Alexander Danilin

Alexander Gennadievich Danilin was born on 12 March 1960 in the Soviet Union. He studied medicine at the Moscow Medical Stomatological Institute, graduating from its medical faculty in 1983, and then completed a city internship in psychiatry and addiction medicine (known in Russia as narcology).

In 1984 Danilin joined Narcological Clinical Hospital No. 17 in Moscow. He became head of a department there in 1987 and a leading specialist of the hospital in 1998, and for many years practised psychotherapy in Moscow clinics. He taught at Moscow State Medical University, ran a psychotherapy course at the Russian State Pedagogical University, and led a programme called Society Against Drugs at the Moscow Centre for Continuing Adult Education. He was a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association.

From 2003 to August 2016 he was the author and regular host of Silver Threads (Serebryanye Niti) on Radio Rossii, a programme presented as being about the human soul in all its manifestations. From 2004 he also ran face to face personal growth groups based on the programme, under the name of the Silver Threads Club. At the second all Russian seminar and competition of anti drug social advertising, he ran psychological training sessions for journalists.

Danilin wrote a long series of popular books. With I. V. Danilina he wrote practical guides for teenagers and parents, including How to Save Children from Drugs, which the journal Voprosy Narkologii singled out for their scope and detailed advice. His 2001 book on hallucinogens, psychedelia and addiction was, according to media reports, withdrawn from sale by officers of Russia's federal drug control service and security service. Later books included Breakthrough to Genius, Vision Quest, A Pill Against Death, Keys to the Meaning of Life, Questions for a Psychotherapist, Five Steps to Overcoming Depression and The Myth of Schizophrenia.

He was often at odds with the psychiatric establishment. His articles Dead End and Any Diagnosis in Psychiatry Is a Myth caused heated controversy. In December 2010 he criticised the management of Hospital No. 17 on REN TV over the installation of surveillance cameras in its admissions area. In November 2013 the rehabilitation department he had led for 25 years was closed; Danilin said this followed his criticism of the country's chief addiction specialist, Yevgeny Bryun.

Danilin was married and had two sons.

Alexander Danilin died in Egypt on 14 August 2026, at about 11.55 pm Moscow time, at the age of 66. Because he died so close to midnight, some sources, including the first notice on the psychology site b17.ru and the Russian Wikipedia, give the date as 15 August. His cause of death was not made public.

For thirteen years Danilin's Silver Threads brought conversations about addiction, depression and the meaning of life to a national radio audience, and his books carried the same plain spoken approach to parents and patients. Within his profession he was remembered as a doctor willing to challenge accepted diagnoses and official policy in public, even at a cost to his own career.