The Disease of Addiction


Book Description

Joseph Caravella, MA LADC currently practices as an addiction therapist for the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation at their campus in Center City, Minnesota. As an educator he's known for his high energy, breathtaking lectures (on addiction, forgiveness, and love). In "The Disease of Addiction," he masterfully unravels the complexities of the addicted brain, breaks down the fundamental components of addiction in easy-to-understand terms, and paints a detailed clinical picture with color sourced from his own harrowing experiences with addiction, mental illness, and early recovery. Foreword by the author: I've been formally studying addiction since 2011 while also walking my own path in recovery that began in 2008. Even after years of self-study, thousands of twelve-step meetings, graduate school, and professional experience treating the illness, my experience shows that this disease is not the easiest subject to grasp. But knowledge truly is power. And after studying the best textbooks and reports on the neurobiology of addiction, I believe the information in them is sound and of the utmost importance. That said, I also think the packaging and delivery of the material should be more accessible to addicted people, their family and friends, and anyone curious to learn more about the disease. I've been privileged to lecture on the disease of addiction to large treatment populations for years. Inspired by requests for written material beyond my lectures and by my personal mission to improve addiction education, this short book is a meditation on the evolutionary perspective of chemical use, the origins of the Alcoholics Anonymous program, our present understanding of the neurobiology of addiction, and how the twelve-step solution is well supported by scientific evidence. I also describe the correlation between physiological stress response in early recovery and a spirituality-based approach to recovery in a manner that I haven't seen in the literature. In this book, I'm specifically speaking to the person unsure about addiction as a disease but also pained by the consequences of their chemical use. To me, this person is the newcomer to recovery, and they are the most important person about whom I should be concerned when discussing addiction and recovery. Special thanks to my clients, family, teachers, guides, mentors, colleagues, bosses, and especially my wife for making this possible. I was taught that I can only keep what peace and love I have by freely giving it away. In part, this is my love to you.




The Biology of Desire


Book Description

Through the vivid, true stories of five people who journeyed into and out of addiction, a renowned neuroscientist explains why the "disease model" of addiction is wrong and illuminates the path to recovery. The psychiatric establishment and rehab industry in the Western world have branded addiction a brain disease. But in The Biology of Desire, cognitive neuroscientist and former addict Marc Lewis makes a convincing case that addiction is not a disease, and shows why the disease model has become an obstacle to healing. Lewis reveals addiction as an unintended consequence of the brain doing what it's supposed to do-seek pleasure and relief-in a world that's not cooperating. As a result, most treatment based on the disease model fails. Lewis shows how treatment can be retooled to achieve lasting recovery. This is enlightening and optimistic reading for anyone who has wrestled with addiction either personally or professionally.




Evaluating the Brain Disease Model of Addiction


Book Description

This ground-breaking book advances the fundamental debate about the nature of addiction. As well as presenting the case for seeing addiction as a brain disease, it brings together all the most cogent and penetrating critiques of the brain disease model of addiction (BDMA) and the main grounds for being skeptical of BDMA claims. The idea that addiction is a brain disease dominates thinking and practice worldwide. However, the editors of this book argue that our understanding of addiction is undergoing a revolutionary change, from being considered a brain disease to a disorder of voluntary behavior. The resolution of this controversy will determine the future of scientific progress in understanding addiction, together with necessary advances in treatment, prevention, and societal responses to addictive disorders. This volume brings together the various strands of the contemporary debate about whether or not addiction is best regarded as a brain disease. Contributors offer arguments for and against, and reasons for uncertainty; they also propose novel alternatives to both brain disease and moral models of addiction. In addition to reprints of classic articles from the addiction research literature, each section contains original chapters written by authorities on their chosen topic. The editors have assembled a stellar cast of chapter authors from a wide range of disciplines – neuroscience, philosophy, psychiatry, psychology, cognitive science, sociology, and law – including some of the most brilliant and influential voices in the field of addiction studies today. The result is a landmark volume in the study of addiction which will be essential reading for advanced students and researchers in addiction as well as professionals such as medical practitioners, psychiatrists, psychologists of all varieties, and social workers.




The Urge


Book Description

Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and The Boston Globe An authoritative, illuminating, and deeply humane history of addiction—a phenomenon that remains baffling and deeply misunderstood despite having touched countless lives—by an addiction psychiatrist striving to understand his own family and himself “Carl Erik Fisher’s The Urge is the best-written and most incisive book I’ve read on the history of addiction. In the midst of an overdose crisis that grows worse by the hour and has vexed America for centuries, Fisher has given us the best prescription of all: understanding. He seamlessly blends a gripping historical narrative with memoir that doesn’t self-aggrandize; the result is a full-throated argument against blaming people with substance use disorder. The Urge is a propulsive tour de force that is as healing as it is enjoyable to read.” —Beth Macy, author of Dopesick Even after a decades-long opioid overdose crisis, intense controversy still rages over the fundamental nature of addiction and the best way to treat it. With uncommon empathy and erudition, Carl Erik Fisher draws on his own experience as a clinician, researcher, and alcoholic in recovery as he traces the history of a phenomenon that, centuries on, we hardly appear closer to understanding—let alone addressing effectively. As a psychiatrist-in-training fresh from medical school, Fisher was soon face-to-face with his own addiction crisis, one that nearly cost him everything. Desperate to make sense of the condition that had plagued his family for generations, he turned to the history of addiction, learning that the current quagmire is only the latest iteration of a centuries-old story: humans have struggled to define, treat, and control addictive behavior for most of recorded history, including well before the advent of modern science and medicine. A rich, sweeping account that probes not only medicine and science but also literature, religion, philosophy, and public policy, The Urge illuminates the extent to which the story of addiction has persistently reflected broader questions of what it means to be human and care for one another. Fisher introduces us to the people who have endeavored to address this complex condition through the ages: physicians and politicians, activists and artists, researchers and writers, and of course the legions of people who have struggled with their own addictions. He also examines the treatments and strategies that have produced hope and relief for many people with addiction, himself included. Only by reckoning with our history of addiction, he argues—our successes and our failures—can we light the way forward for those whose lives remain threatened by its hold. The Urge is at once an eye-opening history of ideas, a riveting personal story of addiction and recovery, and a clinician’s urgent call for a more expansive, nuanced, and compassionate view of one of society’s most intractable challenges.




Courage to Change—One Day at a Time in Al‑Anon II


Book Description

More daily inspiration from a fresh, diverse perspective. Insightful reflections reveal surprisingly simple things that can transform lives.




Addiction


Book Description

In a book sure to inspire controversy, Gene Heyman argues that conventional wisdom about addiction—that it is a disease, a compulsion beyond conscious control—is wrong. Drawing on psychiatric epidemiology, addicts’ autobiographies, treatment studies, and advances in behavioral economics, Heyman makes a powerful case that addiction is voluntary. He shows that drug use, like all choices, is influenced by preferences and goals. But just as there are successful dieters, there are successful ex-addicts. In fact, addiction is the psychiatric disorder with the highest rate of recovery. But what ends an addiction? At the heart of Heyman’s analysis is a startling view of choice and motivation that applies to all choices, not just the choice to use drugs. The conditions that promote quitting a drug addiction include new information, cultural values, and, of course, the costs and benefits of further drug use. Most of us avoid becoming drug dependent, not because we are especially rational, but because we loathe the idea of being an addict. Heyman’s analysis of well-established but frequently ignored research leads to unexpected insights into how we make choices—from obesity to McMansionization—all rooted in our deep-seated tendency to consume too much of whatever we like best. As wealth increases and technology advances, the dilemma posed by addictive drugs spreads to new products. However, this remarkable and radical book points to a solution. If drug addicts typically beat addiction, then non-addicts can learn to control their natural tendency to take too much.







Addiction


Book Description

"Addiction, the Brain Disease is a young adult guide to the physical, emotional, social, psychological disease of addiction. Addiction to substances, behaviors, and addiction to the self are explored. Self-tests, personal stories, treatment, recovery, dictionary of addictions, terms, and meanings are included. Also includes lists of resources, help sources, a bibliography, illustrations, and personal stories."--Amazon.com.




Medications for Opioid Use Disorder Save Lives


Book Description

The opioid crisis in the United States has come about because of excessive use of these drugs for both legal and illicit purposes and unprecedented levels of consequent opioid use disorder (OUD). More than 2 million people in the United States are estimated to have OUD, which is caused by prolonged use of prescription opioids, heroin, or other illicit opioids. OUD is a life-threatening condition associated with a 20-fold greater risk of early death due to overdose, infectious diseases, trauma, and suicide. Mortality related to OUD continues to escalate as this public health crisis gathers momentum across the country, with opioid overdoses killing more than 47,000 people in 2017 in the United States. Efforts to date have made no real headway in stemming this crisis, in large part because tools that already existâ€"like evidence-based medicationsâ€"are not being deployed to maximum impact. To support the dissemination of accurate patient-focused information about treatments for addiction, and to help provide scientific solutions to the current opioid crisis, this report studies the evidence base on medication assisted treatment (MAT) for OUD. It examines available evidence on the range of parameters and circumstances in which MAT can be effectively delivered and identifies additional research needed.




The Disease of More


Book Description

The Disease of More chronicles the childhood, young adulthood and current life experiences of Eleanor R., a woman who overcame great odds to recover from the diseases of alcoholism and food addiction. It is the true story of one woman's journey toward becoming the person she always wanted to be, despite her disadvantaged upbringing and her early affliction with addictions that took her to places of extreme shame and humiliation. Eleanor is every woman who struggles with self medication through food, alcohol and things. She is a mother, a wife, an influential public servant in one of the largest states in the nation, but still, after 25 years, she must get up each day and be vigilant against slipping back into cravings and her fears that she does not have enough. This book is an inspiring story of surrender and ultimate victory. Every reader will discover nuggets of Eleanor's hard-won wisdom that drive home the truth of her journey and the triumph of her courage.