I think in most cases this is true, but there are cases where a person's body becomes physically dependent on a substance, and denial of that substance kills them. 

...now, the actions of these people that led them into that particular state were, obviously, their choice (though a certain genetic susceptibility to opiates or whathaveyou may have lent a hand - they still had to take that first hit).

So you both believe in free will then?

Anyone who's ever spent time on an indian reservation understands that there are genetic proclivities towards addiction to certain substances.

fnord wrote:

Emmeran wrote:

Anyone who's ever spent time on an indian reservation understands that there are genetic proclivities towards addiction to certain substances.

But! But! That would imply that race is real!  That members of different races have inborn tendencies towards certain behaviors!  No!  It can’t be!  The racists who want separation of the races in order to preserve what they believe are unique characteristics of their own race can’t be right about race being real!  They can’t be right!  They can’t be right!

Die Fahne hoch! Die Reihen fest geschlossen!
SA marschiert mit mutig-festem Schritt.
Kam'raden, die Rotfront und Reaktion erschossen,
Marschier'n im Geist in uns'ren Reihen mit.

Sure and the chinese don't turn red when they drink.

And notice that I said genetic tendency - not disease.

Dusty is right. I went cold turkey 5 years ago, and haven't touched the shit since.

It is a choice.

Some people are stupid, and keep choosing it when they should permanently chill the fuck out.

Dmtdust wrote:

Tendency... references?

umm... go to China - buy someone a beer.  Bingo - skin changes color.

Not a problem for the Koreans or Japs though - manly the mandarin chinese.

It's just the way it is....

pALEPHx wrote:

Vile and stupid.

And, if any-body has experience in being vilely stupid . . .

Last edited by Decadence (2009-07-30 07:29:23)

sofaking wrote:

Montecore wrote:

As someone who got sober 20 years ago, I have to say that it's both a disease and a choice.

I agree with this view, but when you're in it, your only chance in hell is to see that it's a choice you have to stop making. People who get all fatalistic think they never can stop, when they can.

I'm living proof.

Sofie:

All I'm saying here is that a true alcoholic - as opposed to someone who is an abusive drinker - is often going to have to be stopped, because they can't do it themselves.  Hospital stays, with supportive meds (phenobarb) for the withdrawal symptoms are a very good way.  Once that is done, an alkie can start making choices.  But they gotta stop first, because their mechanism for choice-making gets seriously impaired when under the influence.

Again, only for true alcoholics.  Abusive drinkers are a whole 'nother beast.  And the hard part is trying to sort out who's an abuser and who's an alkie - the two look an awful lot alike much of the time.  An abusive drinker has a much easier time of it all the way around, because they usually can choose, even stinking drunk.

P.S.: Pale, to whom were you responding?  You didn't quote, and your post doesn't give any real clues.

Last edited by Montecore (2009-07-30 11:19:01)

karenw wrote:

Nice to see another stepper here.

You're a "stepper," Karen?  So, you admitted that you could not "over-come the power of alcohol" absent the assistance of an omni-potent being?

It's just that . . .   Well, to be honest . . .  I rather assumed that all of the "regulars" here were rather above such non-sens . . .  Supersitiou . . .  Uh . . .   Help me out here, Guys.  Needing a life-raft here . . .   Any-One - Any-One?

Fucking "fair-weather friends."

Decadence wrote:

You're a "stepper," Karen?  So, you admitted that you could not "over-come the power of alcohol" absent the assistance of an omni-potent being?

It's just that . . .   Well, to be honest . . .  I rather assumed that all of the "regulars" here were rather above such non-sens . . .  Supersitiou . . .  Uh . . .   Help me out here, Guys.  Needing a life-raft here . . .   Any-One - Any-One?

Fucking "fair-weather friends."

I'm a friend of Bill's wife. My loved ones are friends of Bill. I get crazy and sick when trying to control, fix, manage, and change them. And to be honest, most days I'm pretty ambivalent about the Higher Power, but that's OK, because I don't have to believe anything I don't want to.

GooberMcNutly wrote:

Wake up people! Obama got elected! We aren't responsible for our own bad decisions any more. It's societies fault now if you drink, smoke, write bad checks, knock up teenagers, drive without a seat belt or build your plywood shack in hurricane country.

Don't be such an ass.  Obama is the one saying we all have to take responsibility and work hard to unfuck this mess.

Bush famously suggested that everyone "go to the mall and shop" when we were faced with hardship.  The only reason we are making a move towards a public health care option is the Repubs were so busy screwing the pooch that they forgot to run the fucking country.

They hypocrites that are the current neo-con's are what has driven main-stream america (like me) away.

Decadence wrote:

karenw wrote:

Nice to see another stepper here.

You're a "stepper," Karen?  So, you admitted that you could not "over-come the power of alcohol" absent the assistance of an omni-potent being?

It's just that . . .   Well, to be honest . . .  I rather assumed that all of the "regulars" here were rather above such non-sens . . .  Supersitiou . . .  Uh . . .   Help me out here, Guys.  Needing a life-raft here . . .   Any-One - Any-One?

Fucking "fair-weather friends."

Dec:

The concept of "Higher Power" does not necessarily mean that you have to subscribe to Imaginary Friend Theory.  It really just means that you acknowledge that you do not control things.  There's a whole lot going on in this world, and whether you believe in God or chaos theory or garden gnomes doesn't matter; what matters is that you learn the difference between managing and controlling.  Managing means that you look at things the way they are and do something constructive with them.  Controlling means that you're forever trying to make events turn out as you'd like, without really stopping to think whether that's workable or not.   

I've worked with some people who really, really could not deal with the concept of "Higher Power," and what I've always done is to introduce them to another concept - the Shitbox.  Whenever something is not manageable, you shrug and mentally put it in your Shitbox.  It's then out of your way, you've acknowledged that you can't do jack shit about it, and you're free to move on and work on something else that you can do something constructive about. 

That's really all it boils down to.  No Jaysus-freakery required.

Bill credited taking LSD for his being able to get off alcohol.


...and, Monty, you can talk around it all you want, but the original 12 steps published by AA:

all knowing wikipedia wrote:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
   2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
   3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
   4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
   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 to remove our shortcomings.
   8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
   9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
  10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
  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.
  12. 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.

A judge can, as part of one's sentence, make you go to AA.  If that's not a violation of the separation of church and state, then I don't know what is.

Last edited by jesusluvspegging (2009-07-31 13:30:49)

Em wrote:

And you get the privledge of having some cubicle worker somewhere decide what treatment and meds you can have - a cubicle worker who I might add has their raises and bonus's determined by the amount of money they save the insurance company by denying claims.

This is the big problem I have with Obamacare.  Except instead of an insurance worker making the call on your treatment, you have a government bureaucrat.  Right now I have the choice of flipping off the insurance company and going elsewhere.  When the govt runs the system, we will all be trapped.  I believe I am a little closer to retirement age that you, so Obama's plan to have "health counselors" visit me every five years to counsel me about giving up expensive treatments and tests as well as end of life procedures sounds pretty fucking scary.

I try to live by the idea that if it does not fuck with me then what ever gets you through the night is alright.  [Emphasize try.]

There is no Putfile.  There never was Putfile.

Last edited by MSG Tripps (2009-07-31 16:25:37)

phreddy wrote:

When the govt runs the system, we will all be trapped.

Damn, now that is neo-con speak - "be afraid, be very afraid"

Actually Obamacare started out pretty good, basically like the post office vs fedex; one is a public service the other a for-profit corporation - each has it's place.

What concerns me is that no matter how well planned or executed it might be (which I doubt) once the riders start coming in from both parties it will be as big of a clusterfuck as what the corporations put over on us now.

But here is the break point for me - with the current private insurance scenario you are covered to a point, they then kick you out and you are on the government dime anyway.  Where's that  point for the private insurers?  When they start losing money on that case of course.  I just went through this experience with my ex-wife, not a lot of fun.

Bottom line is that we are paying either way, it just comes down to who pays the beauracrat making the decision and whether the insurers get to make a profit at our expense first.

MSG Tripps wrote:

Pork

It always happens.

Nothing has changed in 3000 years of politics....

Clauswitz claims they are one and the same (jarhead required reading)

GooberMcNutly wrote:

Wake up people! Obama got elected! We aren't responsible for our own bad decisions any more. It's societies fault now if you drink, smoke, write bad checks, knock up teenagers, drive without a seat belt or build your plywood shack in hurricane country.

Aaaaaaaaand -- this just in --- Jesus tipped us off that Obama really IS the antichrist!

Emmeran wrote:

Clauswitz claims they are one and the same (jarhead required reading)

Jarheads don't READ.

I need to go to Marijuananonymous, because I'm HIGH as GIRAFFE BALLS.

phreddy wrote:

Em wrote:

And you get the privledge of having some cubicle worker somewhere decide what treatment and meds you can have - a cubicle worker who I might add has their raises and bonus's determined by the amount of money they save the insurance company by denying claims.

This is the big problem I have with Obamacare.  Except instead of an insurance worker making the call on your treatment, you have a government bureaucrat.  Right now I have the choice of flipping off the insurance company and going elsewhere.  When the govt runs the system, we will all be trapped.  I believe I am a little closer to retirement age that you, so Obama's plan to have "health counselors" visit me every five years to counsel me about giving up expensive treatments and tests as well as end of life procedures sounds pretty fucking scary.

I see you've been listening to that reliable source, Betsy McCaughey, for your summary of "Obamacare."  She is so full of shit that you can smell her over the internets.  The house bill that she pretends to describe provides only that one such counseling session every five years would be covered by insurance.  Nothing is mandated, and talk of "government-mandated euthansia" by McCaughey and Boehner is just manipulative fear mongering.  Why not stick to real issues instead of inventing them?

The public option issue is at least a serious argument.  As a general matter, a public option could help to control costs, as medicare has done.  While you might not like how it has done so, because it imposes limits on fee-for-service charges that annoy many medical professionals, at least it has forced cost reductions.  In addition, administrative costs for the current public programs are a fraction of those incurred by private insurers.  Also, a large non-profit insurer could negotiate reduced rates with pharmaceutical companies and major providers, whereas private insurers have proven unable or unwilling to do so.  While there is some risk that a public insurer might ultimately squeeze out private ones, a strict limit on subsidies could ameliorate the problem.

Last edited by Fled (2009-08-01 12:46:05)

tojo2000 wrote:

But how is that possible when total malpractice costs make up only about 2 percent of health care spending?  Either the premiums are rising for reasons other than the cost of tort liability, or the effect has been overblown.

From the CBO study that figure came from... 97 percent of tort cases that "terminated" in federal district courts in fiscal year 2000 were disposed of before a verdict was reached, and further Data do not exist for those tort disputes that do not go to trial, because the details of settlements are usually private.

Which means the 2% figure you quote is based on 3% of the cases. 

I only point this out because as is so often the case, statistics are not worth the paper they're printed on.   You may be correct that liability costs are not as significant as I have painted them, but unbiased data to support either of our assertions seems hard to come by.