Understanding Addiction

…by James Morris… The great “controlled drinking” debate has a controversial history dating back to the 1960’s. Since then, politics, addiction ideology, and evidence have often been hard to separate. In the 1970’s the Sobells were vilified for allegedly skewing the results of research showing that some dependent drinkers achieved controlled drinking, but they were […] (Read the rest.)

…by Hanna Anderson… In marijuana news, the government of Canada is looking to create and finalize a bill that will legalize marijuana in the spring of 2017. Some changes are already in motion. Just recently, Minister of Justice, Jody Wilson-Raybould, announced the Task Force for Marijuana Legalization responsible for creating Canada’s drug policy on marijuana […] (Read the rest.)

…by Colin Brewer… Greetings from London and thanks, everybody, for what are — amazingly for this field — almost entirely positive comments on the ‘language’ analogy that I first suggested in 1989 and that my co-author Emmanuel Streel and I have been writing about since 2003. (Emmanuel is a neuropsychologist but also a psychopharmacologist.) Since […] (Read the rest.)

…by Matt Robert… There is a well-known unconscious defense mechanism in psychology—compartmentalization. All humans compartmentalize. It’s one of the ways we make sense of the world, putting things in little boxes, so we can understand and move through the world more effectively. But compartmentalization can cause more harm than good. Especially when it comes to […] (Read the rest.)

…by Gina Murillo (comments by “Gina”)…   So much of what we’re trying to hash out about drug courts here wouldn’t be an issue but for poor drug policy (the War on Drugs — as discussed in the comment section following the last post). The War on Drugs causes far more harm than good. I agree […] (Read the rest.)