Addiction Proof Your Family with Maia Szalavitz

The Healthy Family Podcast

Addiction has become a big buzz word. You hear about it from media reports, books, and friends. And it’s no longer just about drugs and alcohol, but food, the internet, gambling, and even healthy activities like exercise.

Is addiction simply a brain disease that leaves people powerless or is there something else going on?

Today we have on science writer Maia Szalavitz, author of The New York Time Bestseller Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction. She not only has a personal history of addiction, she has spent years researching its underpinnings. Maia argues that addiction isn’t a disease but rather a learning disorder more similar to autism, ADHD and dyslexia. Using her story as a backdrop -- and citing the latest research -- she helps readers see how addiction risk begins in childhood and either withers or grows throughout life. She also recommends better, research-based treatments for people who have already become addicted.

Anyone who has experienced the heart-wrenching reality of addiction knows that we need to do more and learn more about how to make it stop.