Thought Leaders
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In an effort to better understand the nature of addiction and how it should be treated we present some of the leading thinkers on the subject. On this page we ask prominent scholars, researchers, practitioners, politicians and writers for their definition of addiction, how it should be treated, and how they understand the role of the faith in the healing process. Each will include resources to support their assertions.
Dr. George Vaillant
A retired American psychiatrist and Professor at Harvard Medical School and Director of Research for the Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Vaillant has spent his research career charting adult development and the recovery process of schizophrenia, heroin addiction, alcoholism, and personality disorder.
William L. White
A former community organizer from Illinois, Bill White contributed an amazing body of work on addiction treatment and recovery.
Tom McLellan
McLellan is widely regarded as one of the best researchers on addiction related issues.
Carol McDaid
McDaid is a registered federal lobbyist. An advocate in Washington D.C. for people in recovery.
Phillip Valentine
Valentine is Executive Director of C.C.A.R., an organization providing treatment for people who have what he terms “Low Recovery Capital”—those who have lost savings, money, families and homes.
Don Coyhis
Coyhis, a member of the Mohican Nation who leads Wellbriety with a mission is to bring 100 Native American communities into healing through its program.
Nora Volkow
Volkow is the current Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Bill Miller
Miller’s groundbreaking studies on Motivational Interviewing 30 years ago have radically changed how clinicians think about substance abuse, treatment, and how to most successfully effect change in patients.
Keith Humphreys
Humphreys studies self-help groups such as A.A., Women in Sobriety and Moderation Management (MM).
Paul Molloy
Molloy developed Oxford House, a community based approach to addiction treatment which provides unsupported sober housing for people in recovery.
Stanton Peele
Peele has authored books and treatises committed to his thesis that AA is not the only way to treat addiction, and that alcoholism is not a chronic and progressive disease. Most addictions, he believes, are a product of culture and an individual’s response to their personal experience.
John F. Kelly
Kelly is the Professor of Psychiatry in Addiction Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Recovery Research Institute at the Massachusetts General Hospital.
Amy Krentzman
Senator Amy Klobuchar
American politician who was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 2006 and began representing Minnesota the following year. A recent candidate for president of the United States, Klobuchar has a long record of fighting addiction through legislation in Minnesota and at the national level.
Dr. Marvin Sepella
Servers as Hazelden Medical Director and is a national expert on addiction treatment, pharmacological treatments and integration of evidence-based practices.
William C. Moyers
Serves as vice president of public affairs and community relations for Hazelden Betty Ford, based in Minnesota.
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