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THE OVERRIDING PRINCIPLE
before you get bogged down with debating specific issues in the book let me clarify the key overriding issue of the book, an issue that most people ignore and forget, mostly because they're bogged down in their own beliefs and prejudices. the critical principle of all of science, including and especially medicine, is that the correct theory of anything is paramount in understanding that issue and in dealing with it. in medicine this is called the pathophysiological basis of medicine, or the disease concept of modern medicine. [see: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/diseaseconcept1aperspective/ ) for the field of medicine to work at a practical level we need to know both the correct physiology (the biology of the normal) as well as the correct pathophysiology (how the normal has been altered or changed to cause the disease). the history of medicine shows us that if we get these wrong then all policies (prevention, treatment, and public policies) based on them will fail and even harm our patients. thus, the first critical issue in any medical problem (and addiction is a medical problem) is to get the theory right, the correct physiology and pathophysiology. until this is done we will have policies that don't work and are harmful. also, when we have this right, effective policies are then possible, policies derived from this knowledge, not picked out of a vacuum. thus, the first thing that must be done in the field of addictions is to search for the CORRECT underlying physiology and pathophysiology related to addiction creation. once that is done, effective policies can then be worked out. the policies i have laid out in my book are admittedly speculations, but they are speculations based on what i think the science shows to be the right theory, the critical principle. the problem with the field of addictions historically has been that all policies have never been arrived at this way. treatments have always come first and theories have often followed, but based on nonsensical beliefs (biases and prejudices not derived from science) rather than science, real physiology and pathophysiology. this is a medical sin of the highest and it still runs the field of addictions. the current theory running addictions is the hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH), a hypothesis that was scientifically wrong when it was first published by Leshner in 1997 and which has been proven wrong in many ways since then. [see my continuously updated paper on addiction causation: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ , and Hiroi's seminal paper on this issue: Genetic susceptibility to substance dependence, Molecular Psychiatry (2005) 10, 336–344, by N Hiroi and S Agatsuma. NIDA is still pushing the HBH despite it being proved wrong because of the bias of nora volkow rather than that it is based on valid science, which it isn't. the rest of the addiction field, including AA, follows suit and remains stuck in a wrong theory. thus, the field of addictions remains ineffective and harmful. thus, the important issue in my book and the follow-up "hypoism hypothesis" paper is to deal with the theory issue primarily, to debunk the HBH and other wrong theories of addiction causation, and to replace them with the correct theory based on science not bias and prejudice. this should be your primary focus of reading the book and the web paper. once the theory is replaced we can then move on to the best policies to be used derived from this theory. sticking with the wrong theory ensures we will never discover effective and humane policies, exactly where we are today. if people want to maintain their unscientific beliefs, biases, and prejudices about addictions and addicts at the expense of the correct theory then they have to accept the consequences of doing that. i think that's today's conundrum, whether to use science or false belief to run the field of addictions. the public isn't being given this choice, however, because Hypoism, the science-based alternative that has existed since 1992, is being censored from the public. Dan Umanoff, M.D.
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You can take the addiction out of the hypoic, but you can't take the Hypoism out of the addict.
