Mark S. Gold

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Mark S. Gold is a scholar, researcher, and author known for his work on the effects of food, tobacco, cocaine, and other drugs on the brain. He is the author of commercial books and has also written over 1,000 scientific articles, chapters, and abstracts published in journals for neuroscientists and health professionals.

Gold is the 2015 John P. McGovern Award Recipient in honor of his contributions to public policy, treatment, research, and addiction prevention. He has increased our understanding of the relationship between addiction and society.

Gold was the University of Florida Distinguished Alumni Professor for 2011-2014.^[1] He was the Donald Dizney Eminent Scholar and was a distinguished professor of psychiatry, neuroscience, community health and family medicine. He is the former chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Florida College of Medicine.

Gold created the Division of Addiction Medicine at UF and its treatment program, the Florida Recovery Center. With Bob DuPont and Tom McLellan, he has studied physician and health professionals who have become addicts and observed their outcomes after treatment. He has reported on physician treatment since reporting on the sequential use of clonidine and naltrexone in addicted physicians.

Gold has served as a consultant on website design for NIDA: The Science of Drug Abuse and Addiction in 2013 and is a member of the ASAM Drug Testing White Paper Committee (2013).

Gold was Chief Scientist for the Afghanistan National Urban Drug Use Survey which gathered information on second- and third-hand opium exposure in Kabul and other urban Afghan areas for the US State Department and the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. The State Department's funded study identified second and third-hand exposure to opiates in the body, fluids, and hair of children of Kabul and subsequent epidemiological studies of the mothers. [1]

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Gold has been working on new addiction-based models for understanding hedonistic overeating, food addiction and the development of new therapies. He has carried out similar work for opiate addiction which led to the discovery of clonidine's efficacy in opiate withdrawal. His work in cocaine addiction led to the dopamine depletion hypothesis (Patent #4/312,878).

Gold has studied smoking as well as second- and third-hand tobacco smoke with support from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and FAMRI. He has worked with a variety of government agencies in the area of drug use and youth: the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, Media Partnership for a Drug Free America, the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, and the Betty Ford Center Foundation.

In addition to his research into the the neurobiology of addiction, Gold has worked for over 30 years to evaluate the hypothesis that hedonistic overeating is a pathological attachment to food like any other addiction. Gold is a co-editor of the 2012 textbook, Food and Addiction, ^[2]published by Oxford Press.

In an interview for the Congressional Quarterly (CQ Researcher), Gold stated that there is universal agreement that genes can be changed by exposure to drugs.^[3] He used the example of a person whose mother smoked when she was pregnant. This person had genetic receptors that were changed because of the exposure, making that person more likely to become addicted to nicotine.<ref>{{cite press release |title=Friedman J. Treating Addiction. CQ Researcher. 2014 May 2; 24(17)|url=http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2014050200&type=hitlist&num=0> Intrauterine and early childhood exposure may also change risk trajectories for other drugs and food and become an acquired risk for obesity.

• Washington University in St. Louis
• Medical degree from the University of Florida College of Medicine
• Residency and fellowship at Yale School of Medicine

Friedman J. Treating Addiction. CQ Researcher. 2014 May 2; 24(17)

• Food Addiction Oxford University Press Blog
• Mark S. Gold named 2008 Yale Distinguished Alumni
• Yale Hosts Historic Conference on Food and Addiction
• Wall Street Journal food addiction article
• Bloomberg article on food addiction
• Explaining the Disease of Addiction
• Mark S. Gold named 1989 Washington University Distinguished Alumni