Before Nic became addicted to crystal meth, he was a charming boy, joyous and funny, a varsity athlete and honor student adored by his two younger siblings. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who lied, stole, and lived on the streets. David Sheff traces the first warning signs: the denial, the three a.m. phone calls—is it Nic? the police? the hospital? His preoccupation with Nic became an addiction in itself. But as a journalist, he instinctively researched every treatment that might save his son. And he refused to give up on Nic.

    The letter was both a confession and an invitation for public scrutiny. “No matter where I was,” he recalls, “there was always a chance that someone had read my post and was waiting to catch me with a drink in my hand.” To help keep himself on the straight and narrow, Carr still has a counter at the top of his site, ticking off the number of days he’s gone without a drink.In this bracing (but zero-proof) tale of recovery, Carr delivers his own twelve steps to building a life without booze. His hard-earned advice, punctuated with anecdotes that are both cautionary and comic (a bender once took him to Iceland, where he drunkenly believed he’d get better Wi-Fi) is given with humility and goodwill. Along the way, Carr celebrates the simple yet overlooked pleasures of sobriety—weight loss, a renewed love life, the ability to buy a phone or laptop without promptly losing it in a bar. As he slowly discovers, a sober life actually CAN be fun. What’s more, he’ll remember it.

    That evening, he asked his sister to smuggle in a bottle of gin, and gave in to addiction.But whether or not you've ever had a drop to drink in your life, we're all looking for ways to stop the pain. Like Seth, we're all seeking balms for the anxiety of what sometimes seems to be an absent, unresponsive God—whether it's through people-pleasing, shopping, the internet, food, career highs, or even good works and elite theology. We attempt to anesthetize our anxiety through addiction—any old addiction. But it often leaves us feeling even more empty than before.In Coming Clean, Seth Haines writes a raw account of his first 90 days of sobriety, illuminating how to face the pain we'd rather avoid, and even more importantly, how an abiding God meets us in that pain. Seth shows us that true wholeness is found in facing our pain and anxieties with the tenacity and tenderness of Jesus, and only through Christ's passion can we truly come clean

    Discharged in 1966, after finally receiving proper psychiatric care, Sawyer kept her past secret and moved on to graduate from Yale University, raise two children, and become a respected psychotherapist. That is, until 2001, when she reviewed her hospital records and began to remember a broken childhood and the even more broken mental health system of the 1950s and 1960s.

    And though the 12-step program by itself can often bring initial success, many addicts find themselves relapsing back into old ways and old patterns, or replacing one addiction with another. Working with the traditional 12-Step philosophy, the author first shares his own life path, and how he came to find the spiritual solace that has greatly enhanced his life in recovery. Then, he details out how his work integrating Buddhism into the traditional twelve-step programs validates both aspects of the recovery process. While being careful not to present himself as a Tibetan lama or Zen master, the author shows how each step -- such as admitting there is a problem, seeking help, engaging in a thorough self-examination, making amends for harm done, and helping other drug addicts who want to recover -- fits into the Bodhisattva path. This integration makes Buddhism accessible for addicts, and the 12 Steps understandable for Buddhists who may otherwise be at a loss to help those in need. The 12-Step Buddhist is designed to be a complimentary practice to the traditional 12-step journey, not a replacement. While traditional twelve-step programs help addicts become sober by removing the drug of choice and providing a spiritual path, they rarely delve deep into what causes people to suffer in the first place. The integration of Buddhism with the traditional process provides the wisdom and meditations that can help addicts truly find a deep, spiritual liberation from all causes and conditions of suffering -- for good.

    Laurie Hall's story reveals pornography's subversive side and offers comfort, encouragement, insight, and a plan of action to women whose husbands are addicted.

    Learning what it means to fully surrender character defects frees you to make amends with Steps 8 and 9, realize the Big Book’s “Promises,” and move on to Step 10.In this new follow-up resource, Fred H. explores what he calls “the ripple effect” that can be created by using Step 10 to practice Steps 6 and 7 every day and avoid picking up “the rock” again. Drawing on his years of lecturing on the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, he reveals Step 10 as the natural culmination of working the previous Steps. providing a crash course on renewing your recovery program through the daily practice of Twelve Step principles.Like its predecessor, Drop the Rock—The Ripple Effect provides multiple perspectives from people successfully working a Twelve Step Program, showing Step 10 as a key to a sober life free of fear and resentment and filled with serenity and gratitude.Fred H. has worked in the field of addiction and recovery for over three decades and is the director of the retreat center for a leading addiction treatment program. He is a popular international speaker on the Big Book and the principles of the Twelve Steps.

    Drawing from personal letters, diaries, AA archives, interviews—and Cheever's own experiences with alcoholism—My Name Is Bill is the first fully documented, deeply felt account of Bill Wilson and Alcoholics Anonymous.

      Sara suffered a debilitating fear of asserting herself. Spencer experienced crippling social anxiety. Bonnie was shut down, disconnected from her feelings. These patients all came to psychotherapist Hilary Jacobs Hendel seeking treatment for depression, but in fact none of them were chemically depressed. Rather, Jacobs Hendel found that they’d all experienced traumas in their youth that caused them to put up emotional defenses that masqueraded as symptoms of depression. Jacobs Hendel led these patients and others toward lives newly capable of joy and fulfillment through an empathic and effective therapeutic approach that draws on the latest science about the healing power of our emotions.   Whereas conventional therapy encourages patients to talk through past events that may trigger anxiety and depression, accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy (AEDP), the method practiced by Jacobs Hendel and pioneered by Diana Fosha, PhD, teaches us to identify the defenses and inhibitory emotions (shame, guilt, and anxiety) that block core emotions (anger, sadness, fear, disgust, joy, excitement, and sexual excitement). Fully experiencing core emotions allows us to enter an openhearted state where we are calm, curious, connected, compassionate, confident, courageous, and clear.   In It’s Not Always Depression, Jacobs Hendel shares a unique and pragmatic tool called the Change Triangle—a guide to carry you from a place of disconnection back to your true self. In these pages, she teaches lay readers and helping professionals alike   • why all emotions—even the most painful—have value. • how to identify emotions and the defenses we put up against them. • how to get to the root of anxiety—the most common mental illness of our time. • how to have compassion for the child you were and the adult you are.   Jacobs Hendel provides navigational tools, body and thought exercises, candid personal anecdotes, and profound insights gleaned from her patients’ remarkable breakthroughs. She shows us how to work the Change Triangle in our everyday lives and chart a deeply personal, powerful, and hopeful course to psychological well-being and emotional engagement.

    In Alcohol Explained 2 William Porter develops his insight into the alcohol phenomenon, and provides the tools you need to retake control of your life for good.

    This includes loved ones, family, and friends beginning the journey of recovery. This resource can help you understand how to help them thrive.A compassionate, user-friendly handbook for family and friends navigating the many challenges that come with a loved one's new-found sobriety. A relative or friend has finally taken those tentative first steps toward sobriety. With the relief of this life-changing course of action comes a new and difficult set of challenges for recovering addicts and those who love them. Family members and friends often find themselves unsure of how to weather such a dramatic turn, as the rules and routines of their relationships no longer pertain. Everything Changes assuages fears and uncertainty by teaching loved ones of newly recovering addicts how to navigate the often-tumultuous early months of recovery. Beverly Conyers, author of the acclaimed Addict in the Family, again shares the hope and knowledge that she gained as a parent of a recovering addict by focusing on the aftermath of addiction. She outlines the physical and psychological changes that recovering addicts go through, and offers practical tools to help family members and friends: build a fresh, rewarding relationship with the addict be supportive without setting themselves up for disappointment avoid enabling destructive behavior set and maintain boundaries cope with relapse deal with the practicalities of sober living, such as helping the addict find a job and deal with the stigma of addiction.

    Marya Hornbacher offers fellow nonbelievers a generous sense of the spiritual for hard times as well as happy ones.For those who don't believe in God—or don't know whether they believe—New York Times best-selling author Marya Hornbacher offers an insightful, moving approach to the concept of faith. Many of us have been trained to think of spirituality as the sole provenance of religion; and if we have come to feel that the religious are not the only ones with access to a spiritual life, we may still be casting about for what, precisely, a spiritual life would be, without a God, a religion, or a solid set of spiritual beliefs. In Waiting, Hornbacher uses the story of her own journey beginning with her recovery from alcoholism to offer a fresh approach to cultivating a spiritual life. Relinquishing the concept of a universal "Spirit" that exists outside of us, Hornbacher gives us the framework to explore the human spirit in each of us--the very thing that sends us searching, that connects us with one another, the thing that "comes knocking at the door of our emotionally and intellectually closed lives and asks to be let in." When we let it in and only when we do, she says, we begin to be integrated people and csn walk a spiritual path. There will be many points along the way where we stop, or we fumble, or we get tangled up or turned around. Those are the places where we wait. Waiting, you'll discover, can become a kind of spiritual practice in itself, requiring patience, acceptance, and stillness. Sometimes we do it because we know we need to, though we may not know why. In short, we do it on faith.

    From buying the duct tape for an armed robbery to saving the life of a prison guard, author Weldon Long recounts his harrowing journey of self-discovery and how he went from being a drunk in a jail cell to the CEO of a multimillion-dollar business. Twenty years of drinking, robbing, drugging, and lying led Long to more than a decade of time spent in prisons, jails, and halfway houses - and a more strained relationship with a son he barely knew. Through the revealing perspective of an eloquent criminal, readers will discover how to use fear as a positive motivating force and use the mind to strengthen the will, even in the bleakest of circumstances. Long's story demonstrates that love can redeem even the most hopeless criminal.

    In this wise and compassionate book, bestselling author and eminent psychiatrist Theodore Rubin shows us realistic ways to break these negative mental and emotional attitudes and build a strong sense of well-being and self-understanding. Dr. Rubin looks of how self-hate begins, is sustained, and eventually leads to destructive and defeating behavior—from alcoholism and drug dependency to perfectionism and fear of failure (or success). Offering practical and reassuring advice, he shows that the key to freeing yourself from these restricting emotions and habits is to find and examine the self-hate that generates them, and then to release your innate and powerful capacity for compassion. This warm, sympathetic, and ultimately practical guide to personal growth and fulfillment is timelier and more helpful than ever.

    This includes our planet, the stars and galaxies, and the physical universe, as it stretches out in space, beyond our perceptions. This title deals with this topic.