Addiction is a crisis affecting millions of Americans every year. While the prevailing model—addiction as a brain-based disease—has destigmatized addiction, it hasn’t solved the problem. Instead, as pioneering psychiatrist and researcher Elias Dakwar shows, it may be making things worse. Drawing on his research with hallucinogenic compounds and meditation-based treatments, fifteen years of clinical experience, and recent findings from neuroscience, Dakwar frames addiction as the fixed “reality” to which the imagination become captive. In a bold repudiation of the brain-disease model, he approaches addiction, not as a physical problem, but as a crisis of the creative imagination in which our all-too-human attempts to alleviate suffering and make sense of the world leads to a locked-in conception of things that only confuses things further.