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Why we don't need Hypoism or any other half-baked addiction paradigm:- We already know why those people are addicts.
- There is no underlying disease causing addictions. Using addictors is a choice; purely voluntary. Addiction is just a deserved consequence of the voluntary excessive use of addictors. Addicts are just like everyone else, just a bunch of undisciplined and out of control babies.
- We already know how to treat addictions in those people. Treatment works! Addicts just don't do what we say.
- Experts from addictionology, theology, politics, drug companies, law, philanthropy, media, psychology, academia, and the criminal justice system just need to work a little harder with more money to get it all straightened out.
- Why are only 5% of addicts recovering? Because the rest are either enjoying themselves too much or they're just anti-social misfits, stupid, and/or self-destructive assholes.
- 5% recovery is pretty good for a bunch of jerks. So what if we expect 100% recovery for every other disease.
- Our addiction policies just need to be enforced better to get everything under control.
- All other medical conditions have a hundred or so different causes and treatments run by anyone under the sun, why not addictions?
- Research in addiction is going in the right direction: more control, more medication, more therapy, more rehabs, more jails, and more religion. It makes good sense to me. I don't hear anyone complaining.
- What do you mean there are no studies proving the current paradigm in addiction, its treatment, or its recovery? Just because I don't know about them doesn't mean the experts don't.
- Of course prevention works. Why else would so many people and so much money be allocated for it if it didn't work?
- We need more education and advertizing about how bad addictions are for people. Why some people don't mind what we say must be that they're just stupid.
- Except for their stupid addictions, if those people just tried hard enough and listened to their teachers, ministers, parents, and therapists, they would have no other difficulties.
- Sure, my kid used drugs, but he's OK otherwise. It's your kid that needs to be in jail for us to be safe.
- Me? Sure, I smoke three packs of butts and drink 20 cups of java a day, place a bet now and then, read playboy for the articles, take my Prozac, pray three times a day, work seven days a week/24 hours a day, weigh 300 pounds, been divorced five times, beat my wife and kids when they deserve it, watch the neighbor get undressed, filed for bankruptcy, belong to the KKK, but I don't drink and go to meetings. Besides, I'm the chief of police, studying to be an alcoholism counselor, and I'm running for congress to keep those bleeding-heart liberals from letting drug addicts and pedophiles out of jail.
- The best way to deal with addicts, like all other conditions such as cancer, diabetes, and heart attacks, is with tough love. All patients respond best to: abandonement, arrest, incarceration, removal from job or career, loss of children, bankruptcy, mandated treatments, psychotherapy, and drugs, divorce, homelessness, fines, committment to mental hospitals, ostracism, stigmatization, betrayal, and mandated religious beliefs.
- If I read your book then I'll have to read everyone else's book. I don't have the time. If the experts don't support Hypoism, that's enough evidence it must be wrong.
Let's clarify the problem with these reasons for why we don't need Hypoism. Because of the perplexing nature of addictions and their warped perceptions among people ignorant of human nature and the true motivation behind human behaviors of all sorts over the past million or so years, we have developed a myriad of superstitious beliefs to explain these behaviors. These superstitious ideas are so commonplace and personal that every person on the planet has his own spin on them and believes them.Stated simply, there is no valid premise for human behavior unlike the rest of medicine. A principle of medicine that holds in all cases is: Without a valid premise for the condition being studied or treated, there will be no meaningful research, treatment, policy or consistent success! The ordinary person, not trained in medicine where this concept is paramount, has no basis for differentiation between a superstitious premise and a valid medical one. To him/her, they all seem the same. In fact, experts from different arenas and perspectives likewise appear equivalent to the ordinary person. A self-proclaimed expert in astrology, theology or psychology, for example, will be given the same level of credibility as one from established medicine. (Read, Why People Believe in Weird Things, by Shermer) Credibility is a serious problem that has been overcome in medicine from the neck down, but not from the neck up. The problem actually lies with the experts. Valid experts always admit when they don't know what they're talking about. Charlatans don't do this. It's clear that no one knows enough about addictions to call himself an expert (I don't), yet, we have numerous experts in addictions making baseless claims, directing baseless treatments, and making baseless policies without telling us they have no idea what they're talking about. Because someone has been working, studying, and writing on a subject for many years does make him/her an expert. "Practice makes permanent, not perfect." The result is that each individual ordinary person is forced to make decisions on addictions without a valid premise, and without knowing that there is no valid premise. Moreover, ordinary people don't realize they even need a valid premise, they have been using superstition for so long. Additionally, the ordinary person won't take the time or make the effort to read and evaluate the vast literature in addictions to judge whether or not a valid premise is present. Most people don't care as long as it doesn't effect him, and that's most people. So, that's where we are in this mess of addictions. It's up to the ordinary person, and particularly the hypoic, to wake up to this mess and, if they truely care, to demand the experts either put up or shut up and move over so that we will not be stiffled by their dogma and their lies of expertise any longer. They will not do this on their own, brothers and sisters, they will not do this on their own! The attitude, "The experts will take care of that," is not working and will not work as long as we have charlatans (who won't admit their lack of expertise) running addictions.If after reading Hypoic's Handbook a couple of times, you still think we don't need Hypoism, please e-mail or write me explaining why. Thanks.
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