Researching alcohol interventions for a friend. I’ve seen more ads for alcohol than ever in my life

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.
- I don't believe this
- No they don’t.
  https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trade-aa-medallions-free-drinks/
  A simple google search disproves that.
Holy hell, that's straight up evil if true. I hope the bad PR ran them out of business.
- You can buy the coins for as little as £0.75 each (~$1) https://www.recovery12.co.uk/newcomer-aa-medallions-67-c.asp Then go to a bar and get a drink for almost nothing.
  😀

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.
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
- 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 !

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.
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.
- 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.
- 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.

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

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.
- 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.
- 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

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 )

go to Internet & Network Settings
Enter "dns.adguard.com" for Private DNS
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.

Your friend is lucky to have you. Good luck, I hope everything works out for the best.

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.
Also add either ublock origin or Ad Nauseam as Firefox extensions
- Adguard dns filter for the home network too

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
- 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.

Alcoholic here. Super bowl ads are toxic. All hail the protective ad blocker.

"Why should I care about privacy? I have nothing to hide, who cares if they target advertising at me?"

Not to make light of your situation, but if anyone in the crowd has said this to themselves at some point, the answer to why they should care is "shit like exactly this." This is a prime example of "not illegal stuff to hide but targeted advertising actively making your life harder purposefully in an attempt to manipulate you into buying their products."

Take back your privacy, use alternate solutions and avoid shit tier companies that attempt to take it from you for their own financial gain, even at the expense of your own financial ruin. Make "unsecure" a black mark companies have to crawl their way out of or else their products won't be used or bought. Fuck them. Is it possible to gain 100% anonymity online? Likely, no, but you can put in a little effort to stop it as much as you can, and use adblockers of course to block what they would send. There is effort to it to be sure, but it is worth it, and the more people take their privacy seriously the more tools will be developed, improved, etc.

Again sorry to sort of hijack your post for this comment, that sucks and fuck whoever is serving you (and by extension actual alcoholics seeking recovery) those targeted ads. I just feel it's necessary to point out real world examples of "this is why" because when you're just talking about privacy as a concept people always pretend that since they aren't a Sicario for Sinaloa they have no reason to care. You do, something as "small" (legal) as this is a reason.

First thing everyone should do on a new phone ( or old phone, any phone )
go to Internet & Network Settings
Enter "dns.adguard.com" for Private DNS
Profit: never see ads anywhere on your phone. Not in apps and in no browser.
It's as simple as that.
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.
- Well shit I'll have to look into this, fist I'm hearing of it. Thanks!
Lots of really good privacy tips etc in this thread. Many I knew. Some I didn’t and loads that will help others. It’s actually great to see.

There’s actually a setting at least on Facebook to specifically disable alcohol and gambling based on some settlement a few years ago but they hid it really welll

You sound like a good friend, thanks for caring so much. The world needs more caring people.

Gambling and alcohol ads have to be among the most unethical form of marketing in existence, yet, it really is everywhere. These companies (Google/Meta/Twitter) are even showing these ads to minors on an ongoing basis.

I couldn't imagine being an addict or former addict and having to be exposed to this mindfuck.

I would encourage everyone to actively find ways to block ads, even if solely to preserve one's mental health.

Gambling is the one that is so infuriating for me as well, and part of the reason I don't watch sports at all now.
They have sponsored segments IN THE SHOW during the game talking about the current odds and bets that can be placed. In addition to all the signs and ad segments. It is so terrible in Ontario once online gambling ads were legalized.
It's just as if announcers were consuming alcohol or smoking on set with a bottle or pack of it in front of them. Gambling should be illegal or heavily regulated just the same as other addictive substances.
- I've seen music videos being re-uploaded with gambling ads inserted into the video (like a character was watching TV/on their computer/looking at their phone, and it was there). I couldn't believe it when I saw it. It's so disgusting, I didn't think people could stoop so low.

Facebook briefly offered you the option to select topics you didn't want to see advertised at all, I chose alcohol and politics. Want to guess what 90% of my ads on that garbage site are?

I had the same experience. Those settings didn’t seem to change a thing.

If you don't block ads and you type things into searches about alcohol you will indeed get a lot of alcohol ads. The thing is though, I never got them as frequently when I was still drinking, or maybe never noticed them. Also I once got served ads for beer on a page about quitting booze lol, it seems pretty intentional even though it's most likely not that targeted.

You guys are getting ads?

Make a new account on Instagram and see how much of it is pedo shit on a new feed. Everything is out of control.

How about I don't
- Good plan.

Oh man, this sounds like it could become a news piece.

https://ublockorigin.com

https://adguard.com

This treats the symptom, not the illness.
- This is a vaccine that will make you immune to the illness.
Wait - are you really the real Blizzard?
Why did you do this to us?
- I wish they had an official account on Lemmy because I'd like to ask them some questions:
  why do giant slugs and porcupines keep bound prisoners?
  why do mobs suddenly come out from underground? Just becasue it made sens with zergs, doesn't mean it will make sens with everything
  Don't let me start talking about movement because it'll turn into a rant.

Interesting. I live in Poland and liquor advertisements are illegal here, in fact all alcoholic beverage commercials are banned except for beer (I think even with that there used to be some restrictions that in tv they can be only aired after 23:00 or 11 PM, I'm not sure if it's still the case). According the law definition, it should also apply to social media and internet in general, but it might or might not be completely regulated (yet?). In general however, I don't see such adverts and even beer adverts are quite rare, to the point that I forgot they could exist, just like cigarettes commercials.

Last beer advert I remember was some some billboard with 0% Free beer with raspberry flavor or whatever

Sounds shit and you probably should install some kind of adblock.

AdBlocker, revanced, instander, haven't seen an add in a week

What's a proper source for instander? Haven't heard of it before.
- https://thedise.me/instander/
Instander is whack tho like there's so many claims of people suddenly following bots, and it's all closed source:/ we need a better replacement. As of right now though revanced tweaks for instagram is solid, gets rid of timeline ads, but a lot more could be done
- barinsta, an open source Instagram third party app I used doesn't work anymore, that's why i switched to instander but now I'll probably go revanced

What makes it better?
- NextDNS and similar services basically host the pi-hole on your behalf. Pi-hole setup involves installing packages on a device that will handle your ad content filtering and related network configuration; NextDNS involves getting a URL to copy-paste into your phone, computer, or network's DNS configuration settings. The latter is far less labor-intensive. The trade-off is that you have less control over how things get blocked. Pi-hole is more of a local solution than NextDNS, but if you don't want to fuss with the tech and just want to start blocking more ads, go with NextDNS (or similar).
  Here is an article that covers info about how to set this up on an Android phone and several private DNS provider options: https://www.theupdatebox.com/how-to-enable-private-dns-on-android/

Hope things go well and your friend is receptive to the message. It might not change the trajectory right away but at the very least, it'll be something to encourage them to examine their habits. If your friend does seem to take it to heart but has a hard time cutting back, there's a medication called naltrexone which may help reduce alcohol cravings. I'm just some internet guy though so that's more of a conversation between them and their doctor, it's something I didn't know about before starting treatment but I think it was helpful. Carbonated (seltzer/sparkling) water was useful as a replacement for the alcoholic drinks in my case but if that brings to mind stuff they used to mix together, it may not be an ideal solution.

If they've been drinking heavily over a long period, there are also some risks associated with complete cessation so it couldn't hurt to encourage them to schedule an appointment with their doctor anyway. I'd imagine that's come up in your research already though.

Install uBlock Origin. Ads are a legitimate malware threat.

I know this is four months old, but I'm getting nonstop gambling ads after googling how to block them and its driving me insane. I hate that I'm not alone in ad hell... I've lost people because of gambling addiction and it is RIDICULOUS that there isn't a way to block ads for things that are dangerous, if they become addictive.

I have, through a mixture of ad blockers, privacy friendly 3rd party front ends, choice of services and living in a city which banned billboard ads, pretty much stopped seeing ads. And I observed I feel annoyance, when I do bump into an ad.

You can disable targeted ads on most platforms, which will make the ads you see less relevant.

However, you’re right—ads for alcohol shouldn’t appear when searching for information on quitting drinking. I recall a liquor store offering discounts on drinks in exchange for the sobriety tokens people receive.

I would say calling it sick is a bit much. Yes, I’m this context it’s fucked up but the ads being served are simply trying to match advertisements to users. Alcohol is quite popular for advertising, alcoholic interventions not so much.

So yeah, you’re gonna get ads about alcohol. If this bothers you, turn off ad targeting wherever possible. You could also install an ad blocker (mind blowing you don’t seem to have one?)

There are solutions if you truly cared

You can't help anyone with a substance abuse problem.

They either choose to fix themselves or they die.

OP and others are reaching out to a friend to show they care. They want to tell their friend that they have a problem, and that the problem is solvable. OP is putting up with any unconformable feelings and bad blood this will cause to do this.
This might be enough for that friend to want to make a change.
OP must know only their friend can choose to stop drinking.

that's why I pay to remove ads.

I would say the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon plays a bigger role here. Alcohol ads are super common and wouldn't be surprised if you just zoned them out before.

I am not going to deny that searching for anything alcohol related can increase the amount but I highly doubt it would be by such a large margin.

I searched for husavara images once because we were watching an old b sci-fi movie where they dressed one up with crappy “prosthetics” but didn’t paint it and I wanted to prove that’s what it was.
I got huskavara and John Deere ads all over my socials pretty much exclusively the next day and extremely frequently for a week afterwards. There’s just no way those were there prior to that search. I turned off targeted ads and never saw them again.
I believe op when he says he was inundated with them.