My rule of thumb is, as soon as it gets to the point where I need to use "this", I find a library that abstracts that whole business away.
I've been there and it sucks. I say leave it to someone with the expertise to use "this" in Javascript without shooting themselves in both feet, at least for browser-side work.
Learn the language. You can't just outsource understanding the language you write code in. Even if you just mash together some jQuery you have to understand the semantics for `this` or you're going to trip over them later.
It's not even that complicated. Honestly, just put in 10 minutes one day to learn how it behaves. Even if you end up just always assigning a new variable (e.g. var self = this) it's better than putting your fingers in your ears and closing your eyes when you see `this`.
Most of the JS development that I've seen happen is done by people holding their nose and refusing to properly learn the language's idioms, or by people that wish they could be writing in another language that abuses JS as a glorified bytecode interpreter.
I agree that it's a pretty awful language. I wish it weren't the only choice in web dev (and resent the HTML5 zealots that chafe at any attempt to go beyond it with new languages - LOL, as if HTML5 was a real standard to begin with!) But it's there, that's reality, and the good programmers need to deal with it.
Coffeescript makes it a modicum less terrible, but it's Yet Another Language to learn, and people that are already burdened with maintaining more than just the FE stack, like myself, are getting pretty tired of context-switching between all these languages and mini-frameworks-with-adorable-nonsensical-names.
I've been there and it sucks. I say leave it to someone with the expertise to use "this" in Javascript without shooting themselves in both feet, at least for browser-side work.