Buy new:
$29.95$29.95
FREE delivery:
Tuesday, Jan 24
Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com
Buy used: $1.60
Other Sellers on Amazon
+ $3.99 shipping
98% positive over last 12 months
+ $3.99 shipping
92% positive over last 12 months
Usually ships within 3 to 4 days.
+ $1.99 shipping
96% positive over last 12 months
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Learn more
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
The Thirteenth Step: Addiction in the Age of Brain Science Hardcover – May 12, 2015
| Markus Heilig (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
Enhance your purchase
Clarifying the cutting-edge science of addiction for both practitioners and general readers, The Thirteenth Step pairs stories of real patients with explanations of key concepts relating to their illness. A police chief who disappears on the job illustrates the process through which a drug can trigger the brain circuits mediating relapse. One person's effort to find a burrito shack in a foreign city illuminates the reward prediction error signaled by the brain chemical dopamine. With these examples and more, this volume paints a vivid, readable portrait of drug seeking, escalation, and other aspects of addiction and suggests science-based treatments that promise to improve troubling relapse rates. Merging science and human experience, The Thirteenth Step offers compassionate, valuable answers to anyone who hopes for a better handle on a confounding disease.
- Print length320 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherColumbia University Press
- Publication dateMay 12, 2015
- Dimensions6.3 x 1.2 x 9.1 inches
- ISBN-100231172362
- ISBN-13978-0231159371
Customers who bought this item also bought
Editorial Reviews
Review
It was a great pleasure to read this book. Without being openly critical of the usual talk therapy, Heilig outlines the newest treatments that should be offered to every patient suffering from addiction. He shows that treatments today can be based on recent scientific knowledge about what is happening in the brains of alcoholics and describes new treatments based on current knowledge about the disease. Heilig, a world-class expert, has done a tremendous service for patients and their families by writing this book. -- Charles P. O'Brien, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania
Markus Heilig sums up what he has learned during his twenty years as a physician and researcher in the treatment of alcohol and other addictive disorders.... An informative and compassionate chronicle. ― Kirkus Reviews
Poignantly written and personal, yet presents the current science of addiction in a clear and engaging way. Markus Heilig's exploration of addiction science is beautifully written and is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand why addictive behaviors and bad habits are difficult to give up, and how to do it. Heilig has masterfully laid out his own clinical experiences and concisely presented the science of addiction. His book brings to life the countless devastating effects of addiction that affect individuals across all strata of society while attacking the stigma of addiction and shows the importance of neuroscience in understanding and treating it. -- Rajita Sinha, chief, psychology section, Yale Medical School
Heilig is one of the wisest, smartest, most insightful people I know. And what Heilig is, so is this book. A fantastic journey across one of the most complex and misunderstood problems of our time. -- Pier Vincenzo Piazza, director, Neurocentre Magendie
Recommended for anyone who suffers from addiction or who knows someone who does; undergraduate and graduate students, scholars, and researchers studying medicine, particularly addiction and neurology, and psychology; and anyone who has an interest in learning more about the subject. ― Library Journal
What makes this book especially compelling is the author's ability to smoothly transition between dealing with addictions at the human clinical level and at the more abstract level of scientific research. Heilig admirably tries to extract the most meaningful takeaway points from sometimes-dense scientific findings.... Highly recommended. ― Choice
Markus Heilig has succeeded in making the airy dismissals of biological evidence-based approaches to addiction, such as those he heard in medical school, no longer tenable. -- Séamus Sweeney ― Times Literary Supplement
[The Thirteenth Step] offers a brilliant and, perhaps more important, highly legible review of current addiction science.... Heilig's synthesis invites us all to critically consider the addiction concept along with its implications for people, policy, and the practice of medicine. -- Kyle Bridge ― H-Sci-Med-Tech
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Columbia University Press; 1st edition (May 12, 2015)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 320 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0231172362
- ISBN-13 : 978-0231159371
- Item Weight : 1.35 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.3 x 1.2 x 9.1 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,272,089 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #376 in Medical Psychopharmacology
- #480 in Popular Psychology Psychopharmacology
- #1,457 in Sociological Study of Medicine
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
If you want a good grounding in the research, the status of clinical help available, and the many factors that are associated with addiction, read this book. It's written at a relatively sophisticated level, but it is not dry or boring.
Top reviews from other countries
Demonstrated to me that alcoholism (oops! "dependency") is a disease, For comparison, think of diabetes. If diabetics were advised to go to talk therapy, how many would be helped? Buy it or borrow or steal.





