The Urge

Informationen zum Autor Carl Erik Fisher is an addiction physician and bioethicist. He is an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, where he works in the Division of Law, Ethics, and Psychiatry. He also maintains a private psychiatry practice focusing on complementary and integrative approaches to treating addiction. His writing has appeared in Nautilus, Slate, and Scientific American MIND , among other outlets. Klappentext Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and The Boston Globe An authoritative, illuminating, and deeply humane history of addictiona phenomenon that remains baffling and deeply misunderstood despite having touched countless livesby an addiction psychiatrist striving to understand his own family and himself Carl Erik Fisher's The Urge is the best-written and most incisive book I've read on the history of addiction. A propulsive tour de force that is as healing as it is enjoyable to read. Beth Macy, author of Dopesick As a psychiatrist in training fresh from medical school, Carl Erik Fisher found himself face-to-face with an addiction crisis that nearly cost him everything. Desperate to make sense of his condition, he turned to the history of addiction, learning that our society's current quagmire is only part of a centuries-old struggle to treat addictive behavior. A rich, sweeping account that probes not only medicine and science but also literature, religion, philosophy, and public policy, The Urge introduces us to those who have endeavored to address addiction through the ages and examines the treatments that have produced relief for many people, the author included. Only by reckoning with our history of addiction, Fisher argues, can we light the way forward for those whose lives remain threatened by its hold. The Urge is at once an eye-opening history of ideas, a riveting personal story of addiction and recovery, and a clinician's urgent call for a more nuanced and compassionate view of one of society's most intractable challenges. Leseprobe One Foundations: Before "Addiction" I get an immediate sense of how Susan's doing from the moment she walks through my office door. When she's not drinking, she's meticulously groomed, hair just so, sharp business-formal blazers and crisp shirts over her tense, thin frame. But today, I can tell, she's slightly off. Over the years I've learned the tells. A little too much perfume to mask the smell of morning drinks. Hair askew. Rumpled shirt. Slightly sloppy makeup. I've also seen her in total crisis, with dirt caked under her fingernails and alcohol fumes lingering in the room long after she leaves. But to her, just to be drinking at all feels like a crisis. She identifies as an alcoholic, she is certain that she wants to stop drinking, and yet she does not, and this is what she hates the most-the disorder, the lack of control. I can see she is struggling with this feeling now. She tells me about the most recent relapse. Alone in her room, she felt restless, and she couldn't get the thought of drinking out of her mind. She had firmly decided that she wouldn't have wine that night. She absolutely would not go to the liquor store. Then, in a twisted compromise, she watched herself walk to the corner store and buy a few bottles of vanilla extract. The vile liquid made her drunk, then sick to her stomach, she tells me. Eyes wide, she says, "It was ridiculous." These days in my psychiatry practice, I mostly see people with complicated substance use problems: people who still struggle after spending thousands of dollars on rehabs and outpatient programs, people for whom the traditional treatments don't work nearly often enough. Susan has gone to those programs-both the old-school abstinence-based rehabs and ...

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Carl Erik Fisher is an addiction physician and bioethicist. He is an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, where he works in the Division of Law, Ethics, and Psychiatry. He also maintains a private psychiatry practice focusing on complementary and integrative approaches to treating addiction. His writing has appeared in Nautilus, Slate, and Scientific American MIND, among other outlets.

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*Named a Best Book of the Year by *The New Yorker and The Boston Globe

An authoritative, illuminating, and deeply humane history of addiction—a phenomenon that remains baffling and deeply misunderstood despite having touched countless lives—by an addiction psychiatrist striving to understand his own family and himself

“Carl Erik Fisher’s The Urge is the best-written and most incisive book I’ve read on the history of addiction. In the midst of an overdose crisis that grows worse by the hour and has vexed America for centuries, Fisher has given us the best prescription of all: understanding. He seamlessly blends a gripping historical narrative with memoir that doesn’t self-aggrandize; the result is a full-throated argument against blaming people with substance use disorder. The Urge is a propulsive tour de force that is as healing as it is enjoyable to read.” —Beth Macy, author of Dopesick

As a psychiatrist in training fresh from medical school, Carl Erik Fisher found himself face-to-face with an addiction crisis that nearly cost him everything. Desperate to make sense of his condition, he turned to the history of addiction, learning that our society’s current quagmire is only part of a centuries-old struggle to treat addictive behavior.

A rich, sweeping account that probes not only medicine and science but also literature, religion, philosophy, and public policy, The Urge introduces us to those who have endeavored to address addiction through the ages and examines the treatments that have produced relief for many people, the author included. Only by reckoning with our history of addiction, Fisher argues, can we light the way forward for those whose lives remain threatened by its hold.

The Urge is at once an eye-opening history of ideas, a riveting personal story of addiction and recovery, and a clinician’s urgent call for a more nuanced and compassionate view of one of society’s most intractable challenges.

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One

 

Foundations: Before "Addiction"

 

I get an immediate sense of how Susan's doing from the moment she walks through my office door. When she's not drinking, she's meticulously groomed, hair just so, sharp business-formal blazers and crisp shirts over her tense, thin frame. But today, I can tell, she's slightly off. Over the years I've learned the tells. A little too much perfume to mask the smell of morning drinks. Hair askew. Rumpled shirt. Slightly sloppy makeup.

 

I've also seen her in total crisis, with dirt caked under her fingernails and alcohol fumes lingering in the room long after she leaves. But to her, just to be drinking at all feels like a crisis. She identifies as an alcoholic, she is certain that she wants to stop drinking, and yet she does not, and this is what she hates the most-the disorder, the lack of control. I can see she is struggling with this feeling now.

 

She tells me about the most recent relapse. Alone in her room, she felt restless, and she couldn't get the thought of drinking out of her mind. She had firmly decided that she wouldn't have wine that night. She absolutely would not go to the liquor store. Then, in a twisted compromise, she watched herself walk to the corner store and buy a few bottles of vanilla extract.

 

The vile liquid made her drunk, then sick to her stomach, she tells me. Eyes wide, she says, "It was ridiculous."

 

These days in my psychiatry practice, I mostly see people with complicated substance use problems: people who still struggle after spending thousands of dollars on rehabs and outpatient…