Harvard Professor Gene M. Heyman Claims the Unbelievable in New Book, Addiction: A Disorder of Choice

Posted on by

A Harvard psychologist named Gene M. Heyman recently released the book, Addiction: A Disorder of Choice, which asserts that addiction isn’t really an illness. However, it really isn’t that surprising as Heyman is just one of the many who have previously posed this opinion.

The facts remain that nearly all health experts agree that addiction is a serious illness, which is not voluntarily chosen. Among such experts that disagree with the logic behind Addiction: A Disorder of Choice, is Norman Miller, professor of medicine at Michigan State University, who says: “These guys – I don’t know, academia, they just kind of take what they want, and they don’t care about the truth, or what the studies show.”

Tony George, the head of addiction psychiatry at the University of Toronto, further expounds upon this point, when he says the following about Gene M. Heyman’s hypothesis in the new book: “Where (Heyman) loses the argument is that there are clearly both biological and environmental or contextual factors involved, but he’s basically saying that the context and the environment are everything and the biology is irrelevant.”

  • Jay Mooney

    Have you read it? Sometimes it is good to read opposing viewpoints. This idea that addiction is a disease that we can never fully cure seems to me not all that benign. It has left us with a recovery industry/movement that is effective approximately 5 percent of the time, a rate no more than the rate of natural remission. I know by pure numbers a lot of people get better in AA and NA. But the vast majority of people who darken the doors of those august fellowships never get better. Anyone who has ever attended a meeting and who is “rigorously” honest, knows that. So I say, let’s explore other ideas, other avenues of thought.

  • http://upstreamanddown.blogspot.com Ruth Douillette

    Read a review of the book in the September issue of The Internet Review of Books:
    http://internetreviewofbooks.com/sep09/addiction.html