A version of this post was originally published in 2016 and is part of an ongoing review of past posts about the conceptual boundaries of addiction and its relationship to the disease model and recovery. I've had a lot requests to respond to this recent piece in the NY Times. A Personal Narrative or Universal … Continue reading Addiction is disordered learning AND much more.

It was suggested to me to post my testimony at the state hearing here. There is a link to a PDF of it at the end of the document Senate Democratic Policy Committee Hearing Recovery Issues & Improvements January 20, 2022, at 10 AM Testimony on Recovery Funding  William Stauffer LSW, CCS, CADC Recommendations and … Continue reading Testimony PA Senate Democratic Policy Committee Jan 20 2022 – William Stauffer LSW, CCS, CADC

This post was originally published in 2016. By now, the DSM-IV is a distant memory but this post seemed relevant to our recent discussion about the conceptual boundaries of addiction and its relationship to the disease model and recovery. There's been a big change in the way professionals and advocates talk and think about drug … Continue reading Substance Use Disorders as a category

Yesterday's post and the discussion around it brought up a lot of good questions. Among them was the question, does it really matter whether we call it a disease? It prompted me to look at some old posts. I'll share versions of a few of them in the coming days. A few variations of this … Continue reading Defining addiction and problem ownership

The complexity of addiction requires an equally complex notion of recovery. Holistically, recovery is generally conceptualized across three classes of variables- individual, social, and ecological. The biopsychosocial model of recovery fits well within this framework. Expanding recovery conceptually to include the environmental sphere of variables has allowed for new contextual and structural factors to be … Continue reading Understanding the Relational Dynamics of Recovery

The New York Times published a guest essay this weekend challenging the disease model of addiction. I've read several similar pieces over the years and frequently have the same experience. I agree with most of the writer's points, but disagree with his conclusions. Let's walk through it. Annual U.S. overdose deaths recently topped 100,000, a record … Continue reading Is it misleading to call addiction a disease?

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to testify in front of the PA Senate Judiciary Committee in favor of legalizing Fentanyl Test Strips. One of the other testifiers, talked about the role of harm reduction in his own recovery process. Harm reduction was life saving for him. As he indicated in his testimony, his … Continue reading What Are We Doing Once We Keep People Alive?