The Captive Imagination: Addiction, Reality, and Our Search for Meaning – A USA TODAY Bestseller: A Psychiatrist's Path to Freedom

by Elias Dakwar

Psychiatrist and scientist Elias Dakwar presents a groundbreaking yet simple framework for understanding and addressing addiction as a confusion from which we are all, addicted or not, working to find freedom.   Addiction is a crisis affecting millions of Americans every year. As rates of addiction and overdose deaths surge across the country, physicians, mental health professionals, and researchers scramble to help. While the prevailing model—addiction as a brain-based disease—has destigmatized addiction, it hasn’t solved the problem. Instead, as pioneering psychiatrist and researcher Elias Dakwar shows, it may be making things worse. Drawing on his research with hallucinogenic compounds and meditation-based treatments, fifteen years of clinical experience, and recent findings from neuroscience, Dakwar frames addiction as the fixed “reality” to which the imagination become captive. In a bold repudiation of the brain-disease model, he approaches addiction, not as a physical problem, but as a crisis of the creative imagination in which our all-too-human attempts to alleviate suffering and make sense of the world leads to a locked-in conception of things that only confuses things further. Addicted individuals therefore suffer acutely from what afflict us all – the fictions we create and mistake for reality. In this beautifully written and often startling exploration, Dakwar reveals how the journey towards freedom is not unique to addiction, but a passage we must all make as we work towards greater understanding, fuller relationships, and more profound peace. He makes an urgent plea for scientists to consider consciousness and meaning-making when approaching addicted individuals, and combines cutting-edge research with clinical narratives to pose and address the existential, relational, and philosophical questions that are at the heart of addiction. A leading researcher in the use of ketamine in addiction treatment, he examines how psychedelics, in combination with other practices, might be helpful clinically, and how they can also shed light on the broader systemic and cultural shifts that are needed to alleviate suffering, beginning with the most vulnerable among us.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Addiction

400 pages, Hardcover

Published June 4, 2024

Reviews

[Chris Boutté · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am borderline speechless as I prepare to write the review for this book…but here goes.

I’ve read over 1,000 books in the last five years, and I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that started out so good and took such a hard turn into one of the worst things I’ve ever read. I’m a recovering addict with 12 years sober, and I was ready to recommend this book to everyone I know or anyone interested in addiction, and now, I don’t think I can. Let me explain.

Elias Dakwar is a pioneering psychiatrist who specializes in addiction and is a professor at Columbia. I’ve read a ton of books on addiction, and Dakwar’s perspective on addiction is so unique, that I loved it. Basically, his view is that addiction is a sustained creative act that involves our imagination and false beliefs. For example, addicts like me continue using thinking it’s going to solve our problems, but it only makes things worse. Our imagination and beliefs are so strong, we keep drinking and using while getting the same results.

He has some great stories about his work with a variety of different clients, and he pulls from academic research as well as philosophy. It’s so, so, so damn good. So where does it go wrong?

The second half of this book (maybe last third of this book) is like a bad fever dream. It feels like the writing is just the ramblings of a crazy person. It’s so hard to explain. It was pure torture. If I didn’t love the book so much, I wouldn’t have finished it. I basically only finished it so I could write this review.

Out of nowhere, Dakwar turns 100% of his focus to ayahuasca, and he writes like some sort of fictional story about a patient. To keep the patient’s anonymity as much as possible, Dakwar basically writes a completely fictional story, and it is insane. It’s written in a way that sounds like someone who thinks they’re being philosophical but just doesn’t like a crazy person. It’s so hard to explain. Even the brief conclusion of the book is written in a crazy, confusing way.

I don’t even know how to rate this book or if I should recommend it. Like I said, the first part of this book is one of the best addiction books I’ve ever read. I guess, if you really want to read it, maybe go into it knowing you should only read the first half? I’ve never experienced anything like this, and I have no clue how editors allowed this to go through. This book would have been perfect if they just cut it in half and left out all of the ayahuasca insanity.

[Noor O'Neill · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had some really interesting insights and some downright beautiful writing (in the sense of poetic). It's a bit off-putting to read a book about addiction by someone who does not seem to experience addiction, but the author clearly has a lot of compassion for those who struggle with addiction and writes about some of its complexities insightfully.

[Deb · Rating 5 out of 5]

This fascinating book rewards the attentive reader. Frequent moments of lush, lyrical, or imaginative language and concepts create an ongoing experience of an introduction to and understanding of new, inspiring, and provocative ideas. Drawing on his extensive professional psychiatric and researcher persona as well as personal experiences – of his patients, friends, and himself – Dakwar
radically expands our perspective of addiction, viewing it as a fundamental characteristic of the human condition. In doing so, he challenges our underlying notions of reality, using a lens that encompasses examples from all of human existence alongside pointed, cogent commentary on contemporary issues, illuminating them as one and the same.

[Ksenia · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was like bubble gum - started out great but ultimately ended in disappointment. The last 100 pages were… bizarre.

[James Hope · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this book at a release party: emerging from it now like a fever dream. I had expected a book on addiction and drugs, and found instead a strange mirror casting light on the many lies we tell ourselves, as well as the beauty beneath the make-up. This book requires work (or absolute surrender) given its complexity, richness, and density, but it's worth it - maybe like addiction itself, which as the author reminds us, is anchored in words and representations as much as in the thing itself and requires sifting layers of false earth before we find our ground, our groundlessness. Highly recommended.