In less than a week my book will be released. It’s called Memoirs of an Addicted Brain, and it recounts the story of my years of almost continuous drug taking and periods of intense addiction—interspersed with neuroscience, to help explain what was happening to me, why it was happening, and how it is that addictions are, in part, products of our biology. The book says a lot of what I have to say. It’s written from the perspective of a neuroscientist and a recovered addict. So it speaks to both the raw, often horrendous experience of drug use and addiction and to the science of how brains operate, when they’re under the influence…or desperately wishing they were.
So, if the book says it all, why a blog?
This blog can be a meeting ground for people with starkly different backgrounds and life experiences—people who have one thing in common: their lives have been deeply affected by addiction. These include present and former addicts, whether to drugs, alcohol, food, gambling, or other obsessions. They include people whose family members or loved ones have been beaten down by addiction. They include people who just love drugs, or are fascinated by them, who may remain free of addiction for now or forever. And they include scientists, clinicians, mental health professionals, and others who’ve devoted their minds and their careers to trying to understand addiction or help alleviate it. Scientists, clinicians, addicts, nonaddicted druggies…all of us have a lot to say to each other, and a lot to learn from each other. Our lives, one way or another, have been caught in the magnetic field of substances or activities that hijack the nervous system, because…well let’s face it, because they are tremendously attractive.
I know you’re out there: fellow travelers looking at addiction from the inside, because that’s you, or from the outside, because that’s what you’ve devoted your life to studying. I know you’ve got a lot to share. I hope this site will provide space for conversation, confession, soul-searching, questions nobody can answer and questions that we might be able to answer for each other. And I know that scientists, clinicians, and addicts have to talk to each other.
Now I want to hear from you. Tell me how this blog can work for you. What do you want to get out of it? What do you want to tell us and what do you want to learn? How can I help by sharing my own struggles, my own knowledge, and by guiding the conversation to the benefit of all?
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