Stanton Peele (born January 8, 1946) is apsychologist,attorney,psychotherapist and theauthor of books and articles on the subject ofalcoholism,addiction and addiction treatment.[1]
Raised inPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania,[2] Peele received hisB.A. inpolitical sciencecum laude on municipal and state scholarships from theUniversity of Pennsylvania in 1967. Supported by a number of fellowships (including theWoodrow Wilson Fellowship), he went on to earn aPh.D. insocial psychology from theUniversity of Michigan in 1975. From 1976 to 2012, he maintained a private practice and consultancy while based inMorristown, New Jersey.[3]
After earning hisJ.D. from theRutgers School of Law – Newark in 1997, Peele was admitted to theNew York andNew Jersey bars. He maintained a concurrent law practice (including two stints as a pool attorney in theMorris County Public Defender's Office that offered vital insights into the workings of the Americancriminal justice system)[4] until 2012. As a psychologist and addiction specialist, he has held visiting and adjunct academic positions atNew York University (adjunct clinical professor; 2003–2007),Bournemouth University (visiting professor; 2003–2010) andThe New School (adjunct professor; 2004–2010).[1] He currently resides inBrooklyn, New York.[5][6]
Peele inaugurated the Life Process Program (LPP) as a residential treatment program in Iowa from 2008 to 2011; LPP went online at that point and has been an international coaching service into the present (see the “Life Process Model of Addiction”[7]).
Peele is the author of fourteen books, includingLove and Addiction (1975),The Meaning of Addiction (1985/1998),Diseasing of America (1989),The Truth about Addiction and Recovery (with Archie Brodsky and Mary Arnold, 1991),Resisting 12-Step Coercion (with Charles Bufe and Archie Brodsky, 2001),7 Tools to Beat Addiction (2004),Addiction-Proof Your Child (2007),Recover! Stop Thinking Like an Addict (with Ilse Thompson, 2014),Outgrowing Addiction: With Common Sense Instead of "Disease" Therapy (with Zach Rhoads, 2019), and his memoir,A Scientific Life on the Edge: My Lonely Quest to Change How We See Addiction (2021), as well as 250 other professional publications.
He began his critique of standard notions of addiction when he publishedLove and Addiction (coauthored with Archie Brodsky).[8] According to Peele's experiential/environmental approach, addictions are negative patterns of behavior that result from an over-attachment people form to experiences generated from a range of involvements. He contends that most people experience addiction to some degree at least for periods of time during their lives. He does not view addictions as medical problems but as "problems of life" that most people overcome. The failure to do so is the exception rather than the rule, he argues.[9] This view opposes thebrain disease model of addiction.
In his books on non-addictive child rearing,Addiction-Proof Your Child (2007) andOutgrowing Addiction (with child development specialist Zach Rhoads, 2019), Peele argues that the best antidote for addiction is raising independent children who are competent and who have pro-social, health-oriented values. These same profiles, along with socially privileged backgrounds, account for which young people are able to overcome whatever addictive episodes they have.
In a number ofpapers, as well as his 1989 book,Diseasing of America: Addiction Treatment Out of Control, Peele has argued that treatment— including asideally administered inProject MATCH— is an inadequate, eveniatrogenic, cultural response to addiction. This is particularly true, he finds, for disease treatments, since they diminish people's sense of themselves and their ability to change.
When it was published in 1975,Love and Addiction pre-dated by almost a decade the notion ofsex addiction and codependency popularized by authors such as Patrick Carnes, whoseOut of the Shadows, one of the earliest popular books to describe sex addiction, came out in 1983, and Melody Beattie, whoseCodependent No More was published in 1986.Love and Addiction pre-dated the current popular use of the terms "sex addiction" and "codependency" to describe disorders of love attachment, as these terms were not part of Peele and Brodsky's nomenclature. However, becauseLove and Addiction was concerned with observing the same condition of addictive human attachments, it has been argued that this is the first book to be written on the subject of codependent relationships.[10]
In reviewing the legacy ofLove and Addiction, psychologist Dr. Alex Kwee wrote:
"That experiences can be addictive was a prescient notion in 1975 as psychology now embraces the concept of the process (or behavioral) addictions such as pathological gambling, compulsive eating, and sex addiction. But it must surely be to Peele's dismay that instead of rethinking substance addiction as a medical illness, psychology has gone and classified the behaviors as addictions in the same medical sense and yielded the solution into the hands of the 12-Steps."[11]
Peele maintains that, depending on the person, abstinence or moderation are valid approaches to treat excessive drinking. In aPsychology Today article which compared theLife Process Program with thedisease model,[12] he also argues against the theory proposed decades ago by modern physicians, mental health professionals, research scientists, etc. that addiction is a disease.[13] InDiseasing of America (1989), Peele contested Dr George Vaillant's pro-disease treatiseThe Natural History of Alcoholism.
Peele has been concerned with identifying cultural factors (those differentiatingTemperance from non-Temperance societies) in support of positive alcohol experiences, as well asmedical andpsychological benefits due to positive drinking practices. Primarily, he has found, such drinking occurs where alcohol use is socialized in young people in family and community settings. He has also sought togeneralize this paradigm to drug use.
In a co-authored book,Resisting 12 Step Coercion (2001), Peele outlined his case against court mandated attendance oftwelve-step drug and alcohol treatment programs. He argued that these treatment programs are useless and sometimes harmful, he presented research on alternative treatment options, and accused some addiction providers of routine violation of standard medical ethics, an accusation that is likewise often leveled at Peele by disease proponents.[14]
InThe Truth About Addiction and Recovery (1991) and7 Tools to Beat Addiction (2004), Peele laid out what he believes to be the elements of alternative treatment. He developed these ideas as theLife Process Program, which was the basis for a non-12 Step residential treatment program and is now offered as an online treatment resource by Dr. Peele and colleagues.[15]
Peele attributes theintensifying drug crisis in the US to the continuing acceptance and spread of thedisease model of addiction in both its 12-step and brain disease forms since, he feels, the disease model undercuts the sense of self-efficacy that characterizes positive, controlled substance use.
In a review ofThe Meaning of Addiction, addiction researcher DrGriffith Edwards stated the following about Peele's work:
"With these and other issues treated in cavalier fashion, with referencing highly incomplete and crucial work often ignored, one begins to feel that this is a book where polemic and scholarship have become inextricably and unhappily mixed. [...] Peele is not only a psychologist of distinction, but someone who can make use of sociological and biological ideas. [...] So there's the dilemma."
— Griffith Edwards, Review ofThe Meaning of Addiction.[16]
Stanton Peele has done as much as anyone to reveal the inadequacies, absurdities, and injustices of the idea that addiction is a disease and, specifically, that it is a disease of the brain. In a constant flow of influential books, articles, and blogs over more than forty years, he has persuasively extended the critique of the disease theory of addiction beyond the scientific community to the general public. When the disease theory is eventually replaced by a more rational and humane approach in the popular understanding of addiction, Stanton Peele will be first in line to receive the plaudits, and those of us who broadly share his view will owe him a profound debt of gratitude.
— Nick Heather, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Alcohol & Other Drug Studies, Northumbria University, UK; co-editor,Evaluating the Brain Disease Model of Addiction.
Lindesmith Center (now the Drug Policy Alliance): grant to write an adolescent drug guide (1996).
TheDistilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS), and theWine Institute provided unrestricted grants for research used in the journal articleExploring Psychological Benefits Associated with Moderate Alcohol Use: A Necessary Corrective to Assessments of Drinking Outcomes?[19]
