Webinar: Retiring the Brain Disease Model of Addiction. And Then What?
EditorATN Webinar: Retiring the Brain Disease Model of Addiction. And Then What?
Featuring: Bruce K. Alexander
When? 19/04/2022; 1600-1730 Edinburgh; 0800 Vancouver; 1100 New York; 1700 Paris
Update: Full webinar video now available at ATN Webinar featuring Bruce Alexander Retiring the Brain Disease Model of Addiction BDMA And Then
The free event will be held via MS Teams. Those interested in attending must register by clicking this : Meeting Signup.
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Event description:
In this Addiction Theory Network (ATN) webinar, Bruce Alexander examines why, despite theoretical shortcomings and limited therapeutic utility, the Brain Disease Model of Addiction (BDMA) continues to dominate the field of addiction. He argues that we should turn our attention away from neurological determinism – and every other kind of determinism – towards a focus on the adaptive functions that drug use and other addictive pursuits serve for people in the modern world, notwithstanding the harms they can bring. He further argues that an ‘adaptive paradigm’ will not only lead to improved prevention and treatment for drug addiction, but will also focus attention on even more ruinous kinds of addiction that seriously threaten the emerging world society of the 21st century.
The event is for anyone interested in contemporary approaches to addiction theory and intervention which go outside the standard biomedical model.
Bruce Alexander will speak for approximately 45 minutes and there will then be opportunity for questions and discussion. Please note that a recording of the Webinar will be made available online.
Speaker: Bruce K. Alexander
Bruce K. Alexander is professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University, Canada. Having, with his colleagues, conducted ground-breaking ‘rat park’ studies in the 1970s, his more recent contributions (e.g., The Globalization of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit; 2008) examine the wider contexts in which addictions arise and are maintained.
Organisers: Addiction Theory Network (ATN)
Please see https://addictiontheorynetwork.org/ for more information about the ATN.
