Why We’re Addicted and How to Break Free

An urgent and compassionate exploration of why we are all vulnerable to addiction and how emerging science can help us break free.

In the twenty-first century, we have built a world that exploits the most vulnerable parts of the human brain. Addiction is not an outlier, nor is it simply a failure of individual willpower. It reflects the interaction between our biology and the environments we have created. From our phones and feeds to substances, habits and behaviours we struggle to control, many of us live with the quiet sense that something has us hooked.

In The Vulnerable Brain, Dr Rayyan Zafar draws on neuroscience, his own personal story and his work at the frontline of psychedelic research to offer a radical new understanding of addiction as one of the defining public health challenges of our time. He tells the story of how our brains are shaped, how their ancient systems of desire can be hijacked and how, under the right conditions, they can be reshaped again.

Taking readers inside some of the most cutting-edge developments in medicine and neuroscience, Zafar brings us to the edge of a new and hopeful era and offers a vision of a future in which we can reclaim our attention, our agency and our capacity to want without being destroyed by what we desire.