For the sake of happiness, indulge in this fantasy: Think of a tropical island where the sun shines and the fish jump, where exotic fruits fall off the trees into your hands and gracious people move through their paces as they have for centuries, and where time passes as slowly as the days unfold. Who […]

A lifetime of work in the field of substance abuse has left Pat Santora, a veteran Johns Hopkins researcher, in the grip of her own emotional turmoil—frustrated that her patients are stigmatized, angered that the public still sees addiction as a moral failing rather than a treatable disease, and irritated that, despite her vociferous protests, “in a wonderful acute-care hospital like Johns Hopkins, we have thousands of people who are diagnosed with addictions to alcohol, tobacco, and illegal and/or prescription drugs,” she says. “And like so many acute-care hospitals, we focus primarily on treating the adverse medical consequences of the addiction—heart disease, cancer, cirrhosis—rather than treating the addiction itself.”