I have an ex-colleague who has both drunk and smoked heavily for years, so far without any (apparent) negative effects. This got me to wondering which of the more ‘common’ vices have the most serious impacts. Let’s consider the following at a level of moderate dependency:
Alcohol (e.g. 6 drinks each evening)
Cigarette smoking (e.g. one pack a day)
Marijuana (e.g. a couple of joints a day)
Paying for sex (e.g. once a week)
Gambling (e.g. betting $1000/week)
For the sake of discussion, let’s assume that the marijuana and prostitution are legal, and let’s ignore the financial cost implications of the different habits, except for gambling where I expect the costs are closely linked to the impacts. I am more interested in the social, familial, and health impacts of these, based either on empirical evidence or personal experience. I am not including hard drugs because those are clearly into the realm of illegality and everything that implies.
I am not an expert in most of these, so please take the consumption levels as illustrative. The point is that we are taking about a level that would be considered a moderate dependency.
(as this is IMHO, I am interested in peoples’ opinions rather than a debate on the moral wrongness of vice)
Wait – the question is “What are the worst vices”, but then, let us ignore financial repercussions? Then state exactly the effects that the nominated vice does have, so we can evaluate it in that precise and narrow context, disregarding any excluded ramifications.
Of the items listed, the one that will take out the average person fastest would probably be gambling. Most Americans, at least, can’t afford to lose 1000 even once, let alone weekly.
I see your point. I didn’t want the conversation to drift in a relative cost comparison, e.g. hookers cost twice as much as booze and then half as much as gambling, so drinking is better, etc, but I don’t mean to limit the discussion.
The sort of thing I was looking for was people’s views on the relative impacts of each, for example really heavy drinking may pose higher marginal health risk than similar levels of smoking, but moderately heavy smoking may be worse than moderately heavy drinking. But on the other hand, smoking has relatively minor impacts on your loved ones, whereas drinking can destroy families. Paying for sex has a relatively small health and familial risk (assuming you are careful), but if you aren’t careful then the negative impacts are quite dramatic. And compulsive gambling can be relatively harmless if you are a net-winner, but the worst cases can lead to financial ruin, prison, and often suicide.
The average Joe is not a pro gambler. If he’s playing poker with his buddies who are of comparable skill, then I expect winnings will mostly just slosh back and forth from week to week. But it’s likely that someone is better than the others - and over time, money will flow to that guy, and away from our average Joe. The rate at which Joe’s wallet bleeds will depend on everyone’s skill level.
If Joe is playing the slots or scratch-off lottery tickets, he’s going to lose much more money than he wins. The expected value of a $1 scratch-off ticket is around fifty cents, so if he’s buying $1000 worth of tickets each week, he’s only going to recover half of that. That’s about $26,000 a year in gambling losses, taken from a median US household income of $52,000. OP wasn’t interested in the financial implications, so I’ll just say that a gambling compulsion of this magnitude is difficult to hide, and will cleave the average Joe from his home and family very quickly.
I think you can set aside most specifics and rank vices according to their effect on the individual’s situation. How functional is the individual, thus fulfilling his obligations? How much burden (other than nebulous moral/ethical issues) does it place on his family or people around him? How much burden does it put on governmental and societal support? What is the net cost of his vice to “the world” - everyone who would be affected differently if he didn’t exercise that vice?
I’d say that even a serious, expensive, self-injurious vice that has few or no repercussions for “the world” is lesser than a mild vice that depletes family resources and directly injures or deprives others, including societal costs.
I’m going with the prostitution followed by the gambling as second place. For some reason, of all the “victimless crimes” those two always seemed the least victimless to me.
It is all context dependent. Smoking will kill you but it doesn’t hurt your family or society at large. Drinking will kill you slower but it will also hurt your family, but if you don’t have a family it might not be that bad. Going to prostitutes will break up your marriage but if you are single then it will just keep you single and give you a disease that might kill you. Gambling will ruin your finances but if you are either rich or single it won’t hurt anyone else. Marijuana will make you lazy and eventually depressed but depending on your financial situation may not hurt those around you.
My rankings from bad to less bad, hookers, gambling, drinking, marijuana, smoking.
I’d say that the ones that affect others are the worst ones. I mean, if you’re a single guy, and you’re gambling, then that’s pretty much a victimless vice, assuming it’s sustainable.
However, if you have a family and you are doing any of the aforementioned vices and they’re having negative impacts on your family in some fashion, then that’s where the line is drawn.
Ignoring the financial implications of gambling means your just doing it for fun, like playing Assassin’s Creed or catching Pokemon. Not a vice in that case. IMO legal prostitution would greatly reduce the sex trafficking that has dominated the local news with a few busts lately. Again not a vice in that case, just another business. Of the remaining? Alcohol at the quantity listed would most likely have the greatest negative effect. Half the amount listed? Not even on my radar, just a normal evening nightcap. Then it’d be smoking but I don’t know which would be worse. You missed buying and subscribing to hours of porn.
One way to look at this would be to think about how you would feel if a member of your own family - a spouse or a child, for example - had one of these vices, and which would be the worst.
For me, having a spouse or a child who drank too much would be the absolute worst, followed by a gambling problem. Those do the most damage long-term to health, finances, and general ability to function. If I had a child who smoked pot, frequented prostitutes, or smoked, I’d be disappointed, but I don’t think I’d be as fearful, and I think it would be much less likely to destroy our relationship.
Smoking and drinking have a physical cost beyond the dollar cost. One of my co-workers was recently admitted to the hospital for pneumonia, and kept taking smoking breaks through it; another co-worker who has to share space with her when she comes back from her smoke breaks has no sympathy.
Seriously tho, I’d have to say the sex addiction would be worst. Its not an addiction you can treat by giving up the source of the addiction. The goal, similar to the goal of food addicts, is to be able to learn a new, healthy relationship with the subject of the addiction. Also, many people are able to be somewhat sympathetic to the trials and tribulations of people dealing with substance addictions. However, given the extremely personal nature of sex addiction, many people close to a sex addict simply cannot feel any compassion for someone who cant keep his dick in his pants.
For this reason, I think sex addiction has even more potential to ruin the personal relationships in the life of the addict. Many spouses decide to stay with the alcoholic/drug addict but sex addiction just rips spouses apart, even if the addict is fully committed to getting better.
ETA: in terms of purely physical detriment, I would say alcohol is the worst.