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.

Intended as a complete textbook for every addict seeking recovery, Narcotics Anonymous describes the NA program and how it works. It includes the NA Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, as well as many personal stories of people who have found freedom from addiction through Narcotics Anonymous.

Ordinary Recovery is a revised edition of Alexander's book Cool Water, with a new foreword, a new preface by the author, updates throughout the book, and a new resources section.

The disease of addiction affects 1 out of 10 people in the United States and is a devastating and often fatal illness. Dr. Harry Haroutunian--or Dr. Harry as he is affectionately known by his patients--offers a step-by-step plan with a realistic, one-day-at-a-time approach to a disease that so often seems insurmountable. With a focus on reclaiming the power that comes from a life free from dependency, Being Sober guides you through the many phases of addiction and recovery with a warm sense of humor and compassion, not judgment or overly cultish language. This revised edition shares a new chapter on emotional sobriety and advanced recovery topics, along with more information on the opioid crisis and prescription drug abuse in the United States.

This groundbreaking book also addresses the growing face of substance abuse: the high-functioning addict, or someone who is still able to achieve personal and professional success even as he or she battles a drug or alcohol problem. Dr. Harry tackles this provocative issue head-on, offering new insight into why you don't have to bottom out to get help. He is a recovering alcoholic himself and knows firsthand the challenges of sobriety. His background and expertise in the field of alcohol and drug treatment give him a powerful edge and perspective that is unparalleled.

Using clear, straightforward language, Being Sober offers a proven path toward emotional sobriety and a rewarding new life based on gratitude, dignity, and self-respect.

Millions of people with addictions have pursued their recovery journeys through Alcoholics Anonymous' twelve-step program. However, many people with addictions also suffer from mental health disorders, which more traditional twelve-step workbooks do not address. Similarly, the healthcare system has generally failed to implement addiction-mental health integrated treatments. Since 1996, Dual Diagnosis Anonymous has addressed this crucial healthcare need via personal, community, and political advocacy for those persons that are dually diagnosed and their families.

A culmination of decades' worth of ideas and advice, Dual Diagnosis Anonymous: A Journey Through the Twelve Steps Plus Five is a strategic workbook that offers hope for achieving recovery from the dual diagnosis of addiction and mental illness.

An authoritative, illuminating, and deeply humane history of addiction--a phenomenon that remains baffling and deeply misunderstood despite having touched countless lives--by an addiction psychiatrist striving to understand his own family and himself

Carl Erik Fisher's The Urge is the best-written and most incisive book I've read on the history of addiction. A propulsive tour de force that is as healing as it is enjoyable to read. --Beth Macy, author of Dopesick

As a psychiatrist in training fresh from medical school, Carl Erik Fisher found himself face-to-face with an addiction crisis that nearly cost him everything. Desperate to make sense of his condition, he turned to the history of addiction, learning that our society's current quagmire is only part of a centuries-old struggle to treat addictive behavior.

A rich, sweeping account that probes not only medicine and science but also literature, religion, philosophy, and public policy, The Urge introduces us to those who have endeavored to address addiction through the ages and examines the treatments that have produced relief for many people, the author included. Only by reckoning with our history of addiction, Fisher argues, can we light the way forward for those whose lives remain threatened by its hold.

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 nuanced and compassionate view of one of society's most intractable challenges.

The end of ourselves is a lonely place to be, but it is often where miracles take place. Counterfeit Peace is a story of redemption. Ryan Duerk details the story of his life from childhood, into the ravages of addiction, and ultimately through the front doors of a rescue mission. He describes in intense detail what can happen to a life with no direction.

The memoir begins with a brief reflection on the psychological depths and despair of addiction and then moves into a personal account of how his descent into darkness was fueled by trauma, lack of identity, pain, and the endless pursuit of peace by any means necessary. The book attempts to answer the question, Why do addicts do what they do? Although painful to read at times, Counterfeit Peace candidly exposes the raw reality of dependence and brokenness.

Left with nothing but the air in his lungs, Ryan reaches out for help and finds himself checking into a rescue mission operated by Miracle Hill Ministries in South Carolina. With the nonjudgemental love of a community of believers, Ryan begins the arduous journey toward recovery. He chronicles his crash course with the Creator and unpacks the truths he uncovered along the way.

Through the boundless grace of God, Ryan responds to a call to ministry and eventually begins helping others just like himself. Through emotional storytelling and profound introspection, Ryan offers a beacon of hope to those grappling with addiction and paints an intimate portrait of what crisis ministry is at Miracle Hill.

Release Guilt and Embrace Grace: A Mother's Guide to Experiencing Hope and Healing

Are you a mother trying to cope with the painful reality of your adult child's addiction or self-destructive behaviors?

Are you overwhelmed with feelings of hopelessness, fear, and despair?

Do you experience regret, as though you could have prevented this from happening to your child?

Are you worn out from trying to save them from themselves?

You are not alone. Dawn Ward has experienced a similar journey in her efforts to save her children who were struggling with substance use disorder. After years of trying to break free from feelings of guilt, shame, and self-blame, she finally surrendered her will to God and embraced His redeeming grace like never before.

From Guilt to Grace: Hope and Healing for Christian Moms of Addicted Children offers guidance to mothers grappling with the anguish of their child's addiction. Through Biblical truths and personal insights, you will discover the lies keeping you trapped in guilt and shame and experience the transforming power of God's grace to set you and your loved ones free.

From Guilt to Grace offers the kind of practical and spiritual guidance I wish I'd had on my painful journey. - Dena Yohe, Co-founder of Hope for Hurting Parents

• Explains the science behind addiction, how it affects the brain, and how to control it.
• Outlines usual symptoms of addiction so you can become aware of them before they worsen.
• Recognizes risk factors for addiction so you don't self-sabotage your recovery.
• Provides in-depth information on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and its various techniques that have helped countless people end their addictions.
• Guides readers through the principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and how to use mindfulness, cognitive diffusion, and value clarification.
• Explains Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy (ERP) that will help you manage even the most powerful cravings.
• Covers the causes of relapse and how to prevent it, including tips for avoiding triggers and keeping up a healthy lifestyle.
• Explains how to build your support networks during recovery, including practical advice for building and maintaining positive relationships.
• Offers case studies and real-world examples to illustrate the concepts and techniques covered in the book.

This comprehensive guide offers practical, evidence-based techniques and exercises that will help you get insight into your addiction and develop the skills you need to overcome it.

Explore all aspects of addiction recovery, including self-awareness, stress management, mindfulness, communication skills, and more. With interactive activities and journal prompts, readers will deepen their understanding of addiction and develop the skills needed for recovery.

Whether you're seeking to overcome addiction yourself or seeking to help a loved one, The Addiction Recovery Workbook is an important tool for anyone looking to take back control of their life.

Unlike most books on families and addiction that provide prescriptive advice, When The Solution Becomes the Problem takes a different approach. This book partners with families, aiming to help them understand why implementing expert recommendations can be so challenging. By delving in the why, families gain insights into their current crisis and the factors contributing to it.

The book's primary goals are twofold. Firstly, it aims to provide comprehensive information on addiction and trauma, drawing from scholarly literature while presenting it in a family-friendly style with relatable stories and clinical descriptions. Real-life scenarios woven through the chapters allow readers to recognize themselves and their family's circumstances from fresh perspectives.

Secondly, the book encourages readers to embark on a transformative journey of self-discovery, leading to growth, healing, and positive change for the entire family system. Divided into two parts, the educational section offers insights into addiction as a chronic, progressive disease that hijacks the brain's reward system and impairs a loved one's self-awareness of their problem. The trauma chapters introduce readers to a continuum of traumas, including Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, Transgenerational Trauma, Complex/Developmental Trauma, and Secondary Trauma arising from living with a loved one struggling with addiction and trauma.

The second part of the book expands on resilience as both an individual and family process, exploring the dynamics of change, improving communication, and the path to family healing. These chapters provide practical steps empowering individual family members to effect positive changes that ripple into transformative shifts for the entire family. The book guides families in supporting their loved ones' journey to recovery and reintegration into the family with full membership.

Ultimately, the book aims to guide families away from the perspective of we are a family with a loved one who struggles with addiction towards embracing the identity of we are a family in recovery from addiction and trauma. By fostering understanding, empathy, and actionable guidance, this book seeks to empower families to break free form the cycle of addiction and trauma, promoting healing and a renewed sense of togetherness.

What if addiction, dissociation, and other manifestations of trauma were not framed as diseases or disorders, but rather as adaptive methods of regulating the autonomic nervous system (ANS)? This book takes that approach, and guides readers through 20 embodied practices that promote the rewiring of the ANS. By integrating the latest neuroscience from Stephen Porges's Polyvagal Theory with Eugene Gendlin's embodied felt sense, Jan Winhall's Felt Sense Polyvagal Model is a paradigm-shifting, deeply somatic approach to healing trauma and addiction.

Readers are presented with two vital tools for healing: learning how to recognize and rewire their autonomic state, and finding the felt sense of somatic wisdom. This compassionate and inviting model centers the intelligence of the body to allow for deep healing, and these 20 step-by step exercises present an accessible approach for clinicians, their clients, and anyone on the journey to healing from trauma and addiction. The book's exercises are uniquely designed to be completed either with a mental health professional, another person engaged in this embodied process (a felt sense partner), or both.

With its deeply personal and seamless blend of memoir, cultural history, literary criticism, and reportage, The Recovering turns our understanding of the traditional addiction narrative on its head, demonstrating that the story of recovery can be every bit as electrifying as the train wreck itself. Leslie Jamison deftly excavates the stories we tell about addiction -- both her own and others' -- and examines what we want these stories to do and what happens when they fail us. All the while, she offers a fascinating look at the larger history of the recovery movement, and at the complicated bearing that race and class have on our understanding of who is criminal and who is ill.

At the heart of the book is Jamison's ongoing conversation with literary and artistic geniuses whose lives and works were shaped by alcoholism and substance dependence, including John Berryman, Jean Rhys, Billie Holiday, Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson, and David Foster Wallace, as well as brilliant lesser-known figures such as George Cain, lost to obscurity but newly illuminated here. Through its unvarnished relation of Jamison's own ordeals, The Recovering also becomes a book about a different kind of dependency: the way our desires can make us all, as she puts it, broken spigots of need. It's about the particular loneliness of the human experience-the craving for love that both devours us and shapes who we are.

For her striking language and piercing observations, Jamison has been compared to such iconic writers as Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, yet her utterly singular voice also offers something new. With enormous empathy and wisdom, Jamison has given us nothing less than the story of addiction and recovery in America writ large, a definitive and revelatory account that will resonate for years to come.

From addiction expert Dr. Nicholas Kardaras, a startling argument that technology has profoundly affected the brains of children--and not for the better.

We've all seen them: kids hypnotically staring at glowing screens in restaurants, in playgrounds and in friends' houses--and the numbers are growing. Like a virtual scourge, the illuminated glowing faces--the Glow Kids--are multiplying. But at what cost? Is this just a harmless indulgence or fad like some sort of digital hula-hoop? Some say that glowing screens might even be good for kids--a form of interactive educational tool.

Don't believe it.

In Glow Kids, Dr. Nicholas Kardaras will examine how technology--more specifically, age-inappropriate screen tech, with all of its glowing ubiquity--has profoundly affected the brains of an entire generation. Brain imaging research is showing that stimulating glowing screens are as dopaminergic (dopamine activating) to the brain's pleasure center as sex. And a growing mountain of clinical research correlates screen tech with disorders like ADHD, addiction, anxiety, depression, increased aggression, and even psychosis. Most shocking of all, recent brain imaging studies conclusively show that excessive screen exposure can neurologically damage a young person's developing brain in the same way that cocaine addiction can.

Kardaras will dive into the sociological, psychological, cultural, and economic factors involved in the global tech epidemic with one major goal: to explore the effect all of our wonderful shiny new technology is having on kids. Glow Kids also includes an opt-out letter and a quiz for parents in the back of the book.

This latest Carlat Fact Book provides you with all the tools and information needed to assess and treat your patients who are struggling with alcohol use disorder. Unlike traditional textbooks, this Fact Book distills each critical aspect of clinical decision making into a single sheet, with tips and bullet points that you can use at the point of care. Topics covered include assessing severity of use, treating withdrawal symptoms, use of basic therapeutic techniques, and appropriate prescription of medications for alcohol use disorder.

Step 1: You admit that you're powerless over your addiction. Now what?

12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) have helped countless people on the path to recovery. But many still feel that 12-step programs aren't for them: that the spiritual emphasis is too narrow, the modality too old-school, the setting too triggering, or the space too exclusive. Some struggle with an addict label that can eclipse the histories, traumas, and experiences that feed into addiction, or dismisses the effects of adverse experiences like trauma in the first place. Advances in addiction medicine, trauma, neuropsychiatry, social theory, and overall strides in inclusivity need to be integrated into modern-day 12-step programs to reflect the latest research and what it means to live with an addiction today.

Dr. Jamie Marich, an addiction and trauma clinician in recovery herself, builds necessary bridges between the 12-step's core foundations and up-to-date developments in trauma-informed care. Foregrounding the intersections of addiction, trauma, identity, and systems of oppression, Marich's approach treats the whole person--not just the addiction--to foster healing, transformation, and growth.

Written for clinicians, therapists, sponsors, and those in recovery, Marich provides an extensive toolkit of trauma-informed skills that:

Imagine landing your dream job as an addiction psychologist at the nation's most famous alcohol and drug treatment facility. You've spent 8 grueling years earning your Master's and Doctorate degrees in a program you were never supposed to get into, and you've been identified as a rising star in the field. At every turn, leaders and clients are praising your abilities. There's just one catch: you have been doing all this while secretly battling your own addiction. For years you lead a painful double life, presenting to the world as a competent clinician, but privately you are spiraling into hell. Then one day everything falls apart and you must learn what it truly means to heal from addiction.

Wounded Healing: the Art and Soul of Surthriving weaves Dr. Jamison's personal memoir with expert commentary for anyone who has struggled with substance use or mental health issues.

Dr. Dodes's approach runs directly counter to the paralyzing, but standard, message of 'powerlessness'--a mes-sage that reinforces the sense of helplessness that is at the root of addicts' life predicaments! Many psychiatrists recognize that this is where we must head, but Dr. Dodes is one with the guts to shine a beacon in the right direction.

--Stanton Peele, PhD, author of 7 Tools to Beat Addiction and The Life Process Program of Treatment

The follow-up to his groundbreaking volume The Heart of Addiction, Dr. Lance Dodes's Breaking Addiction is a step-by-step guide to beating addiction of any kind--from drugs and gambling to alcoholism, overeating, and sex addiction. By recognizing and understanding the emotional forces underlying addictive behaviors, Dr. Dodes says any dangerous, life-destroying obsession can be overcome. Including special bonus sections for both families and health-care professionals, Breaking Addiction is the new handbook for those suffering from addiction--a valuable resource that addresses addiction's root causes and serves as an alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous and similar recovery programs.

A USA TODAY BESTSELLER!

A profound, humane, and revolutionary new framework for understanding and addressing addiction.

Addiction has been called a moral failing, a social problem, a spiritual crisis, a behavioral disorder, and a brain disease. It has also been called a class issue, a supply problem, a problem of learning, a memory disorder, and a result of trauma. And some propose that addiction is neither a disease nor a problem, but a transgressive expression of freedom, a maligned sub-culture, a therapeutic relationship. Even the term 'addiction' is open to question. There are few human phenomena so elusive and intractable; after decades of neuroscientific research, we aren't much closer to understanding addiction, nor to addressing it effectively.

This profusion of interpretations, meanings, and models reflects a hidden truth about addiction: that it is profusely generative of meaning itself. In this bold reimagining, pioneering psychiatrist Elias Dakwar examines addiction as a sustained creative act--and specifically as a process of personal world-building, complete with its own rituals, systems of value, modes of suffering, and sources of support. In this regard, addiction is something we all do. But there is a crucial difference. In the case of those of us suffering from addiction explicitly, this meaningful world keeps us in clear captivity, worsening the suffering and confusion we hoped it would console. And we remain stuck because we have trouble imagining it differently.

Drawing on vivid stories of his own patients, path-breaking research with meditation, psychotherapy, and psychedelics/hallucinogens, and decades of clinical experience, Dakwar explores this captivity at the heart of our addictions, and shows how we might move beyond its bounds to reclaim our freedom. He also relates addiction to our collective self-inflicted crises, from environmental destruction to militarism to social injustice, rendering this often stigmatized condition relevant to all of us. With fluid, rich, and often startling prose, The Captive Imagination offers a novel path for better understanding and overcoming addiction, as well as human suffering more generally.