The Pervasive Myth of the Evidence-Based Practice

The 35th president of the United States, John F. Kennedy, once said that “The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive and unrealistic” (Kennedy, 1962). We have seen myths—the persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic—play out all too often in our field of practice, including the following, to name only a few (Gold, 2024):

• Addiction [sic] is a disease of choice;
• People need to hit “rock bottom” to recover;
• Medication-assisted treatment (MAT) replaces one addiction [sic] with another.