From one of the world’s leading experts on addiction, a paradigm shift that shows us why we’ve gotten addiction wrong—and how to get it right

As a culture, many of us have long regarded addiction as an illness without a cure. Even worse, some have regarded addiction not as a disease at all, but as a moral failing or a lack of willpower. While progress has been made in our understanding of addiction—its genetic inheritance, its neurobiology, its link to trauma—our perspective on interventions, treatment, and outcomes has remained largely the same.

Now, in Treatable, leading addiction expert and Harvard Medical School physician Dr. Sarah Wakeman challenges us to consider: What if we’ve gotten it all wrong? What if, in fact, people with substance use disorder are not weak or hopeless or doomed? What if notions like allowing them to hit “rock bottom” or issuing hard ultimatums or sending them to “rehab” were, in fact, making them sicker instead of helping them get well? And what if much of the addiction treatment system—the very body empowered to help people with addiction—was frequently so rife with bias, fraud, and non evidence-based models of care that, actually, very few people seeking care receive the help they need?

In Treatable, Dr. Wakeman helps us see that the stigma associated with addiction has kept us from fully adopting the many evidence-based approaches that have been proven to work, and news headlines keep us from seeing the full picture: recovery is not only possible, it is the most likely result. We hear about the overdose deaths, but not about the 22 million Americans who have recovered from an alcohol or drug problem—about one in ten adults.

For the first time, Dr. Sarah Wakeman sets the record straight on a disease that is as prevalent in our society as diabetes, but which receives much less attention, compassion, and care. Through the stories of her own patients, she shows that addiction is not hopeless or untreatable. With medication and supportive, holistic care, it can be managed just as well—or even better—than many other medical conditions.

Treatable is a paradigm shift in the way we conceptualize addiction, poised to revolutionize not only how we approach treatment, but how we understand ourselves, and one another.