The Urge

An authoritative, illuminating, and deeply humane history of addiction—a phenomenon that remains baffling and deeply misunderstood despite having touched countless lives—by an addiction psychiatrist striving to understand his own family and himself.

Even after a decades-long opioid overdose crisis, intense controversy still rages over the fundamental nature of addiction and the best way to treat it. With uncommon empathy and erudition, Carl Erik Fisher draws on his own experience as a clinician, researcher, and alcoholic in recovery as he traces the history of a phenomenon that, centuries on, we hardly appear closer to understanding—let alone addressing effectively.

As a psychiatrist-in-training fresh from medical school, Fisher was soon face-to-face with his own addiction crisis, one that nearly cost him everything. Desperate to make sense of the condition that had plagued his family for generations, he turned to the history of addiction, learning that the current quagmire is only the latest iteration of a centuries-old story—humans have struggled to define, treat, and control addictive behaviour for most of recorded history, including well before the advent of modern science and medicine.

A rich, sweeping history that probes not only medicine and science but also literature, religion, philosophy, and sociology, The Urge illuminates the extent to which the story of addiction has persistently reflected broader questions of what it means to be human and care for one another. Fisher introduces us to the people who have endeavoured to address this complex condition through the ages—physicians and politicians, activists and artists, researchers and writers, and of course the legions of people who have struggled with their own addictions. He also examines the treatments and strategies that have produced hope and relief for many people with addiction, himself included. Only by reckoning with our history of addiction, he argues—our successes and our failures—can we light the way forward for those whose lives remain threatened by its hold.

The Urge is at once an eye-opening history of ideas, a riveting personal story of addiction and recovery, and a clinician's urgent call for a more expansive, nuanced, and compassionate view of one of society's most intractable challenges.

'The Urge is an absolutely brilliant exploration of humanity's ever-present struggle with addiction, or what psychiatrist Carl Erik Fisher calls "the terrifying breakdown of reason." Dr Fisher's firsthand experience, as both a doctor and a patient, gives The Urge a layer of insight that deepens its historical focus. Readers will walk away with a nuanced grasp of the high stakes of our broken medical system and the bias baked into our understanding of addiction and mental illness in general. This book is special—as edifying as it is electrifying, as meaningful as it is humane.'
—Susannah Cahalan, author of Brain on Fire

'Carl Erik Fisher expertly weaves his own story of addiction into a comprehensive and fascinating narrative. The Urge is an engaging read that also helps us gain a fuller picture of our own nature and how society has capitalised on it to drive addiction. Even as an addiction psychiatrist and researcher, I learned a great deal from this book.'
—Dr Judson Brewer, PhD, author of Unwinding Anxiety

'Thoughtful, moving, and wonderfully informative, Carl Erik Fisher's The Urge arrives just in time to help us, as a nation, rethink our failed war on drugs. In telling his own story, that of a young physician wrestling with both alcohol and rehab, Dr Fisher humanises the struggles that ensnare so many of us. Addiction, this marvellous book makes clear, is confounding, seductive, and elusive. In facing it without prejudice, we can learn a lot about ourselves.'
—Dr Mark Epstein, author of The Trauma of Everyday Life and Advice Not Given