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Dr. Howard Wetsman argues that most addiction treatment has been misguided and ineffective but that we are finally able to "throw away the cookie cutter" and "treat addiction like the disease it is."...Richard Juman, PsyD

We don’t really believe that addiction is a disease!

in spite of the language that we use in describing addiction as a disease, we don’t actually treat it like it is a disease

The psychologists also support the use of anti-craving medications like naltrexone, which block the brain’s ability to release endorphins and the high of using the substance.

A 2002 study conducted by researchers at the University of New Mexico and published in the journal Addiction showed that motivational interviewing, cognitive behavioral therapy and naltrexone, which are often used together, are far more effective in stopping or reducing drug and alcohol use than the faith-and-abstinence-based model of A.A. and other “TSF” — for 12-step facilitation — programs.

Researchers elsewhere have come up with similar findings. In 2006, the Cochrane Library, a health care research group, reviewed four decades of global alcohol treatment studies and concluded, “No experimental studies unequivocally demonstrated the effectiveness of AA or TSF approaches for reducing alcohol dependence or problems.” Despite that research, A.A.’s 12-step model is by far the dominant approach to addiction in America.