What Is The Addiction Arena?

Life With Freedom

"The sway of alcohol over mankind
is unquestionably
due to
its power to stimulate
the mystical faculties of human nature."
William James

The goal of the LiveReal.com Addiction Arena is pretty simple: to be one place where practical, no-nonsense, see-for-yourself information is gathered to help those who want, to help themselves.

Despite billions of dollars in research, decades and centuries of thought, study, and worry, and thousands of shelves of books written, the whole topic of "addictions" is still as disorganized, confusing, and pervasive as it ever was. Ask any five experts their theory of addiction, and you can get five different answers, all equally fuzzy, misleading, or wrong. Walk into a bookstore, find the section on addiction, and you'll find shelves of books with dozens of experts all contradicting one another. We send men to the moon, to the other side of the world, to the bottoms of the oceans, but still can't seem to keep some of them out of the bottle, or understand why they go there to start with.

The economic cost of drug abuse totals more than $100 billion per year. It increased 82% between 1985 and 1995. This doesn't even mention the painful personal emotional toll taken on relationships, families, and individual lives.

The LiveReal Addiction Arena is about doing what we can to combat this aspect of life, one person at a time. While this arena is not substitute for professional and expert advice when needed or the medical precautions one must be aware of (as well as limits to what can happen through a web-page), we aim to arm individuals with the best tools and knowledge available to living a full, free life. In other words, this Arena is designed to be a place where we gather the best of what we know about addiction in one place, translate it into English, and talk about it.