[CodingJeebus]

12 Step recovery and adjacent programs fill this niche quite well, and new communities are popping up all the time to deal with more modern addictions, like internet/technology addiction.

I'm sober and have been in that world for several years now, and the most important (and hardest) part of getting sober was accepting that I had a problem and needed help. Macro policy decisions can help with access to an extent, but addicts fundamentally cannot make better decisions for themselves until they first realize they have a problem. And as prohibition taught us, once the demand is there, it can't just be regulated away.

[bombcar]

That's certainly part of it - but there's some distance between prohibition and infinite alcohol dispensaries in everyone's pocket (which is what gambling has become).

[CodingJeebus]

I completely agree. Fundamentally, prohibition showed that legislating morality ultimately fails. As immoral as mobile gambling is (and I firmly believe it is), people are going to do it. And when you start coming up with top-down technology solutions to stop people from gambling online, you realize that there isn't a workable solution that privacy advocates would support en masse.

Increasing awareness and creating programs to help people seeking treatment are the way to go.

[bombcar]

> legislating morality ultimately fails

But yet murder is illegal ;)

I think everyone agrees you can legislate morality, just they disagree where that line is (even the Oldes™ like Aquinas, who argued that prostitution is immoral but the state shouldn't outlaw it because the alternatives are worse for the state).

[thewoodsman]

The major benefit of legalization of something like marijuana is that you nix a lot of criminality associated with the drug being illegal. You also wind up with a better quality product, labels that help with dosage, potency, etc.

The no-holds-barred legalization of gambling apps has none of these benefits, and almost everyone I've talked to, no matter how libertarian their instincts, seems to agree we've gone way too far. I think (and hope) we'll see a backlash on the gambling stuff that pushes legal gambling out of the insanely public and accessible places where it currently lives.

[quickthrowman]

> The major benefit of legalization of something like marijuana is that you nix a lot of criminality associated with the drug being illegal.

These days, if you exclude ‘possession’ and ‘selling’ from weed-related crimes, there’s almost nothing left. Weed is commoditized and is one of the few products that has gotten cheaper over the last 6 years.

There’s very little violence in the weed trade, the profit margins aren’t high enough for people to murder each other like they are for cocaine, heroin, and meth.

[thewoodsman]

agreed - s/marijuana/dangerous drug of your choosing/ - the point is more about the differential between the purported benefit of legalization / decriminalization of "sinful" activities and the actual outcome in the specific case of gambling

[nekusar]

12 step recovery is just bullshit christian religionism wrapped in some psychobabble. Id much rather have a program that doesnt use "scary man in the sky" doing bad stuff to you.

Here's the steps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-step_program

     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.

[Slow_Hand]

I disagree, as someone who doesn't practice any religious faith.

The fact is, many people in AA and related programs do have faith, and the program is wise to engage with it and help those people orient themselves in a way that compliments that worldview and strengthens their resolve to get sober.

For the members who don't have faith, my experience with the program has been that it does not impose any Christian worldview onto the actual practice. There's no imposition for non-believers to conform to that belief.

I've never left a meeting and felt like I was being pushed a religious agenda. The vague talk of a "higher power" is a way for believers and non-believers alike to articulate a personal spirituality that will bolster their likelihood of success in the program.

I've been to many meetings over the years to support friends and am heartened by the nature of AA as an organization. It's been a wonderful experience. I often leave joking that I wish I had a problem so that I could come back more often and participate with the community and the program.

I have a lot of positive things to say about the program, but they're beyond the scope of this comment.

[bombcar]

> I often leave joking that I wish I had a problem so that I could come back more often and participate with the community and the program.

HN Anonymous.

Hello, my name is bombcar and I have 50,903 karma.

[CodingJeebus]

That's a common criticism that doesn't hold up. Anyone with program experience will tell you that you get to determine what your higher power is and how you define it.

> God, as we understood Him

AA is 90 years old, practiced all over the world (in many non-Christian countries) and has helped millions of people get sober. It's not for everyone, but I'd ask for an example for a more successful and long-lived organization that has saved as many lives as AA. I struggle to think of one.

[lelanthran]

I've known more than a few atheists who successfully used this program.

If reality and your theory differs, it's not reality that's wrong.