6 Addiction specialist and alumnus Kent Hutchison searches for new drug and alcohol abuse treatments. STORY BY Matt Elliott PHOTOGRAPH BY Jonathan Castner Addiction affects millions of people each year in the United States and costs the American economy billions of dollars in lost productivity. Leading the fight against drug and alcohol addiction is College of Arts and Sciences alumnus Kent Hutchison, one of the nation’s foremost experts in how genes, drugs and controlled substances affect our brains. “It’s all about the interplay between genetic risks and exposure to alcohol and drugs,” Hutchison says. Hutchison is a clinical psychologist with the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Mind Research Network, an Albuquerque, N.M., high-tech imaging center. Hutchison studies therapies, the addicted brain and what keeps the brain hooked. He also examines how genes determine treatments’ effectiveness. He uses MRI technology to see what brain areas seem most linked to addiction. “Addiction is a very complicated thing that involves changes in brain genetics and social-environmental factors — all of which change over time. This starts when people are young, and, as psychologists, we see them when they’re 55 or 60 years old. Ideally, you want to study them when they’re 16 and follow up in the next 40 years, but that’s really hard to do.” He has found that genetics and social environments account for much of our vulnerability to addiction. “One of the things that’s always fascinated me is how some people can never quit,” he says. “What is it about some people that lets them quit easily or never have the problem in the first place, while other people develop the problem and never recover?” If the medical community can understand those things, he says, then it might develop better treatments. Hutchison’s work comes as understanding of addiction is evolving. Once considered a result of personal weakness, addiction increasingly is thought of as a brain disease. Hutchison’s area of study is part of a growing field in psychology. The result has been a rise in new treatments and research into whether old treatments for other disorders work with addiction. “There’s been a huge explosion in terms of our ability to look at genes and identify new potential treatments,” he says. “Most treatments today are modestly effective. Even patients who receive the best treatments are likely to relapse in one year.” The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Cancer Institute have funded his research to the tune of millions of dollars. Drug companies have shown interest in his work, funding his screening of their products against different types of drug addiction. CONTINUES At the Forefront of the Mind
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