Alcoholism Books - Page 3

First Year Sobriety: When All That Changes Is Everything

Guy Kettelhack

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The first in a series of three recovery guides for the first three years of sobriety, First-Year Sobriety uses the voices of many women and men who are struggling in the often baffling territory of their first year of sobriety to show that despite their differing experiences, all are united in the process of giving life without alcohol or other drugs a chance.

These are people who are alternately amazed, appalled, delighted, depressed, illuminated, disturbed, or simply thrown by their first days, weeks, and months of sobriety. Kettelhack explores the challenges all seem to face: learning to break through loneliness, isolation, and fear; finding ways to deal with anger, depression, and resentment; and learning how to deal with a new and sometimes overwhelming happiness.

Guy Kettelhack has written seven books on recovery. He is completing a Master's degree in psychoanalysis, and is an analyst-in-training at the Boston and New York Centers for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies. A graduate of Middlebury College, Kettelhack has also done graduate work in English literature at Bread Loaf School of English at Oxford University. He lives in New York City.

It Will Never Happen to Me: Growing Up With Addiction As Youngsters, Adolescents, Adults

Claudia A. Black

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

awakening 4 out of 5 stars.
11 of 11 people found this review helpful.

This book was recommended by my therapist and after reading it I gave it to a friend who is also an adult child of an alcoholic. I haven't got the book back so I'm buying another copy for myself. I NEED to read it again and again. It opened my eyes and put a lot of the pieces of the puzzle together for me. Although it's hard to face some of the realities this book points out, I believe it to be one of the vital steps I am taking in trying to change my life for the better. It's never too late.

It will never happen to me 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Still the best introduction to the impact of chemical dependency on the family. I must give about 5 copies of this away to my students every year.

Really good 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is a great read for anyone who has grown up or is growing up in an alcoholic family. It helps the reader in very simple ways to understand the dynamics of alcoholic families and offers concrete ways of dealing with issues and problems. I recommend it to anyone currently dealing with alcoholism or dealing with the aftermath of an alcoholic upbringing, or even for someone just curious about the effects of alcoholism on families.

Editorial Review:

This "little green book," as it has come to be known to hundreds of thousands of C.O.A.'s and A.C.O.A.'s, is meant to help the reader understand the roles children in alcoholic families adopt, the problems they face in adulthood as a result, and what they can do to break the pattern of destruction.

Relapse Prevention Counseling Workbook: Managing High-Risk Situations

Terence T. Gorski

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Good book 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 15 people found this review helpful.

Gave as a gift to a coworker who was promoted. He love it because easy to follow exercise for the population he is working with.

Changing Course: Healing from Loss, Abandonment and Fear

Claudia A. Black

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Great insight and solutions for both addicted & family. 5 out of 5 stars.
32 of 35 people found this review helpful.

Claudia Black has an inside track of what it feels like to be a family member in a family where addictive behavior is going on. She is able to write in understandable fashion the complex dynamics that go on in addictions and recovery. She never fails to understand the heart and soul and the sheer pain involved in addiction; she also provides insight and solutions for healing. Great work! All her work is very insightful. This is an author who cares about those who read her books.

Editorial Review:

In Changing Course, the best-selling sequel to It Will Never Happen to Me, Claudia Black extends a helping hand to individuals working their way through the painful experience of being raised with addiction.

"How do you go from living according to the rules-Don't Talk, Don't Trust, Don't Feel-to a life where you are free to talk and trust and feel?" Black asks. "You do this through a process that teaches you to go to the source of those rules, to question them, and to create new rules of your own," she explains. Using charts, exercises, checklists, and real-life stories of adult children of alcoholics, Black carefully and expertly guides readers in healing from the fear, shame, and chaos of addiction.

Not God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous

Ernest Kurtz

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

helpful background 4 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

in depth history of aa beginnings, including much insight into the formative reasons for the successes and failures of this program. very helpful for someone new to aa, trying to grasp the essence of the program.

Deeper Understanding 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This is an excellent book giving a deeper understanding of Alcoholics Anonymous. To have a chronicled background from which the program and 12 steps originated is invaluable. It is useful for both personal study and also for professional information. As a recovering alcoholic using the program of alcoholics anonymous, I have a much greater appreciation for how the 12 step process works and the hours and time that previous participants put in so we can have this option available to us. As a professional, I have a greater understanding of the context and history for why this works and why science and medicine have not been able to effectively help alcoholics so far. Kurtz's wonderfully rich details gives a full 360 view of why and how alcoholics can recover using the 12 steps of alcoholics anonymous.

Editorial Review:

The most complete history of A.A. ever written. Not-God contains anecdotes and excerpts from the diaries, correspondence, and occasional memoirs of A.A.'s early figures. A fascinating, fast-moving, and authoritative account of the discovery and development of the program and fellowship that we know today as Alcoholics Anonymous.

Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood

Koren Zailckas

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 200 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Garnering a vast amount of attention from young people and parents, and from book buyers across the country, Smashed became a media sensation and a New York Times bestseller. Eye- opening and utterly gripping, Koren Zailckas’s story is that of thousands of girls like her who are not alcoholics—yet—but who routinely use booze as a shortcut to courage and a stand-in for good judgment.

With one stiff sip of Southern Comfort at the age of fourteen, Zailckas is initiated into the world of drinking. From then on, she will drink faithfully, fanatically. In high school, her experimentation will lead to a stomach pumping. In college, her excess will give way to a pattern of self-poisoning that will grow more destructive each year. At age twenty-two, Zailckas will wake up in an unfamiliar apartment in New York City, elbow her friend who is passed out next to her, and ask, “Where are we?” Smashed is a sober look at how she got there and, after years of blackouts and smashups, what it took for her to realize she had to stop drinking. Smashed is an astonishing literary debut destined to become a classic.

“Gripping... one of the best accounts of addiction, the college experience, or even what it means to be an average teenage girl in America. A.” –Entertainment Weekly

Cracked: Life on the Edge in a Rehab Clinic

Drew Pinsky

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 254 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Both halves of recovery 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Dr. Drew transcends the glib advice given by many in pop-psychology culture with a profound yet down to Earth wisdom about the human condition. This is his story about the interaction of codependency and addiction in treatment. His understanding of both topics is deep, and he expresses it with great clarity. Drew writes about his own struggle with codependency:

"[Childhood] Traumas ... leave imprints on parts of the brain that don't have a sense of time. The memory gives the sense that the trauma is always happening. As a result, I grew up with a feeling that there's a catastrophe waiting around every corner. I can't remember a time when I have not felt anxious. My response has been to try to control everything and everyone. I am a perfectionist. I rescue people. I have to make sure no one else gets carted away....

"Of course it's unreal to think I should be able to save everyone or that everyone should listen to me or both. How dare I insist all my patients cooperate with my need to rescue? But thats exactly what did."

Through his decades of treating addiction, Drew explains what he has learned about society and mental health. From the book:

"If I get angry it's at the bigger picture. In general, our culture offers us solutions that inly intensify our problems. I'm prone to rant about this, I know -- but after all, surgeons are permitted to rage against cigarettes and fatty foods, psychologists about poor communication skills. So why shouldn't I go off on the culture? ....

"To me, mental health isn't always about feeling good. Nor is it always about avoiding depression. Nor is it about being happy. As I define it, mental health is about accepting reality on reality's terms."

I highly recommended this book not only for people in recovery, but for anyone interested in mental health.

Editorial Review:

Dr. Drew Pinsky is best known as the cohost of the long-running radio advice program Loveline. But his workday is spent at a major Southern California clinic, treating the severest cases of drug dependency and psychiatric breakdown. In this riveting book, Pinsky reveals the intimate and often shocking stories of his patients as they struggle with emotional trauma, sexual abuse, and a host of chemical nemeses: alcohol, marijuana, Ecstasy, heroin, speed, cocaine, and prescription drugs. At the center of these stories is Pinsky himself, who immerses himself passionately, almost obsessively, in his work. From the sexually compulsive model to the BMW-driving soccer mom, Cracked exposes, in fast-moving, powerful vignettes, the true scope and severity of addiction, a nationwide epidemic.

Adult Children: The Secrets of Dysfunctional Families

John C. Friel Ph.D., Linda D. Friel M.A.

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Nobody teaches this stuff. Read it! 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 8 people found this review helpful.

Excellent. A bit dated but timeless content. The beginning and end speaks to AA type meetings but it's not the main focus of the book, co-dependency is, which just about everyone deals with growing up. Quick read. There are a few short stories featuring animals that are sprinkled between the chapters, adding levity and a moment to escape and explore how the new information may serve you. My favorite, The Goose, whose parents told her not to leave the pond despite her feeling sick but she finally did leave and discovered she was right. The family unit unknowingly puts family members into positions and then keeps them there unable to see the dysfunction. Once one family member took action leaving the others behind the others eventually followed. If one family member is acting out and you don't know why it is not always the issue of the one who is acting out, look beyond, look to yourself first. Highly recommended.

Editorial Review:

It is estimated that as many as 34 million people grew up in alcoholic homes but what about the rest of us? The authors provide a readable explanation of what happens to those of us who have had no alcoholism, but did have perfectionism, workaholism, compulsive overeating, intimacy problems, etc.

The Complete ACOA Sourcebook: Adult Children of Alcoholics at Home, at Work and in Love

Janet Woititz

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

From one of the movement's most respected leaders, the complete resource for Adult Children of Alcoholics.

When they were first released in the 1980s, Janet Woititz's groundbreaking works, Adult Children of Alcoholics, Struggle for Intimacy and The Self-Sabotage Syndrome, provided a new message of hope to adult children who had grown up in the shadow of alcoholic parents. Their message today is as profound and timeless as it was two decades ago.

Now, in this complete collection, readers will learn again the insight and healing power of Janet Wotitiz's words. The Complete ACoA Sourcebook is a compilation of three of Dr. Woititz's classic books, addressing head-on the symptoms of The Adult Children of Alcoholics syndrome and providing strategies for living a normal life as an adult. Readers will find help for themselves: at home, in intimate relationships and on the job. They will discover the reasons for the way they think, believe and feel about themselves; ACoAs often feel isolated, have difficulty in relationships, in the workplace and in feeling good about themselves.

Readers who are familiar with Woititz's work will find wisdom once again in this classic collection. Those new to ACoA will gain fresh insight into their behavior patterns and find an avenue for self-love and healing. Noted ACoA expert Dr. Robert Ackerman, author of the best-selling Perfect Daughters and Silent Sons, provides a foreword and explains why Janet Woititz's message will continue to help millions of readers for generations to come.

How Al-Anon Works for Families & Friends of Alcoholics

Al-Anon Family Group Head Inc

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

you win with this one! 5 out of 5 stars.
51 of 51 people found this review helpful.

for those of us who have a drinking or sober alcoholic in our past or present (and god, don't most of us!), this book can help. it's beautifully yet simply written and gently lays out a new philosophy for life, one in which we can learn to keep the focus on ourselves and our behavior, be honest but in an appropriate way, and be kind but firm - with boundaries. this book offered me a whole new idea of what love and life are and can be, and encouraged me to walk forward in a healthy direction like few books have.

another strong plus is that it offers many personal stories - of how and why a wide range of people got into al-anon and how their recovery has been progressing, and each told by the individuals themselves, starting with Lois W., al-anon's co-founder, the wife of Bill W., the founder of AA.

this is a wonderful book and i recommend it highly!

How Alanon Works For Families and Friends of Alcoholics 5 out of 5 stars.
45 of 45 people found this review helpful.

This book is a wonderful basic text on the principles of the Alanon program, a program of recovery for anyone who has an addict in their lives. It explains how addiction warps those close to the addict, the behaviors that ensue and finally healthier behavior. It's provides a way out of the prison that's constructed when a family or friend faces the frustration of living with and loving an alcoholic/addict. Buy this book for YOU if you're in this situation..and stop the madness.