The addiction process so empties some of us that we cease being a person. Having lost any semblance of boundaries, hugging us is like trying to hug smoke. Only a masked ghost of our former selves, we exist only as a drug-consumption machine dragging along whatever whisper of our former self that remains. We devolve(……)

One of my favorite authors is Dr. Oliver Sacks, the famed clinical neurologist and author of such works as The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Awakenings, and Seeing Voices. Two of Sacks books (Hallucinations and On the Move) and a Sacks biography (And How Are You, Dr. Sacks by Lawrence Weschler) recount(……)

In the midst of the present coronavirus pandemic, one hears regular reports of people who exhibit no symptoms of COVID-19, but who are capable of spreading the coronavirus infection to others. Asymptomatic (presymptomatic) carriers pose a major obstacle to public health responses to COVID-19—an obstacle underscoring the need for mass testing, tracking, isolation of virus(……)

The Good News: More than 22 million Americans have resolved a significant alcohol or other drug problem during their lifetimeThe Problem: People in recovery from addiction continue to suffer inordinate rates of respiratory disease, kidney failure, heart disease, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, stroke, cancer, and premature death. (Eddie et al., 2019; White et al., 2013)The Solution:(……)