I was working in residential treatment a few years back; one Friday night, a new resident, Ryan, approached me. He was a teenager, 5’6” with big, kind eyes, natural dark circles, and a face that turned red at every feeling or change in temperature. He asked, vulnerably, if he could speak with me. I took him to my office, we sat down and I asked, “What’s up?” “I got out of Heroin detox two days ago....
Read MoreRead MoreIn Maia Szlavavitz’s new book “The Unbroken Brain” Maia articulately lays out a subtle and nuanced idea: Addiction is a developmental disorder. It is a beautiful (although not new) idea that bridges the gap between the brain disease model of addiction and the idea that addicts are selfish amoral people “model” of addiction. The idea that addiction is developmental in nature accounts for the vast majority of what we see in the addicted populations. Addiction as a developmental disorder posits that there...
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