Understanding Addiction

I just got a piece published in Newsweek! This makes me happy, to be sure. But if you see the paper version, the headline they picked does NOT appeal to me:  “My Kool Acid Test”. Hmmm….not my choice, but I couldn’t talk them out of it. Oh well, it’s Newsweek, and I’m a shameless publicity […] (Read the rest.)

Several posts ago I started a discussion of “the pivot point” — the moment when we give in to our cravings and dive for the drugs or the booze. I emphasized a few things about this event, many of which resonated with readers’ experiences — in fact many of which came from readers: -it can […] (Read the rest.)

Why the new book image on the homepage? My book is going south. It just got published in Australia/New Zealand, and on March 6th it will be released in the US. The cover you see now is the US version. The Australian version, which features my addicted brain as a moth-infested lightbulb, can be seen […] (Read the rest.)

Hi All. I just got back from a week in the French Alps. I know: poor me. But I spent the first day trying to snow-board, and fell on my ass with bone-jarring impact about once a minute. And I thought I was past the suicidal thing… But while I was away, my US publicist […] (Read the rest.)

Last post, I emphasized an assumption of incompleteness as the foundation of craving. This feeling was referred to by readers as a hole, or pothole, or just plain lacking something. There is a lot to that, for those of us who put things (like booze or drugs) into us, in order to fill us up. […] (Read the rest.)