Thinking Aloud

Nevertheless, the combination of a long-term aim and a short-term one in our alcohol addiction overcoming model rational choice story has some potential yet. We wrote before that alcohol addiction unlike some other drugs takes time and often reaches its peak when a person is at the peak of his / her career has a high position in the society, a good salary, favorite work: those things that are weighty not only at the rational level, but also provide strong incentives for the same reward system he / she stimulates with alcohol at the same time. The alcohol addiction study often contain the idea that, statistically, the addiction affects different social strata evenly.

Let’s add more details to the reception example. Such things are not nosh-up events, first of all, but social events. There you can bypass a social lift and solve your business problems, find new partners. In other words, short-term rivaling aims (in our case satisfaction and trying all foods) can be replaced with another relation with a long-term part (for example, business interests or scientific career potentials) and a short-term one (the same appetite). In most cases, the long-term aim wins. Let’s add one more component to the same reception model. They serve wine and stronger liquors in such events.

Any change in behavior can be described as a choice. Out of many alternatives a human always chooses one leaving others aside. Once we are not satisfied with the choice made, sometimes, when it’s possible we can try again an abandoned alternative. Is it possible to predict or even stimulate this choice? In the simplest case – probably yes. In fact, under the condition of the plenty of demand, for example, when a supermarket shelf is full of products with the same eating qualities there’s a problem to make a consumer buy a definite product.

The answers to these questions seem evident: to keep your health, to relieve your family from sufferings. One may even use something commonplace: “Be like the whole world”, “Live a normal life”. But whether it’s a weighty argument for an alcohol addict we don’t know. Our discourse can be compared with the following conclusions justifying relatively lower malignancy compared to other form of chemical addiction.