No one knows what addiction is until they are there, so if you want to be a blowhard, go and find out what it is like first, then maybe you will have some idea.

Ignorance is bliss, of course - especially if you are trying to seem like you understand the plight of people’s mental and physical anguish when dealing with addiction.

What people need to keep in mind at the forefront is addiction changes your morals, your personality, your brain’s ability to be happy… ultimately it just makes you a narcissist. Cause and effect.

You won’t ever be the same, but you CAN learn how to live again and be a different person.

As an alcoholic, I am well aware of the factors of cause and effect. “Decisions” are not made without influence. Space is not truly empty. Emotions or ideals are what really make decisions, not free will.

On the river of time, we don’t have control of boulders or tree trunks sticking out of the water. Those things were always there… but they weren’t there until they were…

The past affects the future, nothing else. Every atom is just a series of dominoes falling together in a straight line, it starts small but all combines to be the world we can see (and can’t).

If two atoms get quantum entangled, it was always supposed to happen. So what ever “spooky action” they show, well, it’s natural. In our physics laws and point of view in the universe.

So… free will? And this isn’t about criticizing religion or anything, or being an apologist for criminals who do what they do.

This is about disregarding the need for free will. Is free will binary? It is there or it isn’t? A spectrum? You kinda get total control over this… but that there is totally out of your hands.

In my opinion, we are affected by the past emotions, neural networks, and experiences that influence our decision-making.

Would ‘true free will’ be a subject with consciousness, yet having no feelings, memories, or experiences of any kind?

Before my alcoholism would become a trouble for my day-to-day life, the topic of free will was very sparingly in my mind. Aside from debates involving Christopher Hitchens or Sam Harris. I always kind loved the amazing quote from Christopher Hitchens as the end of the discussion -

“Of course we have free will because we have no choice but to have it.”

-Christopher Hitchens

Probably the biggest benefit in taking heart to the notion of cause and effect as the only influences in what we do and say (even the things we don’t even notice) is one of empathy and caring about how we treat one another.

When it comes to consciously altering drugs/alcohol, maybe curiosity is the only time your free will is at use. Every other time, as they say, is to chase the first time. But is it really free will to do something when you feel you have to?

I guess it comes down to the fact that free will is like what chaos theory teaches. You might think you have stability to have a legit choice, but entropy is gonna get ya. We have no choice anyway.

We might think we have everything under control, but we don’t. Something else happens, then that happens, and you do this and that. How is that free will if it is always reacting?

Is being proactive not free will because it is dawned into you by a random impulse or idea?

See, I don’t think anyone is truly master of their domain.

P.S. …. Wasn’t drinking while writing this.