Now, everyone one of you who is reading this page is going to have an opinion about it, pro, con, or just plain confused. Despite this, very few of you will read the book that explains my assertions in detail, and this includes the "scientists" who wrote the article this page rebuts. They have their opinions and won't debate me just in case I show them their scientific hang-ups and biases are wrong. They will write me letters but won't debate me much like the creationists whose whole argument is based on belief and no science.

Let me ask you a question that should be easy as pie, but you will get it wrong. It is basically the question Dr. Lai is asking in his "research" but doesn't know it. The question is: Does cocaine cause cocaine addiction? The answer to this question is the key to understanding addictions and seems so obvious to everyone reading it. The correct answer is the difference between Hypoism and the P/R paradigm and everyone will get it wrong. Before I answer it, I must say that this question is exactly the same as the one answered by the "gateway" theory of addictions, and this is why it is the question that Dr. Lai asks but is unable to answer correctly or even comprehend the correct answer. This is why he will continue to do the same research, get the same result, make the same conclusions and be wrong every time. And, when I tell him he's wrong he'll not ask me to explain, he'll instead tell me I not entitled to question him. That's the only way he can get out of the debate, by making it personal and putting his pseudoauthority in the way of debate, just like the Pope does when asked a question, "I don't have to answer that because you're not entitled to ask it. God gives me the answer, not men, not science, not you." This is no way to win an argument if you claim to be a scientist.

So, what's the answer? All of you will say, yes, cocaine causes cocaine addiction. You are all wrong. I can ask this question to the same people a thousand times, tell them their answer is wrong, and they'll give me the same answer yet again. I say, "Read the book to discover why you're wrong as well as the to find the correct answer," and they won't. They just don't want to hear about it. So, they don't. That's where we are at in addictionology. The father says, "I don't want to hear about it. Shut up and go away." He wins? Nope. Everyone loses, right? Of course. Because fathers don't always know best.

Let me answer the question for you correctly. I bet you think I'm nuts when you hear it, but this, of course is the difference between reality and belief, between what you're able to conceive of and what you can't, based on your biases, on your biases.

The answer is, NO. Cocaine doesn't cause cocaine addiction. Cocaine addiction is present at birth in hypoics only. Remember? Hypoics are born not made. But, you say, how is that possible? If a person doesn't take cocaine he won't and can't be a cocaine addict. And that's the concept you can't get. And that's the difference between the reality and falsehood of addictions. YOU ALL ARE FOCUSING ON THE ADDICTIONS INSTEAD OF ON THE DISEASE. I've said it a thousand times: You are missing the forest for the trees. The forest is the disease, the mechanism in the brain, the trees are the individual addictions. Just as Dr. Lai's article focused on smoking and cocaine addiction, so do you. Smoking and cocaine addiction are irrelevant unless you keep focusing on them. Then, of course, you miss the forest for the trees. Again - the addictions aren't the issue here. They are but symptoms. Who cares about symptoms once the diagnosis of the disease is made? No doctor does. A good doctor focuses on the disease and deals with the disease despite what the symptoms are doing. He knows that once the disease is dealt with, the symptoms will disappear. But the doctor who keeps chasing the symptoms misses the disease and catches his own tail, ouch. Ouch for him and ouch for the patient. This difference is the difference between a real doctor and a jerk who thinks he's a doctor. And, of course, you all think you're doctors. That's why you think your opinions matter. They don't, because you're not only not doctors, you're bad doctors. You don't know what a real doctor is or does. He doesn't chase symptoms. He goes after the disease. Dr. Lai is chasing addictions, symptoms, like the rest of addictionology, and thereby they miss the disease. They are the quintessential bad doctors. Most likely they are bad doctors for other diseases as well because they don't know what a good doctor is, they don't know what good medicine is, they never did and probably never will. Why do I bother arguing with them? Good question. But it's to get a debate. Otherwise there will be no debate because addictionology is comprised of only these guys. So, to stimulate a public debate that informs the public, I must debate these bad doctors.

Back to the question: does the addictor (drugs, behaviors) cause the addiction? Answer: No. The addiction is irrelevant. The right question is: Does this person have the disease of Hypoism and how shall we help him with it? We keep asking, "What do we do with such and such addiction?" Wrong question. What's the right question? Does this person have Hypoism or not, and how do we help him?

Why is this the right question and the right answer both at the same time? Because it deals with the disease, not the symptom. Someone with an out of control disease will have many symptoms, many addictions, and many other problems as well. Chasing the addictions only gets you dizzy and doesn't help anyone. Dealing realistically with the disease takes care of all current and future symptoms without having to deal with a single one of the symptoms individually. So, cocaine doesn't cause cocaine addiction, hypoism does. Deal with the Hypoism and the addiction goes away along with all the other symptoms. Deal with the cocaine addiction and the addiction may or may not go away, but, nevertheless, the disease continues to kill the patient. Do you see the difference in perspective now? Do you see why it matters whether the chicken or the egg came first? The egg, the genes, the disease came first. The chicken, the individual addictions, come afterwards. Don't focus on the chicken, focus on the disease, the egg. From the egg grows the cocaine addict, the alcohol addict, the sex addict, the religious fanatic, the violence addict, the workaholic, the anorectic, etc. Who cares about the individual addictions? Get the disease right and all these symptoms disappear.

Let me show you how focusing on the individual addictions has messed up addictionology over the last 100 years.

100 years ago, addictions were bad and immoral.

65 years ago, Bill Wilson said alcoholism (an addiction) was a disease.

Addictionology took 64 years to catch up to this wrong concept because they've been stuck in psychobabble for 99 years.

Now I come along and say, Hypoism is the disease that causes all addictions and addictionology says, NO, each addiction is a disease. Alcoholism is a disease. Heroin addiction is a disease. Sex addiction "may" be a disease. Notice the emphasis. To addictionology, the disease only occurs after the addiction is thoroughly in place. Wrong. The disease was there at birth. The addictions happen one at a time as the hypoic lives and experiences them inexorably.

Look at this person:

He is born in a family. The family has a history that we will get back to in a second. The person is born and 1) cries more than most babies, or, sucks his thumb for a long time, or wets his bed too much, or gets too fat, or injures himself more than most, or plays with his penis too much, or, etc. 2) Has trouble in school, gets homesick too much in camp, gets hung up on cleaning his room, or other stuff, etc. 3) Is too perfectionistic or too sloppy, beats up other kids, wants to have sex with girls too early, eats too much ice cream or cake, etc. 4) is too nervous or too depressed, too fidgety, or too whatever. 5) hangs out with goofy friends 6) does quite well in school or too poorly, underachieves and overachieves. 7) starts smoking at early age 8) etc. etc.…… 22) makes too much money 23) uses cocaine and gets addicted to cocaine. The addictionologist looks at this guy and says: smoking leads to cocaine addiction. All the other stuff is psychological blah blah and different and unrelated.

Lets look at his family now. Many generations and many family members are available to study. There are 50 people to study. There is one alcoholic, one homosexual priest, one massively obese, one pedophile, one philanderer, one anorectic, one workaholic, one gambler, one psychedelic goof, one shoplifter and thief, one spousal abuser and three abused spouses, etc. etc. Do statistics on the family. Conclusion: cocaine addiction is not hereditary. Alcohol addiction is not hereditary. Sex addiction is not hereditary, etc. etc. These behaviors must be environmental. No connection except that the family sure is fucked up. They must teach each other to be fucked up. No mechanism. No disease.

The Hypoism specialist takes a look at the guy and his family and concludes: severe genetic hypoism in most members of the family. Clear cut genetic mechanism involving the reward mechanism and neurotransmitter deficiencies in the decision-making apparatus leading to drug and behavioral addictions, and other bad decisions, all unconscious.

Do you see now how different this addict and his family looks to a P/R paradigm addictionologist compared to a Hypoism addictionologist?

Are addictions genetic? Are addictions caused by the addictors? Are addictions the or a disease? Isn't it clear that it depends on how you look at the people and the families. If you look for specific behaviors these people look different and the answers are NO, YES, YES. If you look for patterns of similar behaviors, all addictions, then the family disease is seen and their behaviors make sense, and the answers are YES, NO, NO. Addictionology has for years been looking for only specific addictions within families to see if they're inherited such as, "Is alcoholism genetic," instead of, "Is there a disease in this family that is inherited and causes all these different behaviors?" Because they have asked the wrong questions and looked at the wrong things they have come up with heritability numbers that are high, but still less than 100%. Less than 100% leaves room for the wrong conclusion: addictions are part genetic and part environmental. The mistake addictionology has consistently made over the last 100 years is to ask the wrong questions, look at the wrong things, and come up the wrong conclusions, all because they have been looking at the specific addictions as if they were individual entities and missing that they are all part of one entity. Again: Does cocaine cause cocaine addiction? NO. Hypoism causes cocaine addiction and 60 or so other addictions as well as many other symptoms previously not hooked up with any underlying disease other than the generalization - "this family is sure fucked up." Wrong!

The entire field of addictionology needs to change perspective as discussed in my article, The Third Millennium Keynote Address on Hypoism, and start asking the right questions, seeing the right things, finding the common denominator causing all this stuff, and coming to the right conclusion: All individual addictions are symptoms caused by a single but individually and genetically diverse entity, Hypoism, that is inherited 100% and causes the disease of addictions whether a specific addictor (such as cocaine) is present or not. The slight genetic variations between individual hypoics (as all people are slightly diverse genetically except for identical twins) causes the slight differences in how the Hypoism is manifest from one hypoic to the next. The presence or absence of a specific addictor or addiction in the individual hypoic's life makes no difference whatsoever in the overall picture of the disease in the individual, only in the specific symptoms he may or may not manifest. The individual hypoic still needs the correct recovery for his disease as discussed in Hypoic's Handbook irrespective of which symptom or group of symptoms he has.