NIAAA’s Core Resource on Alcohol
by A. Tom Horvath, Ph.D., ABPP Might you be looking for an up-to-date and thoroughly scientific “textbook” on alcohol, alcohol problems, and how to deal with them? In May, 2022, the US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), one of the 27 National Institutes of Health, published one online. Although this resource is […]
Rat Park Revisited
By Tom Horvath, PhD Not exactly: I’m reporting about a presentation by Professor Bruce Alexander, the creator of “rat park,” given on 4/19/22, for the Addiction Theory Network, based in the UK. The webinar was: Retiring the Brain Disease Model of Addiction. And Then What? Rat Park Recap Rat Park, if you are not familiar […]
Undoing Drugs – a Review by Tom Horvath, Ph.D.
Undoing Drugs: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction, by Maia Szalavitz Review by A. Tom Horvath, PhD The harm reduction approach to addressing addictive problems has until recently been highly controversial, at least in the US. Treatment and other change efforts in the US have been primarily guided by the […]
Stanton Peele Book Review by Dr. Tom Horvath
A Scientific Life on the Edge: My Lonely Quest to Change How We See Addiction, by Stanton Peele, reviewed by Tom Horvath, PhD Peele’s latest book (#14) is a personal autobiography, an intellectual autobiography, and a detailed comparison of his work with that of many other authors and scientists, including Maia Szalavitz, Carl Hart, Marc Lewis, […]
America Celebrates the Drug War’s 50th Anniversary
by Thaddeus Camlin, PsyD Let’s call a spade a spade. The war on drugs is a euphemism for a war on personal freedom. The hypocrisy inherent in a war on personal freedom in the self-proclaimed land of the free is more than a tad embarrassing (insert cringe emoji here). The number of lives ruined with criminal scarlet letters […]
Addiction Treatment is Sick, Not the People Treated
by Thaddeus Camlin, PsyD Labeling people who’ve been traumatized as sick, is sick. There’s nothing pathological about being severely affected by the worst of life’s horrors. There is something deeply pathological when natural reactions to unnatural situations are described as sickness and disease. There’s nothing sick or diseased about someone experiencing post-traumatic stress after catastrophic events then easing the aftershocks […]
HBO’s Euphoria TV Show Goes 0/2 on Addiction
by Thaddeus Camlin, PsyD The latest installment of HBO’s Euphoria is chock-full of harmful addiction myths and contradicting information. The show’s main character, Rue, is a young and intelligent woman with a history of severe trauma. Her father died young from cancer, she was drugged and nearly raped, and she was cheated on and heartbroken by her first true […]
The Urgency of Drug Policy Reform
By Thaddeus Camlin, PsyD The urgent need for drug policy reform cannot be understated. In the past few weeks, two stories about drug crime shone yet another spotlight on the lunacy of U.S. drug policy. Oxycontin manufacturer Purdue Pharma plead guilty to three felony charges and incurred an $8 billion dollar fine for actions contributing […]
Mushroom Therapy Sublingual Strips: A Trip on a Strip
by Thaddeus Camlin, PsyD Few things scare big pharma like effective medicines people don’t have to take every day. Many are familiar with the sardonic notion that there is no money in the cure. The psychedelic treatment renaissance is arguably the biggest existential threat to big pharma’s decades-long chokehold on America’s addiction to psychotropic medications. […]
Ending Drug Prohibition Could Unite Left & Right
By Thaddeus Camlin, PsyD We know prohibition doesn’t stop drug use, actually makes the use of drugs more dangerous, and helps increase profit margins for those who control the black market. We know that humans locked in cages for possessing psychoactive compounds deemed dangerous by the government are disproportionately people of color. We know the […]