The Ghost in the Addict

How withdrawal distress and cravings can haunt current and former addicts, and what they can teach us about addiction and its treatments. “The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house,” Jean Cocteau once wrote. In The Ghost in the Addict , Shepard Siegel offers a Pavlovian analysis of drug use. Chronic drug use, he explains, conditions users to have an anticipatory homeostatic correction, which protects the addict from overdose. This drug-preparatory response, elicit