Does it make sense to place hallucinogens and hard drugs in the same category and to regard them all as “addictive”? Should tobacco and alcohol be put on the same plane as heroin, cocaine and crack? Should the argument that we are all addicts of one form or another (even stamp collecting can be considered “addictive”) lead us to regard all forms of substance abuse — whether legal or illegal — as commonplace? With the assistance of Carlos Parada, his collaborator at the Centre Médical de Marmottan, Claude Olievenstein offers the reader his latest thoughts and ideas on the highly distinctive world of substance abusers, which is characterised by pleasure, withdrawal, the need for warmth and haste and, above all, by instability and chaos. After thirty years of medical practice, with extensive experience treating substance abusers, Olievenstein argues for the foundation of an “intensity clinic”, which he believes will provide the tools to understand the borderline personality of drug addicts.

Claude Olievenstein is the head doctor at the Centre Médical de Marmottan, in Paris, and a senior research fellow at the University of Lyon-II. He is the author of Le Non-dit des Émotions and Naissance de la Vieillesse.

Carlos Parada, a physician specialising in drug addiction, works at the Centre Médical de Marmottan.