Understanding Addiction

Last week I was trying to think like a Buddhist, in preparation… I thought about the self-reinforcing nature of “attachment” (à la Buddhism) and the self-reinforcing nature of addiction (which we all know about from our, ahem, independent research). What Buddhists describe as the lynchpin of human suffering, the one thing that keeps us mired […] (Read the rest.)

So I’m having this relatively uneventful week, doing a bit of homework for my Dutch lessons, preparing for a class I’ll be teaching next term, defrosting the freezer, debating with a publisher as to why she should accept my next book, driving the kids to soccer and always arriving late, though no one seems to […] (Read the rest.)

In the last two posts – one by Persephone and one by me – we talked about the possibility that 12-step treatment offers a “static” rather than “developmental” approach to recovery. Persephone argued that certain features of 12-step practice kept the addict or alcoholic in a frozen state of heightened anxiety, much like PTSD. My last […] (Read the rest.)

Hi all— Here’s an announcement before the main act: Please look at the Guest Memoirs page if you haven’t already. The first four memoirs are terrific, and hugely different. I hope that we’ll soon get more, and I hope people will leave comments on those already posted. It may seem hard to “comment” on something […] (Read the rest.)

By Persephone….. (This piece was sent to me by a member of this blog community, and I think it’s incredibly astute and revealing. As a developmental psychologist, I strongly agree that the recovery process should be viewed as developmental, not static. P.S. It’s apparently no longer be-nice-to-12-step week.)   After I had been clean for […] (Read the rest.)