I have long treasured Pema Chödrön as one of my beloved teachers. There is deep wisdom here, which I am moved to share once again. Heartfelt blessings to us all during these difficult times.💜🙏 Molly
If We Want There To Be Peace In the World
War and peace start in the human heart ― and whether that heart is open or whether that heart closes has global implications.
We don’t set out to save the world; we set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people’s hearts.
If one wishes suffering not to happen to people and the Earth, it begins with a kind heart.
The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.
The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.
We think that by protecting ourselves from suffering we are being kind to ourselves. The truth is, we only become more fearful, more hardened, and more alienated. We experience ourselves as being separate from the whole. This separateness becomes like a prison for us, a prison that restricts us to our personal hopes and fears and to caring only for the people nearest to us. Curiously enough, if we primarily try to shield ourselves from discomfort, we suffer. Yet when we don't close off and we let our hearts break, we discover our kinship with all beings.
If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it’s fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there’s an arrow in your heart.
When we hold on to our opinions with aggression, no matter how valid our cause, we are simply adding more aggression to the planet, and violence and pain increase. Cultivating nonaggression is cultivating peace.
If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.
Rather than letting our negativity get the better of us, we could acknowledge that right now we feel like a piece of shit and not be squeamish about taking a good look.
Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.
We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.
Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
Feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.
People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That's not the idea at all. The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart. To the degree that you didn't understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you're given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further.
To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.
Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that's all that's happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction. On the other hand, wretchedness--life's painful aspect--softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody's eyes because you feel you haven't got anything to lose--you're just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. We'd be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn't have enough energy to eat an apple. Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.
If we want there to be peace in the world, we have to be brave enough to soften what is rigid in our hearts, to find the soft spot and stay with it. We have to have that kind of courage and take that kind of responsibility. That's the true practice of peace.
The Buddha said that we are never separated from enlightenment. Even at the times we feel most stuck, we are never alienated from the awakened state. This is a revolutionary assertion. Even ordinary people like us with hang-ups and confusion have this mind of enlightenment called bodhichitta. This openness and warmth of bodhichitta is in fact our true nature and condition. Even when our neurosis feels far more basic than our wisdom, even when we're feeling most confused and hopeless, bodhichitta ― like the open sky ― is always here, undiminished by the clouds that temporally cover it.
You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.
Powerful! This is precisely why I love James Talarico and resonate so deeply with his courage and integrity, commitment to truth and justice, consciousness and wisdom, compassion and fierce love. He mirrors exactly what we need to embody within ourselves and expect in our leaders. — Molly
BREAKING: Trump attacks Texas Democrat James Talarico — and gets a FIERY sermon in response that he won’t forget
Donald Trump thought he could score cheap political points by calling James Talarico an “insult to Jesus” because the Texas Democratic Senate candidate is “beyond woke” and believes that God does not discriminate on the basis of gender.
Unfortunately for Dementia Don, he picked the wrong person. Standing in a Black church in Texas, Talarico didn’t just clap back — he delivered a moral reckoning.
“The president of the United States just said that I insulted Jesus,” Talarico began. “You want to know what insults Jesus? Kicking the sick off their health care while cutting taxes for billionaires.”
And that was only just the start.
“You know what insults Jesus?” he continued. “Deporting the stranger and separating babies from their mothers.”
Then he went even further — taking aim at war, corruption, and hypocrisy.
“You know what insults Jesus? Bombing innocent school children in Iran and sending our brave men and women off to die in another forever war… Covering up the Epstein files and then refusing to prosecute a single person in them.”
This wasn’t politics as usual. This was a full-on moral indictment.
Talarico — who has been attacked by Trump for supporting transgender Americans and saying “trans children are God’s children” — flipped the script entirely. Instead of backing down, he grounded his message in the very teachings Trump tried to weaponize.
“I am not a perfect Christian,” he said. “There’s only been one perfect Christian and he was crucified on a cross 2,000 years ago.”
And then came the line that hit hardest: “Jesus told us to love our neighbors as ourselves… Can we imagine war in heaven? Can we imagine bigotry in heaven? Can we imagine poverty in heaven? Then why do we tolerate these things on earth?”
That’s how you respond. Not with insults. Not with fear. But with clarity — and conviction.
Trump tried to smear him. Instead, Talarico delivered a sermon that’s now echoing far beyond that church.
This is the horrifying truth, something which Chris Hedges has been warning us was coming for decades. And now here we are with great and devastating power sitting in the hands of two profoundly wounded narcissistic fascist psychopaths who are consumed with greed, hatred, and delusion. There is an imperative that we be informed and that we courageously do our part in standing up in solidarity to this madness in every way humanly possible. — Molly
A Bright Future - by Mr. Fish
Gaza is only the start. The new world order is one where the weak are obliterated by the strong, the rule of law does not exist, genocide is an instrument of control and barbarism is triumphant.
The war on Iran and the obliteration of Gaza is the beginning. Welcome to the new world order. The age of technologically-advanced barbarism. There are no rules for the strong, only for the weak. Oppose the strong, refuse to bow to its capricious demands and you are showered with missiles and bombs.
Resources – as the Venezuelans know – are openly stolen. Food, water and medicine, as in Palestine, are weaponized.
Let them eat dirt.
International bodies such as the United Nations are pantomime, useless appendages of another age. The sanctity of individual rights, open borders and international law have vanished. The most depraved leaders of human history, those who reduced cities to ashes, herded captive populations to execution sites and littered lands they occupied with mass graves and corpses, have returned with a vengeance.
They spew the same hypermasculine tropes. They spew the same vile, racist cant. They spew the same Manichaean vision of good and evil, black and white. They spew the same infantile language of total dominance and unrestrained violence.
Killer clowns. Buffoons. Idiots. They have seized the levers of power to carry out their demented and cartoonish visions as they pillage the state for their own enrichment.
“After witnessing savage mass murder over several months, with the knowledge that it was conceived, executed and endorsed by people much like themselves, who presented it as a collective necessity, legitimate and even humane, millions now feel less at home in the world,” writes Pankaj Mishra in “The World After Gaza.” “The shock of this renewed exposure to a peculiarly modern evil – the evil done in the pre-modern era only by psychopathic individuals and unleashed in the last century by rulers and citizens of rich and supposedly civilized societies – cannot be overstated. Nor can the moral abyss we confront.”
The subjugated are property, commodities to exploit for profit or pleasure. The Epstein Files expose the sickness and heartlessness of the ruling class. Liberals. Conservatives. University presidents. Academics. Philanthropists. Wall Street titans. Celebrities. Democrats. Republicans.
They wallow in unbridled hedonism. They go to private schools and have private health care. They are cocooned in self-referential bubbles by sycophants, publicists, financial advisers, lawyers, servants, chauffeurs, self-help gurus, plastic surgeons and personal trainers. They reside in heavily guarded estates and vacation on private islands. They travel on private jets and gargantuan yachts. They exist in another reality, what the Wall Street Journal reporter Robert Frank dubs the world of “Richistan,” a world of private Xanadus where they hold Nero-like bacchanalias, make their perfidious deals, amass their billions and cast aside those they use, including children, as if they are refuse. No one in this magic circle is accountable. No sin too depraved. They are human parasites. They disembowel the state for personal profit. They terrorize the “lesser breeds of the earth.” They shut down the last, anemic vestiges of our open society.
“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life,” as George Orwell writes in “1984.” “All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always— do not forget this, Winston— always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless.If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.”
The law, despite a few valiant efforts by a handful of judges — who will soon be purged — is an instrument of repression. The judiciary exists to stage show trials. I spent a lot of time in the London courts covering the Dickensian farce during the persecution of Julian Assange. A Lubyanka-on-the-Thames. Our courts are no better. Our Department of Justice is a vengeance machine.
Masked, armed goons flood the streets of the United States and murder civilians, including citizens. The ruling mandarins are spending billions to convert warehouses into detention centers and concentration camps. They insist they will only house the undocumented, the criminals, but our global ruling class lies like it breathes. In their eyes, we are vermin, either blindly and unquestionably obedient or criminals. There is nothing in between.
These concentration camps, where there is no due process and people are disappeared, are designed for us. And by us, I mean the citizens of this dead republic. Yet we watch, stupefied, disbelieving, passively waiting for our own enslavement.
It won’t be long.
The savagery in Iran, Lebanon and Gaza is the same savagery we face at home. Those carrying out the genocide, mass slaughter and unprovoked war on Iran are the same people dismantling our democratic institutions.
The social anthropologist Arjun Appadurai calls what is happening “a vast worldwide Malthusian correction” that is “geared to preparing the world for the winners of globalization, minus the inconvenient noise of its losers.”
Oh, the critics say, don’t be so bleak. Don’t be so negative. Where is the hope? Really, it’s not that bad.
If you believe this you are part of the problem, an unwitting cog in the machinery of our rapidly consolidating fascist state.
Reality will eventually implode these “hopeful” fantasies, but by then it will be too late.
True despair is not a result of accurately reading reality. True despair comes from surrendering, either through fantasy or apathy, to malignant power.
True despair is powerlessness. And resistance, meaningful resistance, even if it is almost certainly doomed, is empowerment. It confers self-worth. It confers dignity. It confers agency. It is the only action that allows us to use the word hope.
The Iranians, Lebanese and Palestinians know there is no appeasing these monsters. The global elites believe nothing. They feel nothing. They cannot be trusted. They exhibit the core traits of all psychopaths — superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance, a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception, manipulation and the inability to feel remorse or guilt. They disdain as weakness the virtues of empathy, honesty, compassion and self-sacrifice. They live by the creed of Me. Me. Me.
“The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane,” Eric Fromm writes in “The Sane Society.”
We have witnessed evil for nearly three years in Gaza. We watch it now in Lebanon and Iran. We see this evil excused or masked by political leaders and the media.
The New York Times, in a page out of Orwell, sent an internal memo telling reporters and editors to eschew the terms “refugee camps, “occupied territory,” “ethnic cleansing” and, of course, “genocide” when writing about Gaza. Those who name and denounce this evil are smeared, blacklisted and purged from university campuses and the public sphere. They are arrested and deported. A deadening silence is descending upon us, the silence of all authoritarian states. Fail to do your duty, fail to cheerlead the war on Iran, and see your broadcasting license revoked, as the Chair of the F.C.C. Brendan Carr has proposed.
We have enemies. They are not in Palestine. They are not in Lebanon. They are not in Iran. They are here. Among us. They dictate our lives. They are traitors to our ideals. They are traitors to our country. They envision a world of slaves and masters. Gaza is only the start. There are no internal mechanisms for reform. We can obstruct or surrender.
Those are the only choices left.
---
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University, and the University of Toronto.
This is well worth the read and absolutely 100% spot on!! What a treasured gift — one that I hope will be read, absorbed, and shared widely.
I had a young friend, someone I dearly loved and who I knew since she was a little girl. When in her 40s she was several years sober and doing
everything "right" in her 12 Step recovery program. She worked the steps and read the Big Book, she had a sponsor and sponsored
others, she was a speaker at AA conferences and an inspiration to many. And then, two years
ago, she died of an overdose. I also know her history of trauma, which
was never addressed in the kind of depth that she needed to heal,
unburden, and transform her life. Heartbreaking. I still weep for her and her beloved family...
It has now been 41
years since I took my last drink and 39 years since I smoked my last
cigarette. And today the pull of living a rich full life is stronger
than any pull to ever go back. Yes, there was this part of me that was alcoholic, but this and other symptoms of trauma no longer define me.
Treat the pain, the trauma underlying the addictions and they lose
their power. It's that hard. And that simple. (I wrote more about what sobriety means to me today here: https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2026/02/reflections-on-what-sobriety-means-to.html.)
I'm so very grateful today for the wisdom held in articles like this one and for those like Gabor Maté, Marc Lewis, Richard Schwartz, my wise therapist, and many others
who have empowered me over the years to grow into the truth of who I truly and
wholly am. We humans are so much greater than our addictions and the pain that drives them! May more and more of us find this freedom and peace and the resources which empower us to deeply address and increasingly free ourselves of the pain and trauma which are the roots of our addictions. May we come to deeply embody the life saving gifts of healing our hurting hearts, of supportive and loving community, of purpose and meaning, and of ever expanding compassion and love for ourselves and our sisters and brothers everywhere. May we discover and ground ourselves in the sacred journeys which empower us to remember what we have forgotten — and especially who we most deeply are.🙏💜Molly
(Highlights in this article were added by the author.)
“I’m an addict. I’ll always be an addict. That’s just who I am.”
He was 34 years old, hadn’t used drugs in three years, had a stable job, healthy relationships, and a life he’d built from nothing. But he still introduced himself this way at every meeting, wore his addiction like an identity, and believed that one drink, one pill, one moment of weakness would send him spiraling back into the hell he’d escaped.
“What if you’re not an addict anymore?” I asked carefully. “What if you were someone who struggled with addiction for a period of your life, but that’s not who you are now?”
The look he gave me was somewhere between hope and horror.
“That’s not what they taught me in rehab. They said addiction is a chronic, progressive disease. That I’ll never be cured. That I have to accept I’m powerless over it for the rest of my life.”
Here’s the controversial thing I’ve come to believe after years of working with people struggling with addiction: The disease model — the idea that addiction is a chronic brain disease requiring lifelong management — helps some people. It reduces stigma. It gets people into treatment. It provides a framework that makes sense of suffering.
But it also traps people in an identity they might have outgrown. It pathologizes normal human adaptation to unbearable circumstances. And it obscures what addiction actually is: a solution that became a problem.
The Disease Model (And Why It Became Gospel)
The “addiction is a brain disease” narrative became dominant in the 1990s and 2000s, primarily through the work of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and researchers like Nora Volkow.
The model goes like this: Addiction fundamentally alters brain chemistry and structure, particularly in areas related to reward, motivation, and impulse control. These changes persist even after substance use stops, creating a chronic, relapsing condition similar to diabetes or hypertension. Therefore, addiction is a medical disease requiring medical treatment.
This model was revolutionary in some ways. It challenged the moral failing narrative — the idea that addicts are just weak-willed people making bad choices. It brought addiction into medical legitimacy, enabling insurance coverage and reducing stigma.
Research using brain imaging showed real, measurable differences in the brains of people with addiction compared to controls. Reduced dopamine receptor availability. Changes in prefrontal cortex function. Altered reward processing.
The science was real. The conclusion seemed obvious: addiction is a brain disease.
But here’s what that model misses: Those brain changes aren’t unique to addiction. They occur in response to any repeated behavior — meditation, exercise, learning a language, falling in love. The brain changes in response to experience. That’s what brains do. It’s called neuroplasticity.
The presence of brain changes doesn’t make something a disease. It makes it a learned adaptation.
What Addiction Actually Is (The Uncomfortable Truth)
After working with hundreds of people struggling with addiction — alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, work, food — here’s what I’ve observed:
Addiction is not a disease you catch or develop randomly. It’s an adaptive response to unbearable circumstances or unbearable internal states.
Research by physician Gabor Maté and the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study shows that the strongest predictor of addiction isn’t genetics or brain chemistry — it’s childhood trauma and chronic stress.
The ACE study, which surveyed over 17,000 people, found a dose-response relationship between childhood adversity and addiction: The more adverse experiences (abuse, neglect, household dysfunction), the higher the likelihood of substance use disorders in adulthood.
People don’t become addicted because their brains are broken. They become addicted because addiction solves a problem. It numbs emotional pain. It creates predictable pleasure in an unpredictable world. It provides escape from circumstances that feel unbearable.
Neuroscientist Marc Lewis, in his book The Biology of Desire, argues that addiction is not a disease but an intense form of learning — specifically, learning to pursue a particular reward compulsively because it reliably provides relief or pleasure in a life that offers little of either.
The brain changes associated with addiction aren’t evidence of disease. There’s evidence that the brain has learned something very well: This substance/behavior makes me feel better, at least temporarily. Pursue it at all costs.
That’s not pathology. That’s the brain working exactly as designed — adapting to survive unbearable circumstances.
The Confession: What I See That Doesn’t Fit the Disease Model
Here’s what I observe in clinical practice that the disease model can’t adequately explain:
People “Recover” Without Treatment
Research shows that most people who struggle with addiction eventually stop without formal treatment. Epidemiological studies tracking substance use over time find that the majority of people with addiction histories no longer meet diagnostic criteria by middle age.
This is called “natural recovery” or “spontaneous remission,” and it happens far more often than the chronic disease model would predict.
If addiction is truly a chronic, progressive brain disease like diabetes, why do so many people simply… stop? Not through treatment, not through 12-step programs, but through life changes — getting a job they care about, forming meaningful relationships, moving to a new environment, becoming parents, finding purpose.
Diseases don’t resolve because you found meaning in life. But solutions that became problems can.
Context Matters More Than Chemistry
The famous “Rat Park” experiments by psychologist Bruce Alexander showed that rats in enriched environments with social connection and stimulation largely ignored drug-laced water, while isolated rats in barren cages compulsively used.
Human research shows similar patterns. Veterans who used heroin heavily in Vietnam largely stopped when they returned home, without treatment, without withdrawal management. The change in context eliminated the need for the solution that heroin provided.
If addiction were primarily about brain chemistry and physical dependence, context shouldn’t matter this much. But it does.
I’ve watched clients stop drinking not because they “worked their program” but because they left abusive relationships, found jobs that didn’t destroy them, or built communities that offered connection. The substance use was solving a problem. Change the problem, and the solution becomes unnecessary.
The “One Use Away from Rock Bottom” Myth
The disease model teaches that one use will inevitably lead to relapse and catastrophic consequences. “One drink is too many, a thousand is never enough.”
But research on relapse shows a more nuanced picture. Many people use once or occasionally after a period of abstinence and don’t spiral. The “inevitable” progression isn’t inevitable at all.
A study published in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors found that the majority of people who returned to use after treatment did not return to problematic levels immediately. Many moderated their use or stopped again without formal intervention.
This doesn’t mean relapse isn’t serious or that use is safe. It means the brain disease model’s prediction — that any use triggers an uncontrollable disease process — doesn’t match the actual variability in human experience.
People Who “Should” Develop Addiction Don’t
If addiction is primarily about exposure and brain chemistry, everyone exposed to addictive substances under the right conditions should develop addiction.
But they don’t. Most people who use potentially addictive substances — alcohol, prescription opioids, even cocaine or heroin — don’t become addicted.
Research suggests that only about 10–15% of people who use alcohol develop alcohol use disorder. For opioids, the rate is higher but still not universal — estimates range from 20–30% for prescription opioid users.
The disease model can’t adequately explain this variability. If it’s a brain disease triggered by substance exposure, why do most exposed people not develop it?
The answer: Because addiction isn’t primarily about the substance. It’s about what the substance does for the person in the context of their life.
What Addiction Actually Does (The Function, Not the Pathology)
In my clinical work, when I ask people what their addiction gave them before it became a problem, the answers are remarkably consistent:
“It made me feel normal for the first time.”
“It quieted the noise in my head.”
“It was the only time I felt connected to people.”
“It made the pain bearable.”
“It gave me confidence I’d never had.”
“It was the only thing I could control.”
Addiction provides relief from:
Chronic emotional pain (trauma, grief, shame)
Unbearable anxiety or depression
Social isolation and disconnection
Lack of meaning or purpose
Chronic physical pain.
Overwhelming responsibilities with inadequate support
Feelings of inadequacy or worthlessness
The substance or behavior isn’t the problem. It’s the solution. The problem is that the solution eventually creates its own set of devastating consequences.
But if you only address the solution (stop using) without addressing the problem it was solving (unbearable internal or external circumstances), you haven’t actually helped the person. You’ve just removed their coping mechanism and left the unbearable circumstances intact.
This is why so many people relapse. They get sober, but nothing else changes. The pain they were medicating is still there. The isolation is still there. The trauma is still there. So, of course, they return to the thing that reliably made it bearable.
The Harm of the Disease Model (That Nobody Talks About)
The disease model isn’t just wrong — it’s actively harmful in specific ways:
It Creates Learned Helplessness
“I’m powerless over my addiction” is the first step in many recovery programs. And for some people, accepting powerlessness over the substance is liberating — it releases them from the burden of willpower and self-blame.
But it also teaches that you’re fundamentally broken, that you’ll never have agency over this part of yourself, that you’re one drink away from disaster for the rest of your life.
Research on learned helplessness by psychologist Martin Seligman shows that believing you have no control over outcomes leads to passivity, depression, and reduced motivation to change.
Some of my most successful clients are people who rejected the powerlessness narrative and instead cultivated a sense of agency: “I struggle with this, but I’m not powerless. I can learn skills, change my environment, and make different choices.”
It Makes Identity Out of Pathology
“Hi, I’m John, and I’m an alcoholic.”
This ritual, repeated in millions of AA meetings, makes addiction central to identity. You’re defined by your struggle, forever.
For some people, this identity is grounding and helpful. It provides community and shared understanding.
But for others, it becomes a prison. They can’t imagine themselves as anything other than “an addict.” Years into recovery, they still organize their entire life around not using, rather than around what they’re building toward.
I’ve had clients who’ve been sober for a decade, still attending meetings multiple times per week, still introducing themselves as addicts, still unable to separate who they are from what they struggled with.
Research on identity and behavior change shows that people are more successful at sustaining change when they develop a new identity (“I’m a person who values health and clarity”) rather than a negative identity defined by what they’re avoiding (“I’m an addict who can’t drink”).
It Pathologizes Normal Human Adaptation
Here’s what makes me most uncomfortable about the disease model: It takes people who’ve adapted to survive unbearable circumstances and tells them their adaptation is a chronic brain disease.
If you were abused as a child and alcohol is the only thing that makes you feel safe enough to sleep — that’s not a disease. That’s trauma. The drinking is a symptom, not the primary problem.
If you’re chronically isolated and lonely and gambling provides the only social connection and excitement in your life, that’s not a disease. That’s a solvable life problem. Address the isolation, and the gambling often resolves.
If you’re working three jobs to support your family and methamphetamine is the only way you can stay awake and functional — that’s not a disease. That’s structural inequality and economic injustice.
The disease model medicalizes social, economic, and psychological problems. It says the problem is in your brain, not in your circumstances. This conveniently removes pressure to address the circumstances that make addiction adaptive.
What Actually Helps (And What Doesn’t)
In working with people struggling with addiction, I’ve found that the interventions that work best are the ones that:
If someone was used to numb trauma, treating the substance use without treating the trauma is futile. Trauma-informed therapy — EMDR, somatic experiencing, internal family systems — addresses the root.
If someone was using because of chronic isolation, creating genuine community and connection is more important than any addiction treatment program.
If someone was using to escape unbearable work or family circumstances, helping them change those circumstances is the intervention.
Research by psychologist William Miller on motivational interviewing shows that addressing the life problems driving addiction is more effective than focusing solely on stopping use.
Build a Life Worth Being Sober For
This is the insight at the heart of harm reduction approaches: People don’t stay abstinent just because they “should.” They stay abstinent when they have something better.
A job they care about. Relationships that matter. Purpose and meaning. A vision for who they want to become. Activities that provide genuine pleasure and connection.
If sobriety means returning to the same miserable circumstances that drove you to use, why would you stay sober?
The most successful recovery I’ve seen involves helping people build lives where sobriety isn’t a sacrifice but an obvious choice because it enables the life they actually want to live.
Cultivate Agency, Not Powerlessness
Research on self-efficacy by psychologist Albert Bandura shows that believing you can successfully change predicts actual behavior change better than almost any other factor.
The clients who succeed are the ones who develop a sense of competence and control: “I’ve learned what triggers my use. I’ve developed coping skills. I’ve changed my environment. I have power over this.”
This doesn’t mean denying the difficulty or the biology. It means framing yourself as an active agent in your recovery, not a passive victim of a chronic disease.
Create Environments That Support Change
Context matters enormously. Research shows that changing your environment is often more effective than trying to change your willpower.
This might mean:
Leaving relationships or communities that reinforce use
Moving to a new location without drug connections
Changing jobs to reduce stress or access to substances
Building new routines that don't include use
Creating accountability structures (not the same as powerlessness — this is choosing to involve others in supporting your goals
The disease model focuses on changing the individual. But often, changing the environment is what actually works.
The Alternative Framework (Addiction as Learning)
If addiction isn’t a disease, what is it?
Neuroscientist Marc Lewis and psychologist Gene Heyman both argue that addiction is best understood as a form of learning — specifically, deeply ingrained habits formed through repeated reinforcement in the context of solving problems or pursuing rewards.
This framework explains:
Why context matters so much (habits are context-dependent)
Why many people "age out" of addiction (life changes alter contexts and priorities)
Why relapse is common but not inevitable (old learning can resurface but isn't irreversible)
Why treatment focused solely on abstinence often fails (you haven't unlearned the pattern or addressed what reinforced it)
The learning model also offers more hope: What’s learned can be unlearned. New patterns can form. You’re not broken — you learned something very well in response to circumstances. You can learn different patterns in different circumstances.
This doesn’t minimize the difficulty. Deeply ingrained learning is hard to change. But it’s changeable in ways that chronic progressive brain diseases often aren’t.
What I Tell Clients About Their Addiction
When clients come to me identifying as addicts, believing they have a chronic brain disease they’ll battle forever, I don’t immediately challenge that framework if it’s helping them stay abstinent and build a better life.
But I do say things like:
“The disease model is one way to understand what you’re experiencing. There are others. Let’s see what framework actually helps you build the life you want.”
“What was your substance use doing for you? What problem was it solving?”
“What would need to be different in your life for you to not need that solution anymore?”
“You’ve learned powerful patterns. The brain that learned to pursue drugs so effectively can also learn to pursue health, connection, and meaning.”
“Recovery isn’t about managing a chronic disease forever. It’s about building a life where the thing you were using to cope becomes unnecessary.”
The goal isn’t to convince everyone that addiction isn’t a disease. For some people, that framework genuinely helps.
The goal is to offer hope that you’re not fundamentally broken, that change is possible, and that recovery isn’t just about abstinence — it’s about addressing what drove you to seek escape in the first place.
The Bottom Line From Someone Who Sits With Addiction Daily
After years of working with people struggling with addiction, here’s what I believe:
Addiction is what happens when people try to solve problems they don’t have better tools for. It’s an adaptation that makes perfect sense given the circumstances — until it creates worse problems than it solves.
Calling it a chronic brain disease reduces stigma and gets some people into treatment. But it also traps people in lifelong patient identities, obscures the social and psychological roots of addiction, and implies that the problem is fundamentally in your brain rather than in your life.
The truth is more complicated and more hopeful:
Your brain did change. But brains change all the time. That’s what they do. Those changes aren’t a permanent disease — they’re evidence of powerful learning that can be unlearned.
You’re not powerless. You’re someone who found a solution to unbearable problems, and that solution became its own problem. Understanding what you were solving is the first step to finding better solutions.
Recovery isn’t about managing a chronic disease forever. It’s about addressing the pain that drove you to seek escape, building a life that’s actually worth being present for, and developing the skills and support to handle life’s difficulties without needing to numb yourself.
Some people will always identify as addicts in recovery, and that’s fine. But you don’t have to. You can be someone who struggled with addiction for a period of time and then became someone else.
You’re not broken. You adapted to survive. And you can adapt again — this time toward health, connection, and a life that doesn’t require escape.
