Life Process Program Blog

Stanton Peele, Ph.D. For a half century, at least, American psychiatry and its fellow travelers have been cheerleading a descent into madness. We stand on the threshold of advances in the biological sciences so relevant to psychopathology that one...

Quinta Brunson licked the toughest addiction— with purpose. Quinta Brunson—creator, writer and star of ABC’s Abbott Elementary—has written something of an addiction manual in her 2021 memoir, She Memes Well. In all of Brunson’s work, she reckons to have...

An interview with a fictional newscaster I often fantasize about having an honest conversation with the type of news correspondent (virtually all of them) who believe addiction is a brain disease— that some are genetically predisposed to become addicted...

Can a child feel too much? Can they take their concern for others, and the state of the nation and the world, too far? Congressman Jamie Raskin had a monumental year in 2021. As a progressive representative from Maryland,...

Does Bruce Springsteen symbolize creativity, engagement, and superseding early roots? Instead, for some he symbolizes mental illness and requiring psychiatric medications to live.   Bruce Springsteen’s Legacy If it were possible, Bruce Springsteen is having a “moment” in the...

The American medical establishment hasn’t progressed one iota beyond “This is your brain on drugs.” The esteemed medical website WebMD featured a piece “How Alcohol Affects Your Body” listing 15 items.  Guess how many of them were positive? I...

We are emerging from the Dark Ages of Drug Policy by recognizing that drug use and addiction are not the same thing. That is, drug use does not inevitably lead to addiction any more than an addiction requires drugs...

We’ve missed something fundamental for decades. It seems impossible that the entire U.S. Government could follow a delusional policy that is an utter failure, while administration after administration and their experts declared it a success. That’s what happened in...

Nobody is actually immune to addiction, despite what you may read about brain surgeries, medicines, or other “magical” addiction cures. The best any of us can do to prevent and beat addiction is to live a balanced life, which...

Love addiction is worse the second time around. This article, written by Dr. Peele, was originally published in Psychology Today Anthony Bourdain hanged himself on June 8, 2018, at Le Chambard Hotel in Alsace, France. He was on location...

It can be difficult for some people to hear about how so many people drink or take drugs without problems, or becoming addicted. Or, on the other hand, to learn how many overcome addiction in the course of time,...

Why relying on disease or trauma in order not to punish people harms more than it helps  In an international cause celebre, Sha’Carri Richardson, perhaps the fastest woman in the world, tested positive for marijuana, upsetting her participation in...

The new cudgel against drinking and drug use Move over racism, sexism and age-ism. We have a new label to shame the majority of people who choose to drink and use recreational drugs. They aren’t “sober.” Medium ran a...

Stanton Peele and Zach Rhoads  There’s benefit to seeking life help in the form of therapy, counseling, coaching and mutual-aid groups. But most of that which is available for addiction doesn’t provide essential benefits.  The Life Process Program operates...

How are we doing at solving our alcohol and drug problems? A dark event has occurred to cloud the Super Bowl. Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid’s son Britt, the Chief’s outside linebackers coach, ran into the back...

Stressful situations or problems can be major addiction-triggers (even when stress is unrelated to addictions past or present). Thus, developing effective problem-solving skills– better ways of coping with such situations– is essential to breaking an addictive cycle. Here are...

12-step groups like AA are largely ineffective at curbing drug and alcohol addiction. Happily, SMART Recovery (Self Management and Recovery Training) is another lay-led support group and that honors the principles of personal agency and development that we talk...

With Contributions From Ilse Thompson Mindfulness is the antidote for addiction. Happily, living mindfully is simple with practice, and getting started doesn’t necessarily require meditation or intense practice. In this article, you will learn five tools for living more...

Stanton Peele: Author of Resisting 12-Step Coercion: How to Fight Forced Participation in AA and NA. One of the country’s foremost experts on addiction joins Jim Breslo (Hidden Truth Podcast) to explain that we focus too much on the...

Dear Dr. Peele, I went through a somewhat nasty divorce in 1990, along with getting laid off from my job. I realized that I had a drinking problem, and I attempted to moderate my drinking. I was somewhat successful,...

He may smoke, he certainly drinks and, good God, that 60-year-old is trim!   This post is in response to Anthony Bourdain’s Addiction Report Card by Stanton Peele Anthony Bourdain is the worldly gastronomical traveler with an addictive past. ...

It’s a regrettable loss to your life, which you may find necessary. I have an older friend (even older than me!) who can no longer drink alcohol or coffee. She has had an unusual drinking career. She came from a...

The two primary (New York) intellectual organs, the New York Review of Books and The New York Times, have recently featured two powerful cultural icons saying exactly opposite things. Marcia Angell, the first woman editor-in-chief of the New England...

Donald Trump was elected by a white underclass that is resentful, suicidal, and addictive, and whose existence is declining rapidly. The most noted element in the current health-care debate is how the Republicans’ White House champion, along with the...

Subject: INSPIRED. A plea from a dissident Dear Dr. Stanton Peele, I am in much need of your advice. I am nervous sending this to you because, 1: I am anxious and have been most of my life; 2:...

Why the Life Process Program doesn’t focus on trauma—it doesn’t work! Trauma theory has come to dominate addiction practice.  It is commonplace to hear assertions that all addiction is due to trauma, or the converse—no one can escape the...

Recent reports on the harm reduction movement portray its rude health—yet simultaneously, a catastrophic event could at any point challenge its growing acceptance. To me, the situation recalls a disastrous confrontation that long negated a hugely promising development, before...

Disease Theory of Addiction The disease theory of addiction underpins punitive and abhorrent drug policies—but in fact, its negative impact is evenworse than this. Recently, two notables on an addiction theory list to which I used to belong debated...

Earlier this year, Maia Szalavitz, my fellow Influence columnist and an old comrade-in-arms, released her masterful book, Unbroken Brain, one that displays skills I only wish I had, and that I try to emulate. In it, she’s kind enough...

A piece on The Influence last week by Patrick Hilsman, a member of this publication’s editorial team, strikingly recounted his experiences—both pleasurable and harrowing—with heroin, to which he was once addicted. He contrasted these personal experiences with some received...

When Archie Brodsky and I were writing Love and Addiction in the early 1970s, a medical resident told us, “Oh, we’ve established what addiction was long ago.” It turns out, that wasn’t true. In 2013, DSM-5, the most recent...

We heard last week how Arianna Huffington, running her eponymous publication, bravely fought against criticism of 12-step programs in a report on heroin addiction in Kentucky that was eventually nominated for a Pulitzer. Should that surprise us? Of course...

We are recognizing that addiction is a regular part of life, and it scares the hell out of us. When I published Love and Addiction with Archie Brodsky in 1975, we received catcalls from my fellow faculty members at...

Abstract The world, led by the United States, is hell bent on establishing the absence of choice in addiction, as expressed by the defining statement that addiction is a “chronic relapsingbrain disease” (my emphasis). The figure most associated with...

This week on Talk Recovery, Dr. Stanton Peele discusses: ‘Does the word addict cause harm?’ Listen to his response.

Americans are dead set on finding a magic-bullet solution for thier addictions. Experts in the field, including pharmacologists, neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and psychotherapists—adding their voices to the 12-step movement—are all clamoring to be recognized as the true messiahs leading us...

We are recognizing that addiction is a regular part of life, and it scares the hell out of us. When I published Love and Addiction with Archie Brodsky in 1975, we received catcalls from my fellow faculty members at...

People know alcohol’s a poison, so I don’t want them to drink—let them die early with dementia! I’ve given up telling people that alcohol makes you live longer, about which I first wrote for the American Journal of Public...

For much of the past 50 years or so, voicing any serious skepticism toward Alcoholics Anonymous or any other 12-step program was sacrilege—the equivalent, in polite company, of questioning the virtue of American mothers or the patriotism of our...

Dr. Peele: I stumbled across your web site, but I was familiar with your work already. I wanted to write you a letter and let you know that your book, The Truth About Addiction and Recovery was a great relief to...

How do you define relapse? Is taking cocaine every every now then less dangerous than using it on a daily basis? Is my moderate drinking okay or was AA right? Can I go back to AA after being a...

Among the misconceptions fostered by AA and the disease theory of addiction is the idea of “hitting bottom” — that there is some objective state beneath which no human being will go. The same is true in our misconceptions...

This post is a response to What Caffeine Really Does to Your Brain by David DiSalvo Whenever people can be shown how any mood-affecting substance affects their brains, it becomes easier for them to comprehend the thing can be addictive. Which...

Gambling Addiction DSM 5’s announcement that the psychiatric diagnostic manual will, for the first time, call something addictive that doesn’t involve substance abuse — gambling — has opened the floodgates. It is intriguing to consider how gambling was placed in this...

Calling gambling and game addictions brain diseases is a stretch. DSM-V’s announcement that the psychiatric diagnostic manual will, for the first time, call something addictive that doesn’t involve substance abuse—gambling—has opened the floodgates. It is intriguing to consider how gambling was placed...

Lowering the threshold for alcoholism can make us mindful, or hobble us Based on a post in The Atlantic—“Are You Almost Alcoholic? Taking a New Look at an Old Problem”—Gizmodo has helpfully(?) declared: “Is Everyone You Know an Alcoholic?”  These posts...

That the DSM-5 substance-use-disorders committee has decided one thing that doesn’t involve a psychoactive substance — gambling — can be addictive has set off a debate about what is the most addictive non-drug experience of all. Leading candidates are love/sex/porn/Internet/food —...

Novelty-seeking used to make people alcoholic, now it makes them creative. The large population studies from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (called NLAES and NESARC) that have found three quarters of ever-alcoholic people become stably sober, and a majority of those...

Four incompatible views of addiction fight to capture America’s consciousness This post is going to be unusually brilliant, even for me. In it, I review four factions warring against one another for our consciousness about addiction. “Chronic Brain Disease” = the dominant view...

People outgrow and control mental illness, the opposite of a disease I often write about how — as the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has only recently rediscovered – most alcohol and drug dependent people recover on their own. (See my...

How to think about the plusses alcoholics are pursuing People who believe in the disease theory are dumb. They can’t help it, so we shouldn’t mock them. You see, they don’t have enough human insight to answer the question,...

AA’s perfectionism prevents people from attaining their perfect selves. Alcoholics Anonymous grew out of the temperance and Protestant revival traditions in America.  The first installment of the Ken Burns documentary, Prohibition, described the Washingtonians, a group of what we would...

Our fellow HuffPost blogger, Laura Harvey, has written “How I Broke All the Rules — But Still Quit Smoking.” “I was a smoker for 28 years. This month I celebrated one year smoke free. Even though I tried to quit...

From time to time, researchers send me their latest results when they are controversial. Recently Dr. Michael Collins, of the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Therapeutics of Loyola University’s School of Medicine, sent me a copy of a just-published...

The New York Times last week announced a new medical approach to addiction taking hold in America’s medical schools, where addiction medicine is becoming a recognized specialty. Although the Times welcomes this development (it was inevitable), it is doubtful it will improve America’s addictive...

This blog post originally appeared on Stanton’s blog at The Huffington Post website.   That idea that addiction has a “meaning” seems strange — haven’t they discovered “addiction” in a PET scan in a laboratory at the National Institute on Drug...

The New York Times announced on Sunday the new medical approach to addictiontaking hold in America’s medical schools, where addiction medicine is becoming a recognized specialty. Although the Times welcomes this development (it was inevitable), it is doubtful it will improve America’s addictive...

Psychoactive substance use — certainly including alcohol and psychiatric medications, on top of illicit drug use — is nearly universal in Western societies. It is becoming more, not less, so, and it’s beginning at younger ages. American public policy...

The two primary (New York) intellectual organs, the New York Review of Books andThe New York Times, have recently featured two powerful cultural icons saying exactly opposite things. Marcia Angell, the first woman editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine and now...

Following are five key points about addiction prevention programs and the current research, the best ever conducted on the question, and the three key results of the research and three conclusions from this (see Effectiveness Bank Bulletin , February 25, 2011):...

On the one hand, young people shouldn’t act addicted — because it can become a lifelong habit. On the other, we shouldn’t regard young people as lifetime addicts due to their current situations (think Drew Barrymore); this is a horrible mistake...

You Shouldn’t Smoke Or Drink Allen Carr is an Englishman who wrote bestsellers about quitting things (he died in 2006). Most famously, he wrote the all-time bestselling book about quitting smoking, “The Easy Way to Stop Smoking.” Carr later...

Abstinence from alcohol (no, you’re not misreading this) is the second greatest cause (after smoking, and more than being overweight) of heart disease, the greatest killer of Americans – particularly middle-aged and older men (and almost as much so...

As the effort by drug policy reform advocates to achieve their holy grail — the legalization of a formerly illegal substance (marijuana) in a leading-edge state (California) — was within reach, former Clinton Drug Czar, General Barry McCaffrey, bad-mouthed...

Abstract Alcohol has developed indelibly different footprints in different cultures. Research shows that how a culture views and appreciates alcohol impacts people’s very likelihood of being addicted to it. In this context, the US and other Protestant English-speaking nations,...

Los Angeles Times, July 21, 2010, A17. As California contemplates legalizing the sale of marijuana, the real war over intoxicants in this country is, as always, over alcohol. Since Prohibition ended in 1933 with the 21st Amendment to the...

Building on an essay in Wired magazine by Brendan Koerner, New York Timesconservative columnist David Brooks lauds to the sky AA and its founder, Bill Wilson. Both Brooks and Koerner point out the worldwide spread of AA (although it is limited mainly to the...

“If you mean the demon drink that poisons the mind, pollutes the body, desecrates family life, and inflames sinners, then I’m against it. But if you mean the elixir of Christmas cheer, the shield against winter chill, the taxable...

Los Angeles Times, Friday, March 1, 1996 After years of debate, the U.S. government has finally decided that alcohol can be beneficial. Federal dietary recommendations, revised every five years, now indicate that moderate drinking lowers the risk of heart...

In response to howls of outrage that some professionals (few enough) continue to talk about controlled drinking, Stanton points out that the result that many people reduce their drinking healthfully is an ever-present research finding, even among the most...

Abstract The kind of clear-cut model of the genetic sources of alcoholism perceived by the public and presented in popular tracts does not accurately reflect the state of knowledge in this area. No persuasive genetic mechanism has been proposed...

AA, treatment centers and alcohol counseling are the only known successful methods of arresting the compulsion to drink or take drugs. Alcoholism was totally untreatable and fatal until 1935, when A.A. was founded. —Ruth Harris, WomenSpace Shelter Project, Cleveland...

WOMAN IN THE BALCONY: Is there much drinking in Grover’s Corners? MR. WEBB: Well, ma’am, I wouldn’t know what you’d call much. Sattidy nights the farmhands meet down in Ellery Greenough’s stable and holler some. Fourth of July I’ve been known...

The fight over the new psychiatric manual, DSM-V, has escalated. The conflict is due to an underlying flaw in the manual’s conception. Rather than tracing human activity in terms of its impact for people’s lives, it instead attempts to...

I previously answered the question, “What’s the hardest addiction to quit?” It turns out that the same addiction is the most dangerous. Michael Jackson died at age 50, and long term prescription drug abuse is suspected. In other words, it often takes...

Mark Sanford’s wife has made clear just how far “gone” her husband, the governor of South Carolina, was over his affair with his Argentinean lover.  Vice President Biden should consider appointing Jenny Sanford director of the new National Institute...

Addiction is like the tail wagging the dog, or person, with the tail being a habit that dominates the person’s whole life. Addiction therapy concentrates on the tail – cutting it off in abstinence therapy, making it smaller in...

Although it might seem surprising to say so, responses to my post “Addiction Myth #4: moments of clarity lead ONLY to AA” actually indicate a decline in the dominance and dogmatism of AA in the 21st Century. When I entered...

Some progressives want to change our approach to drugs to recognize that there will be continuing use, and to accept the need to protect users through providing them with clean needles, non-injectible drugs taken orally, medical care, good diets...

Recovered addicts often describe their escape from addition in terms of a moment of truth when they see clearly how their addiction violates their most basic values. Such moments inspired Christopher Lawford to write about famous addicts in recovery, like himself,...

I asked a British man what struck him about the United States. The thing he found most amazing about America was how many towns didn’t allow restaurants to sell alcohol, and that some towns allowed no alcohol sales at...

A paper to be published in America’s leading alcoholism journal compiled the results of studies of mental functioning in relation to drinking. The research repeatedly finds moderate drinkers have lower rates of Alzheimer’s disease and are mentally sharper in...

It is not that addicts don’t get better – the vast majority do. But the disease theory actually does damage by conveying the image of addiction as an alien force that medical experts can remove. In fact, recovery is...

Addiction differs from such DSM-IV disorders as, say, schizophrenia, in that having the condition qualifies a person as an expert. “What alcohol does to me is reality,” alcoholics believe, “and so I know all about alcoholism.” Susan Cheever, who added her...

Harm reduction is the concept of reducing the dangers of drug and other substance use, including the damage due to addiction. While this seems perilously radical — opponents claim it encourages drug use by “sending the wrong message” —...

Here are – in reverse order of difficulty – the seven addictions people find hardest to quit. Cocaine. Cocaine is an episodic-use drug. It is one moreover associated with certain lifestyles – at one time (if not now) people...

Dr. Joseph Beck, psychiatrist and addiction specialist, wrote an article for the Sun-Times News Group titled, “Addiction doesn’t always involve drugs, alcohol.” I confess to thinking, as the author (in 1975) of Love and Addiction, “I’m glad someone got psychiatry...

This spring, I have had a chance to observe alcohol consumption in three very distinctive cultural settings – First Nation (Canada), Irish, and Iberian (Portugal/Spain). Alcohol use – and consequences – could not have been more different in these...

  Further Reading I have always been aware that my boyfriend of 5 years has “a problem with alcohol.” I have put the previous phrase in quotes because I am having a tough time classifying his problem. He does...

  Further Reading Hello, The main concern I have regarding marijuana addiction is loss of productivity. It seems like if people weren’t wasting all their time smoking (and “waste of time” behaviors while high) people could improve their life...

Hillary Clinton created a firestorm when she downed a shot and followed it with a beer chaser (called a “boilermaker” in local parlance) while “campaigning” in a bar in Indiana. Reaction reverberated across the country.  One woman wrote: “Do...

(Nora Volkow is the neuroscientist who directs the National Institute on Drug Abuse) Dearest Nora (and thanks for the Passover card), My last two posts at my blog for Psychology Today – “The End of Addiction” and “End Alcoholism – Bomb Spain” — have...