Not a Disease

ENDORSEMENTS

“This thought-provoking, often counterintuitive book proposes that addiction is the result of social and psychic decay rather than a biological disease. Mixing compelling anecdotes and peer-reviewed studies, Satel proposes that those who live desperate lives will turn to self-destruction to mitigate their pain, and that the disease model of addiction, though formulated with compassion, undermines self-determination: that its aura of forgiveness cloaks a fearful disenfranchisement.”
—Andrew Solomon, author of Far From the Tree and The Noonday Demon

“A fascinating, bracing, and humane reexamination of the opioid epidemic, and of the prevailing medical model of addiction. Satel writes with the authority of a psychiatrist who is not just deeply familiar with the scientific literature and with the history of drug policy and pain management but who also, more importantly, has worked for years with substance abusers, including at a methadone clinic in opioid-devastated Appalachia. This book will challenge your preconceptions about addiction—and it ought to provoke national debate about how we as a society manage it.”
—Scott Stossel, National Editor, The Atlantic; author of the international bestseller My Age of Anxiety

“Nobody writes better than Sally Satel about the real and imaginary disorders that afflict the mind, and the public policies that compound our misconceptions in ways that harm the very people they are intended to help. In Not a Disease, she examines myths about addiction and recovery with the empirical mind of a scientist, the compassion of a practitioner, and the clarifying art of a writer.”
— Jonathan Rosen, author of The Best Minds

“The topic of addiction is vexing, complicated, highly important, and riveting…Sally Satel’s point of view is useful, significant, and very much worth engaging with.”
—Steven E. Hyman, Director, Program in Brain Health, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

“A spirited challenge to the prevailing view that drug addiction is a ‘disease like any other.’ Satel reviews research studies, introduces her own patients, and brings readers to a city at the heart of the opioid crisis. Drawing on these diverse perspectives, she shows how people addicted to drugs retain substantial agency—a reality that should guide social policy and patient care. Drug addiction treatment is at the heart of Satel’s expertise. Not a Disease may be her finest book.” —Peter D. Kramer, Clinical Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University; author of Listening to Prozac

Sally Satel, MD, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the medical director of a methadone clinic in Washington, DC. She is a lecturer at the Yale School of Medicine and the author of numerous books, including her most recent, Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience, with Scott Lilienfeld, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Science.

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