Dr. Don Wood argues addiction is an attempt to relieve pain, not a moral failure. He uses patient stories to show how shame and blame backfire, and why the dopamine hit matters less than the suffering underneath it.
Chapters
If you and I were standing beside each other and I was shaking your hand and I started to squeeze your hand so tightly, the pain was just overbearing. It got to the point that you were in so much pain, you were down on one knee. And then I said to you, just take a drink of this alcohol and I'll let go. You take a drink of the alcohol, I let go immediately. What happens is you get a dopamine hit because your mind feels good that the pain stops, so you get the dopamine high. But is that the reason you took the drink? No, the reason you took the drink was so I would stop the pain. I'll give you an example of a lady who came in who had been on heroin for seven years. And she said to me, when she first came in, she said, my therapist told me to make sure that I let you know I have self destructive behavior. And I smiled. I said, really? What would make you think you're self destructive? And she was surprised by that. And she looked at me and she goes, well, I'm sticking a needle with heroin in my arm. Don't you think that's self destructive? And I said, actually, no, I don't. I think you're trying to feel better. And I'll bet you when you stuck the needle in your arm, you actually did feel better. And she sort of smiled and she goes, well, yeah. And I said, that's what you were trying to do. I said, the substance is destructive, you're not destructive. And you could see the shift in her face. We have to stop shaming and guilting and blaming these people and understanding why they got into addiction in the first place. It's not about their characters, morals, willpower or ethics, yet that's the common perception of what addiction is all about.
