Quotes from Maia Szalavitz

I felt utterly stripped of safety and love. And so, what tormented me most as I shook through August of 1988 wasn't the nausea and chills but the recurring fear that I'd never have lasting comfort or joy again.

good decisions aren't always made for healthy reasons.

addictive behavior is often a search for safety rather than an attempt to rebel or a selfish turn inward

There is often a struggle, and sometimes, even more interestingly, a collusion between the powers of pathology and creation. —OLIVER SACKS

if punishment worked to fight addiction, the condition itself couldn't exist.

Our brains are embodied—much of the problem with the debate over addiction and psychiatry more generally is a refusal to accept this and our ongoing need to see "physical," "neurological," and "psychological" as completely distinct.

By making love conditional, tough love undermines familial affection, removing the one refuge where people can ordinarily assume they are loved for who they are, not what they do.

addiction is a learned relationship between the timing and pattern of the exposure to substances or other potentially addictive experiences and a person's predispositions, cultural and physical environment, and social and emotional needs.

addiction is the psychiatric disorder with the highest odds of recovery, not

While, like anything else that is learned, addiction may get more engrained with time, people actually have increased odds of recovery as they age, not reduced chances.

Fear and threat also literally shunt energy away from the areas of the brain involved in self-control and abstract reasoning—the exact opposite of what you want when you are trying to teach someone new ways of thinking and acting.

Figuring that "it can't hurt" to intervene "before it gets worse," is an error that many parents who resort to tough love regret forever.

The very same stimulus that is sometimes painfully aversive—loud music, for example—can actually be enjoyed when it is chosen and the volume can be controlled or when sensory experience is not being felt as overwhelming.

Another crucial reform would be a federal mandate that kids in all residential programs must have unmonitored access to an abuse hotline that would trigger immediate investigation.

Dependence" itself is pathologized, when, as we've seen, dependence isn't the real problem in addiction: compulsive and destructive behavior is. (And indeed, the DSM-5, published in 2013, recognizes this, replacing "dependence" with "moderate to severe substance use disorder.")

Drug taking starts as a rational, conscious choice and through repetition becomes an automatic, unconsciously motivated behavior. Addicted

Newton's language choices were Orwellian: restraining others was "a privilege"; having no freedom of speech, movement, or activity was "a respite.

Without oxytocin, mice cannot tell friends or family from strangers—and mothers do not learn to nurture their young.

As noted earlier, having a highly affectionate and responsive mother turns on different suites of genes, compared to being raised indifferently. Not surprisingly, neglect and trauma make social connection more difficult. These changes, too, are mediated by oxytocin, vasopressin, opioids, and dopamine.

In order for people to recover, we can't just say 'love is all we need.'

During infancy, oxytocin focuses your brain on remembering the characteristics of the people who raise you and linking these cues with stress relief, even if your caregivers are inconsistent or cruel. Consequently

That is, love is real when it expands and enhances your life—and troubling and problematic when it contracts or impairs it.

But since President Obama allowed Colorado and Washington to legalize recreational use and sales of marijuana following initiatives in 2012, the United Stets itself is probably now violating international law. (Because we have traditional been the ones who interpret and enforce these laws, it's hard to know exactly; of course, we say we are not.) And with even federal drug control officials slowly embracing harm reduction officially, we have remained silent on New Zealand's law.