Addiction is a Brain Disease: Now what? Walter Ling, MD

Walter Ling, M.D.

UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs

Professor of Psychiatry and Founding Director

When Alan Leshner, former director of National Institute on Drug Abuse, first brought the idea of addiction being a brain disease, it gave us the ability to substitute science for the ideology led strategies that were driving the addition field. It allowed researchers and clinicians to better understand the relationship between the drugs and the brain, and find solutions or ways to overcome the disease. Dr. Ling begins by discussing the triune brain, how drugs affect them, and how the brain got its disease of addiction. He then transitions to revealing the process and difference between getting off and staying off drugs. KEY MESSAGES: Becoming addicted and getting off drugs are matters of drug effects; staying addicted and staying off drugs are matters of memory. Drugs get you addicted but memory keeps you addicted. Learning and memory is the basis of relapse, which is what makes addiction a chronic relapsing brain disease. Detoxification may be good for a lot of things, staying off drugs is not one of them. Next time you talk about substitution therapy, remember it’s the memories, not the drugs, you are trying to substitute.

Learning Objectives:

1. Increase understanding of the concept and neuroscience behind addiction being a brain disease and increasing knowledge of the relationship between drugs and the brain.

2. Review the construct of relapse and relapse prevention as well as predictors of long term recovery

UCLA ISAP Website: http://www.uclaisap.org/video/Research-Training-Series/