Hijacked Minds (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798999565020)

Hijacked Minds: How Addiction Rewires the Soul is a physician's urgent and compassionate examination of addiction as a disease of the brain, body, behavior, and spirit.

Written by Muhamad Aly Rifai, MD (Dr. Rifai), a board certified psychiatrist, internist, and addiction medicine physician, this book explains how addiction takes control of human decision making, disrupts families, damages health, and reshapes the way people think, feel, and survive. Dr. Rifai brings decades of clinical experience to a subject often clouded by stigma, shame, and misunderstanding.

Rather than reducing addiction to moral failure or poor choices, Hijacked Minds shows how substances and compulsive behaviors alter reward pathways, stress systems, memory, impulse control, and identity. The book also explores the emotional and spiritual suffering that often accompanies addiction, including trauma, isolation, guilt, relapse, and the search for recovery.

Blending medical science, clinical insight, and human stories, Dr. Rifai offers a clear framework for understanding why addiction is so powerful, why recovery is so difficult, and why hope remains possible. This book is written for patients, families, clinicians, policymakers, and anyone seeking a deeper understanding of addiction in modern society.

Hijacked Minds is a call to replace judgment with knowledge, despair with treatment, and stigma with a more humane path toward healing.