Thinking About Addiction

$85 million, or 64%, of the new money would go some place other than addiction treatment.

The coffee is just not that tasty. Yet they were getting something out of it that was important to them.

You know what would help put an end to the debate? A protocol and procedures for a successful transition off maintenance for those patients who would prefer not to remain dependent.

People attend AA for a variety of reasons, in different stages of readiness, and with diverse objectives in mind.

The experience of addiction routinely includes periods of reduced substance use, or abstinence.

Heroin is certainly an addictive substance, so why didn’t all the subjects continue using it?

It’s the stigma that creates the distinction, not the distinction that creates the stigma.

“If you can’t measure something, you can’t do science with it, and in addictions, we just can’t measure things as well as we need to.”

Some observers have criticized us for orienting treatment methods to more severe cases, but that’s predominantly who we see in many forms of treatment.

We might have been making things more difficult for the patients we wanted to help. This is not unknown in healthcare.