The Addicted Brain – serie

A former drug addict turned behavioural neuroscientist reveals how drugs work in the brain — and what we can do to fight addiction. Judith Grisel was a daily drug user when she began to consider that her addiction might have a cure, one that she herself could perhaps discover by studying the brain. Now, after twenty-five years as a neuroscientist, she shares what she and other scientists have learned about addiction, enriched by captivating glimpses of her personal journey.In Never Enough, Grisel reveals the unfortunate bottom line of all regular drug use: there is no such thing as a free lunch. All drugs act on the brain in a way that diminishes their enjoyable effects and creates unpleasant ones with repeated use. Delving into the science of one of the world’s most pressing health problems, she reveals what is different about the brains of addicts even before they first pick up a drink or drug, and highlights the changes that take place in the brain and behaviour as a result of chronic using.With compassion and clarity, Grisel describes what drove her to addiction, what helped her recover, and her belief that a ‘cure’ for addiction will not be found in our individual brains but in the way we interact with our communities.

Through the vivid, true stories of five addicts, a neuroscientist explains how addiction happens in the brain, and what we can do to overcome it.The psychiatric establishment and rehab industry in the Western world have branded addiction a brain disease, based on evidence that brains change with drug use. But in The Biology of Desire, cognitive neuroscientist and former addict Marc Lewis makes a convincing case that the disease model has become an obstacle to healing.Lewis reveals addiction as an unintended consequence of the brain doing what it’s supposed to do – seek pleasure and relief – in a world that’s not cooperating. Brains are designed to restructure themselves with normal learning and development,but this process is accelerated in addiction when highly attractive rewards are pursued repeatedly. Lewis shows why treatment based on the disease model so often fails, and how treatment can be retooled to achieve lasting recovery, given the realities of brain plasticity. Combining intimate human stories with clearly rendered scientific explanation, The Biology of Desire is enlightening and optimistic reading for anyone who has wrestled with addiction either personally or professionally.

As a psychiatrist-in-training fresh from medical school, Carl Erik Fisher came face to face with his own addiction crisis, one that nearly cost him everything. Here, he investigates the history of this age-old condition.Humans have struggled to define, treat, and control addictive behaviour for most of recorded history, including well before the advent of modern science and medicine. The Urge is a rich, sweeping history that probes not only medicine and science but also literature, religion, philosophy, and sociology, illuminating the extent to which the story of addiction has persistently reflected broader questions of what it means to be human and care for one another.Fisher introduces us to the people who have endeavoured to address this complex condition through the ages: physicians and politicians, activists and artists, researchers and writers, and of course the legions of people who have struggled with their own addictions. He also examines the treatments and strategies that have produced hope and relief.The Urge is at once an eye-opening history of ideas, a riveting personal story of addiction and recovery, and a clinician’s urgent call for a more expansive, nuanced, and compassionate view of one of society’s most intractable challenges.