Phil Werdell (1941-2023) held a PhD in education, but gravitated to the world of Food Addiction treatment, pulled by his personal struggle with the disease. He worked in hospital-based treatment as a counselor, ran aftercare programs, and then, when the managed-care-insurance era killed hospital-based care, co-established a method to apply the principles he knew worked for Food Addicts in crisis, outside a hospital setting. He and his partner Mary Foushi and others treated more than 5,000 late-stage Food Addicts via their company, ACORN Food Dependency Recovery Services (which now operates at SHiFT, Recovery by ACORN).
Mark Gold, one of the most important voices in addiction research in the 20th and 21st centuries, said of Phil: “He really invented the field. He took basic science and and brought it to clinical practice…”
