Escaping Addiction: Resetting the Brain for Success

Presents a variety of effective tools to break the cycle of addiction. Addiction is a worldwide curse that seems to be growing in seriousness on a yearly basis. While to the general public addiction may seem almost inescapable, the truth is that there are solutions to overcoming the various addictions, though to date they seem more elusive than attainable. The goal of Escaping Addiction is to highlight the variety of causes of addiction alongside an array of useful tools anyone can use to break the cycle of addiction, whether it’s to alcohol, drugs, food, or video games. The seeds of addictive behavior are often planted in childhood then fed to grow over years of the input and reward cycle. Detaching the rewards from the addictive input is key to breaking the habits that keep us addicted. Here, the authors present the variety of treatments – from medications to therapeutic approaches – that can help. Offering a better understanding of the mechanisms of addiction, this book can help anyone struggling with addiction to unravel it in their own lives.

About the Author :
Patrick Bordeaux, MD, is a dual citizen of France and the US. Bordeaux is currently Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Faculty of Medicine Université Laval in Quebec City, Canada, and practices Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Quebec. He is also a consulting child and adolescent psychiatrist in the province of New Brunswick, Canada. He is a Fellow of The Royal College of Physicians of Canada (FRCPC) and of The American Psychiatric Association (FAPA), a Diplomate of the American Board of Addiction Medicine (DABAM), and a member of The Canadian Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. George Koob, PhD, has been Director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) since 2014. Koob has published over 650 peer reviewed papers and several books including the Neurobiology of Addiction. He spent much of his early career at the Scripps Research Institute as the Director of the Alcohol Research Center, and as Professor and Chair of the Scripps’ Committee on the Neurobiology of Addictive Disorders. He has also served as a researcher in the Department of Neurophysiology at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge, and as staff scientist in the Arthur Vining Davis Center for Behavioral Neurobiology at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

Review :
Addiction is a terribly complex disease for all involved-the individual, their loved ones, and the treating providers. Escaping Addiction: Resetting the Brain distills detailed clinical information through accessible language and compelling illustrations to offer a comprehensive guidebook to everyone. It’s a much-needed resource for navigating the biology, pathology and sociology of a medical condition that impacts countless families every day. Escaping Addiction: Resetting the Brain for Success by Patrick Bordeaux, MD, and George F. Koob, PhD, is a unique combination of fundamental science and clinical medicine that incorporates powerful real life stories of people suffering from various addictions. Brain anatomy and explanations of brain chemical imbalance of different addictions are delivered with helpful cartoon illustrations and in clear prose without medical jargon. With this knowledge both mental health professionals and people recovering from addiction and their families can easily understand new psychological tools and pharmaceutical treatments that modify specific brain targets including and most important stress triggers. This book offers a road to successfully rebooting the brain from addiction to recovery! In this volume, Drs. Bordeaux and Koob combine their expertise in neuroscience and experience in clinical medicine to provide an up-to-date, science-based framework to help readers understand how the brain change in addiction, how these changes manifest themselves in patients, and how we can help patients overcome their brain disease. A framework is good not because it explains everything, but because what it explains is clear, valid and reliable, and makes sense, and because what it recommends work. Don’t rush through the book, read it deliberately, enjoy the stories, and keep it handy when dealing with difficult patients. This book is most helpful for physicians and other health care professionals caring for patients suffering from addictive disorders, but it will be of interest to anyone whose life is touched by addiction. In writing this book, the authors may not have discovered a path to fame and fortune, but they have found a great way to help save lives.