Welcome to Dr. Ted Talks Addiction. I'm a psychologist and neuroscientist with 30 years experience in research and treatment of addiction and other mental health struggles. I've used neuroimaging to understand brain systems involved in addiction, and I taught college-level courses on addiction for many years. I've followed the scientific literature on promising "cures" for three decades, only to watch addiction's grip on America tighten year after year. I've seen us turn almost all of our attention to opioids while the crack and methamphetamine epidemics that never left continue to devastate our poorest urban communities.* I've watched stigma toward addiction grow as Americans become ever more accepting of other mental health problems.

I've followed all of this with special interest because I'm a recovering drug addict myself. I've attended countless recovery meetings and been through treatment several times. I've seen family members, friends, and acquaintances die from their addictions. I've worked with fellow travelers, including addicted veterans with PTSD and homeless crack and fentanyl addicts in the most troubled neighborhoods of Columbus OH. The same neighborhoods I once frequented myself. I've seen the devastating effects of addiction on my wife's family, who lost a son to overdose, and I've felt the inescapable, bottomless shame of letting my own family down again and again.

Together, my career and lived experiences show me that scientists and those who struggle with addiction often talk past one another, without much common understanding. This gap almost surely contributes to our treatment failures, which continue at high rates despite major scientific breakthroughs in understanding addiction. Dr. Ted Talks Addiction brings science and lived experience together in ways I hope build greater shared understanding among scientists, the public, and people in active addiction and recovery. Throughout the site and in our new Podcast, I explore important controversies and challenges we face in understanding and treating addiction. I hope you return as we add Podcast episodes and Addiction 101 microlectures, which I've adapted and updated from my college classes on addiction.

For those who are interested in learning more about my background, I earned my Ph.D. at Stony Brook University on Long Island, then interned in addiction science at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. After this training, I began my academic and research career at the University of Washington, where I taught for 10 years. I then joined the faculty at The Ohio State University, where I taught for another decade before leaving for the University of Notre Dame in 2021. I left Notre Dame in 2024 to live a more balanced life with my family in Columbus, OH, where I work with homeless crack and fentanyl addicts at the Hope Dealer Community, run by my friend Scott Sanders. Scott's Hope Resource Centers provide life-saving services in disadvantaged Columbus neighborhoods. I also work in private practice at Radically Open Connections in North Columbus.

If you'd like to contact me, please click the Get in Touch button below or visit our Contact page. I try to answer all messages within a few days.

*In the last two decades, crack and methamphetamine overdose deaths have increased in lockstep with opioid overdose deaths, killing nearly as many people.

Dr. Ted Beauchaine