Thinking About Addiction

Maybe it’s just one of those things that alcoholics and addicts feel they have to try before they settle down to face the challenges of actual recovery– which turns out not to be all that frickin’ easy.

Many treatment programs moved away from medication precisely because it wasn’t helping.

If Project MATCH had it right, and all three work but none works significantly better than the others– then what’s all the argument about?

Pundits are always telling us that science proves this or that, but when we look closer, we find it proves neither.

Many clinicians don’t view addiction as a disease, which they believe relieves them of the need to learn much about its pathophysiology.

Look what’s happened to the public image of rehab as a result of those awful high-profile celeb incidents.

One characteristic of Delta FosB is its unusual stability. It’s capable of persisting in the brain for a very long time.

Few clinicians believed that street crack addicts could succeed as outpatients, but the demand for residential care was never fully met because of, you know, budget considerations.

The treatment population is jam-packed with vulnerable people and families desperately looking for magic solutions to a genuinely challenging problem like recovery.

The evidence suggests we do not yet have a Krokodil epidemic. Although the media seems to do its best to help create one.