Preface

So, here you are browsing through the addiction books. Let's see if this one is right for you. Before you do anything else, go to the appendix and view the questionnaire. Look through the questions. No, they're not to see if you're an addict or not. That's up to you to decide. The questions are there to give you an idea of your attitudes and knowledge about addictions. Are you able to answer them easily? Are you confident in your answers? Do you honestly feel you have a good grasp on addictions: the different types of addictions, their cause, their treatment, and their morality? Do you know what makes an addict and what your prejudices and biases are regarding addictions? Do you feel our medical, psychiatric, detoxification, rehabilitation, criminal justice, legal, pharmaceutical, social work, academic, political, and drug war communities have a good grasp on addictions? Do you feel that, in our culture, everything regarding addictions is hunky-dory? Do we have addictions under good control? Is the present and prevailing concept of addictions successful in diagnosing, treating, and preventing addictions? Do you think our current concept of addictions is the real story? Do you think that, other than just filling in some biological details, not much more needs to be learned about addictions, and that the treatment and prevention of addictions based on this concept is as effective as it can possibly be? Do you think that our concept of addictions is correct and based on the correct premises, and that all we need to do is work harder (and do more of what we are already doing) to get the residual problems of addictions totally under control?

On the other hand, like me, do you think we are in a big mess concerning addictions, because our entire societies' views on addictions are wrong and that the whole psychological-psychiatric-moralistic-legal premise is wrong?

If you agree that we are in a big mess concerning addictions, then buy this book. If you think all is well, put the book back right now. Don't even look at the next line. This book is not for you. If you think all is well, there is no way in the world that you will get a single thing out of this book. If you think things are a mess, you will get more than you ever hoped out of this book. I detail thoroughly the mess we are in, how we got there, why we got there, why we are staying there, and what forces are making sure we stay there. Yes, there is a conspiracy, not necessarily conscious, but one just the same, to keep addictions all messed up. If your ears just perked up, you're in the right place.

Although you're in the right place, you still may be surprised, angered, and startled by most of what is going to be discovered when reading this book. This book may be the most irreverent and realistic book you will ever see about what asses we are as people, why we are this way, and why we insist on staying this way. Most of your concrete ideas about human nature are going to be shaken by this book. I do not hold anything back in my discussion of addictions, what causes them, where they originate, and what societal delusions are maintaining the present status quo about addictions in such a disastrous mess. Would you believe that the present paradigm on addictions is actually perpetuating this mess and damaging countless addicts and their families right this second? If you said yes, then you are right.

This book attempts, in an organized and straightforward manner, to define a totally new paradigm, a totally new global conception of addictions. This new paradigm is based solely on new information about neurobiology as well as newly invented and hypothesized neurologic mechanisms, whose existence is derived and synthesized from evolutionary biology, neurosciences, genetics and clinical addictionology. It is a paradigm which, for the first time, puts all the vagaries and exceptional occurrences of clinical addictionology (real addictions in real people) into one single and simple picture with one simple cause, one simple diagnosis, and one simple (though not necessarily easy) recovery process. Moreover, it puts all addictions there, not just drugs and booze. It shows how they all come from the same disorder, have a common thinking disorder, cause the same kind of messes in all areas of life, and require the same kind of simple recovery process, all for the same reason. This is why I call it a paradigm -"The HYPOISM PARADIGM" Read the book and find out why.

Hypoic's Handbook is a synthesis on as broad a scale as called for by E. O. Wilson in his recent book, Consilience. He predicted, "When we have unified enough certain knowledge, we will understand who we are and why we are here." I don't agree with "why we are here," but I do agree with "who and what we are." Science, particularly genetics, is the only realistic intellectual force capable of unifying not merely the human race, but all organisms and ecosystems which make up the planet earth. In its largest sense, Hypoic's Handbook is an attempt to enable this outcome. Addiction, via Hypoism, is an unintended consequence of human genetic diversity. This fact should be appreciated and celebrated by science, rather than denigrated, judged, suppressed, and condemned by the psychological/religious (P/R) paradigm, the paradigm that this book replaces. Through the perpetuation of corticolimbic dissociation the (P/R) paradigm insists on maintaining this destructive and murderously superstitious philosophical stance. Hypoic's Handbook puts an end to this damaging superstition, once and for all.

Other reasons to buy the book: If you are an addict, if you think you might be an addict, or might be addicted to something or someone. If you are having a relationship with an addict of some sort. If you are thinking of having one. If there is an addict of some sort in your family. If someone in your family is having a relationship with an addict of some sort, or thinking about it. Or, if you're just interested.

Buy the book, read it thoroughly, and then go out and change the world! This new paradigm, in the right hands, yours, will change the world, yes, one person at a time. Now go out and do it!

I want to thank all the people who helped me refine the ideas in this book and all the people who encouraged me to continue despite being daunted by the publication process. I also want to thank all the hateful people in the field of addictions who kept me angrily focused on completing this task if for only one reason, to shut them up. Some of them are mentioned in the book, most not, but I remember who you are. Thanks to Bert Johnson for his infinite support, experience, and consultations, Karen Lubrano for her acceptance, ear, and loving affection, Jason Lubrano for his killer drawings, John Andracchi and Wayne Wiener for their A.A. experiences and wisdom, Joseph Pennello for his help with graphics, Carlotta Schuster, M.D. of N.Y.C, for her validation of and agreement with me and my ideas, Judi Lynn Lake and Lake Graphics for invaluable graphics assistance, Maureen Clancy of mc2 Associates, and Shellie Hurrle for editing and proofing (shelliehurrle@msn.com), the Rockville Centre Public Library and The State University of New York at Stony Brook for letting me use their libraries and tolerating my dog, Lady, chewing on their book covers. Thanks to WFUV from Fordham University in New York for supplying the hours of music that kept my brain occupied while I worked on this book. And thanks to Compaq, Microsoft, and Hewlett-Packard for the technology which made it so easy to write the book.