Dr. Marc Lewis
Marc Lewis’s relationship with drugs began in a New England boarding school where, as a bullied and homesick fifteen-year-old,
he made brief escapes from reality by way of cough medicine, alcohol, and marijuana. In Berkeley, California,
in its hippie heyday, he found methamphetamine and LSD and heroin.
He sniffed nitrous oxide in Malaysia and frequented Calcutta’s opium dens.
Ultimately, though, his journey took him where it takes most addicts: into a life of addiction, desperation, deception, and crime.
But unlike most addicts, Lewis recovered and became a developmental psychologist and researcher in neuroscience.
In Memoirs of an Addicted Brain, he applies his professional expertise to a study of his former self,
using the story of his own journey through addiction to tell the universal story of addictions of every kind.
He explains the neurological effects of a variety of powerful drugs, and shows how they speak to the brain —
itself designed to seek rewards and soothe pain — in its own language.
Dr. Marc Lewis
Marc Lewis’s relationship with drugs began in a New England boarding school where, as a bullied and homesick fifteen-year-old,
he made brief escapes from reality by way of cough medicine, alcohol, and marijuana. In Berkeley, California,
in its hippie heyday, he found methamphetamine and LSD and heroin.
He sniffed nitrous oxide in Malaysia and frequented Calcutta’s opium dens.
Ultimately, though, his journey took him where it takes most addicts: into a life of addiction, desperation, deception, and crime.
But unlike most addicts, Lewis recovered and became a developmental psychologist and researcher in neuroscience.
In Memoirs of an Addicted Brain, he applies his professional expertise to a study of his former self,
using the story of his own journey through addiction to tell the universal story of addictions of every kind.
He explains the neurological effects of a variety of powerful drugs, and shows how they speak to the brain —
itself designed to seek rewards and soothe pain — in its own language.
Through the vivid, true stories of five people who journeyed into and out of addiction, a renowned neuroscientist explains why the “disease model” of addiction is wrong and illuminates the path to recovery.
The psychiatric establishment and rehab industry in the Western world have branded addiction a brain disease, based on evidence that brains change with drug use. But in The Biology of Desire, cognitive neuroscientist and former addict Marc Lewis makes a convincing case that addiction is not a disease, and shows why the disease model has become an obstacle to healing.
Lewis reveals addiction as an unintended consequence of the brain doing what it’s supposed to do—seek pleasure and relief—in a world that’s not cooperating.
Through the vivid, true stories of five people who journeyed into and out of addiction, a renowned neuroscientist explains why the “disease model” of addiction is wrong and illuminates the path to recovery.
The psychiatric establishment and rehab industry in the Western world have branded addiction a brain disease, based on evidence that brains change with drug use. But in The Biology of Desire, cognitive neuroscientist and former addict Marc Lewis makes a convincing case that addiction is not a disease, and shows why the disease model has become an obstacle to healing.
Lewis reveals addiction as an unintended consequence of the brain doing what it’s supposed to do—seek pleasure and relief—in a world that’s not cooperating.
Dr. Gabor Maté
Dr. Gabor Maté
Maté takes a panoramic yet highly intimate and compassionate look at this widespread and perplexing human ailment,
whether it be addiction to alcohol, drugs, sex, money or anything self-destructive.
He presents it not as a discrete phenomenon confined to a weak-willed few,
but as a continuum that runs through (and even underpins) our society—
not as a medical ‘condition’, but rather the result of a complex interplay
of personal history, emotional development and brain chemistry.
Maté takes a panoramic yet highly intimate and compassionate look at this widespread and perplexing human ailment,
whether it be addiction to alcohol, drugs, sex, money or anything self-destructive.
He presents it not as a discrete phenomenon confined to a weak-willed few,
but as a continuum that runs through (and even underpins) our society—
not as a medical ‘condition’, but rather the result of a complex interplay
of personal history, emotional development and brain chemistry.