MISSION: The Addict Experience Explained
By Addiction Science
The mission of this web site is to help educate those affected by addiction to arm them in the struggle against it. It’s for: addicts facing new sobriety; those in recovery who seek deeper insight into their disease; family and friends of drug abusers in recovery or not; and those still using or who’ve relapsed but realize they face a baffling problem and are having trouble confronting it.
Since Alcoholics Anonymous was founded, sober alcoholics and addicts have shared their stories of substance abuse and sobriety at 12-Step meetings. They are a vast repository of wisdom about why people turn to drugs and how to get off — and stay off — them. They draw a compelling subjective portrait of addiction and recovery. Neuroscientists, by contrast, use modern brain imaging technology to develop an objective model of addiction. They say addicts have physically different brains than non-addicts and are making progress investigating why. Significantly, what they’ve found confirms what sober addicts say and validates 12-Step recovery programs.
This website integrates the subjective and objective, analyzing addicts’ experience through the prism of accessible science to help those combating the disease. It results from 19 years working at sobriety one day at a time, not always successfully (for more click on My Story), and almost as long following addiction research. (For more on this subject, click on The Subjective and Objective Views Synthesized; and How Becoming a Neuroscience Geek Supported My Long-Term Recovery.)
This site is dedicated to my children, whose love has been central to sustaining my sobriety.
It’s also in memory of Barbara S, the two Mikes, Peter B, Ray Q, Lynn M, and all the others who, for reasons we’ll never know, weren’t able to attain the emotional acceptance necessary to survive their addictions.
