In the 1980s the study of alcoholism was in a period of rapid change, this book, originally published in 1985, identifies and explores the three most controversial contemporary issues: changes at the basic explanatory level in our concept of harmful drinking; the undermining of our confidence that drinking behaviour can be effectively modified in the traditional context of ‘treatment’; and the changes in our concept of the effective prevention of harmful drinking. The authors of the book came from a variety of backgrounds, but all were members of the New Directions in the Study of Alcohol Group. They broadly reject the disease concept of alcoholism, but, as this volume shows, there is still scope for vigorous debate and this book should have something of interest for all concerned with problems of alcoholism.

Originally published in 1981 and revised in 1983, Controlled Drinking was the first scholarly review of the literature on a controversial but increasingly practiced approach to the treatment of alcoholism. Nick Heather and Ian Robertson analyse all the pertinent questions that controlled drinking raises, starting with the need to examine the ‘disease conception’ of alcoholism and ‘total abstinence’ treatment. They look at the evidence indicating that some people, previously diagnosed as alcoholics, are able to return to normal, controlled patterns of drinking, and discuss therapies where controlled drinking is the treatment goal, fully reviewing the evidence for their success and failure. Concluding with a discussion of the theoretical and policy implications of controlled drinking, the authors recommend that the disease view of alcoholism be finally abandoned. For the revised paperback edition, as well as correcting and updating the text and references, the authors included an important postscript on the charges of falsification of evidence and their subsequent refutation which made up the Sobell affair. The wealth of other material presented in Controlled Drinking supports the authors’ conclusions even if the Sobells’ work were ignored. However, this revised edition was made more useful for student and professional readers by the postscript’s discussion of the controversy surrounding the most widely known and quoted controlled drinking trial at the time.

* A ground-breaking attempt to bring together in one volume all the various strands of this fundamental debate about the nature of what is called addiction. * Presents a robust evaluation of the BDMA * Neatly divided into four sections representing For; Against; Unsure; Alternative Ways of Understanding and Responding to Addiction

* A ground-breaking attempt to bring together in one volume all the various strands of this fundamental debate about the nature of what is called addiction. * Presents a robust evaluation of the BDMA * Neatly divided into four sections representing For; Against; Unsure; Alternative Ways of Understanding and Responding to Addiction

About a decade ago, psychologists began exploring the commonalities among alcohol and drug abuse, smoking, and obesity. The term sub stance abuse evolved into the current concept of addictive behaviors, which recognizes similarities with other behaviors that do not involve consummatory responses (e. g., pathological gambling, compulsions, sexual deviations). Professional societies and journals now have been founded in both Britain and the United States with the purpose of focus ing on research and treatment in the area of addictive behaviors. As the field has evolved, new models have emerged to address the questions and puzzles that face professionals. This volume examines some of these current issues and, in particular, explores common pro cesses of change that seem to cut across the addictive behaviors. The chapters are based on papers presented at the Third International Con ference on Treatment of Addictive Behaviors, which was held at North Berwick, Scotland, in August of 1984. The conference was organized around an integrative model of stages and processes of change that has been useful in organizing new knowledge about how to intervene with addictive behaviors. This model is set forth by its authors, Jim Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente, in Chapter 1. In Chapter 2, Fred Kanfer ex pounds his own model of self-regulation, which overlaps nicely with the Prochaska-DiClemente framework and provides a behavioral-theoretical context."

In the early 1980s the transtheoretical model of change was still in its infancy. Seminal publications were just appearing, but the model already seemed to hold such promise that we made it the organizing theme for the Third International Conference on Treatment of Addictive Behaviors (ICTAB-3), which convened in Scotland in 1984. That meeting gave rise to the first edition of this volume (Miller & Heather, 1986), which focused on processes involved in moving people from one stage to the next. With the volume still in print more than a decade later, we were approached by Plenum Press with the idea of preparing this second edition. We were, obvi ously, persuaded that there was merit to the idea. Since 1986 the work of Pro chaska and DiClemente has grown exponentially in popularity and influence. In Britain and the Americas, it is now unusual to find an addiction professional who has not at least heard about the stages of change, and more sophisticated applica tions of the transtheoretical model are spreading through health care systems and well beyond. The model has influenced professional training, health care delivery, and the design of many studies including a number of large clinical trials."

In the early 1980s the transtheoretical model of change was still in its infancy. Seminal publications were just appearing, but the model already seemed to hold such promise that we made it the organizing theme for the Third International Conference on Treatment of Addictive Behaviors (ICTAB-3), which convened in Scotland in 1984. That meeting gave rise to the first edition of this volume (Miller & Heather, 1986), which focused on processes involved in moving people from one stage to the next. With the volume still in print more than a decade later, we were approached by Plenum Press with the idea of preparing this second edition. We were, obvi ously, persuaded that there was merit to the idea. Since 1986 the work of Pro chaska and DiClemente has grown exponentially in popularity and influence. In Britain and the Americas, it is now unusual to find an addiction professional who has not at least heard about the stages of change, and more sophisticated applica tions of the transtheoretical model are spreading through health care systems and well beyond. The model has influenced professional training, health care delivery, and the design of many studies including a number of large clinical trials."

The central problem in the study of addiction is to explain why people repeatedly behave in ways they know are bad for them. For much of the previous century and until the present day, the majority of scientific and medical attempts to solve this problem were couched in terms of involuntary behavior; if people behave in ways they do not want, then this must be because the behavior is beyond their control and outside the realm of choice. An opposing tradition, which finds current support among scientists and scholars as well as members of the general public, is that so-called addictive behavior reflects an ordinary choice just like any other and that the concept of addiction is a myth. The editors and authors of this book tend to take neither view. There has been an increasing recognition in recent literature on addiction that restricting possible conceptions of it to either of these extreme positions is unhelpful and is retarding progress on understanding the nature of addiction and what could be done about it. This book contains a range of views from philosophy, neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology and the law on what exactly this middle ground between free choice and no choice consists of and what its implications are for theory, practice and policy on addiction. The result amounts to a profound change in our thinking on addiction and how its devastating consequences can be ameliorated. Addiction and Choice is a thought provoking new volume for all those with an interest in this global issue.

Choice, Behavioural Economics and Addiction is about the theory, data, and applied implications of choice-based models of substance use and addiction. The distinction between substance use and addiction is important, because many individuals use substances but are not also addicted to them. The behavioural economic perspective has made contributions to the analysis of both of these phenomena and, while the major focus of the book is on theories of addiction, it is necessary also to consider the behavioural economic account of substance use in order to place the theories in their proper context and provide full coverage of the contribution of behavioural economics to this field of study.
The book discusses the four major theories of addiction that have been developed in the area of economic science/behavioural economics. They are:
- hyperbolic discounting
- melioration
- relative addiction
- rational addiction
The main objective of the book is to popularise these ideas among addiction researchers, academics and practitioners. The specific aims are to articulate the shared and distinctive elements of these four theories, to present and discuss the latest empirical work on substance abuse and addiction that is being conducted in this area, and to articulate a range of applied implications of this body of work for clinical, public health and public policy initiatives.
The book is based on an invitation-only conference entitled, Choice, Behavioural Economics and Addiction: Theory, Evidence and Applications held at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, March 30 - April 1, 2001. The conference was attended by prominent scientists and scholars, representing a rangeof disciplines concerned with theories of addiction and their consequences for policy and practice. The papers in the book are based on the papers given at the above conference, together with commentaries by distinguished experts and, in many cases, replies to these comments by the presenters.