Why you (most likely) can't cleanse your way out of alcohol dependence

Note: This article was written in 2017 and since then, Kelly Brogan has been identified as one of the “Disinformation Dozen” meaning she’s even worse than this article attempts. However, I do want to say that I personally follow a simple set of rules: I trust myself with information, I trust you with information. That means, some of the raddest and most life changing things I’ve learned come from problematic people (Thomas Szasz, for instance). Also, let me just be the first to point out I’m kind of a smug dick in this article?

In 2015 Johann Hari, author of Chasing The Scream, published an article titled “The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered, and It Is Not What You Think.” It went viral, and everyone I knew sent it to me —many of them from outside of the addiction space—with comments like Did you see this? or This has me thinking about addiction completely differently! or Johann Hari is a fucking genius.

I hated him and I hated this article. First, because here was yet a…