James R. Milam

James Milam (b. 1922) was a decorated WWII fighter-bomber pilot with 86 combat missions, most in P-47s but with a few each in the older P-40s and the newer P-38s.

After the war he earned a PhD degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Washington (1959), and practiced as a Licensed Clinical Psychologist in California and Washington States. He then served as Behavioral Research Director in a Seattle Lab conducting research on the causes of alcoholism. It was there in the late 1960s that he discovered and documented the astonishing fact, soon confirmed by others, that addiction is a brain syndrome regularly misdiagnosed as a psychiatric problem and destructively treated with substitute addictive drugs (Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson). It was the discovery of a new paradigm.

Others have naively tried to have it both ways, not realizing that two different paradigms are involved and that they are mutually exclusive. Because of its unique high fidelity to the new paradigm, his Under The Influence has the ring of authenticity, and it was soon recognized as a timeless classic. It is still the unsurpassed guide to treatment for both staff members and patients in the better abstinence-based addiction treatment centers, and the essential information for anyone else who has a serious need to understand addiction.