A paradigm^{1. discussed at end of piece} is an overall concept dealing with any particular issue. It dictates causation and consequences. It can be correct as easily as it can be wrong. It can be based on fantasy, delusion, and superstition as easily as it can be based on reality. It can be believed or disbelieved. However, in actuality, there is only one correct paradigm for any particular issue, whether it be known or not, and no matter how many people believe otherwise. All incorrect paradigms will lead to wrong or at least inconsistent and randomly successful policies (ways to deal with and use the issue for which the paradigm was devised). For example, gravity is a paradigm. It always has its effect no matter what other paradigms about the same issue are believed by anyone. No matter how you feel about it, if you jump off the Empire State Building you will not fly but will splatter on the sidewalk every single time you jump. Poison will kill you if you drink it even if you believe it is harmless or even good for you. Moreover, it will kill you if you understand how it acts on your body or if you don't. Paradigms don't care about what anyone believes or understands. They just are. They are either true or false and they have their effects no matter what anyone believes.

Current addictionology is directed by an incorrect paradigm. It's like the golfer (addiction expert) who keeps slicing the ball (addicts) into the lake, but instead of changing his swing (paradigm, beliefs), blames and changes the ball. The golfer keeps slicing, hooking, topping, and shanking, but the balls still gleefully hop onto the tee and end up anywhere but where they want to be. Only when the balls realize they need to find golfers who hit them straight will they end up on the fairways and greens where they belong. One definition of insanity is, "doing the same thing and expecting different results." Believing the same thing and expecting different results is also insanity. If we keep believing nonsense and expect success, we are to blame.

Wrong paradigms occasionally, by fortuitous chance, have outcomes you desire or even occasionally predict, such as guessing heads or tails. When this happens, people can come to the conclusion that the paradigm on which the outcome was derived was the cause when, in fact, it wasn't. On the other hand, correct paradigms always produce and predict the actual outcome even when they aren't known or appreciated. The former is superstition and the latter is science. The history of man is that of superstitious paradigms eventually being replaced by scientific ones, irrespective of peoples' beliefs and desires.

Before bacteria were discovered as the cause of infectious disease, people believed all kinds of things about infections. One such infectious paradigm was called the "Miasma" paradigm of infections known at that time as suppurations, producers of pus, because the word infection hadn't been invented yet. Whether people liked it or not, knew about it or not, bacteria continued to interact with the human body according to the dictates of the actual paradigm of bacteria and the body's immune defenses. Occasionally, people recovered from infections after they were treated by the miasma paradigm's treatment regimens by the then current experts in miasma. The experts took the credit for these successes and blamed the victims if they happened instead to fail to produce a cure.

Believing they and their paradigm were responsible for the successes, these experts long promoted their miasma paradigm, ignoring another paradigm, even when this was the correct paradigm. Of course, this obstreperousness and closed-mindedness caused undo death and suffering for the vast majority of people infected with bacteria. The experts didn't seem to be concerned about this. They were more concerned with their paradigm and their power. Point: Just because there is a random success, it doesn't mean the paradigm is responsible for the success or that the paradigm is correct. The following rendition of this story is from Hypoic's Handbook, in its attempt to discuss the paradigm problem in addictionology today.

"This particular principle is illustrated by the story of Dr. Ignaz Semmelwies and child bed fever in the 1840's. This story is about deadly infections in otherwise healthy poor women giving birth in hospitals in the 1840-50's before the discovery of bacteria as the cause of infections. The cause was attributed to overcrowding, poverty, poor ventilation or, "miasma" which was defined as some bad spirit in the air (a clearly superstitious explanation, as we know well today). Then, as now, when people didn't understand a problem, they attributed its cause to some superstitious idea and even frequently blamed the patient for causing it him/herself.

When women gave birth at home, they didn't get puerperal sepsis. It occurred only in hospital wards for poor women, women giving birth out of wedlock, or in women with some other complication of delivery that necessitated hospitalization. Dr. S. was working in the field of obstetrics at a time when the medical establishment was resigned to the existence of PS and its unpreventable nature under its current paradigm of thought. Dr. S. began to research this unresolved reality over the strong objections of experts in the field. He noticed a simple correlation between the high incidence of PS in a group of women (first division) whose babies were delivered by medical students and a low incidence in the second division who were delivered by midwives. He saw the students come out of the dissection room to deliver. He hypothesized that the students were carrying something on them from the dissection room into the delivery room. He instructed the students to wash their hands between the morgue and the delivery room and was immediately rewarded with a drop in PS from 25 percent to 1.2 percent, and eventually 0 percent. The medical establishment strongly opposed his new idea, leading to his ostracism. Despite this, he continued his work and wrote many papers on the subject, but the value of the idea was never fully appreciated in his lifetime. He died in a mental hospital after suffering a nervous breakdown resulting from his ostracism and failure to have his idea accepted by the medical community. Eventually, his ideas became standard practice and led to the revolution in the bacterial etiology of infectious disease, which became the new and present scientifically based paradigm. Superstition, ignorance, and failed policy were finally replaced by science, knowledge, and successful policies. The superstitious paradigm was replaced by the scientific paradigm. This is the story of advances in medicine in general."

Currently, addictionology, be it based on psychiatric, medical, pharmacologic, religious, A.A., S.O.S., Moderation Management, Rational Recovery, or any number of other paradigms, is in the position of the Miasma paradigm of infectious diseases in the 1840's. These paradigms are incorrect and have damaging effects on addicts no matter how many people believe them or how important these people are. Because there is an occasional and random superficial success with an addict using one or the other of them to get sober, they are believed and promoted as true. Addicts who fail to achieve sobriety according to these paradigms are judged to be at fault, not the paradigms themselves. Addicts and their families are crucified on the crosses of these wrong paradigms and believe they truly are guilty and hopeless. "The experts must be right. They are the experts," we all passively say en mass.

Well, the history of medicine is replete with paradigms and their experts being 100% wrong until the correct paradigm somehow forces itself into our consciousness and takes over with all around and consistent success in all areas of the issue. In the case of addictions this ranges from recovery to attitudes to public policy. Remember, the paradigm is either correct or incorrect, it's never both. Moreover, when it's correct, it's provable, not just believable.

Does the true addiction paradigm exist today? Not quite. If it did, would we be scrambling around with the drug war, superstitious treatments and recoveries, hundreds of thousands of addicts in jail and dying each year, and infinite numbers of randomly effective treatments among addicts, from "medications" to acupuncture to religion to psychotherapy to various meetings to meditations to various rituals and other unproven and baseless practices? What exactly is the current paradigm of addiction? What is the pathophysiology? How has it been proven? These answers don't exist because there is no correct paradigm today. The current adage, "There are as many answers to addictions as there are addicts. We must apply the right one to the right addict," is nonsense we no longer can or will stand to hear. No other correct paradigm works this way. The correct paradigm works in all instances whether we know about it or are ignorant of it.

If we want the correct answers to these questions we must first admit the current paradigms are wrong, dump them in totality, and honestly begin the search for the correct paradigm.

The following quote presents us with the only admission of the current addiction paradigm vacuum, but the addictionology field has ignored it, to the detriment of their integrity and honesty. In Chapter 8, Psychodynamics, from Substance Abuse- A Comprehensive Textbook, Ed. by Lowenson and Ruiz, the bible of the present addiction paradigm, is the following statement by the authors of the chapter in the opening paragraph: "Unraveling the etiology of substance abuse continues to be a challenge. There have been many technological advances in understanding the chemistry of human behavior, including the highly significant discovery of opiate receptor sites and endorphins, as well as other neurotransmitter systems. However, the substance abuse field continues to be in a PREPARADIGM stage of development, suggesting a lack of agreement between theory and treatment. Sederer notes: To set foot into the field of psychiatry (or the addictions) is to encounter an overwhelming mass of clinical data, hypothetical notions, and theoretical constructs. Dopamine mingles with denial, and serotonin with symbiosis. Defenses and divorce appear as meaningful, and influential, as gamma aminobutyric acid and the endorphins. Urban drift, ego-deficits, and ventricular enlargement may be found rubbing conceptual shoulders.’"

Preparadigm means no paradigm.

I have attempted to synthesize the Hypoism paradigm of addictions from the current realities and science of neurobiology, how the brain works, and how addicts seem to work, and, more importantly, how they don't work. I don't claim it is correct, but Hypoism is testable and provable (or disprovable). Hypoism fits the clinical picture of addicts and addictions more thoroughly and completely than do the wrong paradigms. Hypoism is based on a pathophysiology which predicts and deals with all problems and all aspects of the problems faced by addicts, not just one or another of them. The current addiction paradigms have no neurobiological basis and don't deal with all these aspects. They are based on psychobabble and unsubstantiated and haphazard empiricisms. They don't explain or remedy the obvious difficulties we are having with addicts and addictions. Hypoism explains why the drug war, prevention efforts, and current recovery and treatments don't work completely, consistently, and thoroughly.

Yet, we persist in using the incorrect and clearly unproved (actually disproved but this hasn't been and won't be admitted) paradigm. That is caused by the very nature of humans as superstitious beings. Even after the correct paradigm exists, humans would rather, in many instances, believe their superstitions in place of proven science. The evolution/creationism schism is a deep example of this human trait. I'm not AGAINST beliefs or religions. They are instinctive and part of our common humanity. However, I'm rather FOR reality and FOR using reality for materialistic (life on earth) purposes. You wouldn't suggest defying the paradigms of gravity or infectious diseases while living on earth because of some religious belief, would you? Well, we are doing just that today in our misguided attempts at dealing with addictions. Please, believe whatever you want, but use and scientifically research Hypoism as a way to finally discover the true paradigm causing addictions.

Whether it is true or just a bridge to the true addiction paradigm, Hypoism is what we need right now to modernize addictionology. Please read the book, the complete paradigm and its scientific basis is not on this web site, to see for yourself whether it lives up to my claims. Either way, I hope you realize we are currently without the real addiction paradigm and to continue using the impostor paradigms is senseless and hurtful, even for those of you who believe you have found the best paradigm for yourself. This false belief perpetuates the current and future harm to all other addicts and to those of you who will, god forbid, relapse.