Norman Zinberg
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Dr. Norman Zinberg ((1922 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania - 1989 in Cambridge, Massachusetts) was a psychoanalyst and psychiatrist whose research into addiction is seen as a great influence on current clinical models and greatly influenced the work of addiction treatment specialists like Stanton Peele.
His allegiance to the scientific method allowed him to delineate why some people controlled their drug use while others did not. And why people's relation to drug use could change according to type of drug (an its method of ingestion), their (mind)set, and setting. His book, "Drug, Set, and Setting: The Basis for Controlled Intoxicant Use" explains with data and case histories why someone can drink for 20 years in a controlled fashion and then become out of control. And then over time return to being a controlled user.
His scientific work flies directly in the face of any idea that some people have "addictive personalities" while other don't. One classic example was a study citing the large number of overseas soldiers who became addicted to heroin during the Vietnam war who came back and led normal lives; once back in the U.S., the number of dysfunctional addicts went down and comported with the average number of heroin addicts in the general population (Drug, Set, and Setting: The Basis for Controlled Intoxicant Use", 1984, Page X). The book is made up all kinds of examples that fly in the face of addiction as a "disease" or that some have "addictive personalities" while others don't. Zinberg followed recreational heroin users over a ten year period, dispelling any myths that all heroin users because addicted. The full text of "Drug, Set, and Setting" can be found at various sites on the internet or bought used on amazon.com
In his obituary the New York Times (April 4, 1989) wrote, "He had a remarkable impact on our understanding that drug effects are not simply a consequence of biochemistry, said Dr. Howard Shaffer, a colleague at Harvard and at Cambridge Hospital. He showed that an individual's expectations, his psychological set and his social milieu interact to produce the effects on behavior that we observe. Equally important, Norman Zinberg helped us explain why an addictive drug affects a person differently at different times and how it affects various people in different ways.
If drug treatment programs become less faith based and less dogmatic, Zinberg's science based work will hopefully come into fashion and make drug treatment much more personalized and effective. But at the time of this writing, AA and related ideologies dominate the field despite their high drop out rate, impracticability for most and failure to deal with the underlying problems that compel people to abuse drugs.
[edit] External links
- Obituary at the New York Times
