Pleasure Unwoven & Memo to Self Combo - An Explanation of the Brain Disease of Addiction
Kevin McCauley
2 pack DVDs | Institute for Addiction study | 2016
The most important question about addiction is: "Is it really a "disease?" In this video essay, filmed in high-definition, Kevin McCauley explores the arguments for and against this vital debate, reviewing the latest neuroscientific research about addiction along the way. Using the spectacular landscape of Utah's State and National Parks to describe the brain areas involved in addiction, Kevin McCauley turns complex neuroscientific concepts into easy-to-understand visual images that will help people in recovery feel better understood, and their families and friends feel hope that recovery is possible.
Addiction is a potentially fatal illness - but it is also eminently recoverable. Certain professionals struggling with substance use disorders enjoy phenomenal success rates getting through early sobriety and into long-term remission of their addiction problems. What do they do? And what can we learn from them?
In this film, Dr. Kevin McCauley re-lives his own precarious early sobriety - negotiating hazards such as hostile prosecutors, treatment programs with divided loyalties, and his own craving brain. Following the advice of the Addiction Medicine experts who helped him, he replicates the sobriety habits and success of recovering pilots and health care professionals. By framing addiction not as a problem of moral choice but as a safety/risk management challenge, Dr. McCauley explains how recovery is neither rare nor random - with the right kind of support, it can even be expected.
This film will prove a valuable tool for therapists, counselors, recovery coaches and clinicians to introduce audiences to the concepts and practices of Recovery Management, and for people in early recovery and their families learning how to survive the first year of sobriety.