Episode #113 High Truths on Drugs and Addiction with Dr. Thomas McLellan on Pre-Addiction

Is it time to talk about Pre-Addiction? We have pre-diabetes and pre-glaucoma, diagnosis intended to prompt early treatment in order to prevent worse disease.  Should we be diagnosing and treating Pre-Addiction? Thomas McLellan, Ph.D. has been a career researcher in addiction treatment and policy for 40 years, working primarily at the University of Pennsylvania and at the Treatment Research Institute (TRI) which founded and served as CEO for 25 years.

From 2000-2009 he was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment.  From 2009 to 2011, he was Deputy Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) where he formulated President Obama’s National Drug Control Strategy and helped include addiction treatment into the Affordable Care Act.  In 2015-2016 he served as Senior Editor on the US Surgeon General’s Report, Facing Addiction.

In his career he has published over 550 articles and chapters on addiction research and was awarded over 150 NIH research grants.  He has been among the top ten most cited researchers in the addiction field for 15 years.

Dr. McLellan is the recipient of several distinguished awards including the Lifetime Achievement Awards of the American, Italian, Australian, Egyptian and British Societies of Addiction Medicine; the Robert Wood Johnson Innovator Award; Distinguished Contribution to Addiction Medicine from the American Public Health Association, the American Medical Association; and jointly from the National Institutes of Drug Abuse and Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse.

He currently serves on the boards of Indivior LLC (makers of Suboxone) and Recover Together; and lives with his wife Kerry in Sarasota Florida.

Pre-Addiction - A Missing Concept for Treating Substance Use Disorder, Aug 2022