The 10 Most Important Things Known About Addiction

Abstract

If you were asked: 'What are the most important things we know about addiction?' what would you say? This paper brings together a body of knowledge across multiple domains and arranged as a list of 10 things known about addiction, as a response to such a question. The 10 things are: (1) addiction is fundamentally about compulsive behaviour;(2) compulsive drug seeking is initiated outside of consciousness; (3) addiction is about 50% heritable and complexity abounds; (4) most people with addictions who present for help have other psychiatric problems as well; (5) addiction is a chronic relapsing disorder in the majority of people who present for help; (6) different psychotherapies appear to produce similar treatment outcomes; (7) 'come back when you're motivated' is no longer an acceptable therapeutic response; (8) the more individualized and broad-based the treatment a person with addiction receives, the better the outcome; (9) epiphanies are hard to manufacture; and (10) change takes time. The paper concludes with a call for unity between warring factions in the field to use the knowledge already known more effectively for the betterment of tangata whaiora (patients) suffering from addictive disorders.

What We Do and Do Not Know About Addiction

“…In his paper, Sellman [1] divides the scientific evidence that impacts treatment for addictions into 10 principles.…”

“…I truly enjoyed reading Doug Sellman's paper [1]. These types of paper, which summarize the literature briefly and, even more importantly, review it critically, are needed, especially right now, as there are increasing numbers of scientific outlets for papers and it becomes increasingly difficult to gain an overview of the field-not only for young scholars, who have just entered the field, but also for 'old and wise' researchers who have been in the field for a long time.…”

Mot de présentation

“…Tout récemment, dans un article publié dans la prestigieuse revue Addiction, Sellman (2009) propose un bilan de 40 années de recherche sur l'intervention en matière de dépendance. Il Présentation énumère alors ce qu'il considère comme les « 10 most important things known about addiction ».…”

An Interdisciplinary Workshop to Identify Alcohol Craving Based on Psychophysiological Sensor Data

“…Alcohol addiction is a common disease and can be considered as a chronic relapsing disorder [1]. Even after having an alcohol withdrawal therapy completed successfully craving is the leading cause and a solid predictor [2] for suffering a relapse.…”