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Stanton Peele
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Stanton Peele is an attorney, psychologist, and addiction expert. He was
awarded the Best Academic Addiction Blog by All Treatment. Since *Love and Addiction* in 1975, Dr. Peele has broken down myths about addiction. Among his accomplishments, discussed at his Website, are showing that addiction is more than a physiological response to drugs, addressing life processes in treating addiction, and opening the field to harm reduction. His recent work includes *7 Tools to Beat Addiction*, and his development of the Life Process Program for addictions.

Blog Entries by Stanton Peele

The Search for Mental Illness and Addiction in the Brain, Part I: The Disappointment of the Human Genome Project

(15) Comments | Posted May 17, 2013 | 1:04 PM

In April, President Obama announced the new BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) initiative, which many hope (expect?) will find the sources of -- and solve -- the mysteries and distress of mental illness and addiction. It will not. It cannot.

Before addressing the BRAIN initiative, let's...

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Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's Psychiatric Defense

(1) Comments | Posted April 23, 2013 | 10:44 AM

The Tsarnaev brothers who are accused of having set off bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, 26-year-old Tamerlan and 19-year-old Dzhokhar, have two images. (Tamerlan is deceased, leaving only Dzhokhar to be charged.) The chief image is, of course, that they are terrorists-murderers who allegedly killed three...

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The Kabuki Theater of American Tragedies

(1) Comments | Posted April 16, 2013 | 6:45 PM

The ultimate paradox in media and public life is that when we most ardently seek information, we get the most bullshit. This anomaly is unavoidable: competitive non-stop media outlets must respond to our anxiety-fueled need to explain what often times can't be explained ultimately, and certainly not in the near...

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Real Rancor Shows Between New York Times Columnists

(0) Comments | Posted March 18, 2013 | 8:51 PM

The subterranean rancor most often referenced at the New York Times is between New York Jewish boys, one conservative and one highly liberal, who never bring their conflict out into the open. But the enmity is so clearly there, Atlantic Wire's John Hudson says that "David Brooks and...

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Can You Believe UN Reps Drink a Lot During Budget Sessions?!

(0) Comments | Posted March 11, 2013 | 10:44 AM

News item on New York magazine's website: "The United Nations has a drinking problem, thinks Joseph Torsella, the U.S. ambassador for management and reform at the U.N., who on Monday got a promotion from Captain Buzzkill to admiral by publicly scolding his colleagues for boozing during budget sessions."

...
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The Dynamics of War

(0) Comments | Posted March 11, 2013 | 9:58 AM

Writing as a student during the Vietnam War in his surprise bestseller, The Strawberry Statement, James Kunen noted that, while people have been sent to prison for opposing wars, no one is ever penalized for backing unnecessary wars, or for resisting abandoning a failed campaign.

This is a good week...

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Addiction Isn't What It Used to Be

(6) Comments | Posted March 5, 2013 | 4:53 PM

For the second time in less than a year, The New York Times Magazine has identified a major addictive trend that does not involve drugs. In this case, it is junk foods (the previous example was mindless games). A science writer friend of mine wasn't impressed:...

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How We Could Use Joe Kennedy (Jack's Dad)

(1) Comments | Posted February 26, 2013 | 11:17 AM

David Nasaw's biography of Joseph P. Kennedy, entitled The Patriarch, raises familiar memes about the patriarch of the Kennedy clan: how he prowled around despite his marriage to saintly Rose (most notably with silent screen star Gloria Swanson), how he was both an absent father and a beloved role model...

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What Genetics Tells Us About Anxiety: Not Much

(2) Comments | Posted February 25, 2013 | 3:18 PM

For several days this month, one of the most emailed articles in the New York Times was "Why Can Some Kids Handle Pressure While Others Fall Apart?" The article purports to explain why some children fold under the pressure of taking tests. It begins with the case of...

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Wine Is Healthier Than Coke

(5) Comments | Posted January 29, 2013 | 11:26 AM

Several images float before me when I note Coca-Cola's efforts to "engage" in the health and obesity debate.

One is of Don Johnson (of Miami Vice fame), when he signed on to shill for Pepsi (he later shifted to Coke) saying how he would have been a lot...

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The 12-12-12 Concert: That Bitch Sandy!

(6) Comments | Posted December 13, 2012 | 10:26 AM

Watching 12-12-12 concert organizer, Harvey Weinstein, talk on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" about the cause that brought musical royalty (from Paul McCartney to Bruce Springsteen to the Stones, et al.) together, I was struck by how the film mogul personified the disaster in an entity called "Sandy," attacking this...

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My Argument to the Supreme Court

(9) Comments | Posted December 10, 2012 | 4:12 PM

May it please the Court:

My argument is addressed principally to Chief Justice Roberts (although, of course, you -- Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy -- can listen in).

I'm only going to cite one precedent -- Dred Scott. You know, the case where the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Roger...

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Who Is the Most Reality Challenged -- Democrats or Republicans?

(10) Comments | Posted November 28, 2012 | 12:47 PM

Nobel-prize-winning New York Times opinion columnist Paul Krugman is impressed that the leaders of the Republican party have buried their heads in the sand in a remarkable number of cases (e.g., Mario Rubio, Bobby Jindal), and are able to acknowledge neither evolution nor global...

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We Need a Conceptual Breakthrough in the War on Drugs

(54) Comments | Posted November 6, 2012 | 10:57 AM

Among the misconceptions fostered by AA and the disease theory of addiction is the idea of "hitting bottom" -- that there is some objective state beneath which no human being will go. The same is true in our misconceptions about what will end our war on drugs. Opponents of the...

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Miracle on 14th St.

(0) Comments | Posted November 1, 2012 | 1:35 PM

On Thursday, I went to the Park Slope YMCA early, 6 a.m., expecting it to be open after it had been closed two days. It wasn't. And thus began the Miracle on 14th St.

You see, I live in Brooklyn, close over the bridges from New York City, and my...

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Lurking Beneath (But Not Very Far Beneath) the Surface at the Al Smith Dinner

(6) Comments | Posted October 23, 2012 | 12:15 PM

NBC's Brian Williams, among others, seemed to find the compliments and jokes Barack Obama and Mitt Romney threw at one another at the annual Al Smith Dinner in New York to represent something like a heart-warming laying down of their campaign cudgels. At the dinner, the good Cardinal...

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Mental Gymnastics: 'I Believe, Then I Think'

(1) Comments | Posted October 18, 2012 | 12:22 PM

Cognitive science is all about showing that people's thinking isn't rational -- that their explanations are either expressions of gut reactions or justifications for their beliefs and lives. As Jonathan Haidt wrote in the New York Times:

I developed an idea from Howard Margolis, the distinguished social scientist...
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Who Is Joe Scarborough Voting For?

(34) Comments | Posted October 17, 2012 | 10:11 AM

At first blush, this question might seem a no-brainer. Elected to Congress in 1994 from the Florida panhandle as one of Newt's "Contract With America" foot soldiers, the host of MSNBC's Morning Joe labels himself a conservative who was dissatisfied with George W. Bush for not being conservative enough! Co-host...

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The Deluded Mantras of Addiction

(28) Comments | Posted October 11, 2012 | 6:22 PM

Following are five key ways in which addiction experts demonstrate a detachment from the most self-evident truths about addiction, and what causes their addiction delusions.

I. Most People Get Over Addiction. I have driven home the points revealed by the NIAAA's NESARC research -- the largest study of...

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Five Reactions to the First Debate

(5) Comments | Posted October 4, 2012 | 11:58 AM

From the most ardent Obama supporters on down:

1. He won! (See Al Sharpton): The president successfully employed a rope-a-dope strategy, drawing Romney into making a host of unsustainable assertions re taxes, health care, Medicare, Wall Street regulation, et al. Now the Democrats can feed Romney's statements into...

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