A controversial and persuasive analysis of addiction

A tour de force, a spectacular effort of research and understanding. This book gives us the courage to bypass disease notions to deal with intrapsychic, family system, and social and cultural dynamics in addiction.
?David Cook, Counseling and Psychological Services, University of Wisconsin

This compelling and controversial book challenges the widely accepted belief that alcohol and drug addiction have a genetic or biological basis. The so-called disease theory
suggests that a substance or activity can cause the addict to lose control of his behavior. Stanton Peele demonstrates how this notion fails to make sense of scientific observations.

Analyzing studies of drug and cigarette addiction, alcoholism, obesity, and other potential compulsions such as running and sex, Peele reveals the surprising frequency of self-cure as part of the evidence. The author finds that compulsive habits and depAndency are a way of coping that individuals can reverse as their life circumstances change. This brilliantly argued book is sure to provoke discussion and stimulate new approaches to treatment.

While the federal government is launching a national investigation on the "equity" of organ distribution, a female tech CEO flies across the country to get a liver transplant. Soon, well-respected transplant nurse Sarah Golden and her best friend, Jackie, find themselves tangled up in an intense plot to uncover the answer to the question on everyone's mind: Can you buy your way up to the top of the waiting list? Their pursuit of justice brings them to Miami, San Francisco, and Chicago-a sometimes fun, sometimes dangerous roller coaster ride from which they barely escape with their lives.

What do politics, living donor kidney transplants, and the current opioid crisis all have in common? Sarah Golden and Jackie Larsen, best friends since nursing school, could never have imagined that they'd end up as amateur sleuths searching to find a killer-for the second time! Jackie, a stay-at-home mom with marriage troubles, is racing the clock to get her young son, Wyatt, a living kidney donor to avoid the ravages of dialysis. Sarah, who has been living her career in the fast-paced world of organ transplantation, is helping expedite Wyatt's kidney transplant. Then a much-despised hospital colleague turns up dead of an opiate overdose-despite the fact that she'd never used drugs-and Sarah smells foul play. Her curiosity and tenacity pull Jackie, once again, into a life-and-death adventure that neither woman could have expected. Armed with smarts, tenacity, big hearts, and their raucous senses of humor, the pair gets the help of a few colorful friends to pursue the killer and take on the mission in the only style they both know how: straight on and arm-in-arm as the friends they've always been.