In his New York Times bestselling memoir, Symptoms of Withdrawal, Christopher Kennedy Lawford chronicled his deep descent into near-fatal drug and alcohol addiction, and his subsequent hard-won journey back to sobriety, which he has maintained for more than twenty years. The overwhelming response his book received impressed upon Lawford the number of people struggling to find their own way back from addiction and the need to share their stories. The histories gathered here are the recollections of lives snatched back from the brink of a precipice so wide and deep it threatened to engulf them.

Moments of Clarity includes stories from men and women, young and old, across all barriers of celebrity, color, and class. Represented in these pages are the singer and the actress, the writer and the anchorman, the man from the movie screen and the woman who lives down the street. This book brings together a myriad of different moments, all with the common understanding of where these men and women have been and where they must go. As they bravely share their stories, they shed light not only on their own experiences but also on the journey we all take as human beings who are trying to make sense of our world.

Ask yourself:
Do you believe that the other person is responsible for how you feel? Do their actions seem like a complete mystery? Are you ready to stop feeling angry or upset? Do you still feel hurt or sad? Are you ready to re-build the trust within this relationship? Have you made the decision to forgive? Are you haunted by something you said or did to another?
If you answered YES to more than one of these questions, then this book is for you "How To Forgive" will assist you in unraveling the past and help you to let go of the feelings which are holding you back. Forgiveness is a choice, but to forgive is not always easy. In fact, many people who would like to let go of anger and forgive are stumped with the question of how to forgive. This step-by-step guide will help you acknowledge your emotions and deal with the issues those emotions identify.
"Lynda Bevan offers an important contribution to the clarification of this emotionallyloaded term: 'forgiveness'. She offers a taxonomy of misdeeds and issues that require forgiveness and then proceeds with guidance on how to tackle and defuse these situations and even turn them around in one's favor. Bevan thus transforms forgiveness from a mere ethical or moral requirement to a pragmatic approach to the management of anger, pain, and abuse. I have rarely encountered so much useful content packed into so little a space: this book is a veritable energy drink "
--Sam Vaknin, author of "Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited"
By the author of the #1 Bestseller: "Life Without Jealousy"
Book #5 in the 10-Step Empowerment Series -- Learn more at www.LyndaBevan.com
Self-Help: Abuse - General

An insightful, very readable book. The father of military alcoholism treatment tells about his own life and recovery from alcoholism, and describes how he set up the first officially sanctioned military treatment programs for alcoholics in the 1940s and 50s, when the Alcoholics Anonymous movement was first spreading across the United States. A survivor of the attack on Pearl Harbor, he almost died after the war from his own out-of-control drinking. Using his own recovery as a guide, he persuaded the Air Force to appoint him full time to working with other alcoholics. The success story which he and psychiatrist Dr. Louis Jolyon West related in the "American Journal of Psychiatry" in 1956 was distributed all across the country by the National Council on Alcoholism. If you think that you may have a problem with alcohol or drugs yourself, this book can save your life. The author describes in simple terms the processes which drive people to drink and use drugs, and the route to recovery. He talks about genetics, physical addiction, and the social and psychological pressures which produce subconscious conflicts and massive guilt in alcohol and drug abusers. For mental health professionals, he discusses the relationship between the twelve step program and basic psychiatric principles, and shows how the professionals and the A.A. and N.A. groups can work together to produce impressive recovery rates. This A.A. old-timer (fifty-five years sober) also talks about his early mentor Mrs. Marty Mann, the first woman to gain long-term sobriety in A.A. He describes his conversations with Sister Ignatia and the good old-timers in Akron, Ohio, his work with the noted alcohol researcher E. M. Jellinek at the Yale School of Alcohol Studies, and the way early A.A. meetings were organized and conducted. His book is a lasting monument to those early years, when it was first discovered that alcoholics could be saved.

This is the basic text of the Narcotics Anonymous fellowship. Just as with alcoholism, there is no 'cure' for narcotic addiction, but recovery is possible through a program adapted from the "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions" of Alcoholics Anonymous. This book, written by addicts, for addicts, about addicts, sets forth the spiritual principles of Narcotics Anonymous that hundreds of thousands of addicts have used in recovery. Intended as a complete textbook for every addict seeking recovery, Narcotics Anonymous describes the N.A. program and how it works. It includes the "N.A. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions", as well as many personal stories of men and women who have found freedom from addiction through Narcotics Anonymous.

Nick Charles MBE is a pioneer in treating alcohol dependency. As the founder of both the Chaucer Clinic and the Gainsborough Foundation, he was the first person to be honoured by the Queen 'for services to people with alcohol problems' and his work - over four decades - has helped tens of thousands of people. But Nick's decorated success overlays an extraordinary and unforgettable personal journey, for Nick was once an alcoholic vagrant sleeping rough on the streets of London. In 50 Years of Hard Road, Nick details his time in the abyss of alcohol addiction; a period that despatched relationships, his health, his career, and so much more. Forced to live on the streets for four years, Nick recalls the tough times, the characters he met, and the ever-present call of alcohol, but also how he slowly built up two carrier bags-worth of painstaking research into alcohol and its effects on his fellow man. It was through the documents in these carrier bags that Nick's life was to change forever when, in the mid-1970s, he was taken under the wing of a doctor who cared for those on skid row. This dedicated medic recognised the treasure trove of information Nick had developed. 50 Years of Hard Road is a remarkable, uplifting, and often humorous story of one man's journey from the depths of life-crushing alcohol dependency, to running alcohol clinics and programmes across the country. It describes an incredible life filled with high points, low points, and amazing adventures in-between.

Nick Charles MBE is a pioneer in treating alcohol dependency. As the founder of both the Chaucer Clinic and the Gainsborough Foundation, he was the first person to be honoured by the Queen 'for services to people with alcohol problems' and his work - over four decades - has helped tens of thousands of people. But Nick's decorated success overlays an extraordinary and unforgettable personal journey, for Nick was once an alcoholic vagrant sleeping rough on the streets of London. In 50 Years of Hard Road, Nick details his time in the abyss of alcohol addiction; a period that despatched relationships, his health, his career, and so much more. Forced to live on the streets for four years, Nick recalls the tough times, the characters he met, and the ever-present call of alcohol, but also how he slowly built up two carrier bags-worth of painstaking research into alcohol and its effects on his fellow man. It was through the documents in these carrier bags that Nick's life was to change forever when, in the mid-1970s, he was taken under the wing of a doctor who cared for those on skid row. This dedicated medic recognised the treasure trove of information Nick had developed. 50 Years of Hard Road is a remarkable, uplifting, and often humorous story of one man's journey from the depths of life-crushing alcohol dependency, to running alcohol clinics and programmes across the country. It describes an incredible life filled with high points, low points, and amazing adventures in-between.

Discussion questions and activities to help the reader work through the material in Breathing Under Water

I feel like people leave me abandoned all the time. Sometimes I'm so afraid for what seems like no reason. I just don't seem to have any energy. Why do the same thoughts keep racing through my mind? I usually don't feel happy or sad. If there isn't real excitement, I feel bored. I want to be close to people, but I just never make it. Do you see yourself in this list? Children of alcoholic parents have suffered wounds that affect their lives for years to come. They learn to protect themselves from the pattern of hurt that they have come to expect in life. The results of such constant vigilance against pain can range from ulcers, sleeplessness, addictions, depression and anger to a string of broken relationships. But adult children of alcoholics can go through a healing journey that will help them recover from their painful past and be set free to live as God intended. Daryl Quick takes readers step by step through new ways of feeling, thinking and acting that will replace the ineffective patterns they have been locked into for years. With moving stories and helpful exercises, Quick shows how adult children of alcoholics can find hope and healing. A book for those who want to recover from their past.

Millions of us suffer from addiction, including psychiatrist and recovering alcoholic Carl Erik Fisher. But where does this centuries-old behaviour come from and how should we treat it? As a young doctor, Carl Erik Fisher came face to face with his own addiction crisis, one that nearly cost him everything. Now, in The Urge, he investigates the history of this condition; how we have struggled to define, treat, and control it; and how broader understanding and compassion could change people's lives. The Urge is at once an eye-opening history of ideas, a riveting personal story of addiction and recovery, and a clinician's urgent call for a more expansive, nuanced view of one of society's most intractable challenges.

A great story must entertain, inform or inspire, and this book does all three. Susan Waits has created a dramatic narrative with authentic characters that draw breath, laugh, cry, teach and learn in vivid settings drawn from a deep well of personal experience. The plot reflects the inexplicable and serendipitous twists and turns of two women's lives as they come face to face with their addiction to alcohol. Implicitly revealed are the iconic twelve steps to recovery in the illustration and interplay among personal intention, forgiveness, surrender and love. Claire Danner's life was one call for "another round" after another. Finally, at the age of sixty-eight, after decades of broken hearts and broken promises, and a body ailing from self-abuse, she reluctantly succumbs to her family's insistence to enter rehab. There she must face and conquer the demons long suppressed by her self-administered anesthetic. In the face of failing health and aged despair, will she emerge from this crucible with another chance at love and life? From childhood Grace was close to her "Momma Claire," and as a young adult studying art at Rhodes College, she had an unconscious propensity to overindulge. She wondered at times if she was on a collision course with the same fate as her grandmother, a question that would unexpectedly and suddenly be put to a life-struggling test. The parallel journeys of grandmother and granddaughter weave together and culminate in a joint pilgrimage that reveals a final, life-altering surprise.

Addiction is seemingly inexplicable. From the outside, it can look like wilful, arrogant self-destruction; from the inside, it can feel as inevitable and insistent as a heartbeat. It is possible to describe, but hard to explore. Yet in The Recovering, Leslie Jamison draws on her own life and the lives of addicts of extraordinary talent - John Cheever, John Berryman, Jean Rhys and Amy Winehouse among them - to take us inside the experience of addiction, exposing the contours, edges and wholes of an intoxicated life. Part memoir, part group biography, part literary history and part definitive analysis of cultural and social considerations of addiction, The Recovering is a significant moment in the history of post-war narrative non-fiction.