The conventional idea that a substance or activity can produce a compulsion to act that is beyond the individual's self-control has dominated theory and treatment of addiction for dozens of years now. In this brilliant and original book, however, the author analyzes studies of drug and cigarette addiction, alcoholism, obesity, and other compulsions -- from running to love -- and demonstrates how doctrinaire politically correct-disease theories of addiction fail to make sense of scientific observations. Addiction, StantonPeele argues, while real, is not a biological phenomenon. Addictive behavior, like all human behavior, is best understood as adaptation -- individual, situational, and cultural variations are the rule. And the surprising frequency of self-cure is part of the amazing evidence that compulsive habits and dependency are a way of coping which individuals are able to reverse in line with changing psychological and life circumstances.
