmo•2h ago
It is problematic, but not in the way that you think. While memories can be suggestively altered or created by questioning, the evidence for doing so for traumatic childhood sexual abuse is anecdotal and those anecdotes were pretty heavily cherry picked by the clearly biased FMSF, which was run as a support and advocacy group for parents accused of abuse.
That said, my understanding is that in general, dwelling on traumatizing experiences isn't beneficial to recovery. There are times they may need to be confronted and processed, but generally if it isn't causing a problem, don't go digging it up and spending a lot of time thinking about it unnecessarily.
jxjnskkzxxhx•3h ago
I'm addicted to sugar. I have some trauma now? What trauma? My life has been relatively smooth sailing. You're right, this is just a way of creating the "need" for "therapy".
barbazoo•3h ago
bregma•3h ago
Aurornis•2h ago
dylan604•2h ago
dylan604•2h ago
barbazoo•3h ago
gh0stcat•3h ago
I generally engage more in my own flavor of addictions (caffeine, social media, workaholism) when I am more overwhelmed, understanding that I do this and why… was helpful.
lelanthran•2h ago
Don't worry about it. The trauma diagnosis has been ludicrously poor at treating addiction.
From what I've read, it performs worse than placebos, random chance, etc.
For treatment of substance abuse, therapy is literally at the bottom of the performance chart, below things like hypnotism, alternative medicines and plain old prayer.
everdrive•4h ago
sharifhsn•4h ago
vintermann•4h ago
butlike•3h ago
Where is the trauma in that scenario? The brain damage from the cigs? I can hardly get over that 'trauma' since I've never known a world without it. The trauma of repeatedly getting addicted to things? I DON'T hold that against myself, I just like how they feel. Where is the trauma in that scenario?
some_random•3h ago
Aurornis•2h ago
It can get people started on therapy because it uses therapy speak and therefore feels like therapy is an obvious solution. However, it also makes the person into a victim of external trauma while minimizing their own role in the choices that led to the addiction.
It’s really appealing for people who need something external to blame, but it’s less helpful in getting at the root of behavioral issues that aren’t really external.
For the narrow slice of patients who actually have severe trauma response issues, it can be helpful. For everyone else it’s becoming a big distraction.
micromacrofoot•4h ago
rwyinuse•4h ago
I guess one could argue that modern life in industrialized world is deeply understimulating, and the phones just provide an escape from that, but that's just living conditions, not a trauma.
keiferski•4h ago
vintermann•4h ago
n4r9•3h ago
As soon as I put my smartphone away I realise I'm confronted with challenging feelings: the fear of engaging with the people around me, worrying what they're thinking, looking stupid if I'm not doing anything, or just plain boredom. So it's "avoiding psychological difficulty" that is the fundamental factor.
hollerith•4h ago
I also wasted too much time, thousands of hours, reading and writing on the newsgroups and on the web.
There are similarities between these 2 things. For example, both reduce the amount of motivation and drive available in a life. But they feel very different, and in my experience, avoiding the former is extremely important whereas avoiding the latter is merely one more important thing in a life full of important considerations.
In an ideal world, there would be a word or short phrase for the second thing so that "addiction" could be reserved for the first thing. "Insufficient vigilance against superstimuli" is the shortest phrase I can think of right now. (I'm sad that I cannot use the word "vices" without provoking an immediate negative reaction: "vices" is shorter than "superstimuli".)
blamestross•3h ago
Its one of those "paid for your mental disorder" situations that are a lot more common than people realize.
gausswho•3h ago
On the one hand, it sounds preposterous - a bit like saying you're addicted to consciousness, or meditation. On the other, I can relate to how my enjoyment and pursuit of it strains my relationships with others.
It's a fascinating suggestion. I'd like to hear more about why you feel that way.
hollerith•2h ago
I had chronically-high cortisol. The flow state provided a profound but temporary relief from the cortisol. There are better responses to high cortisol.
DHEA (which is available over-the-counter in the US) is a better response because it allows me to dispense with the hour or 2 of intense concentration necessary to get into the flow state (freeing up the time and the mental energy for more productive uses).
Starting a friendship with a person who gets me and doesn't trigger my trauma triggers was a better response because the cortisol-lowering effect of such a friendship has lasted for years whereas the effect of being in the flow state ends as soon as the flow state ends.
datpuz•2h ago
hollerith•2h ago
127•3h ago
exe34•3h ago
Aurornis•3h ago
The “trauma explains everything” meme has become more of a way to get people to accept therapy than a real explanation.
It transforms the problem from a personal failing (I can’t control my addiction) to a situation where the person is a victim of something external (Trauma inflicted on me has forced me to become addicted). People find it easier to accept treatment when they think they’re a victim of something external.
Gabor Mate (the trauma influencer mentioned in the comment above) uses trauma as the basis of his therapy, so he finds a “trauma” for everyone. If he can’t find something with the patient, he believes being born is their trauma, because the childbirth process is painful. Everyone was born, so he has a fallback trauma to assign to everyone.
lelanthran•2h ago
datpuz•2h ago
intellectronica•1h ago
For some it can be consuming the same psychoactive substance over and over again. For others it may be compulsion to repeat a limited set of rituals and behaviours.
The first thing they need help with is accepting that they will not be able to exercise control over everything. There are many ways to get there, but for many, labelling this pattern as "addiction" and getting help and support in this context, is easier than other options.
jamal-kumar•3h ago
Synaesthesia•3h ago
I've really come around to that theory though and I think he's very wise.
We need to take a close look at the way we are living our lives under capitalism, the decisions we're forced to.make, and the way we treat our children.
Aurornis•3h ago
It’s another example of something that isn’t really correct for everyone but can be useful to get people to go to a therapist and get treatment.
spjt•2h ago
n4r9•2h ago
I guess the upshot is that "I'd rather be doing..." is not actually very simple at all IMO.
Willingham•4h ago
TechDebtDevin•3h ago
Im not against it but it simply is not the only cure for addiction. In fact its provenly a very bad program for the 95% that cant hang.
Much better CBT and medical interventions out there and millions of people are told every year to ignore them because of 12 step evangalist.
If the west had the answer to addiction in the form of 12 step, we probably wouldnt have the highest rates of addiction in the world and is probably a sign of societal trauma that no amount of meetings is going to help.
butlike•3h ago
TechDebtDevin•2h ago
Its the most unscientific method of treating addiction we have, one of the least effective, yet the government literally uses it as its ONLY tool (in a lot towns) to fight addiction in their communities, partly because propagandists of the 12 step methods have ingrained the idea that its the only thing that works into society (USA), when in fact, it is the opposite. My guess is, they like or don't care about recidivism also.
I think the decentralized community-based nature of 12 steps programs is cool though, and we do need more stuff like that.
ants_everywhere•3h ago
I see the point you're making. But we as a society do this a lot, and it hasn't always historically been good for the people who are actually affected by the disorders.
Historically, this has been done by therapists who aren't well connected to the research world. They think they find a framework that works for their patients and promote it. Sometimes it becomes a fad despite not being backed by evidence. It's not always clear what the consequences are, but a common consequence is that many people miss out on actually figuring out what's going on with them and getting evidence-based treatment.
I'm not saying that there is no AI addiction. I'll leave that to the professionals. But I do want to gently push back on the idea that we should raise something to the level of pathology because it seems useful.
And as the parent of kids, there are a lot of habits that become compulsions and where you experience withdrawal if you stop. Reading is one in my family. Exercise is something that's rewarding and you feel bad if you stop. But exercise addiction is a very specific disorder. Just some stuff to keep in mind.
IlikeKitties•3h ago
Just the very 12 Steps themselves are enough to show you that[0]:
> 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.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-step_program
kingkawn•3h ago
tayo42•3h ago
IlikeKitties•3h ago
Aurornis•3h ago
All of these are available and common in the US.
12-step programs and AA are available in many countries outside of the US.
IlikeKitties•2h ago
Anyway, here's a list of court cases/news articles where it wasn't:
https://www.courthousenews.com/atheist-fights-court-ordered-...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/08/alcoholics-ano...
https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/1995/jul/15/aa-probatio...
https://aaagnostica.org/2014/10/17/atheist-punished-for-reje...
I'm sure you can find 20 more easily. Glad i'm not american.
genewitch•14m ago
stronglikedan•11m ago
You could literally say the same about any special interest group in any country.
> Glad i'm not american.
Me too, but the difference is that you don't see me thinking I know anything about UK politics or special interest groups.
I'd even wager that you've never even set foot in a meeting in an attempt to alleviate your naivety.
cturner•2h ago
tea-lover•3h ago
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Кодирование_от_алкоголизма
The article in Russian is much more thorough than the English one, run it through Google Translate or something.
There are various ways it's practiced in my area, all of them can be summarized as follows: a medical professional performs some procedure (sometimes just hypnosis, but it can get more physical), which either "cures" your alcoholism, or convinces you that you're going to die horribly if you have even a drop of alcohol. The process depends on who is doing it.
It's basically just placebo and is pretty useless in practice (most alcoholics I know haven't stopped drinking for more than a couple of months), which doesn't prevent it from being widely used.
IlikeKitties•3h ago
tea-lover•3h ago
Yizahi•2h ago
So in general the system is well equipped to not allow patients die from abstaining.
Yizahi•2h ago
graemep•1h ago
moffkalast•43m ago
singpolyma3•37m ago
bloqs•3h ago
bravo
IlikeKitties•3h ago
Aurornis•3h ago
One of my old friends was a staunch atheist since middle school. He joined AA after some struggles.
He said it was no problem at all. They told him his “higher power” could be anything he chose, such as nature or the universe. The prayer part was just meditation. Nobody tried to push religion on anyone.
I don’t know if his experience was typical or not, but he didn’t think it was a problem at all.
I haven’t kept up with him for a while but last we talked he was still doing well, many years later.
Drew_•3h ago
Craighead•2h ago
imtringued•2h ago
Turns out in the last few centuries a lot of unanswerable questions have found answers rooted in scientific progress and the new answers conflict with the previous answers, which by their very function as placeholders could not have been correct.
Drew_•1h ago
lelanthran•3h ago
His experience is typical. I know have someone very close to me in AA+12-step. There is no pressure to have your higher power named "God". It could be anything; the point is to have a power higher than the one over you (the addiction).
IlikeKitties•2h ago
The rejection of any "higher power" is precisely what being an atheist is for a lot of us. Accepting that we are just the result of random thermodynamic processes in a cold and uncaring universe that provides no evidence that there is any form of "higher power" than uncaring entropy could very well be the definition of modern atheism.
lelanthran•2h ago
The person I am talking about chose their child's well-being and safety as their "higher power".
The higher power has nothing at all to do with religion unless you want it to.
IlikeKitties•2h ago
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/higher-power https://www.dictionary.com/browse/higher-power https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/higher%20power
And it's beside the point anyways because again, look at the 12 Steps, quoted directly from their website, as a canonical source [0]:
> 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
> 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
> 7. Humbly asked Him [God] to remove our shortcomings.
> 11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
If your argument is that to stop alcohol addiction you need to stop using alcohol and most of the 12 Step Program is irrelevant nonsense, than we are in agreement. But they don't talk about "higher power" they literally talk about God (And they obviously don't mean Xenu here) in the majority of their steps. [0]https://www.aa.org/the-twelve-steps
Aurornis•2h ago
Meaning has context. If you're searching dictionaries for multi-word phrases that are specific to a certain context, you're not going to find the right answer.
IlikeKitties•2h ago
Why?
There's lot's of places around the world that do evidence based addiction counseling and unsurprisingly none of them require you to believe in any made up entities and spiritual nonsense.
ta8645•52m ago
"Prayer" has no universally accepted procedure, and can just be your own calm reflective contemplation. "Spiritual awakening" can be that moment when you as an atheist accept your non-central role in the universe, when you come to peace with the fact that there is a higher power than yourself, and you aren't the central character in its unfolding.
There are only "made up entities" when you demand that everything be understood in literally minded cartoonish definitions, rather than a more nuanced understanding of the world around us, and our place in it.
antonvs•28m ago
This is incoherent. It assumes some sort of hierarchy of "power" - what does that even mean? Is the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy a higher power because it has more mass/energy than I do?
> there's no reason to get hung up on that for yourself; it's easy to translate into your own terms without raising an objection.
The reason is critical thought and a dislike of incoherent nonsense.
ta8645•9m ago
But the higher power in the AA context is a deep recognition that we are subordinate to the laws of nature. Which is indeed a kind of higher power; we are subordinate to the laws of nature, and can not exert our own will to overcome them. It is that recognition and submission to reality that can engender a humility and peace essential to recovery from addiction.
It only represents incoherent nonsense to someone who is very literally minded and can not integrate relatively simple concepts into their own rigid mental framework.
phrotoma•2h ago
https://internetaddictsanonymous.org/for-atheists-and-agnost...
IlikeKitties•2h ago
davidmurdoch•2h ago
0xdeadbeefbabe•2h ago
dfee•2h ago
and then your further rejection of the response:
> The person I am talking about chose their child's well-being and safety as their "higher power".
i understand you see the universe as uncaring, but there is care right in front of you. i hope the sunshine breaks through and you find it, too.
antonvs•32m ago
Some of us would like to move on from these primitive superstitions. We can have care, empathy, and "sunshine" without it being contaminated by nonsense.
haswell•2h ago
I’m somewhere between atheist and agnostic. My mental model is a bit different. While I don’t believe there is a god or some “divine entity”, I do see “the stuff of primordial existence” as some kind of “higher power” to the extent that I’m a product of it, and its laws — discovered and yet to be discovered — govern my existence. Not some anthropomorphic entity.
Put another way, those thermodynamic processes and whatever factors of existence that enable/govern them are the “higher power”, and I don’t think that is incompatible with atheism.
tomnipotent•1h ago
Sounds like you're both. They're complimentary labels. It's also possible to be an agnostic theist.
peab•2h ago
A higher power isn't a man in the sky building the world in 7 days. A higher power is admitting that you do not know reality, that we are barely more intelligent than a monkey, and that the universe is much vaster and more mystical than what can be defined in a physics textbook.
IlikeKitties•2h ago
How do you rationalize the high power coming to being? How do you rationalize there being a higher power at all in the first place?
thewebguyd•25m ago
Why does it need to be rationalized at all? I don't need a rationalization for existing - beings arise, exist, change, and then they cease. The world's current existence isn't something that requires external justification, it just simply is.
I guess you could say the higher power to me would just be the continuous process that leads to existence and ceasing to exist - but to me it has no meaning, and no "power" other than simply being the way things are as I experience them.
datpuz•2h ago
lelanthran•2h ago
If you do, you wouldn't be addicted, now would you?
datpuz•2h ago
antonvs•26m ago
genewitch•18m ago
if you're in treatment or AA for alcoholism - just as a single example - you're recovering. If you're merely "not drinking" then you're not recovering, you're just "not drinking."
i don't even understand why this is an issue, there are a lot of people where a 12 step program helps them recover; there are in-patient and outpatient care facilities that also can facilitate recovery.
and yes, some small segment of the population can be a "dry drunk" for the rest of their lives, but thinking you can overcome addiction by yourself is one of the reasons that addiction is prevalent.
dijksterhuis•6m ago
samtheprogram•2h ago
You are taking the “no control” thing too literally.
card_zero•40m ago
antonvs•26m ago
/thread
madog•1h ago
Seems like the first step should be understanding that you CAN have control over it, even if you don't currently; and that you have the agency and strength to do that without appeal to some higher power.
The admitting you have no control sounds fatalistic to me and robs you of agency/responsibility. Then you're reliant on some externality or higher power instead of finding it within yourself.
Even those who go for the higher power are ultimately doing it themselves, they've just kidded themselves something else is involved, and if that helps you find that you can have some control over it, then great, I guess?
IlikeKitties•1h ago
It's the difference between someone who can just drink a beer once in a while and an alcoholic that must abstain completly.
Volundr•1h ago
dijksterhuis•1h ago
“after this one i definitely need to stop”
“i can handle another”
“i’m fine, i can go for a bit longer”
“i can stop after this one”
“the next one will make me feel better”
^ the illusion/delusion of being in control. even when all evidence points to the opposite conclusion — that one more i had yesterday, and all the previous days, was never the last one.
when your in this shit it’s basically impossible to think your way out of it because most thoughts become “a drink will solve this” or some such. that right there is the core problem. the thinking process has become completely twisted and warped into “more is the solution”.
the powerlessness is over the compulsion, obsession and delusions in our own minds around <insert X here>.
-
i appreciate HN is often a more technical / scientific / rational / whatever audience who can maybe sometimes value their own thinking as paramount (coding etc. takes a lot of thinking after all). that’s not a bad thing. it just means it’ll be quite an understandably large leap for some folks to understand what it’s like at the bottom of a bottle.
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edit - i’m not into the whole jeebus thing FYI
datpuz•2h ago
mock-possum•1h ago
But at that point, why is The Twelve Steps as an institution still pedaling belief in the supernatural, when it’s ostensibly just as effective with the Christian mythology removed?
Why not make the atheist version the baseline, and allow members to mix in religion if they find it to be useful - as opposed to making religious belief the default, and allowing users to substitute other things for religion if they find that to be useful?
I think the thing that most atheists are objecting to, with ‘religion as default’ situations like this, is the way religious belief is treated as the norm. I remember growing up and going to church, hearing about how “everyone had a god-shaped hole in their heart” - and each person would inevitably find a way to fill that hole, but nothing would ever quite fit, because that hole was god-shaped and could only properly be filled by god.
So when you run up against this kind of language in a system that’s supposed to be helping people free themselves from addiction, it’s off-putting to run into language that coerces them into making themselves beholden to magical thinking and supernatural beliefs, in gods and higher powers. “It can be whatever you want” feels like a cop out - it’s merely a softened stance on what I described above - “everyone has a god-shaped hole in their heart, and it’s okay if you fill that hole with love for your daughter or pride in your work.”
It’s still a turn-off for people like me, for better or for worse - maybe it’s a filter, maybe I’m not the kind of person who would need or would do well in that kind of program.
wkat4242•1m ago
Also, many of these staps make no sense.
I don't believe in higher powers and I don't want to humbly beg them to remove my character flaws. If I want those removed I have to do it myself.
Some of the steps make some sense but there's way too much senseless groveling in there.
timacles•3h ago
It does not help anyone to pretend that the universe is some sort of pure logic and reasoning machine and that a human can operate that way, because we are governed by and a slave to our emotions.
Religion and God exist for a reason, and that reason is that the world is inconceivably complicated and if you dont create a mental and emotional reasoning system that helps see beyond the complexity then you are going to have a really tough time.
Now, churches and cults and all that preying on vulnerable people is a whole other subject. But God and religion is a powerful tool humans have turned to for millennia.
rubicon33•2h ago
I’m with you for sure, but the truth is systems like religion, art, design, etc all serve a functional purpose to trick the mind, calm the mind, etc.
colechristensen•2h ago
IlikeKitties•2h ago
It's really, really fascinating and there's tons of resources out there how they get started, how they function and why. Once you understand the functional purpose of them, you'll never look at other religions the same.
93po•2h ago
graemep•1h ago
Principles shared with most religions and most non-religious people are hardly a mrk of Buddhism.
Buddhism is not a theistic religion, but it still requires a lot of religious beliefs (reincarnation, enlightenment, nirvana) and a lot of concepts such as detachment.
There is a BIG difference between "not monotheistic" and "not religious".
moffkalast•41m ago
intellectronica•2h ago
peab•1h ago
"There is high quality evidence that manualized AA/TSF interventions are more effective than other established treatments, such as CBT, for increasing abstinence. Non-manualized AA/TSF may perform as well as these other established treatments. AA/TSF interventions, both manualized and non-manualized, may be at least as effective as other treatments for other alcohol-related outcomes. AA/TSF probably produces substantial healthcare cost savings among people with alcohol use disorder."[0]
[0]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32159228/
IlikeKitties•1h ago
stronglikedan•15m ago
afpx•4m ago
Practicing religion yields a lot of net-positive effects, particularly mental anguish and internal turmoil. Otherwise, people wouldn't practice them. With moderate practice, you can easily achieve a state of 100% internal peace.
belter•2h ago
benreesman•1h ago
America is a Puritan origin society with a temperance faction that has been everything from writing the Constitution to largely ignored, standards for alcohol, cannabis, scripts fluctuate like hemlines: a typical adulthood will see multiple incompatible regimes of acceptable use vs unacceptable abuse.
None of that is anything to do with compassionate provision of high-quality medical care to vulnerable people (a strict ethical and practical good). Compassionate provision of high quality support is both expensive and leaves no room for insider/outsider lizard brain shit, i.e. not a very American thing to do in the 21st century.
Our society needs to get its shit together on this, not further weaponize it.