Originally Posted by
StevenSlate 
I'm highlighting the term judgment because I think we need to clarify what we mean by the term. Do substances impair our sensory input and processing of that input so that it's harder to judge when to hit the brakes or turn a steering wheel or speed up or slow down or whatever? Absolutely. And they can impair our abilities which might fall into a realm of judgment for all sorts of activities. I think "judgment" is often used to refer to the problems we have with physical activities while intoxicated. But the term "judgment" is also used to describe "moral" choices - whether or not to hit someone, cheat on a spouse, call the cocaine dealer, or even have another drink. I don't think it's right to conflate these two sorts of "judgment."
In The Freedom Model we discuss this conflation, to say that these "moral" choices aren't rocket science or even as tough as parallel parking. If you've agreed to monogamy, it takes no special level of cognitive functioning, -and in fact very little other than to just know that you yourself are in a monogamous relationship- to not cheat. There is no "judgment" involved in terms of some kind of tough logical reasoning, rigorous fact-gathering, and intense mental problem-solving process. We call these matters of judgment, but they aren't. You don't need to be Einstein, and in fact you can fall on the exact opposite end of the mental ability scale as Einstein and still not cheat on your spouse. It takes no "judgment," even thought the choice to cheat falls in the realm of choices we refer to as "poor judgment."
And I'd say the same about calling the coke dealer so you can keep the party going, or having the Nth drink that people always tell me they know will put them into a blackout before they take it.
Anyways, we often demonstrate "poor judgment" with or without substances. We needn't postulate pharmacologically "impaired (moral) judgment" to explain these choices. We also shouldn't conflate these types of choices with those that do take some lightning fast reasoning and fully engaged cognitive ability (like operating heavy machinery).
I agree that understanding conflation as both a weakness and a tool of language is important in understanding where recovery models choose to place meaning, focus of attention, implicit vs explicit cognition, etc.
And it is clear in your example of conflation wherein “judgment” is used instead of “reaction time” or “predicting outcome percentages”, or “deciding whether or not to break a pledge”.
How do you respond when someone learning about the Freedom Model imagines that your use of “pursuit of happiness”, or just “happiness”, is a conflation of lots of quite different aspects of people’s lives?