Information Related to "The Greatest Addiction of All"
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"I can't get in trouble. I'm a celebrity," boasted Lindsay Lohan on the night she was arrested for driving under the influence with a suspended license and carrying cocaine (Los Angeles Daily News, Aug. 5, 2007, p. 1).
The newspaper article cited here is a sad commentary on the imperious actions of some famous personalities who sometimes do what they want simply because they can.
Interestingly, the article's headline asks, "Have We Lost Our Way?" It assumes that we once knew the right way to live and have merely strayed from it. But it assumes wrong. Drugs and alcohol impair good judgment. Yet a greater addiction, more widespread than any other, distorts true values-and most don't realize that they have it.
Research into addiction
In the introduction to their book Addiction (2007), John Hoffman and Susan Froemke write of their first encounter with various addictions and attitudes toward them. As laypersons, they were researching and preparing to produce a series on addictions for a major cable TV channel. "Neither of us had an in-depth knowledge of the subject," they say (p. 14).
"Addiction, as it turns out, is a problem that is messy-riddled with misconceptions, profoundly lacking in nationally recognized treatment standards, and highly stigmatized. Conversely, we also came to realize that although the science of addiction is relatively new, tremendous shifts in attitudes are occurring," they write.
The authors note that addiction is a chronic (ongoing) brain disease. "A vivid contributor to this change in attitude is the fact that science now gives us the ability to see inside the brains of addicted people. We can see that the addicted brain is different; that it is altered. With brain research has come great advances in the medical treatment of addiction and the promise of even more effective treatments on the horizon."
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