Addiction in Society

Addiction—the thematic malady for our society—entails every type of psychological and societal problem.

by Stanton Peele, Ph.D., J.D.

"Malia and Sasha Have Friends"

Barack Obama now believes gay people are regular human beings who can love and form families because, well, he knows people like that. Oh, and his daughters made him. Read More

Maurice Sendak and the Human Condition

Maurice Sendak had a solution for life which he shared with the rest of us, and especially children. Read More

Science, Schmience—This Means YOU, PT Reader

America prides itself on its commitment to scientifically based thinking. But we really cloak in science our actually increasing tendency to see the world in mythical terms. Read More

Post-Modernism in Brain Psychiatry

America—at least judging from its stalking horse, The New York Times—may be moving away from its slavish devotion to the idea that the key to our mental health is neurochemistry. Read More

Love With a Replicant

We can't halt technological progress, which is reducing us to infantile love relationships while actualizing dystopian 1980s cinematic visions of the future—ones we now view with nostalgia. Read More

Are a "Sensible" and a "Scientific" View of Addiction the Same?

We are lost in the forest of addiction, looking at PET scans instead of at behaviors and experiences. All this leads to a Rube Goldberg way of defining addition. Read More

Is "Almost Alcoholic" a Useful Concept?

"Almost Alcoholic," a new book, reflects a new take on drinking problems. The idea builds from the incremental nature of alcohol problems, which rise and—more often—fall. But the concept highlights the downside of that process and expands self-labeling. Read More

iPhones, Games and the Addictive Experience

Video games were mildly addictive until a radical new delivery system made them universally so. Forget new drugs—the human nervous system may not be able to keep pace with the electronic era in which we have landed. Read More

Maybe the Future's Not Golden?

We once looked forward to the technological future as bringing us a worry-free, blissful nirvana. Now that we''re almost there, it looks more like hell. Read More

Why People Get Better

While durable personality traits in people—partly inherited—might seem to be limiting factors in life, the personality characteristic of novelty-seeking seems to be a moving target. Once seen as the root of addiction and crime, it is now perceived as a way of maintaining fresh outlooks and approaches to life as people mature. Read More

The Perfect Republican Politician and Drug Addiction

Christine Whitman, twice elected governor of blue state New Jersey, is a paragon of moderate Republicanism. That she rejected her own AIDS Commission's recommendation to institute clean-needle programs for heroin addicts hasn't hurt her sterling reputation, although it led to the U.S.'s highest rate of H.I.V. infection among women and children. Read More

Kooky American Positions X: Drug Legalization

The United States is an incredible force for repression worldwide, no better example of which is our international drug policy and undermining of governments that want to try alternatives. Read More

The War of the Addiction Worlds

While the "chronic brain disease" meme dominates American views of addiction, there are actually four such world views at war in our collective consciousness. Which one prevails will determine not only American drug policy, but our psychological future and clinical practice. Read More

Cheaters Always Win—The Paradox of Getting Ahead in America

Do cheaters succeed? Are more successful people more likely to cheat? Is empathy rewarded for individuals and for societies? Are we becoming noticeably more empathic and understanding towards others than ourselves, towards less successful people, towards people in other cultures? The answers vary. Read More

God Is Great?

No matter how many babies die, God's reputation doesn't suffer. In fact, it is enhanced. Read More

What Is Sex For? Rush Limbaugh's and Rick Santorum's Sex Lives

Rick Santorum and Rush Limbaugh are preoccupied with sex. I assume their sex talk—although it concerns other people's lives—is really about themselves. So here are some questions I'd like to ask them. Read More

Are American Women Allowed to Have Sex Because They Want It?

Americans don't believe women should enjoy sex and that sex is a basic right for them. Read More

Addiction and Afghanistan, Volkow and Obama

Americans pride themselves on tapping into bedrock values and realities, like the universality of representative national governments and addiction as a brain disease. Both ideas are cultural delusions. Read More

Temperance Tales: A Journalist Who Drinks Says We Aren't Demonizing Alcohol Sufficiently

New York Times columnist Frank Bruni enjoys cocktails and wine, but feels that Americans don't have a sufficiently negative image of alcohol, which he recommends we remedy by showing more "brains on alcohol" and creating more restrictions on drinking (although the U.S. is the only western country with a 21-year-old drinking age already). Will that work? Read More

Arizona Sheriffs and Republicans Support Gay Rights—Things Are Certainly Changing!

A formidably anti-immigrant Arizona sheriff—a prominent Republican figure in the state—has revealed he had a long affair with a Mexican man. The former lover accuses the Republican of threatening him with deportation if he revealed the affair. But isn't it great that an anti-immigrant sheriff revealed at once both that he is gay and that he loved a Mexican man? Read More

Dear Reverend Santorum: I'm 66, Is Sex Okay?

Leading Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has indicated that sex is meant solely for married couples and for the purpose of procreation. I'm no longer in those categories—so I wonder if I can have sex if the Republicans are elected (in my favor for that party is that I'm not gay and my partner and I don't use contraception). Read More

America No Longer Works for Half Its People (Or More)

The inequality discussion has devolved into the lost generation—and beyond—of working class children. The question isn't "What remains of the American dream?" It is, "Can a nation continue to exist on this basis?" Read More

Whitney Houston, Jeremy Lin, David Brooks, Religion and Addiction

David Brooks says that New York Knicks basketball sensation Jeremy Lin is a wonder whose religious devotion should be honored. Okay. But Whitney Houston's immersion in religion coming up had dire consequences. Read More

Dogs 'R Us

Dogs have been associated with humans since we gathered in settlements. Lately, this association has become closer. Dogs have pervaded, and continue to pervade, my life—and I have never had a personal pet. Read More

The Greatest Love Addiction Songs of All Time

The existential experience of addiction has been captured best by the songs of Smokey Robinson, Leonard Cohen, and Lucinda Williams—an artist America should build a monument to next to the Lincoln Memorial. Read More

The Top Three Misconceptions About Whitney Houston's Substance Abuse and Death

The early, sad returns are in—people, confounded by prominent singer Whitney Houston's death, immediately turned to the wrong sources for explanations and drew the wrong conclusions from her death. Read More

If Inability to Delay Gratification Causes Addiction—Uh, Oh!

A slew of books and articles (okay, a couple) seem to think that the American style of child-rearing creates kids unable to delay gratification. Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous? Ask Nora Volkow, Science (the journal), and Time Healthland—impulsiveness is a result of kids' brain structures. Once we fix those, none of us will become addicted! Read More

The Catholic Church Versus Modern Health Care

Some are declaring open warfare between the Catholic Church and the first African-American president – not a good state of affairs. Read More

Nora Volkow Explains (Not Really) Why People Don't Become Addicted

The latest study purporting to identify the inbred biological factors in addiction calls to mind age-old questions about the nature of science. We in America prefer neat-sounding—but useless—laboratory findings over identifying the factors that actually account for behavior. Read More

Scandal: There Is No Yale University!

You know the Yale Rhodes Scholar candidate who played for his team instead of going for his Rhodes interview? He's charged with sexual assault, wasn't really scheduled for an interview, and—almost worst of all—his team was crushed by Harvard (worst of all a woman was killed at the game and no one noticed). And, oh, there is no such place as Yale. Read More

Stanton Peele, Ph.D., J.D., has been researching and treating addiction since he wrote Love and Addiction (1975). He also wrote 7 Tools to Beat Addiction.

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