Understanding Addiction

…by Peter Sheath (lightly edited by Marc)… Here is a more detailed account of the community-wide treatment approach being implemented in Birmingham. Thanks very much to Peter for stepping up to the plate. Note that this post is a response to the questions and concerns raised by blog members following my last post. —————— I’m […] (Read the rest.)

Some of the comments following my last post asked the same question — and it needed to be asked: How might you apply this perspective? What kind of treatment program would embody these concepts? Let’s get concrete…how would it work? I more or less ended that post with the following proclamation (copied here, in part, […] (Read the rest.)

As promised, here’s Part 2. But note that this section (on implications for treatment) is based on eight and a half chapters you haven’t read yet. To distill some of the main points is tricky, but here goes: Addiction is maintained by an entrenched set  of connections between the striatum — the part of the […] (Read the rest.)

Our sponsor is the brain, of course. So, before getting to Part 2, here’s an important message, also excerpted from the final chapter:   The term neuroplasticity has been bandied around a lot in recent years, but it’s been understood for at least a century. In Donald Hebb’s (1940s) memorable words: What fires together wires […] (Read the rest.)

So I got the manuscript back from my main editor (who works for the publisher), and to my horror the right margin was swarming with little purple boxes containing suggested revisions. This was only for Chapter 9, mind you. Everything else was pristine by now. Still, I really thought there would be little left to […] (Read the rest.)