The Captive Imagination
Addiction, Reality, and Our Search for Meaning
Psychiatrist and scientist Elias Dakwar presents a groundbreaking yet simple framework for understanding and addressing addiction as a confusion from which we are all, addicted or not, working to find freedom. Addiction is a crisis affecting millions of Americans every year. As rates of addiction and overdose deaths surge across the country, physicians, mental health professionals, and researchers scramble to help. While the prevailing model—addiction as a brain-based disease—has destigmatized addiction, it hasn’t solved the problem. Instead, as pioneering psychiatrist and researcher Elias Dakwar shows, it may be making things worse.Drawing on his research with hallucinogenic compounds and meditation-based treatments, fifteen years of clinical experience, and recent findings from neuroscience, Dakwar frames addiction as the fixed “reality” to which the imagination become captive. In a bold repudiation of the brain-disease model, he approaches addiction, not as a physical problem, but as a crisis of the creative imagination in which our all-too-human attempts to alleviate suffering and make sense of the world leads to a locked-in conception of things that only confuses things further. Addicted individuals therefore suffer acutely from what afflict us all – the fictions we create and mistake for reality.In this beautifully written and often startling exploration, Dakwar reveals how the journey towards freedom is not unique to addiction, but a passage we must all make as we work towards greater understanding, fuller relationships, and more profound peace. He makes an urgent plea for scientists to consider consciousness and meaning-making when approaching addicted individuals, and combines cutting-edge research with clinical narratives to pose and address the existential, relational, and philosophical questions that are at the heart of addiction. A leading researcher in the use of ketamine in addiction treatment, he examines how psychedelics, in combination with other practices, might be helpful clinically, and how they can also shed light on the broader systemic and cultural shifts that are needed to alleviate suffering, beginning with the most vulnerable among us.
"Addiction has been called a moral failing, a social problem, a spiritual crisis, a behavioral disorder, and a brain disease. It has also been called a class issue, a supply problem, a problem of learning, a memory disorder, and a result of trauma. And some propose that addiction is neither a disease nor a problem, but a transgressive expression of freedom, a maligned sub-culture, a therapeutic relationship. Even the term 'addiction' is open to question. There are few human phenomena so elusive and intractable; after decades of neuroscientific research, we aren't much closer to understanding addiction, nor to addressing it effectively. This profusion of interpretations, meanings, and models reflects a hidden truth about addiction: that it is profusely generative of meaning itself. In this bold reimagining, pioneering psychiatrist Elias Dakwar examines addiction as a sustained creative act--and specifically as a process of personal world-building, complete with its own rituals, systems of value, modes of suffering, and sources of support. In this regard, addiction is something we all do. But there is a crucial difference. In the case of those of us suffering from addiction explicitly, this meaningful world keeps us in clear captivity, worsening the suffering and confusion we hoped it would console. And we remain stuck because we have trouble imagining it differently. Drawing on vivid stories of his own patients, path-breaking research with meditation, psychotherapy, and psychedelics/hallucinogens, and decades of clinical experience, Dakwar explores this captivity at the heart of our addictions, and shows how we might move beyond its bounds to reclaim our freedom. He also relates addiction to our collective self-inflicted crises, from environmental destruction to militarism to social injustice, rendering this often stigmatized condition relevant to all of us. With fluid, rich, and often startling prose, The Captive Imagination offers a novel path for better understanding and overcoming addiction, as well as human suffering more generally"--
Autor: | Dakwar, Elias |
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ISBN: | 9780063340480 |
Sprache: | Englisch |
Produktart: | Gebunden |
Verlag: | Harper Collins (US) |
Veröffentlicht: | 04.06.2024 |
Untertitel: | Addiction, Reality, and Our Search for Meaning |
Schlagworte: | PSYCHOLOGY: COGNITION & THINKING PSYCHOLOGY: Mental Health PSYCHOLOGY: Psychopathology / Addiction SELF-HELP: Substance Abuse & Addictions / General SOCIOLOGY: MARRIAGE & FAMILY |
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