Topic: addiction

The best answer is the one we came up with to explain the selectivity of alcoholism: Differences in individual susceptibility.

…in many instance, it’ll be an unfair fight between enormously well-funded, politically savvy industry lobbies and a few determined nonprofits that advocate for public health.

…there’s general agreement that the experience of being raised in a home with a troubled parent can and does have adverse impact on adult behavior

One of the key ingredients for a drug epidemic is a false sense of confidence in the safety of drug use.

It’s these outdated attitudes towards addictions that enable the healthcare professional to ignore important information provided by the patient. 

Here’s something else familiar: That preoccupation with obtaining and protecting the supply.

The author correctly observes that the type of treatment offered for addiction will reflect prevailing beliefs about addiction itself– its causes, effects, likely outcome.

CDC gives cigarettes credit for more than 480,000 deaths a year, in the US alone.

There’s no blood test, no scan to aid diagnosis. Knowing intellectually that one in ten will succumb is very little help; it has no practical value in terms of predicting an individual outcome.

Money is a tool that allows some to delay the inevitable. They construct a protective bubble that minimizes the risk of getting caught and the other consequences that follow addiction.