Dr. Carran I just want to say your explanation of brain changes due to addiction is very clear thank you for the lectures.

These lectures are to the point and informative. A+!

Man, I just found this guy. I am enjoying how he is explaining how addicted brains work.

Outstanding presentation…learning and growing I am. Thanks for sharing ✌️

Also, in my experience the only"test" for addiction was a short questionnaire given by some office person at a detox facility about past use history and they just look at the numbers you put. Thats some diagnosis right there. I love how there were no doctors and there was no actual test ran on my brain. Then i get whisked off to rehab and get told how much of a disease I have, and that if i disagree with that, or any of the 12 step dogma, well, im just trying to poke holes and be too critical. Fascinating.

This helped me to understand addiction and realize it's not all about making the right choice. Great lecture!

As a grandmother of an addiction in my grandson, I learn so much! Thank you

If there was hope for the future and we could successfully deal with childhood trauma addiction wouldn’t be a problem

I his discussions and examples, very easy to follow.

Have been working on my issues for years. This was the clearest, most articulate presentation I've ever heard. Finally, I've gotten the whole story. Thanks, and try to teach someone else your talent for lecturing before you retire.

very informative lecture, really helped get a better understanding on addiction!

My mother and father were addicts' all my life, so I have been dealing with addiction issues since the age of 10 years old. It is very hard to accept this disease. I had to learn how to deal with a person stuffing from this illness. This disease ripped my family apart for two generations. I am thankful for the one to be able to break an ugly cycle in my family.

Dear Dr. Carran, Speaking from experience, the majority of people outside of recovery cannot process the “disease” designation. Therefore, I fear, you alienate many when you begin your discussion in this manner. As a practicing alcoholic for 22 years, and now recovering alcoholic for almost 26 years, I express my substance abuse as a “fatal condition”, caused by an “allergy” which renders my body unable to process alcohol in the normal way. I equate it to someone who is allergic to hornet, or bee stings. (As a simple example) Some people experience only the discomfort of the sting, while others require medical attention. I sincerely thank all those who attempt to educate others about what is , undoubtedly, the most misunderstood malady known to man...Mark

Brilliant

Some of the most sucessful and rich individyals ever used drugs

So interesting. I better understand my sons addiction.

This video help me better understand the meaning addiction and the fundamentals of addiction and treating it as a disease and not an addiction. I like how the lecture was put together.

Your delivery for alcoholism is well received for my practicum I will emulate your format.

Thanks!!! This is helping me to stay SOBER!!!!

Very informative. I learned so much from this video. I have a better understanding of addiction and why it is classified as a disease.

While I love this explanation, for those who aren't addicted and don't understand it... this has made it harder for me to stop using. I'm no longer sure if I am making the choice to relapse. I don't know if I'm choosing to use and using this fact as an excuse to justify my using, or if I truly don't have a choice.

Great discussion!

very good lecture, you should consider lecturing at a big university

Excellent lecture! What about the power of spirituallity...? Can it help with addictions?

Really interesting

Your explanation is so well presented,too bad the general population doesn’t understand this disease in its proper contest. Even the most educated stereotype alcoholics as weak. True they have a battle, they didn’t know they were prone to.

i learned that addiction is a disease not a choice, a disease needs to meet the 3 criterias of being detrimental, have aset of symptoms and that their has to always be an abnormal test to be called a disease, and found it interesting that addicition can be reversable

Look, my understanding of neurophysiological A&P leaves much to be desired. With that said, can't the brain use ketones as an energy source as well; hence, what is claimed to be a cognitive enhancement, such as ketosis? Or are ketones assisting glucose and not replacing it?

What part of the brain keeps us breathing?? - respiration necessary for life (number 1) I would think. More than 3 minutes without oxygen leads to death.

I have a question here. Does this apply to only drug and alcohol addiction or to other addictions as well?

Bruce Dern

This is BS. The statistics is only taken from rehabs and 12 steps program. How about the vast majority who quit after systematic substance abuse without treatment, higher power?

Right off the bat-- his first point is wrong. You do have a choice. The disease concept is useful and it clearly is correct to borrow from the medical model, but it doesn't tell the whole story. I wish he were right but he's wrong. His first criterion for meeting the disease definition falls short of the mark. It's not the substance or process that causes abnormality-- it's the patient's personal choice. If you extend his logic to guns: people don't kill people, guns kill people. People must exercise personal choice to become addicted and people must exercise personal choice to recover. Don't confuse the difficulty in exercising personal choice with the inability to do so.

With this facility for taxonomic elasticity (nose picking ought be properly identified as a pathology), perhaps a future exist in for an Institute of Rhetorical Bungee Jumping. What changes the brain? - EVERYTHING you do. How does the general public understand the concept of disease (remember, chemist don’t expand the definition of [atomic] weight if a new chemical element is discovered - the fundamental concept involved is not altered in such a way that the general public needs to change its understanding each time a new chemical element is discovered)? - expression at the cellular level. Where is addiction expressed - at the behavioral level. It’s simply dishonest. There are many individuals who’s “brains have been altered” who none the less are abstinent or have chosen a path of practical moderation - millions of people. That why (unlike other legitimate pathologies) there is no lab diagnostic. “The weakness is its lack of validity. Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain or the quality of fever. Indeed, symptom-based diagnosis, once common in other areas of medicine, has been largely replaced in the past half century as we have understood that symptoms alone rarely indicate the best choice of treatment.” - Thomas Insel on April 29, 2013 Proponents of disease narrative are akin to Luddite NW Passage Explorers; who, when confronted with truth of there misplaced endeavors, would seek to go Panama Canal across the entire North American continent, rather than cop to the failure of their favored line of thinking. It’s a scientific embarrassment, disgrace to medical science specifically, and abomination upon western epistemology writ large - simply dishonest.

There ia nothing nor special about drug use.Onoy the americabs wanted to bann something as natural and normal asdrug use.Humana uaed drugs since dawn of 5heir existence and whole cultures were based in it U should teach responsible drug use rather than banning everythint

Bullshit. If people didn't have a choice to stop, then nobody would ever stop. But they do. Whether they go about it through rehab, or by themselves, or family or whatever it is, a choice is made at some point. Whether one gets some help, or the method of help, it doesn't matter. There is still a choice made that, I want to stop, I'm going to do what is necessary in order to make that happen. Shame on this presenter for saying otherwise. But it doesn't surprise me because he's speaking at a rehab and I guess it's good for business if they push the disease and powerless model.

It is astounding that professors are lecturing opinion as fact. His logic is flawed at a glance. He talks in scientific terms and mixes legitimate neuro-anatomical terms in, but his premise is incorrect.