I have a friend who’s alcohol consumption has gotten out of control. Me and his other friends/family are planning an intervention and so I’ve been doing a lot of research/reading on the topic.
NEVER and I mean NEVER have I seen so many fucking ads for alcohol in my LIFE. Instagram? 15 ads in a half hour of scrolling reels. YouTube? Ads. Google results? Ads. Twitter? Ads.
It’s fucking everywhere and it’s SICK. I’m researching how to help someone stop drinking and I’m getting inundated with ads for anything from gin, beers, vodkas and more. I can’t even imagine having an alcohol issue and trying to find help for myself with the web being this way.
It’s fucking sick.
Tbf, most of the reasoning behind the “help” you got for smoking was because it actively endangers those around you. Alcoholism, by an extremely large margin, affects those around you much less.
That’s very much not true. Smoking will always negatively impact those around you, and drinking can be done fine. But when you’re getting to the point where you’ve decided to quit drinking you’ve likely been reflecting on the damage you’ve done to others. Alcoholics in the heat of their addiction range from unpleasant to deadly. Hell that’s why America had a prohibition movement once.
Alcohol abuse absolutely affects everyone around you. We had a friend who used to say “there is no problem in the world that can’t be made worse with alcohol!”
Even setting aside things like car crashes under the influence and violence under the influence - lost days at work affect your coworkers, hung over parent who can’t help out, alcohol abuse harms others, not just the abuser.
With the understanding that I don’t have the knowledge to say that you’re anything but absolutely right, I do think that the damage assessment would be tricky when taking mental health and social wellbeing into account.
That last sentence was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read.