Importance

As recently as two decades ago, what happened during the course of addiction treatment was somewhat of a mystery. There were few empirical studies showing which treatments worked, and what was known took decades to trickle from research studies to clinical practice. A gap, not unlike the gap in medical practice, existed between scientific evidence and addiction treatment.

For addictions, which have historically been stigmatized disorders, the gap was especially wide because treatment tended to be isolated from other medical or mental health practice and because practitioners were often peers who were in ...