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Addiction research – Who are we studying?
I teach a class on the psychology of addiction (Psych 477 at California State University in Long Beach) and as I have been preparing the lectures something has become very clear to me – textbooks patently gloss over important details about the addiction research they cite. One of the most obvious gaps I’ve noticed this…
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Rubber-band addiction recovery – No shame
There’s a specific issue that keeps coming up with nearly every addiction client I work with who is in early recovery. Regardless of whether they’re trying to stop unhealthy alcohol or drug use, sex or gambling behavior, or anything else, this issue keeps returning. It doesn’t even seem to matter if this is their first…
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Biology versus Choice: Is a simple explanation of addiction enough?
At the recent Addictions conference, held in D.C. and sponsored by Elsevier, a well known academic publishing house, I got myself into one of those long debates with a fellow addiction researcher. The question we were debating was whether addiction is primarily biological or if it is mostly a matter of personal choice. We ran…