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Comment by throwayEngineer | Hacker News Reader

What should humanity do?

The big hitters are Drug addiction and Chronic Pain.

I don't have a solution for drug addiction, but I can't blame our generation for not finding a solution. No generation has, and given caffeine addiction, it's extremely hard for others to help with.

Chronic Pain needs to end. Between Doctors of Physical Therapy and medications, there are little reason for people to be experiencing chronic pain. Take note that the author was very generic about their meaning on that.

The rest of the stuff are significantly smaller and usually involved a traumatic event.

What can we do?

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> given caffeine addiction

Caffeine is not addictive. Physiological effect of constant coffee drinking go away without side effects after two weeks. It has no (known) negative effects on health or sociological function as actual drugs have.

I can't figure out why you mentioned caffeine at all

I think I'm a caffeine addict. If I try to quit caffeine, I'll have flu-like symptoms and migraines for at least a week or two. I can see how that's less bad than a heroin addiction, but isn't addiction somewhat of a spectrum?

There is very little that doctors and physical therapists can do to treat certain types of chronic pain. Sometimes root causes are impossible to determine, or we just aren't capable of fixing the damage. Powerful analgesics come with serious risks and side effects.

Part of the problem is that we don't even fully understand how pain works.

Decriminalization of all drugs. Almost all evidence from history and practical implementation points to it massively reducing the many negative impacts of criminalized drug addiction. Sadly, the influence of the war on drugs continues to kill and cause suffering to many thousands.

Humanity shouldn't do anything.

The simplest solution to both of your problems on a societal level is assisted suicide.

It's not the solution, it's a solution, that many people would take.

Yeah, honestly this article is more of an indictment of the medical fields complete inability to solve most issues, even fairly common ones.

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