In less than a week my book will be released. It’s called Memoirs of an Addicted Brain, and it recounts the story of my years of almost continuous drug taking and periods of intense addiction—interspersed with neuroscience, to help explain what was happening to me, why it was happening, and how it is that addictions are, in part, products of our biology. The book says a lot of what I have to say. It’s written from the perspective of a neuroscientist and a recovered addict. So it speaks to both the raw, often horrendous experience of drug use and addiction and to the science of how brains operate, when they’re under the influence…or desperately wishing they were.
So, if the book says it all, why a blog?
This blog can be a meeting ground for people with starkly different backgrounds and life experiences—people who have one thing in common: their lives have been deeply affected by addiction. These include present and former addicts, whether to drugs, alcohol, food, gambling, or other obsessions. They include people whose family members or loved ones have been beaten down by addiction. They include people who just love drugs, or are fascinated by them, who may remain free of addiction for now or forever. And they include scientists, clinicians, mental health professionals, and others who’ve devoted their minds and their careers to trying to understand addiction or help alleviate it. Scientists, clinicians, addicts, nonaddicted druggies…all of us have a lot to say to each other, and a lot to learn from each other. Our lives, one way or another, have been caught in the magnetic field of substances or activities that hijack the nervous system, because…well let’s face it, because they are tremendously attractive.
I know you’re out there: fellow travelers looking at addiction from the inside, because that’s you, or from the outside, because that’s what you’ve devoted your life to studying. I know you’ve got a lot to share. I hope this site will provide space for conversation, confession, soul-searching, questions nobody can answer and questions that we might be able to answer for each other. And I know that scientists, clinicians, and addicts have to talk to each other.
Now I want to hear from you. Tell me how this blog can work for you. What do you want to get out of it? What do you want to tell us and what do you want to learn? How can I help by sharing my own struggles, my own knowledge, and by guiding the conversation to the benefit of all?
Informed by unparalleled neuroscientific insight and written with his usual flare, Marc Lewis’s The Biology of Desire effectively refutes the medical view of addiction as a brain disease. A bracing and informative corrective to the muddle that now characterizes public and professional discourse on this topic.” —Gabor Maté, M.D., author of In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction
Hello!
I just came across an article in the Globe and Mail – Saturday Edition, drinking my kicking horse coffee and enjoying the sun on my back deck when I was drawn into the psychological components of addictions. I remember being at OISE and sitting in your class wondering if I was out of my league or not. I made it out alive and successfully graduated with my Master’s. I now work with families that struggle with sometimes severe addictions to opiates and the likes of pain killing drugs.
I must say, Marc, it was great having you as a professor and I now appreciate the candor of your teaching style. At the time, I wasn’t especially fond of it.
I will be purchasing your book! Let me know if you’ll be doing a book launch! I wish you good will and thank you again, for helping me identify my personal potential.
Hi Randy. Great to hear from you, and thanks for your kind words. I did notice that you weren’t particularly fond of my teaching style that term…I can be a bit of a hard ass…but it’s intended to help. And I’m really glad to hear that you feel it did help. Thanks also for your interest in the book — it will show you a very different side of me! See you at the launch. Cheers, Marc
I’d like to hear about successful recovery from opiate use. My son used opiates for a few months. He’s been clean for almost a year now but says he still has cravings and is convinced he will use again if he can get his hands on them. The idea of spending the rest of his life craving opiates (his only 17) is very painful to him.
Well done, sir. The narrative of your life that has etched your brain has now become your brain sculpted narrative etching other brains. I applaud the extension of this work into the blogosphere as it will no doubt spur helpful dialogue.
But as the discussion evolves (and more people actually read the book rather than relying on news articles), I hope that the more fundamental message comes through – how do we become who we are? Addiction is an insightful window into these processes, but it is a big house and there are many windows.
I want AND I like…
I came hear after hearing you on Australian Radio JJJ and you where Skyping with the DJ.
I am a Addict of those drugs that you talked about being the harmful addictive ones and look forward to reading your book. Im on strong pain killers (oxcycontin) from a accident whilst in the Aust Military which now has lead me onto the next step to Herion. I crave ALL the time and go through the Oxcy’s as if there was no tomorrow then suffer with pain. I want to know why I’m craving this drug all the time and how to over come it. I am hoping your Memoir’s can give me some insight.
Thanks
Hi Brent. Welcome. There are a lot of people now visiting this blog who have similar issues — although yours sound pretty severe. I’ve certainly been there myself, and it’s an awful place to be. The pleasure is so transitory and soon dwarfed by the anxiety and suffering of withdrawal, and in your case, actual pain.
I really hope that the book casts some light on the nature of craving. That’s a big part of its message. There is a very clear neurophysiological basis for craving, and I explain it in detail while telling the story of my own addiction.. Also, we are discussing craving on current posts and comments.
I hope the dialogue, information, and sense that you’re not alone will provide you with some help.