The worldwide cost of substance abuse is 1.35 times the gross domestic product of the United States. The World Health Organization has been honing knowledge to reverse the expansion of substance abuse with the emerging pandemics of internet and technology addiction evidence of that expansion. This book aligns the work of the scholars from 1800 to 1960 to recommendations in Abraham Flexner's 1910 report, Medical Education in the United States and Canada - the physician as a practitioner whose purpose is more societal and preventive versus as a social humanist whose purpose is more individual and curative. Note: The reference to 'primary care physician' in this book is intended to be a placeholder for the general practice dentist, the general practice physician and the general practice psychiatrist. This book leverages the 1984 Physicians for the Twenty-First Century report, which relaxed the student's preparation allowing for a broader liberal arts education, as the basis for the understanding that substance abuse is in part latent (borderline) schizophrenia. This book assesses mortality and morbidity statistics, and evidence-based practices as deployed in the World Health Organization, as being the key to addressing the harmful use of alcohol as one of the four most common modifiable and preventable risk factors for major non-communicable diseases as communicated by the World Health Organization. Also assesses disturbing evidence with respect to the tenants of cognitive psychology and the evidence-based movement, placing further emphasis on the primary care physician as a social humanist. Note: Alcohol and substance abuse are not synonyms - alcohol is a subset of substance abuse but will be given sole visibility as circumstances dictate. Going beyond World Health Organization communications that are limited to alcohol, the position in this book is substance abuse is (1) a pandemic that is responsible for more than 2.5 million deaths, (2) the leading risk factor for poor health globally, (3) fueled by a person's attitude about substance abuse, the common denominator to the four most modifiable and preventable risk factors, and (4) doomed to continuance while focus is set on the evidence-based movement's strategies given the abuser's denial. This book takes the notoriety out of addictive-oriented thinking and reframes that thinking in a manner that comports with normal day-to-day frustrations, the price that is attached to the gift of cognition.
About the Author: David H. Cook has donated time to his community, homeless shelters and a jail. His professional experience includes economic and financial analysis and planning, and software engineering. His professional service to the community includes serving as the president of the board of trustees of a substance abuse treatment center, the finance director of a domestic violence agency, and has authored applications to a variety of U. S. Federal Grant Funding Opportunities.