Hypoic's Handbook: The Hypoism Paradigm of Addiction by Dan F. Umanoff, M.D. (Umanoff, $25). "Addictions are not caused by the addictors, the drugs, the behaviors, or the beliefs, but by a genetically diverse brain mechanism which has evolved over millennia to enhance human survival," says Umanoff, a recovering addict and hypoic. "Addictions are not controllable, changeable, treatable, or preventable in the currently used sense of these words. And the idea that addicts are teachable and amenable to therapy, in the usual sense of [therapy], stands between [us] and the reality of addictions."

This complex book discusses addictions as an unintentional consequence of evolutionary diversity in the brain's limbic system that evolved many thousands of years ago to deal with survival issues in the absence of massive availability of addictors; explains that the current analysis of addiction and our social reaction to it is wrong-headed, ineffective and even harmful because it is misperceived as antisocial rather than as a behavioral symptom of an unconscious survival enhancing neurobiological entity; and explains how and why we must stop discriminating against addicts, stop focusing on removing addictions, and focus instead on the recovery from the underlying disease of Hypoism that causes these symptoms.

Hyposim is a "chronic, progressive, and frequently fatal, albeit recoverable, thinking and decision-making disorder resulting from physiologic deficiencies of the limbic neurotransmitter systems as part of the instinct decision-making apparatus leading inexorably to addictions, disastrous decisions, and evaluation mistakes," Umanoff says.

Addictions are not "conscious manifestations of choice, stupidity, or shmuckiness ... Rather,addictions to a hypoic are unconsciously derived behavioral symptoms of a primary underlying internal entity, not primary entities or diseases themselves [and] not caused by outside forces... Until we transform addictionology from witchcraft and superstition, the current beliefs about the origins of addictions, into modern medicine we will perpetuate exactly what we all say we don't want."

Umanoff advocates that addiction should be decriminalized because it is a disease and not a badness, and addicts should be given free legal and other advocacy against discrimination. His discussion is thorough, deeply informed, impassioned, and often outraged. His idea for a national association for addicts was awarded the Best Social Innovation for the year 2000 in the Welfare Category by The Institute for Social Inventions of the United Kingdom.

He refers to his book as "a good first attempt by anyone to couple all the currently known science of addiction, genetics, neurobiology, and evolutionary psychology with 12-Step recovery to produce a nonsuperstitious recovery program that can enhance recovery and make recovery more accessible to all addicts, no matter what their spiritual beliefs." In so doing, he makes addictions more understandable and palatable to the general public, thus allowing for necessary public policy changes concernung addictions. The book is available at dumanoff@optonline.net or www.hypoism.com.