RJ Branconnier
Roland J. Branconnier graduated from Suffolk University with a BS in Psychology. He attended graduate school at Boston University School of Medicine where he earned an MA in Pharmacology.
Roland is an Instructor in the Alcoholism/Chemical Dependency Treatment Services Program at UMass – Boston. His interests include the evolutionary basis and neuroscience of addiction. In the clinic, he advocates for client's rights to select a treatment regime from among evidence-based treatment options.
Articles by this Author
Bill Wilson’s Spiritual Awakening: Conscious Contact with God or a Neurobiological Perfect Storm?
- By RJ Branconnier
- Published 05/28/2009
- History of Addiction - History of Alcoholism
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Bill Wilson was the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.), a fellowship of support groups dedicated to helping alcoholics achieve sobriety. In December 1934, Bill Wilson’s experienced a spiritual awakening and conscious contact with God that was a pivotal event in the founding of A.A. and the Twelve Step program of recovery.
By deconstructing Bill Wilson’s own words within the context of physicalism, we posit that the mechanisms of his spiritual awakening and conscious contact with God, were not a transcendental or supernatural experience but the result of a confluence of physical factors that created a Neurobiological Perfect Storm.
Maturing Out of Addiction: An Age-Related Shift in Hyperbolic Temporal Discounting
- By RJ Branconnier
- Published 04/23/2009
- Addiction Research
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The concept of addiction as a progressive, chronic disease remains an
idea with substantial support in the recovery community. This belief
persists despite substantial scientific evidence that significant
numbers of addicts eventually mature out of addiction as they age.
