Healing Art

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.”