Gene Heyman, a research psychologist at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School, is going after a medical paradigm and he’s not pulling his punches: addiction is not a disease, it’s a choice, he argues in this book.

From the stories of addicts and previous treatment studies to expert opinion and psychiatric epidemiology, it is an easy-to-read, scientific and personal exploration that includes.

His conclusion, that addicts will quit if given the right incentives, is not without its critics – for it doesn’t argue the case from the perspective of biology and the effects of drugs on the human brain.