Are drugs really frying your brain? | Dr. Carl Hart

What the ‘decade of the brain’ taught us about drug addiction. (Hint, we had it all wrong before.)

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Thanks largely to the "War on Drugs," we have been led to believe that drug addiction is the source of most of the problems that we see in our communities.

But much of what we have been told about drugs is pure nonsense. For example, most people who use drugs do not become addicted. To determine if someone is addicted, we should analyze someone's behavior, rather than their brain.

Dr. Carl Hart, professor of psychology, believes that society's drug problems need to be understood within a greater psychosocial context, such as lack of opportunity, education, and healthcare.

Further reading about Dr. Carl Hart’s perspective:
GQ: What If Drugs Aren't as Bad as We've Been Told?
► https://www.gq.com/story/imagining-a-world-where-all-drugs-are-legal-carl-hart
Exaggerating Harmful Drug Effects on the Brain Is Killing Black People
► https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7328574/
Viewing addiction as a brain disease promotes social injustice
► https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0055
Meet Carl Hart: parent, Columbia professor – and heroin user
► https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/06/meet-carl-hart-parent-columbia-professor-and-heroin-user

Read the video transcript ► https://bigthink.com/series/explain-it-like-im-smart/drug-myths/

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About Dr. Carl Hart:
Dr. Hart is an Associate Professor of Psychology in both the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology at Columbia University, and Director of the Residential Studies and Methamphetamine Research Laboratories at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. A major focus of Dr. Hart’s research is to understand complex interactions between drugs of abuse and the neurobiology and environmental factors that mediate human behavior and physiology. He is the author or co-author of dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles in the area of neuropsychopharmacology, co-author of the textbook, Drugs, Society, and Human Behavior, and a member of a NIH review group. Dr. Hart was recently elected to Fellow status by the American Psychological Association (Division 28) for his outstanding contribution to the field of psychology, specifically psychopharmacology and substance abuse.

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Read more of our stories on drug use:
5 drugs that changed the world (and what went wrong)
► https://bigthink.com/health/drugs-that-changed-the-world/
Sex, drugs, and genes: Why some people morally condemn drugs
► https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/morality-drugs-sex/
Rhode Island will be the first state to open safe drug consumption sites
► https://bigthink.com/the-present/drug-consumption-site/

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