Reconceptualizing Addiction: Integrating the Sciences of Addiction & Reward Deficiency Syndrome, Part 1

Abstract

Analytic review of research study results from psychology, addiction science, and interactive sciences like neurology, genetics, and epigenetics, implore psychology, psychiatry and addiction recovery treatment fields to enlarge their perspective, by considering underlying causal influence. The appropriate time to re-conceptualize addiction for the practitioner world is now! Treatment protocol must expand beyond mitigation of the symptoms and address genetic, epigenetic and neurological causal influence. The science of Reward Deficiency Syndrome (RDS), offers a new phenotype for addiction, providing a common rubric for all obsessive, compulsive, and addictive behavioral patterns, and contributes understanding of the psychiatric genetics and/or causal influence of dopaminergic dysfunction in other co-occurring mental disorders. In consideration and review of the body of scientific knowledge, to successfully bridge the gap between science and practice, an integration of the sciences of addiction, and Reward Deficiency Syndrome must be achieved [1].