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.
I had 2 interventions in my life and neither worked. In fact, they made it much worse for me.
I suggest that you go to AlAnon and learn a bit about alcoholism before trying anything (btw, AlAnon is not AA, but is a program to help non-alcoholics understand what they’re dealing with.)
Your friend is lucky to have you. Don’t give up on them. It truly is hellish, and they’ll need your support.
I’ve found with my own addictions that forcibly stopping one just causes a different one to start up.
The real solution for me has been healing trauma, resulting in baseline consciousness not being painful.
Most alcoholics use alcohol to run from difficult, unprocessed emotions. I was one of them.
Many of the programs recommend therapy first. No one wants to drink themselves to death, even though it feels like that sometimes.
And weed helps…not advocating, just saying it helped.
i smoke as much as the next guy but at this point it would be replacing one vice with another
But it’s replacing it with a much less destructive one, which can be beneficial
Different people react to it differently and for some it’s very positive. It may depend what the underlying stressor is. People who have chronic pain often respond well to THC/CBD.
And it certainly has fewer ill effects than booze.
AA always gave off bad vibes to me because of the whole “surrender to a higher power” shtick
Lots of secular AA groups out there
It’s hard to know which are really secular. Some folks think that calling it “a higher power” makes it secular. A fig leaf over the word “god” doesn’t do it for me.
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Not in Texas seemingly lol
Lots of secular groups on zoom.
Don’t think that my father would be able to use zoom like that when he decided to go to rehab and got the basic AA give it all to God treatment.
Same, but the community was great. Being around people that understand is so beneficial.
Absolutely. There has to be some little glimmer of already wanting to quit for them to take the help seriously. I would absolutely recommend AlAnon as well. You can’t just force someone into treatment, and that’s pretty much what interventions try to do, on top of making the person feel guilt and shame which likely is why they drink in the first place. Being able to have a one on one, calm conversation about how the person is affecting themselves and others is probably a good route, because people often do not recognize they have a problem in the first place. It would not be surprising for it to end with the person getting angry and storming out, but it plants the seed in a more reasonable way than having everyone they know cornering them, humiliating them, and saying “go to rehab now or we never speak to you again.”
Source: in recovery, worked in the field.
The guilt and shame is brutal, and shouldn’t be used to try to change someone into behaving better. It’s like spanking you kids, which is illegal now (at least whew I’m at).
Can 100% support Al-Anon. Great program.
+1 AlAnon is a good program. It shows how deeply ingrained alcohol is in our society that we have support programs just for people who know an alcoholic.
Shit like this is why I use ad blockers and route all my home network traffic through a Pi Hole.
If Google gets their way with their evil “Web Environment Integrity” bullshit this is going to get so. Much. Worse.
The whole internet at that point would be pretty much 100% ad and 100% unusable at that point with the “wEb InTeGrItY” bullshit they’re pushing.
Really hoping it fails or it’s just another abandoned Google project, but it’s deeply worrisome for us netizens.
Hey! My husband is thinking about doing something similar with his, can you share any resources you used? He’s done programming before but never with a raspberry pi, and he’s not sure where to start.
You can follow pi hole website to do it https://pi-hole.net/
Very easy, straight forward, and well explained.
The only thing you might want to check before buying something or trying this is if your router allows to set custom dns servers. Basically,connect to your router, and check the step 3, and see if it has the option for it. From my understanding some might not have the option.
Not necessary, but a next step can also be to install a VPN and route your mobile phone thru it too. Means you are also covered on the go, so no ads on mobile too , when you aren’t home too !
This is great advice. The other advice I would give is to make sure the household is prepared for the impact of routing everything through a pihole. There are quite a few things out there on the internet that will simply stop working with the default block lists. Yes, that is obviously the point. But it is helpful to prepare everyone with how to do temporary allows, and have a strategy for what type of things you might want to whitelist and which you’re content with leaving blocked. Otherwise it can be very jarring especially at the beginning.
Thanks for the heads up! That’s definitely something we hadn’t considered. We’ll start looking into it!
Very helpful! We are already looking into a VPN, just undecided which one to go with, so I’ll send this comment to him. Thank you!
You can turn off targeted ads on most platforms so the ads you get are useless.
But you are right, when searching for anti drinking info ads for drinking shouldn’t appear. I seem to remember there was a alcohol shop that was giving discounts for drinks if you gave them your sober token things you get.
A lot of bars will give you free drinks if you give them your sobriety coin from AA.
Unethical life pro tips: visit AA meetings to get sobriety coins and exchange them for free drinks.
You can probably just buy the coins online lmao
But they would not be free.
AA sourced sobriety coins cost a LOT trust me. You dont ever want to have to find out. Not that they charge you for the coins (they do not), but whatever landed you in there likely cost you more than some online coins would, is my point.
People are talking about going to AA just for the sobriety coins. I don’t think they’re actually doing it earnestly because they really have a problem they want AA to help them with. So nothing actually “landed” them there.
You never know, maybe my problem is lack of money for drinks.
You’re fun at parties huh
Been there, you have to actually have been a regular member for those said months until you can earn tokens. I don’t think the elders give them out to randos on the street.
Are they less than a drink? I sense an arbitrage opportunity.
and you get to fuck over a bar owner who is a piece of shit so there is that
I don’t believe this
I’ve definitely heard of bars offering free non alcoholic drinks to DD’s but I can’t imagine any trying to get AA coins in exchange for alcohol that’s crazy.
it’s a big world. Any conceivable promotion you could think of us being done in at least a few places. Can’t imagine its common though
It’s very common, Google it for your location
No they don’t.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trade-aa-medallions-free-drinks/
A simple google search disproves that.
A “simple goodge search” is not the same thing as some shit snopes article that i can tell isn’t right, from direct life experience. IDGAF what snopes says. its a real thing, and its stupidly easy to find. I’m not telling you how to google, even though you clearly suck at it.
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Holy hell, that’s straight up evil if true. I hope the bad PR ran them out of business.
I quit smoking years ago and I really felt like the world wanted me to quit. Indoor smoking at restaurants was being banned. No more smoking section on flights. Movies were no longer depicting everyone with a cigarette in their mouth all the time like they did in the 60s. Many hotels stopped offering smoking rooms. Nicotine patches and gum were available to help.
I felt like trends in the world were behind me and it helped.
Alcohol is a totally different story. Alcohol is not being banned. It is still something almost everyone does. It is allowed at restaurants and virtually everywhere else. Everyone I know drinks. They haven’t cracked down on advertising in the same way. Hotel rooms have booze in the room for you. Airlines bring you drinks. There are no OTC quitting aids.
If someone has an alcohol problem and needs to quit, they’re really going to have a much harder time than quitting smoking.
Unfortunately, the medications that help with alcohol withdrawal are somewhat dangerous in their own right and need to be fairly tightly controlled. Delirium tremens (the shakes) from withdrawal are usually managed with benzodiazepines like Valium for emergent use and Ativan for prolonged control. The other main maintenance drug for alcohol withdrawal is Librium, and that one is also a benzodiazepine. It would be amazing if there were safe OTC options, but because of the serious damage alcohol does and the dangerous nature of withdrawal from it, it really needs to be closely medically managed. Opiate withdrawal sucks…alcohol withdrawal can very easily kill you outright.
You’re right. Serious alcohol addiction can be an in-patient thing. All the more reason it’s strange how we demonize smoking but not alcohol. They both have quite negative long term health impacts, but I don’t think nicotine withdrawal can be fatal. And the whole drunk driving thing…
I know there is a long history of temperance movements and things aren’t as bad as they once were in history. But I think our current age is really lacking a much needed awakening about alcohol.
Yeah it’s so hard because for most of us, alcohol is food culture, not so much a drug. I drink one cocktail 2 - 3 times a week, only ever one because I don’t enjoy being drunk, and make drinks at parties BUT also always make sure there is something adult, delicious, and not alcoholic plus plenty of soda and pitchers of water because I know not everyone can just pick it up and put it down like that. But most people can & do. Fewer people just smoke a couple times a week.
Humans have been fermenting things to get alcoholic drinks for a really long time.
Something I’ve seen at some restaurants (ranging from casual to Michelin star) is the increasing prevalence of mocktails. If you mix non-alcoholic ingredients with the same kind of style and objective as mixed drinks, you can make some really tasty stuff.
Exactly. Not fruit punch. I try to make something complex, with some bitter, some sour, some sweet. Young pineapple tepache or ginger beer, before they get at all boozy are good if you aren’t serving actual recently recovering alcoholics as they are non-intoxicating and delicious and complex. Grapefruit juice non alcoholic cocktails are also good and complex.
Chinotto soda or Malta can also be good adult choices for a party.
Usually even the drinkers at a party like the non alcoholic fancy drinks. And Diet Coke is always popular too.
I just had my 2 year sobriety birthday this month and I completely agree with you, however, I do think the culture in America is shifting. Millennials aren’t drinking AS much and Gen Z much much less. The social pressure to drink is waning somewhat and I live in a state that has the most drinking per capita in the country.
There’s a lot of N/A beers that have gotten much better to give people quitting an alternative (like nicotine gum or patches). Long way to go but I do think it’s trending in a positive direction for people struggling. I understand this isn’t something some people feel comfortable with - I was very hesitant to try one for the first time after quitting because I wasn’t sure if it would spark the urge to drink real beer more but it’s been great for me.
I don’t see a world where alcohol is restricted as much as public smoking but having alternatives is a big thing for me to feel less awkward in drinking social settings where i still feel like I’m participating in a healthy way for me.
Good to hear about the youth trends. The industry has gotten creative in going after them with all manner of sweet alcoholic coolers and such. I guess that’s been going on for some time.
It does seem that young people these days are doing considerably less drinking, fucking, and fast driving than when I was their age. As a parent, I suppose I am glad for this, even though it seems to come along with some bad stuff like spending less time outside and social media zombification.
Glad to hear that near beer helps you. I have tried it and didn’t find it sparked anything for me, but it also didn’t do anything for me either, and I felt conspicuous with it in my hand. Maybe that’s all better now with more options that are higher quality.
Congratulations on your anniversary! I will raise a La Croix to you today.
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I know what you mean about consequences to other people. It is significant that second hand cigarette smoke can give other people cancer, though. I think that’s one of the big reasons why cigarette smoking gets banned in lots of places while drinking does not.
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.
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.
That last sentence was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read.
Happened to me when I quit drinking. It was so engaging. Suddenly every other ad online is for hard liquor, too drastic to have been a lot of coincidences lining up.
It’s less Google fault directly, more that finding sobriety terms is part of the alcohol manufacturers SEO/ad words strategy. Which is absolutely disgusting.
I hope your intervention goes well, it wouldn’t have worked well on me for sure so I hope your friend has more grace than I did when I was drinking.
We can still blame google for not low prioritizing alcohol ads when people search for sobriety.
Agreed. I wrote them a complaint about it years ago. sucks to hear its still an issue.
Yeah, surely you could implement logic to see things like intervention paired with alcohol and then not show those ads.
It’s less Google fault directly, more that finding sobriety terms is part of the alcohol manufacturers SEO/ad words strategy. Which is absolutely disgusting.
Not just online, my friend. I got sober around the beginning of last baseball season. Thought I could turn the volume down on cravings that day by turning on a game.
“Welcome back to the broadcast, sponsored by Truly Hard Seltzer. Now let’s take a look at the Miller Lite home run replay brought to you by Jack Daniel’s Fire, cinnamon infused whiskey.”
Interventions are tough. When I was intervention-ed, it felt like no one was on my team, like this is what they’re supposed to do. I even went to rehab, but my heart was not in it. At all. Zero percent.
The second time I went, it was for me, not just to appease the endlessly talking heads all around me. Interventions walk that odd line between we’re here for you in support, also, you’re going somewhere because we care. Like the intervention is a favor.
At least for me. Others obviously experience it differently. I’d be willing to bet there’s a lot of failed recoveries because of interventions and AA though. It might be because gasp people might have mental, emotional, and even genetic reasons. We aren’t just a clump of people called alcoholics that need help to stop drinking.
That’s like claiming “hey, I stopped beating my wife!” You don’t get credit for that. You’re not supposed to do that. Maybe there’s a mental health issue? Maybe it’s the environment? Interventions are not typically about anything but “hey you, stop”.
Sadly that’s not enough. Anybody thinking about it, the rehab is actually fun, then come the doctors and therapy to help straighten you out for realsies. 15 months for me. To anyone just starting the process, I will not drink with you today!
Don’t do one of those “5vs1” interventions! All it will do is make your friend think you are “ganging up” on him. Talk with him one on one, make your other friends do the same with some time in between.
Why privacy matters, reason #854203
Exactly. “I have nothing to hide”. No shit. They know more than you
You think i close the door on the bathroom because shitting is illegal?
Best way to reply to that
Sending mixed signals to programmers
!stop@believin
return True;
Yeah I learned stuff was spying on my voice because I was talking to my wife about how I need to take a break from drinking for a bit to recalibrate my habits and then for several days literally nothing but alcohol ads. No searches were made.
If they can’t resist doing this then maybe they shouldn’t be allowed to advertise alcohol.
It’s possible that she looked up information about cutting down on drinking, and because you’re connected in the ad network system, you also got ads from it. They like to learn who is connected to who and target ads that way. Facebook is, as you might predict, one of the most notorious.
Also, his purchases of alcohol may have made it to an advertiser. He may simply not have noticed he was getting ads until his wife talked to him about drinking too much.
The whole “phones are listening all the time” thing could be true, and wouldn’t surprise me, but to my knowledge no hacker or privacy monitor has ever found evidence that they do. Always just seemed more likely to me that people just expose information without realizing these systems are much more ubiquitous and complex than just microphones illegally listening.
Yeah if I didn’t trust her to tell me specifically if she’d done it I’d’ve thought that. But she’s been there in the past herself and was less concerned than I was. Also she’d’ve definitely told me when I complained about the ads
There could also be cues from the rest of your observable behavior even if it wasn’t explicitly searched for. They have a lot of data to work with and your circumstances probably aren’t unique, maybe there are signs they are aware of that you wouldn’t be.
Bless you for using two different double contractions
I’dn’t’ve even noticed if you’d’nt mentioned it lol
Na, it’s parsed from conversations. I don’t know why everyone always tries to explain the connection when it’s quite obvious your phone is designed to use your spoken words for ads.
It’s not. On the one hand is however many people saying “it’s obvious!” and on the other hand is no evidence of network traffic transmitting audio data. Why spend all the power to transmit audio, autotranscribe, and parse for specific keywords when they already track your browsing habits and those of your housemates?
It’s decoded on the device with the dedicated audio processor built into every smartphone since about 2010.
Is there any proof of this?
Listening to, and understanding, everything said within range of the phone should use noticeable processing power.
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I disagree. Consider the average internet user and how much they willingly give up about themselves online. Most of them use social media and have everyone they’ve ever met added on it, they post directly about what they’re doing and often who they’re doing it with, and they lend their engagement at things they like. They use Google for a search engine and don’t block ads.
So really, for the probably 80-90%+ of the population that captures, the massive surveillance network in place just at that level is perfectly sufficient to gleam anything they might want to know. Even if someone does protect their privacy, people they’re connected with still influence their profile through their lack of concern for privacy.
So really, with all that in place, what’s the incentive to have a top secret voice surveillance system built on top of all that? It would destroy the market for any phone doing it if it was ever proven. Why take that risk when you can get everything you want from all those other sources instead?
Your friend is lucky to have you. Good luck, I hope everything works out for the best.
Sorry for spamming, i already wrote this in response to another comment, but i kind of find this important for everyone:
First thing everyone should do on a new phone ( or old phone, any phone )
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go to Internet & Network Settings
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Enter “dns.adguard.com” for Private DNS
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Profit: never see ads anywhere on your phone. Not in apps and in no browser.
It’s as simple as that. That’s all you need, in order too block ads globally.
Iirc there are different DNS servers from adguard with custom filters. Some are more strict and others more loose on the blocking.
This instruction is for Android, since it’s what i use, but I’m sure, similar setting exists in iOS.
It should be noted that setting Adguard as your DNS will allow Adguard to track the domains you visit. The latest info I can find is that a lot of their team is still located in Russia, which makes them susceptible to government demands regardless of their intentions.
DNS adblocking should be the last resort. On Android there are many ways to do system wide local adblocking (with and without root). Don’t know about iOS. Alternatively you can do network level blocking with something like a pi-hole.
What about not using any free services for this? Those are guaranteed to be scummy. I pay $2 a month for NextDNS.
Any qualms with Adguard being [created in] Moscow?
[Edited]
You can self-host it (e.g. on a raspberry pi) and point it to upstream DNS servers not associated with Adguard or Russia (e.g. Google DNS, Cloudflare DNS, OpenDNS, etc). I myself use the self-hosted version.
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Switch to Firefox, duckduckgo, don’t use google of at least turn off personalized ads
I don’t think they’re looking for solutions. I think they’re imagining their friend and others in their friend’s situation that decide to do something about their drinking problem and find that as a cruel joke they’re now inundated with alcohol ads everywhere they go. They’re pointing out yet another example of how capitalism without guardrails sucks.
It does go to show the necessity of adblocking software though. It’s not just a trivial convenience at the expense of sites’ ad-revenue, it’s necessary for online safety.
Absolutely
My desktop and laptop both have adblocks on them amongst other things. But I’ve been doing a lot of this research on my iPhone.
Download Wipr or use Firefox Focus. There’s loads of ways to block ads on an iPhone.
Or make a PiHole. I did years ago and I fucking love it. PiHole+Wipr=hella zero ads.
If you’re still looking for resources (particularly if you are needing non-religious resources) a lot of health systems have outpatient programs and support groups for various substance use disorders, so that would be a good place to look. Depending on how severe the problem is, presenting an open and non-judgemental front regarding medical intervention and medication use can help reduce the stigma of getting chemical help for a chemical problem.
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Also add either ublock origin or Ad Nauseam as Firefox extensions
Adguard dns filter for the home network too
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The level of advertising on the internet is why I haven’t been without an adblocker since the early 2000’s. And when the ads aren’t displayed, you also get to see just how much god damn space is devoted to them, with all the now empty space left on any given page.
Few pages legit break apart without any ad containers
Just as a note to OP, some levels of alcohol addiction are so deep that they cannot be halted at once without risk to the addict’s health or even life. If you suspect your friend could be that far gone, it requires medical intervention.
Gonna hijack this comment to say I was a major alcoholic drinking bottles of vodka every day, always drinking. Never not drinking. You get the idea. A real piece of shit. Anyway I got drunk and did a bunch of acid my friend had and decided while totally fucked on it that I had to quit. A few days later after talking to some family I called my doctor and he referred me to a nearby hospital with a separate chemical dependency area and they helped me medical detox (outpatient at home) and it is the single best thing I ever did for myself. 7 and a half years sober. Life has only got better since then. I had almost nothing, barely showed up to work, blew all my money on alcohol and other drugs, and now after years of hard work I own my own small business and am doing well for myself.
Anyone currently struggling with alcoholism, ask some friends and family for help, speak to your doctor, and get better. You know you want to.
The founder of Alcoholics Anonymous considered LSD to be a great tool to help alcoholics recover. Thank goodness you had that LSD! It changed your life!
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/aug/23/lsd-help-alcoholics-theory
Don’t take it as an instruction to do LSD as a way to stop addiction - follow instruction given to you by a doctor first
A Dr will never prescribe LSD lol
Don’t listen to what AA says tho. They are religious nuts and their practices have no basis in science.
AA is not for everyone. Myself included.
Agreed.
Congratulations on those 7.5 years! What a great story.
The amount of alcohol and gambling ads seem to have shot threw the roof over the last few months. I’m not a fan.
