Life Process Program Blog

The New Yorker designated its July 10-16 edition as “The Therapy Issue.” It pointed out a strange anomaly for our time. We are dedicated to mental health treatments: “If our current moment has a defining impulse, it’s the drive...

Cognitive-behavioral therapy. The entire class of non-medical, non disease treatments is called cognitive-behavioral therapy, or CBT. CBT grew out of behavior therapy, which initially consisted of rewarding approved behaviors and punishing undesired ones. It was opposed to Freudian or...

How we conceive of public health in relation to drugs is crucial for the policies we adopt and invest in and the success of their outcomes. Drug policy reformers often describe their project as being the removal of drug...

The American Dream: We can bypass human consciousness, lived experience and intentionality so as to cure addiction medically. Alcohol: Colonial America to Mary Pendery Antiquity through American Colonial Period. Psychoactive substances were not identified as special objects capable of...

Hi Dr. Peele, I’m a long-time follower of your work, and have been reading about Ariel’s experience. I can relate to so many of the comments in this article, and I was going to just post my own response...

The Life Process Program approaches everything as a life journey, that is as a process. LPP doesn’t see an individual “triggering” thing or event “causing” you to relapse. If you move your life in a positive direction, you will...

It might seem uncomfortable for helpers to acknowledge that most people recover without treatment. But we at LPP feel the opposite is true: that seeing change occur naturally around us helps all of us to change. Thus at LPP...

Dear Stanton, I would love to hear your thoughts and opinions about the prevalence of cannabis stores. I disagree with the point of view often expressed that says “legal” = “benign”. Just interested in you (and Zach’s) thoughts on...

Two Irish superstars who have led very different lives each illustrate the power of local connection in dealing with alcohol At the end of his interview with Norah O’Donnell in the pub in the Irish village where he grew...

The transfer of mental health from the family and community to the medical system is regarded as a modern miracle. It is an unmitigated disaster. In the proceedings of a 1988 conference in which he and I both participated,...

You don’t have to fact check George Santos to know he’s lying  The Peacock series “Poker Face” stars Natasha Lyonne as a superhero with a special power: the ability to detect bullshit. You can do the same without having...

   *  *  * The universal theme of trauma as the cause of addiction and much else has been broadened to include generational trauma. This phenomenon gives the 2013 ESPN series “The Book of Manning” new visibility and significance....

 *  *  * We are walking a razor’s edge in reviewing Perry’s memoir. We risk upsetting AA evangelists and the anti-12-step crowd in one review.  On one hand, AA’s “Big Book” thumpers will hate that we have no patience...

There are two ways of viewing how people emerge from addiction: the “recovery” route, where people fight an “illness” forever, versus the natural, developmental one. In the latter case, the person progresses naturally by maturing and gaining a sound...

 * * * “Drug overdose” deaths are one of our largest killers. From the overdose perspective, a naive user dies due to taking a single unexpectedly powerful dose of a drug, usually an opioid. But this scenario is a...

 * * * Minority and deprived populations’ death rates are increasing precipitously. Covid and drugs have been a major focus for this spate of deaths. But the cause runs deeper. The latest bad news is “U.S. Life Expectancy Falls...

We face a crossroads in harm reduction. The concept has been widely deployed. Yet many object to it — including progressives who should be our biggest backers. Here’s the solution. * * * The Biden Administration’s Harm Reduction Background...

After devastating data have shown that America is leading the world in a failed approach to combating mental illness and addiction, Nora Volkow comes out firing. *  *. * When Prophecy Fails What to do when you stake your...

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 can look forward...

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...

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,...

Britney Spears is the map of the future The documentary Framing Britney Spears revealed the story of how a youthful female singing-entertainment star (now 39) has been under a guardianship arrangement since 2008. The basis for this arrangement was...

The Life Process Program’s “MAT Empowerment Model”  MAT stands for medication-assisted treatment. This is the use of medications to assist recovery from addiction. Harm reduction as it relates to substance use means improvement, or recovery, while continuing to use...

Ian Powell, co-founder (with Jackie Hueftle) of the US climbing gear firm, Kilter Grips, has a long story to tell about addiction, which he did for BBC Business News. A rock climber and gifted designer, Powell co-founded eGrips in...

Prof Jamie Coleman, in an article published on the BBC website, has a solution for the painkiller (or opioid) crisis — a crisis that is particularly virile here in the US, where going on a million people have died...

Our Life Process Program’s founder and creator, Dr. Stanton Peele, Ph.D. spoke to a group at The Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust on March 29th via teleconference called Drugs Do Not Define Addiction. The topic is one...

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...

Should physicians prescribe narcotic substitutes? Can my son’s marijuana use be therapeutic? Tell me about needle-exchange programs and drop-in centres

Last week we wrote to tell you how several readers are using the comments in the blog section of our website as a forum for sharing their experiences. In the following extract, Jenn shares her experience of escaping from...

Painkillers aren’t Addictive like Heroin, Right? It seems like it should be clear. Prescription painkillers are something you take for “polite pain,” like for a backache, or post-surgery; many keep them and use them when a shoulder acts up,...

Everything you believe about drugs/addiction is wrong. EVERYTHING. It matters. I.  Drug Overdose Tom Petty died from, according to the New York Times headline, an “Accidental Drug Overdose.” Here’s the coroner’s list of the drugs found in Petty’s system: fentanyl,...

Everyone has a solution for the opioid epidemic. Here’s a real one. Here’s what we must do to improve our addictive situation In 2016, the American Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, announced in a new report on addiction, as though...

Painkiller addiction is almost nonexistent, according to government data. News item:  The Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, headed by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, was released.  It declares, in the most lurid terms, that we are...

The worst of the disease theory is that it says everyone is equally susceptible News Item: New county-level data from the CDC highlight the extreme geographic variation in opioid prescription rates, with some areas showing average morphine equivalents per capita 10 times...

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. ...

“I have a theory, of which Maggie Hassan is but one example: We don’t really care whether people become addicted, or whether they die. We only care about maintaining our cultural blinders. All of our energy goes into that...

But everything we say and do to combat it accelerates the problem. The American Ethos and Drug Addiction and Death An odd moment occurred on MSNBC when the host of “All In with Chris Hayes” interviewed liberal New Hampshire...

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...

The next step in addiction Tx is assisting those addicted to heroin to inject The United States has been stymied in reducing drug-related deaths, which have continued to grow even in places where Naloxone and other anti-overdose medications have...

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:...

We have entered an era in which drug use is widespread, almost ubiquitous, and yet at the same it is viewed as unmanageable and uncontrollable. We need instead to accept and to regulate drug use. Several recent key writings in...

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...

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...

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...

In line with Andrew Tatarsky’s and Shaun Shelly’s current entries, I would like to hear more of the thoughts on making drug treatment more available, and accessible on an as-needed basis. ” Howard Josepher Thanks for inquiring, Howard. The...

Relapse is common for drug treatments—but worse is when people attribute their recovery to them. This article discusses three kinds of drug therapy in addiction: Substitution or maintenance of a less harmful version of the same addiction (e.g., Suboxone,...

After the disastrous misconceptions of the 20th century, we’re returning to the idea that drugs are an ordinary part of life experience and no more cause addiction than do other behaviors. This is rational and welcome. Drug use was...

We don’t ordinarily think of substance use as involving skill.  But the concept of skill at substance use is essential in treatment, harm reduction, and prevention. The Pre- and Modern History of Substance Use There are two large framing...

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...

Writing as editor of MedPage Today, the redoubtable George Lundberg* confidently (and briefly) declared: “All drugs are habit-forming, but only a subset of psychoactive drugs can produce psychological and physical dependence, tolerance, and withdrawal symptoms when taken away, the usual...

Let’s see, I have three lead-ins to this post.  Lance Armstrong — American icon and seven-time Tour de France winner (when I was coming up, Americans weren’t even competing in the Tour) — has given up his fight against charges that...

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...

The Stanton Peele Addiction Website, January 7, 2006. Research increasingly shows that intensive marijuana use often meets the technical requirements for addiction (or dependence). Analysts use this as evidence of the need to maintain the drug’s illegal status. But...

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...

Addiction is all in the delivery system 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. (One of...

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...

For some time, nicotine replacement therapy (nicotine patches and gum) has been the sine qua non of pharmacological treatment for addiction. NRT’s pedigree is unassailable — if smoking addiction is due entirely to maintaining cellular nicotine levels, then replacing nicotine through...

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...

We have discovered sex is addictive—why now, with what implications? As the author of Love and Addiction (in which I discussed sex addiction in 1975), I have kept a close view on the societal vision of addiction in re sex. I pointed out in that book...

And here I thought all that addiction vaccine talk had been put to rest in 2009. Yet, there it was staring me in the face at the top of the on-line edition of The New York Times: An Addiction Vaccine:...

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...

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...

The 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 Abuse (NIDA)? It’s either there or it’s not, right? Not actually. Here’s...

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...

Everybody’s talking about it — the fastest-growing drugs of abuse are prescribed painkillers, synthetic opiates like OxyContin. “Responding to America’s Prescription Drug Abuse Epidemic” is the lead story at the Web site of the White House’s Office of National Drug Control...

I had the unusual experience of having been, within the last couple of weeks, in a room depicted in The New York Times webcast, which covers three stories around the world each day. This was the injection room in Vancouver. The New...

I. The myth of neurochemical addiction Among American’s mass delusions are that we have either discovered the neurochemistry of addiction or are on the verge of doing so. In fact, we have decisively disproved this possibility, and are inexorably headed in...

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...

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...

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...

Los Angeles Times, Wednesday, March 14, 1990 About one-third of the $10 billion-plus that President Bush has requested for waging war on drugs is targeted to pay for treatment and prevention programs. That’s double what it was as recently...

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...

Headline: Former Washington Mayor Marion Barry has been arrested and charged with stalking a woman.  Remind you of any other politicians? When Marion Barry’s arrest was announced on various news media, each recapitulated how Barry had previously been videotaped –...

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...

We can’t legalize drugs – despite political, economic, even survival pressures to do so – because of deep underlying American mindsets against drugs, the two primary ones being that we believe continuing drug use is, or causes, a disease,...

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...

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...