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• Addiction to Chemical Substances by Steve Colameco, MD, 11/16/97
  • Scripts for Addiction by Don Nathanson, 12/1/97
    
    

You say: "So the treatment of addiction is radically different from any other part of psychotherapy in that the individual must be taught entire realms of affect management normally learned during childhood." How is this different from say a non drug using borderline who has spent thier life in a defensive mode? Why is addiction "radically" different?. .... "otherwise to be able to function in society"... amazing isn't it?

... "very competence makes them all the more ashamed that they know so very little about real life." Boy that is a statement. I am 47 and my younger disturbed wife has taught me more than I ever wanted to know. I guess fighting shame here. "....especially when what you see and feel when you're sober is a huge bunch of things that loom large and scary in ways that "normal" people never seem to notice. " Are you saying that the addict just never saw it because they where "high"? or because they have another take on life? I think this is a very complex question. For myslef I am seeing life not that rosy. "every thing tends towards the mean" therefore the "average" life is necessarly not that "great" for a lot of peopel. That is just the way it is. Everything at some level is statistical. It brings up a ton of questions about what is normal or moral etc. Therefore I think we agree: "Recovery from addiction implies a lifetime of affective learning. But I guess that's true for all of us, isn't it." , So are addicts difernt?,really ? I believe if you are outside the "mean", addict or no, I believe you understand more. Affect theory being biological is ultimately submisable to being measured if measured, subject to quatification, if subject to quantification subject to a mean. Those outside the mean are going to have a rough time.

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• Why addiction is different by Don Nathanson, 1/11/98