Dodes has the view that addiction has been deeply misunderstood in both our culture and clinical practice. He has described addiction as an uncontrollable psychological mechanism that is a subset of psychological compulsions in general. In his book The Heart of Addiction, Dodes argues that people act in addictive ways because they do not feel empowered.
''The Sober Truth''
Dodes, in The Sober Truth, says that most people who have experienced Alcoholics Anonymous have not achieved long-term sobriety, stating that research indicates that only five to eight percent of the people who go to one or more AA meetings achieve sobriety for longer than one year. Gabrielle Glaser used Dodes' figures to state that AA has a low success rate in a 2015 article for The Atlantic, which says that better alternatives than AA for alcohol treatment are available. The 5–8% figure put forward by Dodes is controversial; Thomas Beresford, M.D., says that the book uses "three separate, questionable, calculations that arrive at the 5–8% figure." The New York Times calls The Sober Truth a "polemical and deeply flawed book". John Kelly and Gene Beresin state that the book's conclusion that " approaches are almost completely ineffective and even harmful in treating substance use disorders" is wrong, noting that "studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals have found that 12-step treatments that facilitate engagement with AA post-discharge produce about one third higher continuous abstinence rates." Jeffrey D. Roth and Edward J. Khantzian, in their review of The Sober Truth, called Dodes' reasoning against AA success a "pseudostatistical polemic." Lance Dodes said in a March 2020 interview that he had not yet read the 2020 Cochrane Review which shows AA more effective than some other methods,, but that he does not feel creating a social support network helps with addiction.
Other works
In 2004 Dodes appeared in an episode of In 2015 he appeared as an expert in the film "The Business of Recovery". He contributed an essay to the 2017 book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.
