From Kevin McCauley: The argument against calling addiction a disease centers on the nature of free will. This argument, which I will refer to as the Choice Argument, considers addiction to be a choice: the addict had the choice to start using drugs. Real diseases, on the other hand, are not choices: the diabetic did … Continue reading More on choice and addiction
Tag: addiction
If it wasn’t rational, cont’d
Yesterday I posted about a recent NY Times column arguing for a rational model of addictive drug use: “When they were given an alternative to crack, they made rational economic decisions.” … When methamphetamine replaced crack as the great drug scourge in the United States, Dr. Hart brought meth addicts into his laboratory for similar … Continue reading If it wasn’t rational, cont’d
Brain disease does not equal stigma reduction
Yesterday, I posted about The Anonymous People and Dawn Farm's co-sponsorship of an upcoming screening of the film. So...why is this message of recovery so important to stigma reduction? We've spent 20 years trying to convince the public that addiction is a brain disease without too much attention to the potential for this message to … Continue reading Brain disease does not equal stigma reduction
If it wasn’t rational, they wouldn’t be doing it
Ugh. The NY Times has another column promoting a rational addiction model. "When they were given an alternative to crack, they made rational economic decisions.” ... When methamphetamine replaced crack as the great drug scourge in the United States, Dr. Hart brought meth addicts into his laboratory for similar experiments — and the results showed … Continue reading If it wasn’t rational, they wouldn’t be doing it
Recover from ==> Recovery to
Commenter Web Servant responded to the a recent "Sentence to Ponder" from Bill White about the need to expand the scope of treatment and recovery services that create pathways to natural community supports and adopt a wellness model. His comments seem worthy of a post of their own. The place of treatment in recovery is … Continue reading Recover from ==> Recovery to
Care that never quits
I spent a little more time with Jim Contopulos' video memorial for his son and an interview he did will Bill White. There's a lot to all of this, but a couple of things stuck with me. In the interview, he discussed being a scared parent and seeking to buy recovery: Yes. At the age of … Continue reading Care that never quits
Marc Maron on AA and psychiatry
This is great. I love Maron's fearless questioning and the interviewer's (a psychiatrist) tolerance for vulnerability and honesty: Slate: How did A.A. figure into your getting sober? Maron:For practical tools to deal with the addicted brain, the stuff I learned in Alcoholics Anonymous and the community of A.A. just totally worked for me. If you would … Continue reading Marc Maron on AA and psychiatry
Happy Labor Day!
The video's got nothing to do with recovery, but it's a great song and is apropos for Labor Day. While we're on the subject of labor, Bill White had a post a while back on the subject: In 2011, Dieter Henkel of the Institute for Addiction Research at the University of Applied Sciences in Frankfurt, … Continue reading Happy Labor Day!
Addressing reality with a health-oriented approach
We know how to crackdown -- but we seem ignorant when it comes to what to do with all those addicted people we've "cracked down" on. You may thwart them with your database at the pharmacy, but they're still addicted. Now what? Abuse-deterrent formulations of drugs and prescription drug take-back days are well and good, but … Continue reading Addressing reality with a health-oriented approach
Recovery Pluralsim
Bill White has a new post challenging the recovering community to be more pluralistic and let go of notions that there is one path to recovery: Embracing recovery pluralism is not an embrace of recovery relativism in which opinions and preferences completely dominate facts. To be tolerant of the varieties of recovery experience is not … Continue reading Recovery Pluralsim
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