Nobody chooses to be addicted. But as people become increasingly hooked, they may increasingly choose to take the pill or the drink, to gamble or to purge, and that’s the thing we need to examine.

When most people hear the word addiction, they picture someone whose life has visibly unravelled. Yet addiction is often ...

Addiction is not simply a chronic brain disease and considering it as such can limit treatment options and increase stigma, an extensive research review suggests. After decades of research, Professor ...

Carl Hart, a neuroscientist at Columbia University, writes about the choices addicts make in his new book, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery that Challenges Everything You Know ...

For years, addiction was seen as a matter of personal failure—a bad habit or a lack of discipline. People believed those who struggled with substance abuse could stop if they simply wanted to. But ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American The prevailing wisdom today is that addiction ...

This post was updated April 2 at 10:06 p.m. Dr. Julio Meza lost two family members to addiction-related illnesses when he was a child. Now, as a UCLA Health physician, he leads a program providing ...