- Title Pages
- Editors’ preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of Contributors
-
Chapter 1 On defining addiction -
Chapter 2 How do you know you have a drug problem? The role of knowledge of negative consequences in explaining drug choice in humans and rats -
Chapter 3 Addiction -
Chapter 4 Willing addicts? Drinkers, dandies, druggies, and other Dionysians -
Chapter 5 Failures of rationality and self-knowledge in addiction -
Chapter 6 Normal and addictive desires -
Chapter 7 Addiction, compulsion, and weakness of the will -
Chapter 8 Addiction as a form of akrasia -
Chapter 9 Compulsion and choice in addiction -
Chapter 10 Choice in addiction -
Chapter 11 Assessing drug choice in human addiction -
Chapter 12 The role of the insula in goal-directed drug seeking and choice in addiction -
Chapter 13 Palpating the elephant -
Chapter 14 Addiction as social choice -
Chapter 15 Nonconscious motivational influences on cognitive processes in addictive behaviors -
Chapter 16 Self-regulation, controlled processes, and the treatment of addiction -
Chapter 17 The blindfold of addiction -
Chapter 18 Behavioral economics as a framework for brief motivational interventions to reduce addictive behaviors -
Chapter 19 Role of choice biases and choice architecture in behavioral economic strategies to reduce addictive behaviors -
Chapter 20 How an addict’s power of choice is lost and can be regained -
Chapter 21 What addicts can teach us about addiction -
Chapter 22 How a stigmatic structure enslaves addicts -
Chapter 23 Addiction, choice, and criminal law -
Chapter 24 Ambiguous terms and false dichotomies -
Chapter 25 Overview of addiction as a disorder of choice and future prospects - Index
How an addict’s power of choice is lost and can be regained
How an addict’s power of choice is lost and can be regained
- Chapter:
- (p.365) Chapter 20 How an addict’s power of choice is lost and can be regained
- Source:
- Addiction and Choice
- Author(s):
Gabriel Segal
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
“[M]ost alcoholics … have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so-called will power becomes practically non-existent” (Alcoholics Anonymous). In active addiction, when an addict who is trying to control or cease using attempts to choose to abstain, but fails, he chooses against his own will. He has lost the power to choose as he wants. Often, when an abstinent addict relapses, the relapse is preceded by a cognitive dysfunction that selectively disables his willpower in relation to his substance. These modes of disempowerment in choice making are correctly explained by a specific disease theory of addiction, articulated in the literature of Alcoholics Anonymous, and subsequently vindicated by contemporary cognitive/affective neuroscience. The cognitive dysfunction that precedes relapse is caused by stress. Twelve-step programs are effective at relapse prevention and are so because they are comprehensive stress-reduction and management programs.
Keywords: addiction, Alcoholics Anonymous, twelve-step programs, stress, relapse, willpower, disease
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- Title Pages
- Editors’ preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of Contributors
-
Chapter 1 On defining addiction -
Chapter 2 How do you know you have a drug problem? The role of knowledge of negative consequences in explaining drug choice in humans and rats -
Chapter 3 Addiction -
Chapter 4 Willing addicts? Drinkers, dandies, druggies, and other Dionysians -
Chapter 5 Failures of rationality and self-knowledge in addiction -
Chapter 6 Normal and addictive desires -
Chapter 7 Addiction, compulsion, and weakness of the will -
Chapter 8 Addiction as a form of akrasia -
Chapter 9 Compulsion and choice in addiction -
Chapter 10 Choice in addiction -
Chapter 11 Assessing drug choice in human addiction -
Chapter 12 The role of the insula in goal-directed drug seeking and choice in addiction -
Chapter 13 Palpating the elephant -
Chapter 14 Addiction as social choice -
Chapter 15 Nonconscious motivational influences on cognitive processes in addictive behaviors -
Chapter 16 Self-regulation, controlled processes, and the treatment of addiction -
Chapter 17 The blindfold of addiction -
Chapter 18 Behavioral economics as a framework for brief motivational interventions to reduce addictive behaviors -
Chapter 19 Role of choice biases and choice architecture in behavioral economic strategies to reduce addictive behaviors -
Chapter 20 How an addict’s power of choice is lost and can be regained -
Chapter 21 What addicts can teach us about addiction -
Chapter 22 How a stigmatic structure enslaves addicts -
Chapter 23 Addiction, choice, and criminal law -
Chapter 24 Ambiguous terms and false dichotomies -
Chapter 25 Overview of addiction as a disorder of choice and future prospects - Index
