This is very interesting, thank you for sharing it. I found the ABC podcast to be a fascinating discussion. It is interesting to wonder if, in 50 years, we'll be scratching our heads that drinking was ever so normalized as it is today (you could drink on a plane? they served wine at baby showers??). What I really appreciated was your discussion of the unhelpfulness of thinking of alcoholism as a binary thing. AA has been very helpful to me over the past year even though my story is nowhere near the extremes that are described in the Big Book or in meetings. But, I find that AA has a more nuanced view of alcoholism than it initially appears. Most of the discussion is about thought patterns - and I readily relate to those - rather than to how "far down" you have gone. I find a common thread in how people think about alcohol, relate to it, come to depend on it, even with a wide variation in the level of adverse consequences they experience.
I completely agree. My own read is most of the core teachings of AA are much more nuanced then how they are presented in, say, most treatment centers. Personally I find a lot of fellowship across both cultures and times in the shared outcomes of addictive behaviors, even if the processes and causes are widely different. The phenotype, in other words. Thanks for writing and glad you found it interesting!
This raises a question for me, which some of your links might help me answer (but I'll put it here anyway in case someone reading is inclined to answer): Are cigarettes more addictive, or at least more universally addictive, than alcohol?
I have never smoked, because I am from a generation that doesn't smoke. (I was, relatedly, raised in school on the idea that Just One Cigarette would--not just could, but WOULD--addict you for life.) I know a ton of people older than me who smoked when they were younger, who now never ever smoke at all - I'm not sure I've met more than one or two people in my life who would say something like, "Well, I have a cigarette a couple times a month, but overall I don't smoke anymore." There doesn't seem, in my little piece of the culture, to be any kind of pseudo-sober approach to cigarettes. You're smoking all day or you're not smoking at all.
While alcohol addiction/consistently poor control over alcohol habits has certainly affected people in my life, the vast majority of people I know who drank a lot in their youth, including me, now drink occasionally, almost never to excess, and have reduced their alcohol consumption over time with relatively little effort. The thought "Eh, I'd like to drink less" is followed, for myself and most people I know, with... just drinking less. By contrast, I have never known someone to say, "I'll take it down from 5 cigarettes a day to 1 and hold the line there" - it's always cold turkey. They always swear if they had just one they'd be back to their old habit immediately.
So my question is: Are there way more casual/occasional smokers than I'm aware of? Is there actually some difference in the substances here, where cigarettes addict a way bigger proportion of people who use them than alcohol, to the point that cold-turkey is the only option for most smokers in a way it isn't for most drinkers? Or is this just a cultural difference, where casual/occasional nicotine use is actually totally possible, we've just been hammered with the idea that total abstinence is necessary in a way we haven't yet been with alcohol?
This gets at an important issue! There are some people who consistently use only a few cigarettes per day max. In the literature they are called "chippers" or just "light smokers." There's been comparatively less research on that population but they do exist. That said there is a relatively high proportion of people who develop smoking problems vs ever trying smoking, which leads to a lot of public health messaging encouraging people to never try smoking. I don't think it's useful to put too much power in the drug--what Bruce Alexander calls the "demon drug myth." It's also important to say that "addictiveness" is not a static property of a drug but something that interacts with other psychological, biological, and environmental factors.
Yes, I don’t mean to imply some inherent property of each drug. I’m more interested in what you say, any difference in the ratio of people who try it to people who end up having trouble with it, which can be based on many things.
This is very interesting, thank you for sharing it. I found the ABC podcast to be a fascinating discussion. It is interesting to wonder if, in 50 years, we'll be scratching our heads that drinking was ever so normalized as it is today (you could drink on a plane? they served wine at baby showers??). What I really appreciated was your discussion of the unhelpfulness of thinking of alcoholism as a binary thing. AA has been very helpful to me over the past year even though my story is nowhere near the extremes that are described in the Big Book or in meetings. But, I find that AA has a more nuanced view of alcoholism than it initially appears. Most of the discussion is about thought patterns - and I readily relate to those - rather than to how "far down" you have gone. I find a common thread in how people think about alcohol, relate to it, come to depend on it, even with a wide variation in the level of adverse consequences they experience.
I completely agree. My own read is most of the core teachings of AA are much more nuanced then how they are presented in, say, most treatment centers. Personally I find a lot of fellowship across both cultures and times in the shared outcomes of addictive behaviors, even if the processes and causes are widely different. The phenotype, in other words. Thanks for writing and glad you found it interesting!
This raises a question for me, which some of your links might help me answer (but I'll put it here anyway in case someone reading is inclined to answer): Are cigarettes more addictive, or at least more universally addictive, than alcohol?
I have never smoked, because I am from a generation that doesn't smoke. (I was, relatedly, raised in school on the idea that Just One Cigarette would--not just could, but WOULD--addict you for life.) I know a ton of people older than me who smoked when they were younger, who now never ever smoke at all - I'm not sure I've met more than one or two people in my life who would say something like, "Well, I have a cigarette a couple times a month, but overall I don't smoke anymore." There doesn't seem, in my little piece of the culture, to be any kind of pseudo-sober approach to cigarettes. You're smoking all day or you're not smoking at all.
While alcohol addiction/consistently poor control over alcohol habits has certainly affected people in my life, the vast majority of people I know who drank a lot in their youth, including me, now drink occasionally, almost never to excess, and have reduced their alcohol consumption over time with relatively little effort. The thought "Eh, I'd like to drink less" is followed, for myself and most people I know, with... just drinking less. By contrast, I have never known someone to say, "I'll take it down from 5 cigarettes a day to 1 and hold the line there" - it's always cold turkey. They always swear if they had just one they'd be back to their old habit immediately.
So my question is: Are there way more casual/occasional smokers than I'm aware of? Is there actually some difference in the substances here, where cigarettes addict a way bigger proportion of people who use them than alcohol, to the point that cold-turkey is the only option for most smokers in a way it isn't for most drinkers? Or is this just a cultural difference, where casual/occasional nicotine use is actually totally possible, we've just been hammered with the idea that total abstinence is necessary in a way we haven't yet been with alcohol?
Thanks for the no-alcohol gin rec, by the way!
This gets at an important issue! There are some people who consistently use only a few cigarettes per day max. In the literature they are called "chippers" or just "light smokers." There's been comparatively less research on that population but they do exist. That said there is a relatively high proportion of people who develop smoking problems vs ever trying smoking, which leads to a lot of public health messaging encouraging people to never try smoking. I don't think it's useful to put too much power in the drug--what Bruce Alexander calls the "demon drug myth." It's also important to say that "addictiveness" is not a static property of a drug but something that interacts with other psychological, biological, and environmental factors.
Thanks for responding! Much appreciated.
Yes, I don’t mean to imply some inherent property of each drug. I’m more interested in what you say, any difference in the ratio of people who try it to people who end up having trouble with it, which can be based on many things.