You are right with your observations.
The root cause are mental health disorders like depression.
There is no fast working anti-depressant like alcohol.
People try to solve their problems in the short path with it, it works, but in the long run, the problems coming back even more severe.
Untreated disorders will be amplified like abuse, depression etc.
But its understandable people try alcohol first, until therapy and medication works, its a hard time.
I am an alcoholic myself, sober for five months now after a long-term therapy.
I am sceptical about taking meds for this desease. The change of life and coping with stress is the best way to avoid getting in relapse of use.
The therapists said meds might be a help, but are not the solution.
Its a trap for the dependant who might think now hes cured and does not find himself changing his life and solving problems which have caused the desease.
I was working in IT and have now time to change, i will be working in a less stressful job and will undergo further treatment of depression and narcicisstic personalty disorder i suffer.
In the long run, alcoholism can be avoided by selling it only in special stores, people need more knowledge about it and society itself must be more aware how dangerous alcohol is.
I live in bavaria,germany. I can purchase hard liqour around the clock and in amounts with no limit. Its cheap and i have no problem with the people around me.
The drinking culture makes it possible to be offerd a beer to almost every occasion. Sure the openly and public drinking in broad daylight is some kind of awkward, but people dont take it too serious.
We have no laws exept driving cars or being drunk at the workplace.
But well, meds can help a bit to get someone stable enough be treatabel for a long term therapy, but a cure, they are not.
The nucleus accumbens has stored the associative information that drinking can help with insomnia, depression and makes live a bit easier.
To get rid of this is a long and hard way, the most is done by undergo treatment, self help groups and finding new hobbies or something replacing the habits that led before to the addiction.
Send them a copy of "1984" or, i am not familiar with chromebooks, set a bios/boot-password or something so if they want install anything, they have to ask for permission.
I kinda find it helpless to monitor kids activities instead of talking to them, explaining where the dangers are.
They will continue under a new name and description.
The success to this day is not remarkable.
That software has not stopped criminals like Olaf Scholz and his buddies, nor has it protect a mayor of a city that was killed in his own house.
So, its useless and unethical to think to automate prosecution.
Too many false-positives and a bad success rate is not and can not be the goal to break basic rights.
The real criminals are not the weed dealers next door and not the dumb neo-fascists, they gather everyday in the parlaments with their shady double income, their wrongdoings and promises broken every day.
For what that software has brough revenue, the victims of the flood this summer, would enjoy golden handrails and faucets in their newly built homes.
The internet has become from being a source of information to a marketplace everyone wants to make a quick buck instead.
The times where you can just search for information without being tracked what and when you search, is over.
I never received spam or when, i had known it came from the shady website i signed up with.
Today, my whereabouts, my age and sex are exploited as information for useless and silly spambots.
They are not even trying to entertain me.
And all that because using a mobile phone, goole knows where you are and where you are working. That estimates the income, making more stupid wine offers possibel, im non-alcoholic, that info they didnt get because i called help hotlines and those numbers are not listed and info is not legal to share.
But well. If one wants to build a free search engine and knowledge base, has to fight with users not knowing that the world is round and alternatives available.
It starts in school, kids end up in front of Windows Computers, Word is a text processor and google-ing stuff is the way to go.
It goes to that extent that recommending alternatives, people refuse it, even if its better because they dont know it. Humans are sometimes stuck in their behavior.