ABSTRACT

As research has rushed to catch up with the huge influx of alcoholics and addicts who began to enter treatment in the 1970s, it soon discovered that treatment strategies that worked for the non-addicted patient would not necessarily work for the addicted individual. Foremost among these strategical inadequacies was the increased use of drugs or medication by primary care physicians for the treatment of mental and behavioral disorders. While modern psychiatry was moving more and more toward defining mental illness as a biochemical disorder requiring pharmacological intervention, addiction treatment was heading in the other direction. Drugs and medication were not the answer; they were the problem! Since modern medicine and pharmacology did not have the answer for addiction, addicted individuals had to turn elsewhere for help and a solution for their disorders. This failure had previously lead to the revolution of the self-help movement and Alcoholics Anonymous in the 1940s. The psychological and medical community has still not completely recovered from this revolution and is trying to discover what role, if any, it has in the treatment of addiction.