"A brilliant and compelling contribution...that has the potential to reframe the public’s understanding of drug use and addiction. . . . It is a text rooted in radical compassion that supports autonomy, promotes responsibility without blame, and highlights the various factors that can cause and maintain an individual’s substance use over time."—Cassandra L. Boness, Science
"[This book] has changed my understanding of my habits—and maybe it will change yours, too."—Jacob Rosenberg, Mother Jones
"Pickard convincingly shows that while the diseased brain model aimed to destigmatize addiction, it has largely failed to do so while amplifying some addicts’ pessimism about recovery. Addiction researchers and clinicians will be enlightened."— Publisher's Weekly
"Anyone confronting addiction would do well to read Hanna Pickard’s new book, which should change how ordinary people and clinicians think about it. One important insight is that often a cure for addiction depends on the addict finding a new identity, other than that of being an addict. This is a book by a philosopher, based on experience in a therapeutic setting, that has the actual potential to save lives."—Brian Leiter, Leiter Reports
“A bold, riveting, and moving invitation to rethink much of what we take ourselves to know about addiction—its causes, its treatment, and its meaning to those who live with it. Hanna Pickard is brilliant and humane.”—Amia Srinivasan, author of The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century
“This is a rich and humane book that I recommend to anyone who deals with the hard problem of addiction, whether through lived experience, as a family member, a professional, or all three. Instead of a ‘war’ on drugs, Pickard compellingly argues for a different relationship with the drugs we use and misuse, one that involves responsibility without blame.”—Gwen Adshead, coauthor of The Devil You Know: Encounters in Forensic Psychiatry
“A brilliantly argued, scientifically informed, compassionate, courageous, and ethically urgent explication of addiction. Pickard’s look at how addiction relates to human welfare and to our conception of the good will change your understanding not only of the addict in the park, but of yourself, your friends and family, and of what it means to be human.”—Eldar Shafir, coauthor of Scarcity: The New Science of Having Less and How It Defines Our Lives
“Hanna Pickard is the only philosopher in the world (I suspect in history) to have devoted a quarter century to developing deep expertise across all aspects of addiction research, including doing clinical work herself. The result is this brilliant masterpiece—a synoptic, comprehensive, state-of-the-art exploration of how we can best explain the puzzle of addiction.”—Owen Flanagan, author of What Is It Like to Be an Addict?: Understanding Substance Abuse
“For neuroscientists, this book is an incredibly important reminder that studying addiction is studying behavior—how people evaluate the costs and benefits of their actions, and how beliefs and desires translate to decisions. For clinicians, it provides an accessible summary of scientific knowledge and an eye-opening assessment of why some treatments work while others are doomed to fail. And for anyone who cares about a person who is addicted (which could be yourself), Hanna Pickard offers an actionable blueprint for how to help. We all have agency in solving the problem of addiction.”— Yael Niv, Princeton Neuroscience Institute and Department of Psychology, Princeton University
“A powerful alternative perspective, this book considerably expands the scope of psychological intelligibility in addiction and allows us to see, more clearly than ever before, those aspects of addiction that are uniquely unexplainable by psychology. It is dazzling in the logic of its argumentation, the breadth of its scholarship, the brilliance of its thinking, the elegance of its style, and, last but not the least, the depth of its humanity. If this stance were known and adopted more widely, it would surely make our world a happier, more just, and more peaceful place.”—Serge Ahmed, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), University of Bordeaux
REVIEWS
Science, "Rethinking Drug Use and Addiction" by Cassandra L. Boness
Mother Jones, "Monster of 2025: Cigarettes" by Jacob Rosenberg
The Pharmakon, "WWYD?" by Sam Leith
Publisher's Weekly, "What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing but Cocaine? A Philosophy of Addiction"
EXCERPTS and BLOGS
Public Seminar, "On Self-identity and the Philosophy of Addiction"
Popular Science, "Addiction is Puzzling. Scientists are Trying to Understand Why"
Psychology Today, "Addiction and the Psychology of Deliberate Self-Harm and Suicide"
PODCASTS
CBC Ideas with Nahlah Ayed and Lisa Godfrey
The Addiction Psychologist with Sam Acuff and Noah Emery
The Spectator Book Club with Sam Leith
New Books Network with Emily Dufton
Overthink with Ellie Anderson and David Peña-Guzmán
INTERVIEWS
Jacobin, "We're Thinking About Addiction Entirely Wrong" with Chandler Dandridge
PUP Ideas, "What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing but Cocaine?"
"[This book] has changed my understanding of my habits—and maybe it will change yours, too."—Jacob Rosenberg, Mother Jones
"Pickard convincingly shows that while the diseased brain model aimed to destigmatize addiction, it has largely failed to do so while amplifying some addicts’ pessimism about recovery. Addiction researchers and clinicians will be enlightened."— Publisher's Weekly
"Anyone confronting addiction would do well to read Hanna Pickard’s new book, which should change how ordinary people and clinicians think about it. One important insight is that often a cure for addiction depends on the addict finding a new identity, other than that of being an addict. This is a book by a philosopher, based on experience in a therapeutic setting, that has the actual potential to save lives."—Brian Leiter, Leiter Reports
“A bold, riveting, and moving invitation to rethink much of what we take ourselves to know about addiction—its causes, its treatment, and its meaning to those who live with it. Hanna Pickard is brilliant and humane.”—Amia Srinivasan, author of The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century
“This is a rich and humane book that I recommend to anyone who deals with the hard problem of addiction, whether through lived experience, as a family member, a professional, or all three. Instead of a ‘war’ on drugs, Pickard compellingly argues for a different relationship with the drugs we use and misuse, one that involves responsibility without blame.”—Gwen Adshead, coauthor of The Devil You Know: Encounters in Forensic Psychiatry
“A brilliantly argued, scientifically informed, compassionate, courageous, and ethically urgent explication of addiction. Pickard’s look at how addiction relates to human welfare and to our conception of the good will change your understanding not only of the addict in the park, but of yourself, your friends and family, and of what it means to be human.”—Eldar Shafir, coauthor of Scarcity: The New Science of Having Less and How It Defines Our Lives
“Hanna Pickard is the only philosopher in the world (I suspect in history) to have devoted a quarter century to developing deep expertise across all aspects of addiction research, including doing clinical work herself. The result is this brilliant masterpiece—a synoptic, comprehensive, state-of-the-art exploration of how we can best explain the puzzle of addiction.”—Owen Flanagan, author of What Is It Like to Be an Addict?: Understanding Substance Abuse
“For neuroscientists, this book is an incredibly important reminder that studying addiction is studying behavior—how people evaluate the costs and benefits of their actions, and how beliefs and desires translate to decisions. For clinicians, it provides an accessible summary of scientific knowledge and an eye-opening assessment of why some treatments work while others are doomed to fail. And for anyone who cares about a person who is addicted (which could be yourself), Hanna Pickard offers an actionable blueprint for how to help. We all have agency in solving the problem of addiction.”— Yael Niv, Princeton Neuroscience Institute and Department of Psychology, Princeton University
“A powerful alternative perspective, this book considerably expands the scope of psychological intelligibility in addiction and allows us to see, more clearly than ever before, those aspects of addiction that are uniquely unexplainable by psychology. It is dazzling in the logic of its argumentation, the breadth of its scholarship, the brilliance of its thinking, the elegance of its style, and, last but not the least, the depth of its humanity. If this stance were known and adopted more widely, it would surely make our world a happier, more just, and more peaceful place.”—Serge Ahmed, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), University of Bordeaux
REVIEWS
Science, "Rethinking Drug Use and Addiction" by Cassandra L. Boness
Mother Jones, "Monster of 2025: Cigarettes" by Jacob Rosenberg
The Pharmakon, "WWYD?" by Sam Leith
Publisher's Weekly, "What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing but Cocaine? A Philosophy of Addiction"
EXCERPTS and BLOGS
Public Seminar, "On Self-identity and the Philosophy of Addiction"
Popular Science, "Addiction is Puzzling. Scientists are Trying to Understand Why"
Psychology Today, "Addiction and the Psychology of Deliberate Self-Harm and Suicide"
PODCASTS
CBC Ideas with Nahlah Ayed and Lisa Godfrey
The Addiction Psychologist with Sam Acuff and Noah Emery
The Spectator Book Club with Sam Leith
New Books Network with Emily Dufton
Overthink with Ellie Anderson and David Peña-Guzmán
INTERVIEWS
Jacobin, "We're Thinking About Addiction Entirely Wrong" with Chandler Dandridge
PUP Ideas, "What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing but Cocaine?"