We Are All Addicts


Book Description

Spirituality is a powerful thing, but can connecting with one's soul help kick addictive behaviors? Find out in Dr. Carder Stout's self-help must read. . . In We Are All Addicts: The Soul’s Guide to Kicking Your Compulsions, Dr. Stout offers spiritual solutions to the complex problems created by addiction. He focuses primarily on the idea of the soul and how this authentic voice has the ability to heal addictive cycles. The soul is pure consciousness untethered from human experience and Dr. Stout will demonstrate how to connect deeply to it through exercises, meditations, visualizations and writing. These solutions to the obsessive thinking and compulsive actions caused by addiction are unconventional and most of them have only been shared with his patients in therapy. Dr. Stout believes that the soul has the capacity to completely remove addiction from the psyche. He uses these exercises himself and has been sober for fifteen years. As an expert therapist treating clients for addiction, anxiety, depression, trauma, and relationships, Dr. Stout is adept at helping clients become more truthful with themselves. It is with this expertise, he breaks down his theory of "We Are All Addicts" in a compellingly readable guide so you can understand the addiction getting in the way of your life and how to overcome it by connecting to the ultimate truth of your core being and learning to love yourself to the fullest.




We All Fall Down


Book Description

In his follow-up to his bestselling memoir Tweak: Growing Up On Methamphetamines, Nic Sheff reveals a brutally honest account of a young person's struggles with relapse and rehab. In his bestselling memoir Tweak, Nic Sheff took readers on an emotionally gripping roller-coaster ride through his days as an addict. In this powerful follow-up about his continued efforts to stay clean, Nic writes candidly about eye-opening stays at rehab centers, devastating relapses, and hard-won realizations about what it means to be a young person living with addiction. By candidly revealing his own failures and small personal triumphs, Nic inspires readers to maintain hope and to remember that they are not alone in their battles. A group reading guide is included. Nic Sheff's Tweak, We All Fall Down, and his father's memoir about him (Beautiful Boy) are the basis of the film Beautiful Boy starring Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet.




Lost in Ghost Town


Book Description

Dr. Carder Stout's memoir about his fall from grace into addiction to crack; finding redemption in the most unlikely of places.




What Addicts Know


Book Description

New York Times bestselling author Christopher Kennedy Lawford revisits addiction in his latest book, What Addicts Know, this time framing the discussion in an entirely new way—the lessons addiction and recovery offer to those of us who haven't battled addiction. For too long, society has considered addicts as an unfortunate group that faces incredible and unique challenges. The reality is that the challenges of the addict are faced—to a greater or lesser extent—by all of us. In a “more is better" society, it's indisputable that we've all experienced cravings and denied the truth about our destructive behaviors—traits shared by addicts who've successfully overcome them. What Addicts Know offers the coping and wellness skills necessary to overcome life's obstacles and self-improvement tips for everything from conquering an unhealthy consumption of junk food, to overcoming toxic relationships. These techniques are not just for addicts; they are for all of us. No one until now has related the lessons and life skills that can be drawn from the collective experience of people in recovery from addiction, particularly the ways those lessons or principles can be used by those in the broader non-recovery community. In What Addicts Know, Lawford recounts the inspiring stories and wisdom of recovering addicts, combining them with cutting-edge scientific findings to give hands-on, practical techniques for recognizing unhealthy impulses and managing them. If you're ready to change for the better your habits, your frame of mind, your relationships, your community, and your life, What Addicts Know is the resource that will educate and inspire you along the way.




When Society Becomes an Addict


Book Description

An incisive look at the system of addiction pervasive in Western society today.




Helping the Addict You Love


Book Description

It's okay to love them. It's your right to help them. Addiction destroys people and can even end lives. When you know or suspect that someone you love is suffering from addiction you have two goals: getting your loved one into treatment and turning that treatment into full-fledged sobriety. Many addiction experts tell you that you have to disengage or risk being an enabler, a codependent bystander, in the wreckage of an addict's life; that you have to cut all ties or be taken advantage of financially and emotionally; that you have to protect yourself from your loved one, who isn't the person you used to know. But many friends and family members find it unnatural, even impossible, to turn away from a person they love who is at his lowest point, and refuse to believe that their addict is lost to addiction. Backed by his years of experience, Dr. Westreich guides you through the process of getting the addict you love on the road to treatment and recovery. He provides detailed scripts to lead you through pivotal conversations with the addict in your life, highlighting the words that he's found to be most effective and the words to avoid. With this book in hand, family and friends will know, for example, how to motivate their addict to recognize his problem based on the addict's own definition of what addiction looks like; how to "raise the bottom" that addicts so often must hit to a more acceptable level -- such as embarrassment, job loss, or ill health; and when to use gentle disagreement, quiet listening, or forceful confrontation to move the addict toward treatment, while managing and protecting their own emotions. Dr. Westreich also shows you how to engage a therapist in the process and provides methods for combating an addict's defense mechanisms. By outlining several treatment options, he helps you to weigh what each can and cannot accomplish, which is the most effective treatment for the kind of addiction you are dealing with, what each treatment requires of the recovering addict and the friend or family member, and how successful each is. Dr. Westreich also takes care to discuss the kinds of special situations you may face when the addict in your life, in addition to having a substance abuse problem, is a minor, is pregnant, has mental or medical diseases, or has other issues that are likely to affect recovery. Helping the Addict You Love is the guide that so many loved ones of addicts have desperately needed. Dr. Westreich supports you through the emotional process of helping the addict you love, tells you it's okay to want to help, and teaches you how to do so.




Tweak


Book Description

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NOW A MAJOR FILM, STARRING STEVE CARELL AND BAFTA AND GOLDEN GLOBE NOMINATED TIMOTHEE CHALAMET ‘It was like being in a car with the gas pedal slammed down to the floor and nothing to do but hold on and pretend to have some semblance of control. But control was something I'd lost a long time ago.’ Nic Sheff was drunk for the first time at age 11. In the years that followed, he would regularly smoke pot, do cocaine and ecstasy, and develop addictions to crystal meth and heroin. Even so, he felt like he would always be able to quit and put his life together whenever he needed to. It took a violent relapse one summer to convince him otherwise. In a voice that is raw and honest, Nic spares no detail in telling us the compelling true story of his relapse and the road to recovery. He paints an extraordinary picture for us of a person at odds with his past, with his family, with his substances, and with himself. Tweak is a raw, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful tale of the road from relapse to recovery and complements his father’s parallel memoir, Beautiful Boy. Praise for Nic Sheff:- ‘Difficult to read and impossible to put down.’Chicago Tribune 'Nic Sheff's wrenching tale is told with electrifying honesty and insight.' Armistead Maupin




Everyone's an Addict


Book Description

'Everyone's an Addict' is aimed at anyone. The hypothesis is that we're all addicts. If not to the major league isms, alcohol, drugs, food, gambling and sex; or the second division clutter, hoarding, shopping, video games and work; then to the minor league smoking, sudoku, TV shows and the like - something. Addiction robs us of time that would better be spent in improving our own lives and, as a byproduct, other people's. Even those who think they are not addicted but would like to improve themselves, can all benefit. It has a secular approach - supporting freedom of religious belief, or none, for all. And, inline with the UN's ideas, anyone should be able to change their beliefs at any time. So it is suggested that people who attend meetings primarily address their addictions and keep the meetings non-religious. There are plenty of opportunities to practice religion, atheism and agnosticism elsewhere. 12-step meetings are non-religious, so they are aimed at everyone, too. Not everyone addresses addiction through a twelve step meeting, though, and those that choose an alternative route will find 'Everyone's an Addict' equally helpful to them, whether they attend a clinic or choose another method. This book takes the format of an inspirational comment for each day of the year. Therefore the appropriately numbered 'step', 'tradition' and 'concept' from AA is covered month-by-month. Further 12 step programs like NA, OA, GA, SA and others are given coverage, too. Are you an addict? For the inquisitive drinker asking the question 'Am I an alcoholic?' the question is: Do you have trouble stopping drinking once you have started? If so, you are most likely an alcoholic. Is it the same for you with drugs, eating, gambling or violent behavior? Did you indulge in it when your intentions were dead set against it? Do you have other disorders around eating, like bulimia? Is sex something that preoccupies you unduly? Do you have behavioral problems in other directions such as anger, over-dependence on other people, hiding away from the world, lying, bullying and so on? Sometimes it is a multiple problem and the prime addiction needs to be identified. In Twelve Step programs these disorders must be self-diagnosed and the stepper must be a willing participant. Simply, it is anyone with a desire to stop doing whatever is causing the problem. Members hope that when potential newcomers reach their rock bottom they will have a moment of clarity and turn into a willing, or at least inquisitive, customer before it is too late. They hope the existence of these programs will come to the prospect's mind at the appropriate time, maybe due to the seed planted by information in a school talk years before, or through information passed on through doctors, magistrates, police, and the press. If you don't feel your behavior is obsessive or addictive, if you are interested in this book to make a general improvement in your behavior, ask yourself a similar question to the one above. Have you behaved badly towards someone when you had not intended to, or perhaps your behavior was over the top? Do you ratchet up an argumentative situation rather than try to take the heat out of it or walk away? Are you determined to have your way for the sake of it when there are many suitable ways to go? Are you controlling of other people or a compulsive helper? Results of these 12-step programs include: the relief of identifying yourself as an addict or someone with problem behavior after years of denial; the pride of being honest with yourself and the beginning of building your self-esteem; knowing yourself better and accentuating the positives. Then there is further self-improvement in the calming influence of meditation. Finally there is the task of helping other addicts and people at large because the programs are bridges to normal living.




Beyond Addiction


Book Description

The most innovative leaders in progressive addiction treatment in the US offer a groundbreaking, science-based guide to helping loved ones overcome addiction problems and compulsive behaviors. The most innovative leaders in progressive addiction treatment in the US offer a groundbreaking, science-based guide to helping loved ones overcome addiction problems and compulsive behaviors. Beyond Addiction eschews the theatrics of interventions and tough love to show family and friends how they can use kindness, positive reinforcement, and motivational and behavioral strategies to help their loved ones change. Drawing on forty collective years of research and decades of clinical experience, the authors present the best practical advice science has to offer. Delivered with warmth, optimism, and humor, Beyond Addiction defines a new, empowered role for friends and family and a paradigm shift for the field. Learn how to tap the transformative power of relationships for positive change, guided by exercises and examples. Practice what really works in therapy and in everyday life, and discover many different treatment options along with tips for navigating the system. And have hope: this guide is designed not only to help someone change, but to help someone want to change.




Addiction Is a Choice


Book Description

Politicians and the media tell us that people who take drugs, including alcohol or nicotine, cannot help themselves. They are supposedly victims of the disease of 'addiciton', and they need 'treatment'. The same goes for sex addicts, shopping addicts, food addicts, gambling addicts, or even addicts to abusive relationships. This theory, which grew out of the Temperance movement and was developed and disseminated by the religious cult known as Alcoholics Anonymous, has not been confirmed by any factual research. Numerous scientific studies show that 'addicts' are in control of their behavior. Contrary to the shrill, mindless propaganda of the 'war on drugs', very few of the people who use alcohol, marijuana, heroin, or cocaine will ever become 'addicted', and of those who do become heavy drug users, most will matrue out of it in time, without treatment. Research indicates that 'treatment' is completely ineffective, an absolute waste of time and money. Instead of looking at drub addiction as a disease, Dr. Schaler proposes that we view it as willful commitment or dedication, akin to joining a religion or pursuing a romantic involvement. While heavy consumption of drugs is often foolish and self-destructive, it is a matter of personal choice.




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