As a psychiatrist-in-training fresh from medical school, Carl Erik Fisher came face to face with his own addiction crisis, one that nearly cost him everything. Here, he investigates the history of this age-old condition. Humans have struggled to define, treat, and control addictive behaviour for most of recorded history, including well before the advent of modern science and medicine. The Urge is a rich, sweeping history that probes not only medicine and science but also literature, religion, philosophy, and sociology, illuminating the extent to which the story of addiction has persistently reflected broader questions of what it means to be human and care for one another. Fisher introduces us to the people who have endeavoured to address this complex condition through the ages: physicians and politicians, activists and artists, researchers and writers, and of course the legions of people who have struggled with their own addictions. He also examines the treatments and strategies that have produced hope and relief. 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, and compassionate view of one of society's most intractable challenges.

Caffeine is the most popular psychoactive substance in the world and one of the widest-traded commodities in the forms of coffee, tea, and soft drinks. But, is consumption of caffeine safe in terms of physical and mental health? Aimed at addressing this question, author Jack E. James traces how caffeine consumption evolved as well as how caffeine is absorbed, distributed, and metabolized in our bodies. He then probes the effects of caffeine on psychomotor and cognitive performance, psychological well-being, blood pressure and cardiovascular health, carcinogenic potentials, pregnancy and perinatal health, athletic performance, and diagnostic and therapeutic applications. The book concludes with an examination of the issue of whether or not caffeine is a drug of abuse and whether or not there is a safe level of caffeine consumption. Examining an understudied topic, Understanding Caffeine is a groundbreaking volume that will interest both professionals and practitioners in the fields of psychology, social psychology, public health, behavioral medicine, and nursing

Millions of people enter or seriously consider entering alcohol or drug treatment each year. In their understandable state of urgency, most first-time treatment seekers and their loved ones may rush to the first treatment option they encounter. They are unlikely to be aware of why one form of intervention would be a good choice for their particular problem or why some approaches may, under some conditions, actually be harmful. Lacking reliable information, they are unable to make informed choices.

Recovery from Addiction offers a concise, reader-friendly guide for substance dependent persons, their families, and friends to help make sense of the full range of available treatment options.

Cloud and Granfield introduce readers to their options, from inpatient and outpatient programs and today's major pharmacological approaches to alternative therapies including strategies for using the Internet to access support meetings and approaches which do not call for life-long abstinence from the substances now causing the problem. They outline the underlying principles of each program, its pros and cons, and what a participant can expect when entering that type of treatment, guiding readers in choosing the approach likely to be best for them or their loved one. They also provide specific strategies for addicted individuals who wish to consider recovery on their own, without groups or treatment.

A vital resource for addicts wishing to recover and their loved ones, Recovery from Addiction is also a valuable tool for health care professionals, from social workers to school counselors, responsible for referring clients to drug and alcohol recovery programs.

Chris Grosso invites us to sit in on conversations with beloved luminaries and bestselling authors such as Ram Dass, Lissa Rankin, Noah Levine, Gabor Mate, and Sharon Salzberg to discover why people return to self-defeating behaviors--drugs, alcohol, unhealthy eating, sex, media--and how they can recover, heal, and thrive. In his recovery from drugs and alcohol, Chris Grosso has stumbled, staggered, and started all over again. In an effort to understand why he relapses, and why many of us return to the myriad of other self-defeating behaviors despite our better judgment, he went to bestselling authors, spiritual teachers, psychologists, doctors, and more, and asked them why we tend to repeat mistakes in our lives, even when we know these actions will harm us and the ones we love. In Dead Set on Living, Chris shares these intimate conversations and the practices that have taught him to be more loving, compassionate, and forgiving with himself as well as new meditation and healing techniques he learned through his journey. Unabashedly honest and inspiring, Dead Set on Living is essential reading for anyone seeking a path towards triumph over adversity, understanding the human condition, and rebuilding relationships after promises have been broken.

Your trusted guide to value yourself and break the patterns of codependency Codependency For Dummies, 2nd Edition is the most comprehensive book on the topic to date. Written in plain English and packed with sensitive, authoritative information, it describes the history, symptoms, causes, and relationship dynamics of codependency. The majority of the book is devoted to healing and lays out a clear plan for recovery with exercises, practical advice, and daily reminders to help you know, honor, protect, and express yourself. New to this edition are chapters on working the Twelve Steps to recover from codependency and how therapists/coaches/nurses are affected by codependency. Codependence is primarily a learned behavior from our family of origin. Some cultures have it to a greater degree than others some still see it as a normal way of living. Yet the costs of codependence can include distrust, faulty expectations, passive-aggressiveness, control, self-neglect, over-focus on others, manipulation, intimacy issues, and a slew of other harmful traits. Codependence causes serious pain and affects the majority of Americans not just women and loved ones of addicts. Codependency For Dummies, 2nd Edition offers authoritative and trusted guidance on ways to raise your self-esteem, detach and let go, set boundaries, recognize healthy vs. dysfunctional relationships, overcome guilt and resentment, and much more. * Helps you break the pattern of conduct that keeps you in harmful relationships * Provides trusted guidance to create healthy boundaries, coping skills, and expectations * Offers advice for eliminating feelings of guilt, blame, and feeling overly responsible * Explains the difference between care-giving and codependent care-taking If you're trapped in the cycle of codependency and looking for help, Codependency For Dummies, 2nd Edition offers trusted advice and a clear plan for recovery.

Preventing Drunk Driving shows what is being done today, in research and practice, to reduce impaired driving and the fatalities and injuries it produces and to curtail the spread of this tragic social epidemic. In this informative book, you'll discover how current research and prevention programs are increasing the success of designated driver programs. You'll also find out how communities, friends, and experts are making drinkers aware of their levels of intoxication and discouraging them from driving to keep the roads safer. You'll see when intervention works, when it doesn't, and how you can be most effective as a citizen in the fight against impaired driving deaths along your own stretch of the world's highways and city streets. In Preventing Drunk Driving, you'll get up-to-date data on how researchers are identifying the most dangerous drunk driving recidivists. Also, you'll see how increased study and research have led to theoretical models of intervention, assessments of the usefulness of vehicle interlock programs, and the use of mapping to target offenders most at risk. Most importantly, you'll learn: the results of experiments designed to test methods of increasing designated driving how census-tract mapping can target communities prone to DWI offenses the benefits and limitations of vehicle-interlock devices for the prevention of recidivism how interveners may improve their chances of stopping an impaired person from getting behind the wheel ways that blood alcohol concentration (BAC) feedback stations can reduce DUI incidents"Give me the keys." "Friends don't let friends drive drunk." These are all sayings we've heard--but what are the scientific facts about impaired driving and its prevention in our local communities and neighborhoods? Preventing Drunk Driving analyzes the societal ill of driving under the influence of alcohol and its related death toll from a wide variety of angles.

The book includes research on multi-dimensional aspects of problems related to alcohol. The chapters cover a wide range of topics on the theme of Alcoholism, ranging from reasons and factors that induce alcoholism, to health risks and finally possible medical, psychological and alternative remedial measures. Various factors such as genetics, childhood influences, antisocial behaviour, and personality traits contribute to this menace of alcoholism. Cultural values, beliefs, and childhood experiences to govern thought process are indirectly related to earlier stages of alcohol addiction. Family history and life stress have implications on an individual's susceptibility to alcohol addiction. Personality traits influence the addiction in individuals. The treatment of alcoholism involves different therapies besides medicines for comprehensive and smooth recovery of the person. The important inducing factors, impact on society, individual, brain, family, nutritional deficiency and possible therapies such as body psychotherapies, herbal and natural therapy have been covered in the book in hope of a comprehensive solution. Note: T& F does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

In this hopeful and useful guide, Dr. John MacDougall explains how to maintain our spiritual condition so that we can remain reliably sober, and come to restore our relationships with God, ourselves, and those we love. By practicing the spiritual principles of the Twelve Step programs, and making a daily commitment to our program of recovery, we reliably become happy. Contents Introduction Chapter 1: Staying Sober Chapter 2: Spirituality and Recovery Chapter 3: Surrender and Trust Chapter 4: Practice What Principles Chapter 5: Spiritual Recovery from Trauma and Abuse Chapter 6: Love and Romance Chapter 7: Hope Chapter 8: Finding Joy in Life Chapter 9: Becoming Happy Advance reviews for Being Sober and Becoming Happy: THIS BOOK IS WRITTEN BY A BRILLIANT MIND WITH A GIFT FOR HUMOR, CLARITY, ORIGINALITY, AND MOST IMPORTANT -SIMPLICITY. IN MY OPINION, NO BETTER BOOK HAS BEEN WRITTEN ON RELAPSE PREVENTION AND THE 12 STEPS SINCE THE BIG BOOK. THE AUTHOR HAS SPENT 30 YEARS IN AL-ANON, NA AND AA AND KNOWS WHAT HELPS - AND WHAT DOESN'T - BACKWARDS AND FORWARDS. OF EQUAL IMPORTANCE, THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT POSITIVE TRANSFORMATION FOR US ALL, ESPECIALLY THOSE IN RECOVERY FROM ANY SORT OF SUFFERING. George E, Vaillant MD Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School Author of Spiritual Evolution "As we realize we have a God, rather than we are gods, we get to stop trying to control life, and we get to simply live life instead. I've decided that my life is unmanageable only when I am trying to manage it. My life isn't meant to be managed, it is meant to be lived." This quote is one of the hundreds of pithy ideas from John MacDougall's new book, the book you are soon to be engrossed in. His insights, and they materialize with ease on every page, are amazing and I've loved hearing him share them in meetings and on the "circuit" for years. But having all that wisdom, told with humor at times, but with clarity always, in one place is what makes this book invaluable. John simply gets to the core of any issue with such ease, and he makes himself understood with little work on the reader's part. He writes, or speaks, and we listen and learn with our hearts and minds. John MacDougall has been instrumental in the lives of so many people, those in the fellowship and those who have simply been lucky enough to share a few moments of his time while passing through some stage of life. He doesn't reserve his gift of understanding how life works, life without alcohol or pills but always with a God of one's understanding, for any one group of people. John is simply "the whole package," wherever you meet him; on the pages of a book or in a meeting or an auditorium. You get him whole, unfiltered and erupting always with knowledge, wisdom, humor and a loving heart. Every time you are in his presence, you come away knowing more about the 12 Steps and how to live them, and with the backdrop of humor that helps to make the information even more significant. I love this book Even after 37 years in Alcoholics Anonymous and a few more than that in Al-Anon, I found myself jotting down insights for my own edification, and to share with others. That's what spending any time with John is like. We are never too old to take on a new idea, one that not only benefits us but every single person who is crossing our path quite by divine appointment, today or any tomorrow. John has gotten better with age, with his commitment to the work of helping others, and his passion for passing on that which he has learned. Every one who chooses to gather even an inkling of the wisdom in these pages will bring benefit to the world we all share. Thank you, John. Thank you for helping every one of us make a difference in this life through the application of the principles you so completely embody. Karen Casey, Ph.D., author of Each Day A New Beginning. See www.womens-spirituality.com

The United States is the most medicated country in the world. More than 1.7 million Americans are struggling with addiction to prescription painkillers, fueling the opioid crisis that claims more than 140 lives every day. The trouble isn't just the drugs--it's that we don't know what to do with the people addicted to them. Not as a country, not as the church. Is tough love called for? Or would Christ have us take a different approach to addiction recovery? Drawn from the personal experience of the authors and current research, The Heart of Recovery calls us to set aside judgment and mend recovering addicts and their families with the stuff God uses to heal: compassion and community. It's a call to serve the ones who cannot repay, to forgive 70 times 7, to fling the door wide-open to the prodigal, and to remember the purpose of grace. A supportive community--family, friends, the church, and more--encourages and sustains long-term recovery. Through compassion, we bring hope for healing.

Living Sober is an extremely informative book which does not offer a plan for getting sober but does offer us sound advice about how to stay sober. Basic, essential information from Alcoholics Anonymous. As the book states, "Anyone can get sober. . .the trick is to live sober."

2020 ECPA Top Shelf Book Cover Award It's always somebody else's kid-until it's yours. When Katherine James and her husband found out their son was using heroin, their responses ran the gamut: disbelief, anger, helplessness, guilt. As they struggled to come to grips with their son's addiction and decide how best to help him, their home became a refuge for an unlikely assortment of their son's friends, each with their own story, drawn by the simple love and acceptance they found there-"the Lost Boys," James calls them. In this sensitive, vulnerable memoir, award-winning novelist James turns her lush prose to a new purpose: to tell her family's story through the twists and turns of her son's addiction, overdose, and slow recovery. The result is not just a look at the phenomenon of drug abuse in suburban America, but also a meditation on the particular anguish of loving a wayward child and clinging to a desperate trust in God's providence through it all.

The new face of risky drinking is female. The problem: a global epidemic of bingeing. The solution: a brave new approach to female recovery. Eight years ago, Ann Dowsett Johnston was an award-winning journalist and vice-principal of McGill University. In private, she was wrestling the demon that had undone her own mother; the same demon increasing numbers of women are now battling across the world: alcohol. Aware of her growing dependency, Ann began to document her experiences with drink - the rules she set, and inevitably broke. The diary told a story that was not hers alone. From the 17-year-old heart attack victim to the mother of a child with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, women have bravely shared their own journeys through addiction, creating an alarming composite of the female face of dangerous drinking. In this startlingly honest book Ann Dowsett Johnson reveals why the relationship between women and alcohol has spiralled out of control. Showing how women can escape from this destructive affair, 'Drink' is essential reading for any woman who thinks she has a problem, and for those who care about her.

Designed as an aid for the study of the book, "Alcoholics Anonymous, The Little Red Book" contains many helpful topics for discussion meetings. Drawing from the practical experience of alcoholics who found peace of mind and contented sobriety by following a way of spiritual life set forth in "Alcoholics Anonymous, The Little Red Book" can help members quickly develop an acceptable 24-hour schedule of A.A. living.

Based on the many past study guide formats and beginner classes for "The Little Red Book" and modeled after Twelve Step instruction programs offered at A.A. meetings, this new study guide provides a solid and comprehensive study structure for men and women in A.A. Twelve Step groups and for individuals studying "The Little Red Book" on their own. While "The Little Red Book" interprets the Twelve Steps, the "Guide" gives newcomers to A.A. the structure needed to live them.

Holding a Masters degree in Addiction Studies with an internship at the Alcoholics Anonymous Headquarters Archives, Bill P. has worked in the alcohol/drug addiction field for 18 years as a counselor, historian, educator, and author, including four years with the AA Grapevine Magazine.

By offering an empowering personal program of self-care in recovery, this book provides guidance for everyone affected by widespread modern 'addictiveness'. The book explores Ayurveda's understanding of both the problem of our 'one addiction process' and its solution. It offers holistic techniques that enhance any of the traditional recovery pathways and beyond any of the common diet/exercise dogma from mainstream media. It covers the stress/addictive tendencies of the doshic types, and links this to how stress affects metabolism, the main determinant of health. The program offered in the book is an integration of the philosophy, psychology and physical practices of Yoga and Ayurveda to help people shift their life trajectory. With Yoga of Recovery, author Durga Leela presents a complete resource for working with individuals recovering from addiction.