Therapist's Guide to Addiction Medicine

Throughout his three plus decades as an addiction medicine specialist, Dr. Barry Solof has observed that many well-meaning therapists and counselors working in the field seem to know relatively little about the biological and medical aspects of addiction. This knowledge deficit leads to sub-optimal care and incomplete treatment for an extremely vulnerable patient population. The Therapist’s Guide to Addiction Medicine is written to give therapists and counselors the information and tools needed to help their clients successfully recover from addiction. It highlights current trends in how addiction is understood and treated, including the medications that are increasingly proving to have promising addiction treatment applications, as well as the medicalization of addiction as a chronic, progressive, and incurable disease, similar to diabetes, asthma, and heart disease. This is an inclusive volume that covers a wide range of topics related to addiction and its treatment: dynamics, neurochemistry, drugs of abuse, and process addictions, such as gambling, food, and sex.