Memoirs often offer more than providing a chronological account of a life. At their best, they invite readers to reflect on their own experiences and, occasionally, encourage them to rethink the paths they have chosen with an eye to their future. As a science librarian, I personally find memoirs written by prominent scholars especially valuable because they also let the reader on how a field evolved, often sharing details missing or overlooked in formal histories. The most engaging memoirs also remind us why history still matters.
Historical Awareness
A recently published memoir highlights the importance of historical awareness in addiction science. Seeing Addiction: A Personal Memoir provides a fascinating intellectual and personal history of one of the most influential addiction researchers, Griffith Edwards, best known for rebuilding the scientific and academic reputation of the oldest specialized addiction journal, the British Journal of Addiction, established in 1884. Published by Ubiquity Press and edited by longtime collaborator Thomas F. Babor, the memoir, completed shortly before Edwards’ death in 2012, stands as his final message and professional statement.
Reading this memoir in 2026 also endorses our commitment through our ongoing digital initiatives at Rutgers to preserving the legacy of the field, brought from Yale to Rutgers in 1962. Recalling its interdisciplinary roots, the book provides a clear sense of where the field has come from, implying, that without this knowledge, it is harder to understand contemporary debates surrounding policy and practice, to mentor and train new scientists thoughtfully, and to attract the best forward-thinking scholars to the field.
Part 1. A Career Without Boundaries
Edwards’ contributions helped shape and define the modern scientific understanding of alcohol use disorder. Part One covers his rich international career spanning epidemiology, clinical research, health services, history, ethnography, publishing, and policy, diverse long before “interdisciplinary” was a popular term. He considers addiction a field that needs intellectual curiosity and openness, emphasizing that the “whole was greater than the sum of its parts,” and that research groups were continually renewed as people left and others arrived.
For researchers, notable is the source of inspiration for new research. Edwards argues that, in clinical research, ideas often come from patients: something a patient says, or does, or struggles to explain. But this only matters, he adds, if the clinician has the capacity to listen. Addiction research, in his account, begins not with theory but with attention. His career, he writes, has been “one of continuous self‑education,” influenced by encounters that challenged his assumptions and forced him to see the world through other windows than those framed by his own habits of thought.
His work intersected between research, medicine, law, publishing, and policy. His medico‑legal consultations ranged from alcohol‑related violence and custody disputes to professional regulation and workplace law. These experiences developed his awareness of how addiction is interpreted and managed by different systems, often with conflicting priorities. At the same time, they reinforced his belief that science had a responsibility to inform policy, even with the inevitable frictions between evidence and political agendas.
Part 2. Travels Expanding the Mind
Griffith Edwards giving a speech at Mark Keller’s retirement dinner in 1977 in New Jersey. Pictured also Marty Mann on the left. (Source: Rutgers Digital Alcohol Studies Archives)
Part Two of the book contains seven travelogues over decades and continents: repeated trips across the United States, visits to Canada, Chile, Kenya, Zambia, India, and the Soviet Union. Edwards saw America through the eyes of a British scientist, traveling coast to coast in the 1960s, mostly through hospitals and research sites but also through the culture and the people he met. This trip opened his eyes to the huge contrast between US and UK responses to alcohol problems, drawing a comparison “between American activism and British inertia.” Impressed by the existing diversity and potential of innovation, he confirms, once again, that his own assumptions were often arbitrary and limited.
While others might feature his 1970 encounter with Mother Teresa in India, where she spoke of helping people “do something to help themselves,” my personal favorite is his visit to Yale in 1961, where he met with the “aggressive and talkative” Selden Bacon. I would love to know more about this three-hour talk and the subsequent meeting with Mark Keller. The other memorable travelogue for me was his trip to Moscow in 1989, which describes an era before the political changes vividly and accurately, down to the hard currency shops, the GUM department store, the Red Army group, ballet, deception attempt, and even an “office which is adorned with a colour photograph (actually tinted rather than coloured) of Lenin.”
Rather than considering travel as academic tourism, Edwards used these extreme experiences to challenge the limits of his own assumptions further, while understanding responsibilities of working from a privileged position.
Living and working in a very privileged country, I have realized there is a responsibility to do my very best to help people who work in less privileged surroundings (p. 232).
The Editorial Hand
Thomas Babor presenting at the SALIS Annual Conference in San Diego in 2015. (Photo: J. H. Ward)
The memoir we have today owes a great deal to Thomas Babor, who carefully prepared Edwards’ writings, along with Jean O’Reilly, for publication. Babor’s role is not merely technical. Edwards had reviewed and edited many chapters himself, but several remained as rough dictations, diary‑based narratives, or partially finished texts. Babor, Edwards’ long-time collaborator and an exceptional scholar and editor himself (known as the previous Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs from 2015 to 2023), openly shares his dilemma of editing the texts of one of addiction science’s most influential authors and most powerful journal editors, without being able to seek guidance or clarification.
What ultimately resolved Babor’s dilemma was the book’s original purpose as described by Edwards. He wrote it primarily for students and early‑career professionals trying to understand how addiction science works from the inside. Committed to help raise the next generation of addiction scientists himself, Babor points out that this was one of the main motivations for bringing the book to publication. In preliminary readings, the ethical, historical, clinical, political and interpersonal issues in the book resonated well with students and aspiring researchers, confirming that bridging the gaps between generations and cultures is beneficial, valuable, and possible.
Publishing the book open access, available to download freely for anyone, including the less privileged, is a great example of preserving a legacy true to the author’s original purpose.
Returning to the Roots
Seeing Addiction appears at a moment when addiction studies are questioning mainstream narratives that often cloud public understanding. “Seeing addiction” evolves from Edwards’ lived experience as a clinician and researcher who learned from patients not only about symptoms, but about daily realities, inequities in care, and the social conditions that shape substance use. For Edwards, addiction is not simply a biomedical diagnosis.
Aware that addiction science often lacks reflection about its own history, Edwards believed that, without historical awareness, the field risks repeating old errors and will fail to teach new scientists to ask the right questions. Returning to the field’s interdisciplinary roots, the book serves as a reminder of what gets lost when addiction science is narrowed in ways that might leave much of that complexity behind.
The book also encourages readers considering a career change or a new path into addiction science: this is a profession for people who are curious, attentive, and open to being changed by what they learn.
- Edwards, G. (2026). Seeing Addiction: A Personal Memoir. London: Ubiquity Press.