Don't stigmatize substance use disorders in your docs

[drmattyg]

Please accept this suggestion in the spirit of positive, progressive feedback: "The BFG treats you like a reformed alcoholic: you’ve made some mistakes in the past, but now you’ve cleaned up your act." Lots of reasons why this is not a good idea in public-facing documentation:

• Your users may have faced a substance use disorder in the past. This kind of comment trivializes their disorder and their experience, which can be hurtful and traumatizing. Imagine if this was a joke about being a sexual assault survivor, instead of a survivor of an alcohol use disorder.
• The term "alcoholic" is being deprecated by clinicians who are moving toward a harm-reduction treatment modality for substance use disorders. "Alcoholic" is an identity; it implies that the problem is inborn to the individual. In fact, alcohol use disorder is a disease, and it is treatable. This is a differentiator between current evidence-based practices for treating SUDs and older modalities like AA, which are not based on scientific evidence. The term "alcoholic" is much more common to AA and other twelve-step approaches, which are faith-based and not evidence-based.

Thanks

[rtyley]

Thank you, those are clear points and I appreciate you laying them out for me. I can't offer any sufficient justification for my use of "reformed alcoholic" - I'll fix the documentation later today.

[mbomb007]

So you care about not offending people who have struggled with alcohol but not people who support the president? Seems legit.

[mereswine]

@mbomb007 it sounds like you would prefer for people who support Trump to be classified the same way as people with a real disease. Can't say I disagree....