Please understand one critical feature of this book. It is a biography, hand written by the junkie in question about his life and his alone. As such it is not a piece of literary perfection. It has not been polished to perfection by a team of editors, nor was it published by a major publishing company. Black Tar: For The Love of Heroin was originally written on a legal pad as part of a twelve step program. It made its way to me, its ultimate editor, and I was amazed by the details Stephen was able to remember and capture on paper. Once I got to know him I asked him if he would work with me on his life story and he reluctantly agreed. Sensing his hesitancy I told him we would not use his name and focus on the day to day existence of a junkie as he experienced it living from fix to fix. But Stephen could be a hard person to track down and his never ending thirst for the needle made his story a hard one to tell. I spent days upon weeks crawling the downtown streets looking for him and a lot of times when I did find him I would have to buy him heroin just to get him to work with me. So, I made a deal with him, like making a deal with the devil, that if he would help me drag his biography into existence, I would buy him enough heroin to get through each and every day we worked together.One day's worth of heroin for one day's worth of storytelling. This made it easy for him to make himself available for the writing of his biography. By the time I met Stephen he was almost fifty years old and in full blown heroin psychosis. How he managed to live as long as he had was always a miracle to me. Over the course of a year and several months I pulled every story Stephen could remember from his heroin-addled brain and preserved them on paper. But I never wanted this story to be an autobiography. I wanted it to be Stephen telling his story, in his words, no matter how it might look like in the end.With these rules in place I gave him his first computer and at first he slaved over his 'hunt and peak' computer skills. But the more he wrote the more he remembered and slowly, after three long years of exchanging one day of heroin to entice him to work one day of writing, Stephen declared himself finished with the project. I read what he had written and quickly realized that active heroin junkies make terrible writers. What he had produced was basically unusable. To make a three-year writing stint something of literary value I set myself to editing what he had written. I didn't want to strip it of the style of writing that made it junkie. More than anything else I wanted to preserve his perspective, sense of pain, his defeat, his single-minded approach to heroin and to the fact he knew it was going to kill him. I think that fatalistic view of life is what hit me the hardest.To make the book easy to digest I divided it into five segments and then spread his life between the points. And that is what we ended up with. The biography of a drug addict; barely touched by an editor's pen, and filled with the dirt, muck and blood that is a junkies life.

    Naus, is the author of Straight Pepper Diet, a harrowing and sometimes hilarious memoir about surviving the aftermath of sex and alcohol addiction. “On Tuesday, I was a respected civil trial lawyer making six-figures. On Wednesday, I woke up handcuffed to a hospital bed … and then it got worse.”

     In this unprecedented book, A. J. Adams uses self-deprecating humor, entertaining anecdotes, and frank descriptions to introduce anyone who "just doesn't get" Alcoholics Anonymous to the complete "Undrunk" lifestyle. Beginning with the story of his first AA meeting, he takes the mystery out what goes on behind closed doors, dispelling misconceptions of AA as cultlike, secretive, campy, or lowbrow. He then presents a user-friendly history and introduction to AA, explaining the Steps, Traditions, terms, and sayings--all punctuated by honest, often hilarious descriptions of his own struggles and eventual transformation to "getting" the program.

    Staying Sober: A Guide for Relapse Prevention- Based Upon the CENAPS Model of Treatment (Paperback).

    Over three decades, his affliction has spawned immeasurable chaos, destruction and debauched good times. While his rivals have graced the covers of Spin and Rolling Stone, Shubaly's projects inevitably flame out in the eleventh hour. Is he finally ready to give up his lifelong dream for good?

    Addiction, according to Welch, is when we worship ourselves and our desires instead of the true God.

    May examines the "processes of attachment" that lead to addiction and describes the relationship between addiction and spiritual awareness. He also details the various addictions from which we can suffer, not only to substances like alcohol and drugs, but to work, sex, performance, responsibility, and intimacy.Drawing on his experience as a psychiatrist working with the chemically dependent, May emphasizes that addiction represents an attempt to assert complete control over our lives. Addiction and Grace is a compassionate and wise treatment of a topic of major concern in these most addictive of times, one that can provide a critical yet hopeful guide to a place of freedom based on contemplative spirituality.

    Either way, it will save your life.”—Melissa Hartwig Urban, Whole30 co-founder and CEOWe live in a world obsessed with drinking. We drink at baby showers and work events, brunch and book club, graduations and funerals. Yet no one ever questions alcohol’s ubiquity—in fact, the only thing ever questioned is why someone doesn’t drink. It is a qualifier for belonging and if you don’t imbibe, you are considered an anomaly. As a society, we are obsessed with health and wellness, yet we uphold alcohol as some kind of magic elixir, though it is anything but.When Holly Whitaker decided to seek help after one too many benders, she embarked on a journey that led not only to her own sobriety, but revealed the insidious role alcohol plays in our society and in the lives of women in particular. What’s more, she could not ignore the ways that alcohol companies were targeting women, just as the tobacco industry had successfully done generations before. Fueled by her own emerging feminism, she also realized that the predominant systems of recovery are archaic, patriarchal, and ineffective for the unique needs of women and other historically oppressed people—who don’t need to lose their egos and surrender to a male concept of God, as the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous state, but who need to cultivate a deeper understanding of their own identities and take control of their lives. When Holly found an alternate way out of her own addiction, she felt a calling to create a sober community with resources for anyone questioning their relationship with drinking, so that they might find their way as well. Her resultant feminine-centric recovery program focuses on getting at the root causes that lead people to overindulge and provides the tools necessary to break the cycle of addiction, showing us what is possible when we remove alcohol and destroy our belief system around it.Written in a relatable voice that is honest and witty, Quit Like a Woman is at once a groundbreaking look at drinking culture and a road map to cutting out alcohol in order to live our best lives without the crutch of intoxication. You will never look at drinking the same way again.

    Barnett had her first sip of alcohol when she was thirteen, and she quickly developed a taste for drinking to oblivion with her friends. In her late twenties, her addiction became inescapable. Volatile relationships, blackouts, and unsuccessful stints in detox defined her life, with the vodka bottles she hid throughout her apartment and offices acting as both her tormentors and closest friends.By the time she was in her late thirties, Erica Barnett had run the gauntlet of alcoholism. She had recovered and relapsed time and again, but after each new program or detox center would find herself far from rehabilitated. "Rock bottom," Barnett writes, "is a lie." It is always possible, she learned, to go lower than your lowest point. She found that the terms other alcoholics used to describe the trajectory of their addiction--"rock bottom" and "moment of clarity"--and the mottos touted by Alcoholics Anonymous, such as "let go and let God" and "you're only as sick as your secrets"--didn't correspond to her experience and could actually be detrimental.With remarkably brave and vulnerable writing, Barnett expands on her personal story to confront the dire state of addiction in America, the rise of alcoholism in American women in the last century, and the lack of rehabilitation options available to addicts. At a time when opioid addiction is a national epidemic and one in twelve Americans suffers from alcohol abuse disorder, Quitter is essential reading for our age and an ultimately hopeful story of Barnett's own hard-fought path to sobriety.

    Readers learn the effects that their listening has on others and insight into the effects that the listening skills of others have upon them.

    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.

    This book is a powerful and enriching synthesis of the 12-Step recovery programs and the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism. It is sure to appeal to anyone touched by addiction, including those looking for new ways to understand and work with the tried-and-true 12-Step system. Tens of millions of Americans suffer from alcoholism and other forms of dependence, and 12 Steps on Buddha's Path offers hope and help for any one of them.Though writing anonymously out of deep respect for 12-Step policies, the author is in fact a well-known professional author, deeply involved in the recovery and meditation communities.

     From the moment she uttered the brave and honest words, "I am an alcoholic," to interviewer George Stephanopoulos, Elizabeth Vargas began writing her story, as her experiences were still raw. Now, in Between Breaths, Vargas discusses her accounts of growing up with anxiety--which began suddenly at the age of six when her father served in Vietnam--and how she dealt with this anxiety as she came of age, eventually turning to alcohol for a release from her painful reality. The now-A&E Network reporter reveals how she found herself living in denial about the extent of her addiction, and how she kept her dependency a secret for so long. She addresses her time in rehab, her first year of sobriety, and the guilt she felt as a working mother who could never find the right balance between a career and parenting. Honest and hopeful, Between Breaths is an inspiring read. Winner of the Books for a Better Life Award in the First Book category Instant New York Times and USA Today Bestseller

    Whether you agree with this statement or not, one thing is for sure, you will never see alcohol in the same light ever again after reading this book. Jason Vale takes an honest and hard hitting look at people’s conceptions of our most widely consumed drug. Jason’s major argument is there is no such thing as an ‘alcoholic’ and that we are conditioned to accept alcohol as a ‘normal’ substance in today’s society despite the fact that it is the major cause of many of today’s social problems and a wide range of health issues. This book is much more than a simple eye opener, it will: change the way you see alcohol forever; show you how to stop drinking; help you enjoy the process and enjoy your life so much more than you do now without having to drink alcohol. So open your mind and take a journey with Jason to explore the myths about the most used and accepted drug addiction in the world!

    More than 28 million Americans grew up in alcoholic families.  They bear a painful legacy of confusion, fear, anger and hurt--and they are at shockingly high risk of marrying an alcoholic or becoming alcoholics themselves.  In this authoritative book, Wayne Kritsberg shows how to recognize--and remedy--the long-term effects of the dysfunctional, alcoholic family.  His proven techniques, based on extensive clinical experience using the Family Integration System offer REAL help and REAL hope for adult children of alcoholics--and those they love.