Addiction has become enshrined in the professional and public mind as an intractable biological disorder that can be adequately addressed by limiting current practice to medical models and criminal justice interventions. In this collection of widely acclaimed articles and lectures. Phil Harris re-examines the origin, validity and limits of current practice, and exposes the detrimental impact of the narrow set of concerns we bring to addiction and its treatment. In doing so he challenges the preoccupations of national policy and international research, demonstrating how addiction is the product of deeper human concerns of identity, meaning and exclusion. The specially reworked articles offer innovative perspectives for understanding addiction and how we should respond to it at individual and organisational levels. It reaches out beyond clinical approaches in an open and accessible style, and will resonate with the experience of practitioners as well as those personally affected by addiction - users and ex-users, and their concerned families and friends.
