News Item: Like humans, fruit flies that get intoxicated on alcohol can become addicted and keep drinking regardless of the consequences. (One addiction news digest headline called the critters "Buzzed Fruit Flies.") Researchers at the University of California at San Francisco indicate this phenomenon will allow us to better understand...

We don't have one now - we have a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). This nomenclature has consequences.

Foremost, we fight drug use of all kinds, and only drug use, as addictive - even though (a) a majority of Americans have used illicit substances (and quite a few still...

As the holiday season is upon us, now is a good time to consider cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for depression.

CBT is the new buzzword for therapy - as Freudian psychoanalysis once was. Every therapist now claims to use it (if they aren't psychiatrists who rely strictly on drug therapy).

Sting has given up coffee, "because I'm addicted to it," he said on the Morning Joe show. Everyone laughed. Mika Brzezinski opened a package of Starbucks and waved it under his nose, then ordered coffee for him, which Sting refused.

"How ridiculous," we think. "Coffee, addictive - what will they...

America is a country that worships personal tales of redemption. If public figures are caught out drunk or on drugs, cheating on their wives, then they quickly head off to Betty Ford or Hazelden, apologize to their families and constituents, and promise not to stray or drink again. And...

I posted recently about two exceptional women - Hannah Arendt and Amy Wallace - who slept with gurus - Martin Heidegger and Carlos Castaneda - who despised and mistreated them, and yet the women remained in love until the day their gurus died.

But I didn't note another...

According to a government-appointed panel of prestigious medical experts, one that influences insurers and general practitioners, women should not begin getting breast x-rays until they turn 50, and then only every other year rather than annually. Doctors, the group (the United States Preventive Services Task Force) declares, should not...

Brilliant, talented, successful women sacrifice their lives and dignity to male mentors. What are they thinking?

The specter of screwing your guru has arisen again recently around the debate over the philosopher Martin Heidegger. In brief, Heidegger was the father of existential philosophy, proposing that we must liberate...

I am fascinated by playgrounds as mirrors of our society. And, lately, I have jumped back into playgrounds with both feet as several times a week I accompany my 20-month-old grandson Cassius (Cash for short) to one or another playground in Queens.

It has been hard earned. My son...

The media first fell pray to the hysteria of the six-year-old boy lost in the sky. Now it is clamoring for the punishment of Falcon Heene's reality-show-crazed father.

The only problem is, as Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden noted, there doesn't seem to be a sufficiently severe crime to...

Americans are looking for a bail-out from reality - some actions the President and Congress can take to restore the United States to its former economic glory, so we can all go on living the high life.

But opinion leaders are peering into the future and making different sorts of...

Like the stages people who experience grief due to a personal tragedy pass through, people concerned about modifying American drug policies have dialed through these five stages since Barack Obama was elected President of the United States:

1. Unbounded enthusiasm. Drug reform advocates, along with other progressives, were wild with...

In a recent post noting Barack Obama's limitations as a comedian, I cited his well-known roast of Rahm Emanuel, which took place at a fund-raiser for Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy, organized by Susan Axelrod.

I spoke about Ms. Axelrod and her cause in my post,...

You've seen clips of President Obama speaking at those Washington Press dinners, doing shtik. When he comes to a good joke, he suppresses a chortle, and then burps the punch line out, as pleased with himself as a third-grader who's just spelled "Mississippi." Obama's highly touted roast of Rahm...

A mind-boggling You Tube video describes how quickly the world is changing, how disorienting it is for even young people, how overwhelming are the intellectual demands made on us for processing new information, how China and India are surging ahead of the U.S., and -- while we're at it...

It began with the February C-Span poll of historians ranking Lyndon Johnson number eleven among American Presidents (although he was still behind his predecessor, John Kennedy, who was #6). Then, in April, a Times opinion piece recommended that Barack Obama follow the LBJ model for passing legislation. In that...

Many parents were shocked and chagrined to see the extent to which young people in the new Harry Potter movie casually consume alcohol, both in the presence of adults and together without adult supervision. True, no one behaved outrageously (although an inebriated Hagrid -- a good guy -- does pass...

The concept of addiction is thrown around loosely nowadays. But when people seek more and more of something that is not benefiting -- and in fact is harming -- them, that can reasonably be called addiction.

Americans are addicted to health care. They demand more and more of it, at...

For the first time in memory, Bill O'Reilly, arch Fox conservative, and Chris Matthews, arch MSNBC liberal, reacted the same to an event -- both found that Barack Obama failed entirely to explain his plans for health care reform in his televised press conference.

And virtually all commentators noted the...

The arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. the other day reminded me of the time a few years back when I was arrested and taken to the police station. Unlike Professor Gates, I was charged, had a trial, and was convicted.

Of course, I'm a white man, so racism...