Life Process Program Blog

They discovered what makes for a happy, fulfilled life. It also makes you live the longest and the best able to resist addiction. We tell so many stories about people whose gifts are destroyed by disease: autism, ADHD, bipolar,...

How my family and I rejected AA, the disease theory of addiction, and oppressive rehabs to embrace harm reduction, personal agency in recovery and belief in ourselves. Background Three years ago, my older sister (actually my half sister— 14...

Most people believe their choice is to enter 12-step, addiction-as-disease therapy or to have no treatment at all for addiction problems. In fact, there is a broad array of treatments for addiction. What unites them is: (a) their not...

The New York Times has announced why there are so many drug deaths and why we can’t solve the addiction problem. It’s because people use more than one drug simultaneously! According to the Times addiction is now harder to...

The healing power of words is profound. That’s why writing in a journal is a powerful self-help tool. Journaling is the process of writing down your thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Doing so can help you reflect on the goings...

AA has been around a long time (since 1935 — the first edition of the Big Book was produced in 1939). It and its 12 steps have been the dominant approach to alcoholism and addiction  in America for at...

What Addiction and Recovery Are Addiction isn’t an outside force coming in to “capture” your life, like an infection. You can’t get a medication to “conquer” or to defeat it. Addiction arises due to an imbalance in your life....

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...

While other mass media hosts rose, fell, retired, and fizzled, one modest woman pursued a successful career for a half century while raising a family despite her “illness”. Jane Pauley has several life stories. She was a monument of...

An LPP client asked a question about something that he has been pondering:  “Society seems to acknowledge the danger of prolonged depression and the link to addictive behavior. But what about this word dysphoria? Is it something at the...

Last week, a podcast listener emailed us with such an interesting question that we wanted to share the question and our answer with you. Listen to our answer in this video, or read our exchange below. Question: I feel...

The idea of addiction as inevitably a lifetime burden is a myth. In fact, most people resolve addictions over time and most do so without professional or support-group help.  We know this because the American government’s own data tells...

AA may be among the victims of the modern plague. At least if musician Laurie Wright is any example. For Wright, “AA meetings were my saving grace, by going to them every day.” And now? “We do the meetings...

In a famous research piece, Barry Tuchfeld interviewed people who strove to lick a drinking problem on their own. These individuals rejected the value of AA and treatment in their lives. Here are some of the statements made by...

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...

Can I ever get off methadone? How? Is harm reduction therapy too risky for a therapist to try? What do you think of my individualized harm reduction treatment? Can I ever get off methadone? Can I get wasted once...

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,...

If motivation is the force that drives you to act, then rewards are what you gain from that activity. People quit their addictions when they begin to get more rewards for living without the addiction than they got from...

The disease model of addiction does more harm than good because it does not give people enough credit for their resilience and capacity to change. I t underestimates people’s ability to figure out what is good for them and...

We frequently hear from people who say: “I drink too much sometimes, but I don’t think I’m an alcoholic. And I don’t want to stand up and talk about myself in front of a group. Is there any other...

Because they can’t draw unfavorable inferences about life in poor ghettos or poor rural communities (to which they have little exposure), liberals are drawn to the belief that drugs cause addiction. I couldn’t disagree more. But as a card-carrying...

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...

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...

When I first started looking seriously at addiction in the late 60s, people would ask why I was interested in it. “We already know everything about addiction,” one student told me. My answer to him was that I wanted...

  In the United States today, our goal is to shunt the troubled/addicted individual out of the home and into treatment. By itself, that doesn’t work. What is the purpose of an intervention? In the United States, members of...

My name is Stanton, and I am not an alcoholic. But I can help. At one point, I spent quite a bit of time on the road, giving workshops and making presentations to audiences of counsellors and treatment program...

At a time when diagnoses are set to increase, I’m working to establish online addiction treatment. Some doubt the value of Internet programs, but their reach is unparalleled and evidence suggests they can work. We are about to witness...

Drug addiction is not caused by the effects of drugs alone. After decades of growing acceptance, the concept that addiction is a medical disease (more exactly, a chronic brain disease) is suddenly being linked to the drug war—and being...

It was with great pleasure that I read Meghan Ralston, of the Drug Policy Alliance’s, piece in the Huffington Post, entitled, “I’m Breaking Up with the Word Addict,” in which she wrote: When we do feel the need to...

The Truth About Addiction and Recovery Why It Doesn’t Make Sense To Call Addiction A “Disease” We frequently hear from people who say: “I drink too much sometimes, but I don’t think I’m an alcoholic. And I don’t want...

Writing to SMART Recovery counselors and group leaders, Stanton reminds them that recovery is a natural process, one assisted by counselors and support groups, or reinstated when a person goes in the wrong direction. When presenting this view, Stanton...

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...

Dear Dr. Peele: My name is , and recently I had the great fortune of stumbling across your web-page. Wow! What a life-changing event that has turned out to be! I will not bore you with a comprehensive...

On June 12, the A&E Television Network ran one of its investigative reports entitled, “Inside Alcoholics Anonymous.” Although promoed as including “leading national health authorities and the organization’s outspoken critics. . . answer questions never before asked,” it was...

Psychology Today, September/October 1996, pp. 35-43, 68-70 (material added not present in original article)  American attitudes toward alcohol are paradoxical: we focus almost exclusively on abstinence, yet we frequently drink to excess. Every year $2 billion is spent advertising...

What is the future of addiction and the Internet — will more people be locked in rooms alone communicating wholly electronically, increasingly with entities that may not actually be human? A European group has created an international effort to...

Stanton reviews a new medical tome on sexual addiction, by psychoanalyst Aviel Goodman. Yes, people become addicted to sex; no, it is not a medical disease best treated by the 12 steps. Contemporary Psychology, 44:154-156, 1999 Review of Sexual Addiction:...

Private treatment for alcoholism and drug abuse expanded greatly beginning in the late 1970s. Between 1978 and 1984, the number of beds in private alcoholism treatment centers more than quadrupled. In the ’80s, hospitalization of adolescents in private psychiatric...