Borrowed Peace

You're not weak. You're self-medicating, with the wrong tools.

If you've ever known that something is off with what you reach for, the drink, the weed, the phone, the bet, the late-night scroll, but you don't want a moral lecture or a 30-day challenge, this is the book for you.

Most addiction books ask you to declare yourself broken or to quit forever. Borrowed Peace offers a third path, built for the reader who isn't in crisis and isn't in denial. The premise is simple: substances and behaviors work by borrowing a state your nervous system hasn't yet learned to make on its own, calm, focus, sleep, relief. Borrowed states are real. They're also expensive, and the bill comes due in tolerance, lost sleep, lost attention, lost money, and lost time. Recovery, whether your goal is moderation or abstinence, is the work of building what you've been borrowing.

Dr. Andrew Hill draws on his clinical years on a dual-diagnosis psychiatric unit and at the moderation-friendly program Alternatives, where he trained alongside Marc Kern, founder of SMART Recovery and Moderation Management, plus his own QEEG and neurofeedback practice. The result is a guide that does what the bestsellers skip:

• Maps which brains reach for which substances, and why yours picked this particular one
• Takes moderation seriously as a real, evidence-based option, with a clear decision framework
• Covers modern pharmacotherapy in plain language: naltrexone, acamprosate, bupropion, GLP-1s, the Sinclair Method
• Treats behavioral addictions as serious peers: gambling, porn, phone, food, exercise, work, and even obsessive recovery routines
• Teaches the regulation skills that come before any identity label: urge surfing, the half-second gap, and more

You don't need to call yourself anything. You need to understand what your brain is doing and how to give it what it's been borrowing. Borrowed Peace shows you how.