Life Process Program Blog

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

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 —...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

How do you know if you are addicted to gambling? The new American Psychiatric Association diagnostic manual, DSM-5, scheduled for publication in May 2013, for the first time specifies that an activity not involving a substance can be addictive – namely...

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...

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...

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...

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...