Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction

by Maia Szalavitz

Overview

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

More people than ever before see themselves as addicted to, or recovering from, addiction, whether it be alcohol or drugs, prescription meds, sex, gambling, porn, or the internet. But despite the unprecedented attention, our understanding of addiction is trapped in unfounded 20th century ideas, addiction as a crime or as brain disease, and in equally outdated treatment.

Challenging both the idea of the addict's “broken brain” and the notion of a simple “addictive personality,” Unbroken Brain offers a radical and groundbreaking new perspective, arguing that addictions are learning disorders and shows how seeing the condition this way can untangle our current debates over treatment, prevention and policy. Like autistic traits, addictive behaviors fall on a spectrum — and they can be a normal response to an extreme situation. By illustrating what addiction is, and is not, the book illustrates how timing, history, family, peers, culture and chemicals come together to create both illness and recovery- and why there is no “addictive personality” or single treatment that works for all.

Combining Maia Szalavitz’s personal story with a distillation of more than 25 years of science and research, Unbroken Brain provides a paradigm-shifting approach to thinking about addiction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250116444
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	05/09/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

MAIA SZALAVITZ is widely viewed as one of the premier American journalists covering addiction and drugs. A neuroscience writer for TIME.com and a former cocaine and heroin addict, she understands the science and its personal dimensions in a way that few others can. She is co-author of Born for Love: Why Empathy is Essential - and Endangered and The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, both with Dr. Bruce D. Perry. Her 2006 book, Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids is the first book-length exposé of the "tough love" business that dominates addiction treatment. She writes for a variety of publications includingTIME.com, theNew York Times, New York Magazine, Pacific Standard, Scientific American, Nautilus, Matter, Elle, Psychology Today, VICE, and Marie Claire.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xiii

Introduction 1

1 Needle Point 9

2 A History of Addiction 20

3 The Nature of Addiction 32

4 Intense World 41

5 The Myth of the Addictive Personality 56

6 Labels 72

7 Hell Is Junior High School 84

8 Transitive Nightfall 94

9 On Dope and Dopamine 106

10 Set and Setting 121

11 Love and Addiction 138

12 Risky Business 155

13 Busted 167

14 The Problem with Bottom 174

15 Antisocial Behavior 191

16 The 12-Step Conundrum 207

17 Harm Reduction 224

18 The Kiwi Approach 243

19 Teaching Recovery 258

20 Neurodiversity and the Future of Addiction 272

Acknowledgments 287

Notes 289

Index 323

Editorial Reviews

"Maia Szalavitz is one of the bravest, smartest writers about addiction anywhere. Everything she writes should be read carefully - I guarantee you'll have a lot to think about, and you'll know far more than at the start."

— Johann Hari, New York Times bestselling author of Chasing the Scream

“Maia Szalavitz is one of our most incisive thinkers about neuroscience in general and addiction in particular and her writing is astonishingly clear and compelling. In the timely, important, and insightful Unbroken Brain,Szalavitz seamlessly interweaves her moving personal story with her investigation into what addiction is (and isn’t) and how we can most effectively prevent and treat it.” —David Sheff, New York Times bestselling author of Clean and Beautiful Boy

"Through the lens of her own gripping story of addiction – supported with empirical evidence – Szalavitz persuasively shows that addiction is a disorder of learning, not one characterized by progressive brain dysfunction."—Carl Hart, Ph.D., author of the Pen/Faulkner award-winning High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society

"Of the countless writers out there who's focus is addiction, no one can begin to touch the brilliance of Maia Szalavitz. She is by far my favorite addiction writer, perhaps one of my favorite writers ever. Her passion and exceptional writing talent combined with her exhaustive research, create a book that will inspire, educate, enrage, and entertain. I can only promise one thing: if you read this book, you will never be the same again."

—Kristen Johnston, actress, author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Guts, addiction advocate, founder of SLAM, NYC

“As more professionals realize that addiction isn't really a disease, our challenge is to determine exactly what it is. Szalavitz catalogs the latest scientific knowledge of the biological, environmental and social causes of addiction and explains precisely how they interact over development. The theory is articulate and tight, yet made accessible and compelling through the author's harrowing autobiography. Unbroken Brain provides the most comprehensive and readable explanation of addiction I've yet to see.” —Marc Lewis, author of The Biology of Desire

"... a new way of looking at drug addiction that offers a fresh approach to managing it. [Salavitz] writes frankly about her background .... In a heartfelt manner, she exposes her own fears and pain ... A dense blending of self-exposure, surprising statistics, and solid science reporting that presents addiction as a misunderstood coping mechanism, a problem whose true nature is not yet recognized by policymakers or the public." —Kirkus Reviews

"Szalavitz makes a novel and even beautiful proposal. Addiction, she hypothesizes, is a developmental disorder. Specifically, it is a learning disorder. . . .[Szalavitz] explores problems with the criminalization of drugs, the place of racism in our culture's treatment of drugs and addiction, and she looks closely and illuminatingly at different treatment methods. There's a lot of news you can use in this book if you or someone you love is an addict." -npr.org

"Journalist Szalavitz offers a multifaceted, ground-up renovation of the concept of addiction—both its causes and its cures."—Publishers Weekly

"Anyone who has battled addiction or seen it harm a loved one will gain insights from "Unbroken Brain," and if it influences policymakers, too, everyone will benefit."-Associated Press

"Ms. Szalavitz deftly threads her life story through the book to illustrate the dynamics that put people at risk of addiction." —The Wall Street Journal

From the Publisher

2016-01-28
A proposal for a new way of looking at drug addiction that offers a fresh approach to managing it. Szalavitz (co-author: Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential—and Endangered, 2010, etc.), a neuroscience and addiction journalist for TIME and other publications, argues that addiction is a learned pattern of behavior that involves the use of soothing activities for a purpose such as coping with stress. In this view, simple exposure to a drug cannot cause addiction, for the person taking the drug must find the experience pleasant or useful and must deliberately repeat the experience until the brain processes the experience as automatic and habitual. The author cites the work of numerous neuroscience researchers that support this view, but what makes this presentation different from a straightforward scientific report is that Szalavitz is herself a recovered addict ("by 1988, my life had narrowed to the point of a needle"). She writes frankly about her background, from a precocious child with Asperger's syndrome to an academic star to a young woman facing a mandatory minimum 15-year to life sentence on a charge of selling cocaine. In a heartfelt manner, she exposes her own fears and pain, her problems with her parents, her social difficulties, and her beliefs about being unlovable. She argues that failing to see the true nature of addiction as a developmental problem has prevented society from establishing effective drug policy and approaches to prevention and treatment. She offers New Zealand as an example of a country that has developed a drug policy that reduces addiction risk, and she looks approvingly at certain innovative nonpunitive approaches of some organizations in the United States. The relaxation of marijuana laws gets her approval, as well. A dense blending of self-exposure, surprising statistics, and solid science reporting that presents addiction as a misunderstood coping mechanism, a problem whose true nature is not yet recognized by policymakers or the public.

Kirkus Reviews