tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24820005724315484432024-03-05T07:09:35.215-08:00Book Talk<b>Recovery books, reviewed by those who understand them best: people in recovery. </b>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger63125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-73666454132560634812009-06-05T14:22:00.000-07:002010-01-19T09:50:39.912-08:00'Til Death Do Us Part or 'Til You Piss Me Off ... Whichever Comes First<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2tTsBs2RRfpgi37bDN45ierbKpYeQWy20samaeQZvlGHNfUQdvy0d6bgOb7wNpf96cOvDXpm3XkWlaoBdVt0srCVFIWrDCQy1XVtUim4azqy5-M-ca7O2KFLsBARAfIiDAwsl0PWfJXo/s1600-h/TilDeathDoUsPart.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5343960615759937186" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 195px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 120px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2tTsBs2RRfpgi37bDN45ierbKpYeQWy20samaeQZvlGHNfUQdvy0d6bgOb7wNpf96cOvDXpm3XkWlaoBdVt0srCVFIWrDCQy1XVtUim4azqy5-M-ca7O2KFLsBARAfIiDAwsl0PWfJXo/s200/TilDeathDoUsPart.gif" border="0" /></a><br /><div>By Michael Rice<br />Madeira Publ. Co., Mesa AZ 2009<br />ISBN 978-0-578-02237-6<br /><br /><em>Reviewed by Marty N.</em><br /><br /><br />This book came to my attention because the author, Michael Rice, was a speaker at the Choice Theory conference held in Sacramento May 30, which I attended.<br /><br />As the catchy title suggests, the book is an analysis of why marriages fail and what can be done about it. The answer, in brief, has to do with control.<br /><br />Our culture teaches us to try to control other people to make them do what we want them to do. Dr. William Glasser, the founder of Choice Theory, catalogued methods of control as the "seven deadly habits": criticizing, blaming, complaining, nagging, threatening, punishing, and bribing.<br /><br />Relationships go bad when participants use these methods on one another. If one partner begins, the other usually responds in kind. Before very long, love, trust, and the desire to be together go out the window.<br /><br />Rice includes a number of case studies from his practice as a family therapist. In the cases where he was successful, it was because the couple adopted the seven healthy habits: support, encourage, listen, accept, trust, respect, and negotiate. If one partner begins using these healthy habits, the other partner eventually reciprocates, and the relationship grows stronger.<br /><br />This slim volume doesn't pretend to exhaust the subject of marriage problems and their resolution, but the central insight is clear and helpful, and the suggestions are practical and within the reach of just about everyone.<br /><br />-- M.N.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-11241435110469111892009-04-23T14:30:00.000-07:002009-04-27T08:22:25.199-07:00Natural Process of Quitting Forever: Explicit Instructions<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ23LfJqg7yh8_ltLMw7BnUwPN0REc5cu5-lzkEKZKlEeeCkkSBd57QWG9CKEF3pptmSDJnTM52Y7UyGvyAMKko7nFtz_S6GOo7N7Bf3ugL6KkLayhyONyXeIkS53Tc8_HEPw9tZRywH0/s1600-h/quit4evr.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5328015387264271730" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 87px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 116px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ23LfJqg7yh8_ltLMw7BnUwPN0REc5cu5-lzkEKZKlEeeCkkSBd57QWG9CKEF3pptmSDJnTM52Y7UyGvyAMKko7nFtz_S6GOo7N7Bf3ugL6KkLayhyONyXeIkS53Tc8_HEPw9tZRywH0/s200/quit4evr.jpg" border="0" /></a> William Weber, M.A.<br /><br />ISBN-10: 1434397769<br />ISBN-13: 978-1434397768<br /><br /><em>Reviewed by Alceon</em><br /><br /><br />I was excited by the title of this book and couldn't wait to start reading.<br /><br />My advice is don't waste your money or your time. I have plowed my way through the entire 96 pages of single-spaced typewriter style font on 8 1/4 x 11 inch paper and spent the majority of the time arguing with the book. The book is repetitious beyond belief. He goes over and over and over and OVER the same points, which are mostly based on bashing AA.<br /><br />On page 4 is a full-page chart called "Quitting Forever" and subtitled "Explicit Instructions" The six steps didn’t quite make sense to me. Step (1) you Think about quitting forever, then (2) Intend on quitting forever, (3) Decide on quitting forever, (4) Maintain Abstinence then (5) Permanent Exit. The final step is (6) Deliberating.<br /><br />I thought why do you start Deliberating if you’ve already made a Permanent Exit? Well, I'll keep reading. It’s not until I finally got to page 38 that I found two pages explaining his explicit instructions for quitting forever.<br /><br />It’s kind of like Steve Martin’s advice on how to make a million dollars: "First, you make a million dollars." Well, first, you examine all your reasons then you say "I quit forever." That makes it a decision so you no longer need reasons. You’re free! You can now go anywhere and do anything and no longer be a "second class citizen" because you’ve quit forever.<br /><br />You don’t need to go to meetings or support groups or forums or read sobriety books to help you quit forever (or stay quit) because once you’ve said "I quit forever" it is now a done deal. It's now a decision, which makes it a value, so you don’t need reasons anymore except the one reason that you said you quit forever. Reasons aren’t good because for every reason to quit you’ll also have to argue with an opposite reason for using and that’s all just words in your head that you can just observe as "mind chatter" and ignore. And if for some reason you drink or use after saying you’ve quit forever it’s because you like getting high or loaded and didn’t *really* quit forever.<br /><br />He says the Brain-Recovery model is very complex so he will explain it in a way that’s easier to understand. He has several cartoon-like illustrations of the brain and his main proof that the model is wrong is because (and he says you can look in "any anatomy of biology book" you want and see) there are no nerves that directly connect the portion of your brain that makes you want to drink with the portion that controls your hands. So just because one part of the brain makes you want to get high or loaded, it’s biologically impossible for that part to make your hands move.<br /><br />He also contradicts himself in other parts of the book and says that the whole brain works together.<br /><br />The back cover of the book says that Mr. Weber "is a licensed Alcohol and Drug Abuse and Marriage and Family Therapist" with "more than 18 years of experience talking with people about quitting forever." These are very fine credentials and yet I frankly think all he knows about addiction is from the books he studied to become a therapist and talking to clients. Nothing rings true and his tone struck me often as quite patronizing.<br /><br />He talks about cravings as if they were just 1 or 2-dimensional words on paper or in your mind -- not the 3-dimensional war that seems to rage in your entire body when you’re first getting sober -- and sometimes even drops in for a visit months or years later.<br /><br />He completely doesn’t get the idea of quitting one day at a time. He says it means you haven’t quit forever and have to keep making a new decision to quit every single day. I say it’s because the concept of "forever" to an addict is too hard to even conceptualize at first and even though you know your commitment is to never drink again, cutting that into bite-sized one-day chunks -- and sometimes hours or minutes -- is all that makes it achievable at first.<br /><br />I was also disappointed to find out that you haven’t *really* quit forever if you count days or time since your last drink. He says it means you’re really only quitting one day at a time and every day you have to decide again to quit for another day. (Damn. Guess that means all those days of freedom I’ve counted since <em>quitting forever</em> four years ago this Sunday don’t mean a thing!)<br /><br />There is less than 1/2 page of references and there are no notes or footnotes -- but there is an almost 4" tall picture of the author's face on the title page. There are numerous spelling and grammar errors throughout the book and one area where the same two paragraphs are repeated twice.<br /><br />There are one or two good points in the book but you have to dig hard and far to find them. It’s not worth the search. LifeRing’s motto DDNMW says it all much better.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-30635850336454408242009-04-12T15:25:00.000-07:002009-04-14T10:45:27.130-07:00Cocaine and Methamphetamine Addiction: Treatment, Recovery, and Relapse Prevention<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoYxYwrkoQmwgZAv_s_ywi8cbw0CPj3e7mKHNgtQP8qZS4QtKTfvf3gFGYlZzimbLnEWjkU9TEjN7GEFOAaPpK1UnKNBZhnb8Si-w1hlQ3azez4SuuUZj7I3befT-eRh6tVd72pLTGYa8/s1600-h/cocameth.png"><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323901050454759554" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 3px 5px 0px; WIDTH: 85px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 130px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoYxYwrkoQmwgZAv_s_ywi8cbw0CPj3e7mKHNgtQP8qZS4QtKTfvf3gFGYlZzimbLnEWjkU9TEjN7GEFOAaPpK1UnKNBZhnb8Si-w1hlQ3azez4SuuUZj7I3befT-eRh6tVd72pLTGYa8/s320/cocameth.png" border="0" /></a><br />Arnold Washton, Ph.D.<br />Joan Ellen Zweben, Ph.D.<br /><p>ISBN 13: 978-0-393-70302-3<br /><br /><em>Reviewed by Alceon</em><br /><br /><i><br />Cocaine and Methamphetamine Addiction</i> is a revision of a book published in 1989 originally called <em>Cocaine Addiction</em>. This new edition contains additional information about methamphetamine use and recovery as well the latest research and developments in addiction treatment. </p><p>The authors bring decades of personal experience in the drug rehabilitation field. They speak quite clearly of the need for complete abstinence from any mood-altering drug in order to maintain complete recovery from addiction regardless whether the drug is a stimulant or depressant such as alcohol.</p><p>Even though this book is specifically about treatment for and recovery from stimulant drugs, I think it would be of interest to anyone seeking information about recovery from drug abuse of any kind. I approached it from the standpoint of a past alcohol addiction and came to the very clear understanding that an addiction is an addiction regardless of the drug.</p><p>Washton and Zweben discuss the difference between a stimulant addiction vs. alcoholism (pg. 221 and chapter 2) and state that while there are "noteworthy differences" add that "most of these differences stem from the fact" that the progression to addiction from the first use of cocaine or methamphetamine is much more rapid (weeks to months) than that of alcohol, which may take 15 to 20 years to clearly develop. Thus the indications of addiction appear quite rapidly and are much more visible to others.</p><p>The authors address many issues in this book, beginning with an overview of the history and progression of stimulant drug use in this country. Chapters address the following information:</p><ol><li>Cocaine and Methamphetamine Use in America </li><li>Understanding Stimulant Drugs </li><li>Stimulants and Sex </li><li>Treatment Approaches and Considerations </li><li>Quitting Strategies </li><li>Relapse Prevention Strategies </li><li>The Role of Self Help Programs </li><li>The Role of the Family </li></ol>The primary focus of the book is on treatment and treatment options. In their practices, Washton & Zweben have noticed a synergistic effect when professional counseling is combined with group and/or self-help programs. Although 12-Step programs are the primary self-help groups discussed (mainly because AA/NA meetings are the most readily found world-wide) the authors are careful to address the reluctance many people have about the 12-Step protocol and discuss ways to address those issues. They also include a section about other self-help programs and LifeRing Secular Recovery is the first group mentioned in this section. Other groups include SMART Recovery, Women for Sobriety and SOS.<br /><br /><p>The book is extremely easy reading and contains many case examples from the authors' practices. There's no fancy medical jargon, just a lot of straight talk. Multiple charts throughout the book address topics such as Comparison of Cocaine and Methamphetamine, Quitting Strategies, Drug Triggers, Relapse Prevention Strategies and Points for the Family to Remember. </p>The Appendix has a 3-page list of Substance Abuse Web Sites and LifeRing Secular Recovery at<br /><a href="http://www.unhooked.com/">http://www.unhooked.com/</a> is included.<br /><br /><p>There are 15 pages of References and a nicely compiled index.</p><p>For more information about this book and the authors, follow this link to the publisher's website:<br /><a href="http://www.wwnorton.com/NPB/nppsych/070302.html">h<i>ttp://www.wwnorton.com/NPB/nppsych/070302.html</i></a><br /></p><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-4586401418037985562009-03-19T10:10:00.000-07:002011-02-13T10:51:15.517-08:00Empowering Your Sober Self: The LifeRing Approach to Addiction Recovery<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJU4-VTjmJnbhNYuLlAJa4-LGa67nLCPJF1s7LZQDD0YmdswCkFn7-klpYnDg0WgHzGJbilxQPtOTeH0JvjhqePz3pMHurRb0vTX0DxS302McEea6gBsJm5UmKNVWWTRnZN249bL5RoYA/s1600/empowering.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5573244637047323170" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 87px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 127px" alt="" hspace="3" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJU4-VTjmJnbhNYuLlAJa4-LGa67nLCPJF1s7LZQDD0YmdswCkFn7-klpYnDg0WgHzGJbilxQPtOTeH0JvjhqePz3pMHurRb0vTX0DxS302McEea6gBsJm5UmKNVWWTRnZN249bL5RoYA/s200/empowering.gif" border="0" /></a><br /><div>By Martin Nicolaus<br /><br />ISBN-10: 047037229X<br />ISBN-13: 978-0470372296<br /><br /><em>review by Alceon</em><br /><br /><p>This is the latest book by our very own Marty N., one of the founding members and first CEO of LifeRing. These are only a few of the reviews from the Buzz page at unhooked.com:<br /></p><ul><br /><li>"This introduction to LifeRing Secular Recovery’s principles [and] philosophy for overcoming addiction—without the religious underpinnings of most 12-step programs—will be well received by those seeking support on their road to recovery. Highly recommended for university libraries supporting the helping professions and larger public libraries.Background: Nicolaus (Recovery by Choice), founder and CEO of LifeRing Secular Recovery, a nonreligious addiction recovery treatment alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous, provides an engaging guide for individuals and addiction treatment professionals seeking nonspiritual support and strategies. The author distinguishes LifeRing Secular Recovery from 12-step programs, includes numerous testimonials from members, and focuses on informing readers rather than converting them.—Dale Farris, Groves, TX, in <a href="http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6645676.html">Library Journal 3/27/09</a>.</li><br /><li></li><br /><li>"In the words of our president, 'it’s time for a change' and nowhere is this more evident than in the field of addiction treatment. Nicolaus has written a wonderful book that presents LifeRing, a new model for self-help groups. A model based on empathy, scientific evidence, and giving people the power make their own choices about treatment options. Indeed, change has come." <em>-- </em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Model_of_Recovery"><em>Joseph R. Volpicelli M.D., Ph.D.</em></a><em>, Executive Director of the </em><a href="http://www.ioam.org/"><em>Institute of Addiction Medicine</em></a><em>, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and co-author of </em><a href="http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-047134575X.html"><em>Recovery Options: The Complete Guide</em></a><em>.</em></li><br /><li></li><br /><li>"Introduces a new, rational approach to addiction recovery, grounded in secularity, and informed by modern science. The LifeRing program mobilizes the power of caring and connection to liberate the sober self that lives inside everyone who struggles with addiction." <em>-- </em><a href="http://www.tommoon.net/"><em>Tom Moon MFT</em></a><em>; columnist, </em><a href="http://www.sfbaytimes.com/"><em>San Francisco Bay Times</em></a></li><br /><li></li><br /><li>"Thoughtful and provocative -- issues a long overdue challenge to the accepted wisdom surrounding recovery from addiction, and illuminates a viable, alternative perspective on recovery."<em> -- </em><a href="http://arg.org/zemore.html"><em>Sarah E. Zemore Ph.D.</em></a><em>, Scientist, Alcohol Research Group, Emeryville California</em></li></ul><br /><p></p><br /><p>.Read all of the reviews on the Buzz page <a href="http://unhooked.com/NewBook/buzz.html">here</a> and more about the book and Marty <a href="http://www.unhooked.com/NewBook/index.html">here</a>.</p><br /><p>Now available for sale at the <a href="http://www.lifering.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=28&zenid=ptsqap51qee1vo3v8mjp25lqi0">LifeRing Press</a>.</p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-48697615279478567812007-11-06T15:00:00.000-08:002011-02-13T10:56:56.299-08:00Drugging the Poor: Legal and Illegal Drugs and Social Inequality<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_DF-19zC0ulEvI8u7XuIlbL1wXK5_9dXbtEwq26A7tmucVBYYu4UwC6GCtZivQ5UHLrWfPOrKDOOWMysX3ALQm_UR63yQ1QZH-bS0OrLMcU4x5NgBGs4AczDebO8jlcy7dBXJjXqNTg4/s1600/druggingPoor.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5573250039898936834" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 76px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 115px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_DF-19zC0ulEvI8u7XuIlbL1wXK5_9dXbtEwq26A7tmucVBYYu4UwC6GCtZivQ5UHLrWfPOrKDOOWMysX3ALQm_UR63yQ1QZH-bS0OrLMcU4x5NgBGs4AczDebO8jlcy7dBXJjXqNTg4/s200/druggingPoor.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>By Merrill Singer<br />WaveLand Press 2008<br />ISBN 978-1-57766-494-9<br /><br /><em>Reviewed by Marty N.</em><br /><br /><br />A marker for addiction is continued use despite negative consequences. Prof. Merrill Singer’s Drugging the Poor reminds us that those negative consequences have a more devastating impact on those at the bottom of the wealth distribution curve than at the top. Looking at addiction through the perspective of Critical Medical Anthropology (CMA), an academic discipline that merges the insights of public health and political economy, Prof. Merrill finds that the use of drugs such as nicotine, alcohol, and illegal psychotropics tends to perpetuate and accelerate the widening gap between the rich and the poor.<br /><br />At the heart of Prof. Merrill’s book is a description of what he calls “drug capitalism.” The dividing line between legal drug pushers (the corporations in the alcohol, tobacco, and prescription drug businesses) and the illegal ones is much more blurry than is popularly believed. Respected corporations in fact frequently engage in illegal conduct and should be classified as criminal recidivists. Illegal drug organizations, on the other hand, have on occasion provided important social services and made charitable contributions. The illegal drug trade is exceedingly violent, but its mayhem seems petty by comparison with the blood-drenched birth of the tobacco and alcohol industries, both built on the slave trade. Even today, there is evidence that Big Tobacco has a hand in wholesale smuggling of cigarettes into third world countries (to evade taxes), and Big Pharma knowingly produces vastly more psychotropic drugs than are sold through legal prescription channels. The underground merchants who run the global trade in these mood-altering commodities readily switch between product lines – now liquor, now heroin, now pills, or whatever – as political-economic conditions dictate.<br /><br />This fact-laden volume is the best short critical introduction available today to the pillars of the contemporary drug business, legal and otherwise. Every open-eyed person knows that individual drug use takes place in a social setting, and that personal decisions and the social environment are webbed together. That social environment is powerfully shaped and determined by its major economic and political institutions, including those that profit from addiction to alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs. Prof. Singer’s CMA perspective provides a readable and research-rich overview of the influence that these power centers have over our culture, and in particular, over the culture of the poor, including the lucrative and devastating marketing efforts targeted at African-American and Latino minorities.<br /><br />Although the book applies a searing spotlight to the major pillars of the drug economy, and will raise hackles in the board rooms of Altria, Anheuser-Busch, and many others, it is also in some ways a naïve book. One looks here in vain for a discussion of deliberate governmental injection of drugs into oppressed communities, on the model of Britain’s drive to establish opium addiction in China (hence the Opium Wars), or of more recent instances, such as the flooding of Los Angeles with crack to finance the Contra insurgency, the CIA’s role in transporting opium out of the Iron Triangle during the Vietnam years, and the current resurgence of heroin production in Afghanistan thanks to the U.S. invasion. Prof. Singer rightly criticizes the “War on Drugs” as wholly ineffective in curbing the supply of illegal drugs, but he does not suggest, as have others, that this outcome is intentional. Perhaps there are limits to what a professor at the University of Connecticut can safely write. Nevertheless, this book merits a place on the bookshelf of any person concerned with the cultural contexts in which contemporary addiction occurs. Particularly noteworthy is the final chapter, which briefly describes a selection of grass-roots efforts to abridge the power of legal and illegal drug pushers in the community.<br /><br />-- Marty N.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-63348272542646351402007-10-11T16:24:00.000-07:002011-02-13T11:00:28.001-08:00Dancing with Tina<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS8Vrz9GWwJBzSBbSa7ZqtgdV_zBcH3xiCjUl6yvfKeBZ4DQoSj7IgtY6nO7djJN21xKTTzXM178vg-8U8VmPj4zN4A_SYgfbleE8oxyV63I98OoNY6qH4WzYjLdPtzvMswVg11iWH_1Y/s1600/danceTina.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5573250792722761794" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 81px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 127px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS8Vrz9GWwJBzSBbSa7ZqtgdV_zBcH3xiCjUl6yvfKeBZ4DQoSj7IgtY6nO7djJN21xKTTzXM178vg-8U8VmPj4zN4A_SYgfbleE8oxyV63I98OoNY6qH4WzYjLdPtzvMswVg11iWH_1Y/s200/danceTina.gif" border="0" /></a> By Terry Oldes<br /><br />ISBN-10: 1934187151<br />ISBN-13: 978-1934187159<br /><br /><em>Reviewed by Carol</em><br /><br /><br />Man has sex with man. Man has sex with two men. Man is naive about gay man's life style. Man has sex in bathhouse. Man does TINA, the street name for Methamphetamine, (Meth), and has sex. Man meets man, man has sex and falls in love. Man has 3 month relationship. Relationship ends due to TINA. Man has sex with three men. Man has sex in gay bar. Man has sex with man he meets on-line. Man has sex for 14 hours. Man invites man over to his house to have sex. More men arrive to join in and have sex. Man has protected and unprotected sex. Man is careful not to have sex with HIV positive men. Man does more TINA in different ways and has more sex. Man meets new friends and has sex. Man goes to parties where many people are having sex. Man dresses up in costumes and has sex. Man watches TINA destroy lives. Man is now a walking gay life style encyclopedia and dictionary. Man has sex.<br /><br />Anyone who is interested in learning about the gay life style would benefit from this read. You learn about TINA, or Methamphetamine, the high it produces and the different ways Meth is administered. You also learn about the gay community and the life style of a gay man. There is not much of a plot so after a while it's just monotonous.<br /><br />I would not recommend the book unless you are a naive gay man coming of age.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-83392554168384380552007-04-11T12:39:00.000-07:002011-02-13T11:03:16.198-08:00Feeding the Fame: Celebrities Tell Their Real-Life Stories of Eating Disorders and Recovery<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6fwjLHTY7SSzYz1xP8DGg8s8aIfMCNHp5IX5txSIv5jmRFdbDy7-2cK97nrGT4zqsKPkvLm1UMRR_IYvQKNcMy6EzPUnp0F7i5cN0togc8dYqS2UvQxxKZWHolw67RDqoxo8FpnatsLY/s1600/feeding.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5573251638390277522" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 76px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 115px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6fwjLHTY7SSzYz1xP8DGg8s8aIfMCNHp5IX5txSIv5jmRFdbDy7-2cK97nrGT4zqsKPkvLm1UMRR_IYvQKNcMy6EzPUnp0F7i5cN0togc8dYqS2UvQxxKZWHolw67RDqoxo8FpnatsLY/s200/feeding.gif" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br />Compiled by Gary Stromberg and Jane Merrill<br />ISBN 978-1-59285-350-2<br /><br />Reviewed by Marty N.<br /><br /><br />The seventeen chapters of this book contain fourteen stories of anorexia and/or bulimia, and three stories of obesity. The slant toward disorders of emaciation is very probably due to the choice of celebrities as contributors. There aren’t any Hollywood A-list megastars here, but these interview subjects are all established in their fields and speak from experience about the pressures that the entertainment industry – aided and abetted often by their own dysfunctional family backgrounds – puts on its players. As Catherine Hickland observes: “For actresses our looks are like our instruments; we are hyperaware of appearance, weight, and beauty.” And so we learn of obsessive dieting, and obsessive exercise, and of the delusion that one is always “fat” even though one’s bones stick out, and of the rediscovery of the ancient Roman trick of vomiting, and of the ruinous consequences of that method for the teeth, and much else that is hidden from the eyes of those who are uninitiated into eating disorders.<br /><br />The standout piece in the collection is by the jockey, Shane Sellers, winner of more than 4,000 horse races and more than $130 million in purses. He did everything that anorectics and bulimics do, on a daily basis, but framed as an iron professional discipline, not as a neurosis. His essay is a revealing look into the brutal world of the jockey’s locker room, where there’s a basin alongside the toilets for “heaving,” and a sweat box for “pulling” pounds of water out of the body in order to make riding weight. It is a system that promotes bulimia, and it kills people. After rising to the top of this regime, Sellers became an outspoken reformer, advocating (and sometimes winning) changes in track rules to protect jockeys’ health.<br /><br />There aren’t any similar reformers among the anorectic/bulimic actresses in the book, agitating for changes in the Hollywood horse-racing business to promote a more reasonably-sized, healthier image of women. But a number of the interview subjects here have done much good by campaigning and touring to speak out about their own eating disorders, and by so doing, they have helped break the silence and isolation in which many non-celebrities suffer the same ordeals. There’s a good deal of comparison here of eating disorders with alcoholism and other drug addictions, and the contributors have a diversity of theories about the nature, cause, and cure of their conditions. Except for the obese comedy writer and actor Bruce Vilanch, who cheerfully denies that he has a problem, they have all experienced a sense of recovery, and all say that they are able now to eat in a healthy middle way, without starving or bingeing. They testify to a great diversity of recovery pathways, such as anti-anxiety medications, psychological counseling, nutrition therapy, dialectical and cognitive behavior therapies, will power, self-discipline, surgery, and a handful who used 12-step. The book sometimes tests the reader’s patience with the contributors’ narcissism – what do you expect from celebrities? – but it is, all the same, a useful and readable collection of anecdotal material about its topic.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-80148886986683297282007-04-11T12:34:00.000-07:002011-02-13T11:05:34.616-08:00The Sober Kitchen<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3ufd79meL4Xqf0HfW4A0seOQls9TY6N9wycu1iHRDAY5DFX6Yuu7fAtE_WdgZUaKqUjA3VTDcCv6BY0dCO0fekj-OL6Smii1zMM1ahofXpebwgZZGBwMKo9ZQm7GsLZ6nCxfYFvES5e8/s1600/soberkitLg.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5573252275290932418" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 91px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 115px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3ufd79meL4Xqf0HfW4A0seOQls9TY6N9wycu1iHRDAY5DFX6Yuu7fAtE_WdgZUaKqUjA3VTDcCv6BY0dCO0fekj-OL6Smii1zMM1ahofXpebwgZZGBwMKo9ZQm7GsLZ6nCxfYFvES5e8/s200/soberkitLg.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br />By Liz Scott<br />ISBN1558322213<br /><br /><p align="left"><i>Reviewed by Patricia Gauss.</i></p><br /><br /><p>Liz Scott, professional chef and recovering alcoholic, wanted to create a cookbook for others in recovery. Her original intent was to “use my training,palate, and a little creativity to develop new recipes and redesign old ones that would be sober safe and maybe even healthier and tastier than the original.” During her search, she recognized the lack of, and need for, basic information on diet and nutrition for recovering alcoholics. The Sober Kitchen (copyright 2003, Harvard Common Press) is her answer to that need, and offers a wealth of nutritional information geared specifically for recovering alcoholics.<br /><br />The Sober Kitchen is organized to address the various stages of recovery beginning with Phase One, early recovery, and (what else?) nonalcoholic beverages. Also in this section are information and recipes for healthy snacks, bar food, and simple comfort foods like soups, as well as tips and recipes for some sweet treats and quick fixes for cravings.<br /><br />Phase Two focuses more on complete meals and sobriety maintenance, including dinner entrees, side dishes and veggies, breakfast items, desserts and baked goodies. Phase Three gets into a more intermediate cooking level with sections on vegetarian cooking, foods that are rich in omega-3 fatty acids and other important supplements, and foods prepared with more unusual ingredients (like curry and soy products). Finally, Scott gives us nonalcoholic recipe makeovers for dishes such as beef burgundy, chicken marsala and beer battered shrimp.<br /><br />Scattered throughout the book are anecdotes, information on alcoholism and a little culinary history, too. She warns that alcohol may be lurking in some very conspicuous places (Pam cooking spray, who knew?), and dispels the myth of all alcohol “burning off” during the cooking process (as much as 85% can be retained depending on the method and length of time cooking). These things are important, she notes, because even trace amounts of alcohol can be enough to trigger very powerful cravings, especially during early<br />recovery.<br /><br />There are mini-primers throughout on such topics as essential vitamins and minerals, buying and storing herbs, cuts and cooking guidelines for beef, pork, lamb and chicken, and different types of mushrooms, potatoes and salad greens. She also provides some tasty and creative substitutions for alcohol, such as strong tea mixed with molasses for macerating fruit, and flavored vinegars, fruit juices and nonalcoholic extracts to substitute for brandies and wines in a variety of entrees and desserts.<br /><br />The Sober Kitchen doesn’t end with the last recipe, however. Ms. Scott offers both an extensive bibliography and an excellent list of titles for suggested reading, along with some culinary resources and a list of recovery organizations. While written for the recovering alcoholic, The Sober Kitchen is an interesting, nformative and readable cookbook, worthy of shelf space in any foodie’s collection. You can visit Liz Scott's web site at <a href="http://www.thesoberkitchen.com/">http://www.thesoberkitchen.com/</a>.<br /><br /><br /></td><br /></tr><br /></tbody></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-1305833884762430392007-04-11T12:21:00.000-07:002011-02-13T11:07:41.639-08:00The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEAVKrDmIa6wuDsoUVY3dpu93w4ZpYf3oaeIx77URj6zU91yRFCtDUzd1mHoNo1aIpD9OuQ6e35rHcZciDcbSWgY1tIdyEMFU3FLhymcGvTSSMJFOJ0RRQKDpl-9Lj9jOCYRN7h3ApeYk/s1600/tippingpoint.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5573252765320236898" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 100px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 153px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEAVKrDmIa6wuDsoUVY3dpu93w4ZpYf3oaeIx77URj6zU91yRFCtDUzd1mHoNo1aIpD9OuQ6e35rHcZciDcbSWgY1tIdyEMFU3FLhymcGvTSSMJFOJ0RRQKDpl-9Lj9jOCYRN7h3ApeYk/s200/tippingpoint.gif" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br />By Malcolm Gladwell<br /><br />ISBN 0-316-34662-4.<br /><br />Reviewed by Marty N.<br /><br /><br />The book table in Toronto’s Pearson International Airport offered a wide range of titles, most of them unfamiliar to me. My hand ranged over the display like a dowsing rod, and when it came to this white-covered paperback, it twitched. The plane was over Nevada before I could put the book down, finished. We all know the miraculous parable of the butterfly whose flapping wings set off an intercontinental storm. The Tipping Point explains how the butterfly did it. Using examples from marketing, medicine, literature, politics and other spheres, Gladwell shows the basic moves and conditions that can transform a small change into a sudden mega-metamorphosis. Along the way, he throws new light on many familiar themes, such as subway graffiti, Kitty Genovese, Sesame Street, athletic shoes, and teenage smoking, to name just a few. A former Washington Post journalist and now staff writer for The New Yorker, Gladwell has put together a well crafted, fast-moving, fact-intensive and highly readable book that deserves its national best-seller rating.<br /><br />Three factors must be present to tip a social epidemic. Gladwell calls them the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context. They’re worth reviewing in some detail.<br /><br />A gonorrhea epidemic in Colorado Springs affecting thousands of people stemmed from just 168 individuals living in four neighborhoods and frequenting the same six bars. Each of these exceptionally active individuals transmitted the disease to dozens or even hundreds of others. Successful social movements, Gladwell says, are like epidemics. A handful of people makes them happen: people who are unusually energetic, connected, knowledgeable, persuasive, or otherwise influential among their peers. Gladwell finds three types of such extraordinary people: Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen.<br /><br />A famous Connector from history was Paul Revere, a member of every militia committee who knew all the important people in the American independence movement up and down the New England coast. When he rode north of Boston at night to warn that “the British are coming,” people immediately paid attention and moved to action, because they knew who he was and he had credibility. His countryman William Dawes, by contrast, carried the same message to other towns, and nobody paid attention, because he was an unknown and he didn’t know which doors to knock on. Modern studies of social networks show a great asymmetry. There are only six “degrees of separation” between everyone and everyone else because a rather small number of people each having vast numbers of connections act as junction boxes. Connectors are “people with a special gift for bringing the world together.” They aren’t intimately familiar with all of them, that wouldn’t be possible. Instead, they cultivate what sociologists call the “weak tie” – friendly acquaintanceship. Many Connectors move between a range of different subcultures and niches, cultivating connections in all of them. They tend to be gregarious, outgoing, helpful, and nonjudgmental. They are the people to know when you need a job, because they’ll know somebody who knows somebody. They’re also the people who need to adopt an idea or a product before it can become an epidemic.<br /><br />Great networkers, however, aren’t sufficient. Connectors take their cues from information specialists, whom Gladwell dubs Mavens. Marketplace mavens are people who read all the product reviews, know exactly who is selling what for how much, and debunk all kinds of promotional hype. When you’re buying a car or a computer, you naturally turn for advice to a friend or an uncle who is a car nut or a computer maniac, and this person will tell you where to shop and what to look for and how much to pay, and may offer to go with you and help you out. They not only read Consumer Reports, they write letters to it. There are mavens not only in the marketplace, but in every subculture. They make or break the reputation of any new thing that comes along, because they study everything in their area of specialization deeply, share what they know, and win respect for their expertise.<br /><br />Nothing big would happen, however, without Gladwell’s third type, the Salesman. Connectors connect, Mavens inform, but Salesmen twist arms and motivate people to action. Gladwell profiles several super salesmen. What makes them successful persuaders? Gladwell’s answer is fascinating. Subtle cues in body language, such as facial expressions and head movements, are much more powerful than the spoken message. Microanalysis of videotapes shows that when two people talk, they engage in an elaborate rhythmic dance punctuated by muscle movements (shoulder, cheek, hand, eyebrow, etc.) that quickly synchronize with each other and with the flow of the words. In this synchronicity, one person tends to become the leader or transmitter who initiates muscle movements signaling emotional states that the other person mimics, producing the same emotional state within them. Emotions travel from inside to outside in the sender and then from outside to inside in the receiver. Great salesmen have the ability to enter into this unspoken dance quickly and to establish themselves as the emotional leader or sender in short order. In a fascinating experiment, researchers found that powerful emotional senders could transmit their emotional state and induce the same feeling in more receptive individuals in a matter of two minutes face to face, without a single word being spoken. People who are emotionally contagious in this way are exceptional individuals. When an idea or a product enrolls these essential few -- Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen -- it is well on its way to tipping into an epidemic.<br /><br />But another factor is still lacking, that Gladwell calls “stickiness.” Stickiness is a specific quality of the message that makes it memorable and spurs people into action. Big budget advertisers buy memory space with incessant repetition – it takes at least six repetitions for people to remember a brand name. Stickiness is a low-budget equalizer that grabs people’s imagination on the first or second exposure. A seemingly small or trivial property of the message – the gold box on a record club coupon, a campus map on an informational pamphlet, the mixing of puppets and real people in Sesame Street, the literal narrative format of Blues Clues – resonates with the audience and grabs and holds their attention. The stickiness factor is a simple way of packaging a message that makes it irresistible in the right circumstances.<br /><br />Circumstances and their decisive influence in creating trends form a major portion of Gladwell’s exposition. He begins with the infamous case of Bernhard Goetz, a white New York stockbroker who shot four young black men on a New York subway in 1984 and was later acquitted on charges of assault and attempted murder. Gladwell points out that New York City was at that time in one of the worst crime waves of its history and that the subway system in particular had degenerated into a hellhole of graffiti, garbage, and lawlessness. Yet a decade later, the crime wave broke, felonies declined steeply, and New York became a much safer city. Why? Gladwell argues that the explanation lies in criminologists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling’s Broken Window theory. Broken Window theory holds that a seemingly trivial environmental cue, such as a broken window, sends a message that no one is taking care of property, and this is an invitation to all kinds of more serious crimes. Operating on the Broken Window theory, New York transit authorities eliminated graffiti from the trains – how it was done makes a fascinating side story – and then stopped fare-beaters, people whose flagrant jumping and jamming of the turnstiles, although financially trivial for each violation, extended a larger and much more costly invitation to all kinds of lawlessness in the system. Gladwell’s point is that much of behavior is situational. The famous Zimbardo experiments at Stanford, where ordinary ‘normal’ individuals turned into brutal prison guards when placed into a simulated prison setting, showed that the situational context can overwhelm inherent character traits. In another set of experiments, researchers demonstrated that such supposedly inherent character traits as honesty are in reality quite situational – most people will cheat in certain situations, but not in others. There is a name for the common fallacy that attributes behavior to character instead of to context: the Fundamental Attribution Error. People shown two basketball scenes, one in a well-lighted gym and the other in a dark gym where the basket is barely visible, invariably conclude that the brightly lit players are more talented. Thirty-eight people watched Kitty Genovese being raped and killed and no one called for help – precisely because each of them assumed one of the others had already done so. Seminarians on their way to present a brief sermon on the parable of the Good Samaritan stopped to help an injured man on the street when told they had a few minutes to spare; if told they were in a rush, they literally stepped over the victim on their way to the pulpit. Their personality profile had no bearing on their behavior. The notion that innate character, disposition, personality, genes, and similar traits determine behavior fails the evidence test. Trying to change people’s “character” is usually a wild goose chase. Making small, seemingly trivial changes in the environment, such as fixing broken windows, is a much more powerful method of starting or stopping a social epidemic, Gladwell argues.<br /><br />Another dimension of context, Gladwell reasons, is the critical role that groups play in social epidemics. He credits the success of Methodism as a religion to John Wesley’s insight that fundamental change in people’s beliefs and behaviors could not be sustained without creating a community that would practice, express, and nurture these beliefs. The runaway success of Rebecca West’s Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood was in large part a function of the book study groups that sprang up around the work, and of West’s assiduous cultivation of these circles. Gladwell sheds fascinating light on the quantitative aspects of group dynamics. Referring to a function of the brain called “channel capacity,” he argues that groups in which we have deep emotional interactions begin to max out and to cause overload somewhere between 10 and 15 participants. Groups where we have more casual connections, such as schools, workplaces, and other institutions, max out at about 150 people. Working groups larger than this size tend to become dysfunctional and toxic, and cell division is the only cure. The implication for larger movements is that “in order to create one contagious movement, you often have to create many small movements first.” (192)<br /><br />There is much more of interest in the book. Gladwell’s case studies include some fascinating insights into the nature of addiction. He says – rightly, in my opinion -- that the progression into addiction is not a linear scale, where you become a little bit addicted with each dose of the drug. Instead, “there is an addiction Tipping Point, a threshold – that if you smoke below a certain number of cigarettes you aren’t addicted at all, but once you go above that magic number, you suddenly are.” (249) I am skipping over a great deal of additional interesting content here to get to Gladwell’s general conclusions.<br /><br />If you are interested in starting a word-of-mouth epidemic, Gladwell says, your resources ought to be solely concentrated on the Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen. Beyond that, you need to package your message in ways that are rarely obvious, but that somehow touch a nerve in the messy, chaotic tangle of people’s emotions. To find that nerve, you need to test your intuitions empirically and be ruthless about revising and revising again until you find the sticky point. To engage in this kind of quest, which can take enormous effort and energy, requires “a bedrock belief that change is possible, that people can radically transform their behavior or beliefs in the face of the right kind of impetus.” (258) The fact that Tipping Points do occur is “a reaffirmation of the potential for change and the power of intelligent action. Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push – in just the right place – it can be tipped.” (259)<br /><br />Naturally, I found this message reinforcing and even inspiring, as have hordes of other readers. The addiction landscape does indeed seem like an immovable, implacable hellhole sometimes, not unlike the old New York subway catacombs. As the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation rightly concluded a few years ago, substance abuse is the country’s number one public health problem today. There cannot be the smallest doubt that major change is required. Yet the quest for “just the right place” to give this world the “slightest push” that will tip it has so far proved elusive. Despite brilliant marketing and promotion -- brilliant precisely because packaged as non-marketing and non-promotion -- the 12-step movement has made no discernible dent in the monster’s armor. Most people who do get sober don’t use it. Drunks and other addicts, including veterans of 12-step involvement, continue to die prematurely by the hundreds of thousands each year. The social cost of addiction continues to mount into the uncountable hundreds of billions of dollars. Public policy, by and large, is becoming more expensive, more punitive, and less effective over time. If ever a Tipping Point were needed, it is here.<br /><br />If we follow Gladwell’s analysis, we will look at addiction as an epidemic, much like the HIV plague, and we will try to find the Connectors, the Mavens, and the Salesmen who drive it. Are there people who have a wide network of connections and who promote heavy drinking and drug use? Of course there are. Is anything being done to identify these people, to reach them, and to try to change their message or shut them down? Are there Mavens of drinking and drug use? Yes, there are such people. Is anything being done to identify them, to study their appeal, and to undermine their message? Are there Salesmen of addiction? We know there are, and many of them are hired by the beverage companies to work their emotional charisma on television. Together, the connectors, mavens, and salesmen of alcoholism and addiction are a social scourge comparable to the promiscuous carriers of STDs who infect hundreds of others and cause isolated small problems to escalate into major epidemics. Where is the social service agency, project, or governmental unit that identifies these contagious carriers of addiction and launches effective countermeasures against them?<br /><br />Addiction is “sticky” by definition, as Gladwell observes in his interesting chapter on combating teen smoking. All the more reason why addiction recovery messages need to develop their own powerful stickiness, to resonate somehow with the addicted person’s own inner strivings to get free of the drug – with their “S.” The traditional message of powerlessness and God resonates only with a small percentage; it drives countless thousands of others away. Many proponents of the 12-step approach take a perverse pride in the difficulty of their road, scorning “softer, easier ways,” as if recovery were like the old Inca capital of Macchu Picchu, reachable only via a steep and treacherous path. We need to redefine the City of Recovery as more similar to a metropolis like Rome – a place reachable by many roads. That is not optimistic propaganda; it is fact.<br /><br />Much of addiction treatment today is based on the Fundamental Attribution Error. Persons who get addicted are defined as having an addictive personality, and are told that their character defects lie at the root of their addiction. That seems to be intuitively correct. But decades of psychometric research have blown the “addictive personality” theory out of the water, and we now know that most of what we label character traits, such as the honesty/dishonesty axis, is predominantly situational. Addicts tend to show negative character traits because addiction tends to lead us into negative situations. The quest to cure addiction by reforming character is tilting at windmills.<br /><br />Groups, finally, are critical to starting or stopping epidemics, if Gladwell is correct. The existence of groups that perpetuate the epidemic of addiction is obvious. Most bars, cocktail lounges, and dispensaries of illegal addictive substances contain the nodes of such groups – informal social networks that push the substance, glorify its consumption, lie about or minimize the risk of addiction, and rationalize away the harmful consequences. On the legal side, powerful economic interests protect these networks and provide public validation for them. On the underground side, no less powerful economic interests do essentially the same. Hundreds of thousands of new recruits enter into these networks each year and some of them, sooner or later, join the ten per cent of drinkers who consume 90 per cent of the booze – the alcoholic heart of the beverage economy. Although the basic sickness of beverage economics is well known and there are good exposures of the industry, as far as I know very little has been done to identify the informal social networks that perpetuate addiction, and to intervene in their process. In the early 1900s, a woman driven to desperation by the harm of alcoholism seized a hatchet and began smashing bar rooms. Surely there must be methods more sophisticated than Carrie Nation’s blunt surgery for disrupting the social networks that spread addiction. One of the great merits of Malcolm Caldwell’s Tipping Point is to raise this kind of question.<br /><br /><em>A Postscript for LifeRing Convenors:</em><br /><br />If you are concerned as I am with making LifeRing grow into a beneficial social epidemic, you will read Gladwell’s book as a how-to manual. For the past five years or more I have been urging LifeRing participants to connect with treatment professionals to the extent possible, because each treatment professional is a gatekeeper who may steer hundreds of recovering people into support groups every year. Thanks to Gladwell’s book, we now have a new term for such professionals; they are a kind of Connector. They have contact – weak contact, but contact – with much larger numbers of recovering people than any ordinary person has, and enlisting their support is absolutely crucial to the growth of our network. Another aspect of this point is that LifeRing convenors are themselves Connectors. The basic role of the convenor, to bring people together in recovery, is core Connector work. Effective convenors act as Connectors far beyond the limited circle of the meeting. They connect different meetings together. They connect the meetings with treatment professionals and with other healing institutions. They connect with many other forces in the larger community and mobilize those connections to grow the organization. Such convenors make a big difference in a community. A good example is Jason Kelly in Guelph. I was impressed during my recent visit by the great number of people in diverse circumstances in the town who knew Jason and whose support he had enlisted for the 2005 LifeRing Congress. With even just one such Connector/convenor in a community, LifeRing quickly becomes a real presence. In towns where our convenors are not also Connectors beyond the circle of the meeting, our network languishes.<br /><br />Mavens exist in the recovery world, as everywhere else. One of Gladwell’s omissions is the fact that Mavens frequently disagree with one another, and one Maven may dispute another’s expertise. Recovery has long been a field where cacophony reigns among Mavens. It is hopeless to try to win a Maven consensus in this field. The best we can hope for at the outset is recognition and validation from at least a few. As the new kid on the block and the underdog, we have to present real achievements to win Maven endorsements. In this regard, we have the material in the Presenting LifeRing Secular Recovery booklet, we have the 300-p. Recovery By Choice workbook, and we have the 250-p. convenor’s manual, How Was Your Week. Much of this is material is Maven food. These books contain enough hard substance to pass the scrutiny of open-minded Mavens and elicit their commendation. Author William L. White, for example, is a recovery Maven par excellence. His signed endorsement for the back cover of How Was Your Week, and his co-authorship of a forthcoming journal article with an identified LifeRing spokesperson, are important Maven nods. Alan Ogborne and Ronald Warner, who spoke at our Guelph Congress, are Mavens in Canada. There are many more Mavens to reach, but we are well on our way in this area.<br /><br />The growing priority at this point is to develop more and better Salesmen. I have seen one or two charismatic persuaders emerge in the past, but they had trouble selling themselves on sobriety. In our field, perhaps more than in others, you have to walk the walk in order to sell the talk. We have some relatively new convenors now coming to the fore who display the talents that Gladwell finds in great Salesmen. In order to attract such people, you have to have a product that inspires deep confidence. I’m beginning to sense that the LifeRing package is eliciting that kind of emotional investment from persuasive people. If so, we will have strength in all parts of Gladwell’s trilogy of the Influential Few. It would not hurt if LifeRing convenors were to reflect on how each of us can do a better job transmitting our positive feelings about LifeRing recovery whenever we do what Gladwell calls the dance of conversation with a newcomer. A much bigger problem for us is developing what Gladwell calls “stickiness.” He uses the word to mean retention in memory, which leads to name recognition, which translates as acceptance, and motivates action. This is related to but different from “stickiness” as used by web designers, namely the propensity of visitors to view many pages and to make many return visits to a site; and it is different also from “stickiness” in meeting attendance. Gladwell’s mnemonic stickiness may be a matter of making trivial changes in packaging and presentation, or it can involve the narrative sequence, content, and format of the message. The developers of Sesame Street, Gladwell relates, had an excellent gauge for measuring the stickiness of episodes before they aired. They would sit kids in front of a screen showing the episode, with another screen next to it that displayed rapidly changing randomly sequenced images of animals, landscapes, geometric figures, whatever. They called this device the Distractor. They tracked the kids’ eye movements between the episode and the Distractor. If the episode wooed the kids’ attention away from the Distractor less than 80 per cent of the time, it went back to the drawing board. We could use a similar device to refine our message. One reason why I encourage as many convenors as possible to stand up in front of groups and speak about LifeRing is that this multiplicity of voices acts as a sort of random mutation generator. Most of the small variations that different presenters introduce into our basic message have no deeper significance, but one of these days someone is going to hit on a phrase or an image that taps straight into the collective subconscious of a recovery-hungry culture and makes bells ring. The A and S circle diagrams that I like to use in my talks come close to achieving this kind of memory registration. I have seen audience members reproduce them almost perfectly a week afterward. I would also like to run some side-by-side comparisons of our stickiness when we use the name LifeRing Secular Recovery v. the name LifeRing Recovery in our print materials. Achieving stickiness, Gladwell advises, is an empirical quest – you have to try it out and see.<br /><br />When it comes to changing the larger external conditions that affect change, there is not a great deal that we can do at this time. However, there may be some important visual cues in our immediate environment that are within our power to influence. On the walls of some meeting rooms in treatment centers, there are large posters containing the program or organizational principles of a recovery group other than our own. Never mind that this implied merger of the treatment center and the recovery group violates that group’s own professed principle of separateness from institutions. For us, the presence of these posters in the meeting room is a “broken window” that signals our second-class status. This signal invites unequal treatment for us in referrals, and inspires covert or overt bashing of the LifeRing approach in the facility where it is tolerated. Where these posters are fixed to the meeting room wall, we need to ask respectfully to have them removed. Where they are mounted on roll-up shades, we need to roll them up while we occupy the room, and if the shade mechanism is rusty or broken, the facility needs to replace it. Moreover, we need to develop our own poster-size displays and ask for wall space on a parity basis. In this regard, it may also be well for convenors to remember the importance of LifeRing door signs and directional signs. When these are missing, the Force is disturbed: a hesitant newcomer may not reach us, and six months later there is no capable new convenor to carry on the meeting. Small environmental cues, as Gladwell reminds us, can tip major long-term consequences.<br /><br />In many ways, The Tipping Point is a goldmine for LifeRing convenors. Its basic thesis is one in which we, as a fledgling social movement, are deeply interested. Although Gladwell’s exposition may overlook some important constriction points in the transmission of ideas – I am thinking of factors such as the concentration of the press and electronic media, censorship, the chilling impact of terror and other violence, and the role of the institutionalized transmission of ideas in schools – the work is a fresh and stimulating read that encourages all of us little people to follow our big dreams.<br /><br />--5/15/05</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-37366726957589468952007-04-11T12:15:00.000-07:002011-02-13T11:24:13.703-08:00Drunkard's Refuge: The Lessons of the New York State Inebriate Asylum<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0U7VeUZJWwBH7ioaNF5WcI8YptuAeDLsi7t6B4Yky2o0tZHgRVNTizwbR_2-xpP6Sx4PIpp9fpIl3q1n_YjewzqGzFgflilssdUIaNC3ohqqcEmcVRpWsjZhnKMFvwXmX-3dfbmXe1EM/s1600/drunkards_refuge2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5573256858745360418" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 74px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 111px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0U7VeUZJWwBH7ioaNF5WcI8YptuAeDLsi7t6B4Yky2o0tZHgRVNTizwbR_2-xpP6Sx4PIpp9fpIl3q1n_YjewzqGzFgflilssdUIaNC3ohqqcEmcVRpWsjZhnKMFvwXmX-3dfbmXe1EM/s200/drunkards_refuge2.jpg" border="0" /></a> <div><br />By John W. Crowley and William L. White;<br />ISBN 1558494308<br /><br />Reviewed by Marty N.<br /><br /><br />The state of Maine was in the 1820s the most besotted territory of America. Its residents, by one estimate, spent on drink in every generation a sum equivalent in value to all the property in the state. Lawlessness, chaos, misery and demoralization stamped every town and village. Out of this stinking swamp arose a man possessed from his early adulthood with a healing vision: to build a refuge where the inebriates of the whole nation would be treated on medical principles. Joseph Edward Turner, M.D., brought to this vision a zeal commensurate to the challenge. To raise funds, he had more than 120,000 doors shut in his face, was turned down by more than 1,100 wealthy men, and was bitten six times by their dogs. But in June, 1864, with a grant from the New York State legislature, financed by a portion of the excise tax on liquor, the nation's first "Inebriate Asylum" opened its doors at Binghamton, New York. Drunkard's Refuge is the story of this pioneering institution, based on recently unearthed documents.<br /><br />Those who seek here for a story of medical or moral uplift on an institutional scale will come away disappointed. Turner, his board, his staff, his patients, and the nearby town were in almost constant friction before the doors opened. Two arson fires, cynical maneuvering, power struggles, schisms, corruption, and numerous instances of abuse marked this institution's relatively brief life before it closed its doors in 1879. Few are the testimonials of men who achieved lasting remission of their addiction within its walls.<br /><br />Much of the book attempts to draw the lessons of the asylum's demise for today's treatment institutions and for the larger recovery culture within which they operate. The authors are eminently qualified for such a task. John W. Crowley is the author of The White Logic: Alcoholism and Gender in American Modernist Fiction and William White wrote Slaying the Dragon: The History of Addiction Treatment and Recovery in America. Many themes of the latter book are recapitulated and interwoven with the story of Turner's asylum.<br /><br />It would be interesting one day to compare and contrast this high-profile institutional Titanic with the much longer and more successful story of the Washingtonian Home, which opened its doors in Boston seven years before the Inebriate's Asylum and survived in various forms until modern times. For those who seek to understand treatment institutions and their conceptual underpinnings, Drunkard's Refuge is an illuminating microcosm, a universe seen in a grain of sand. It's also a good read, without a dull chapter. Recommended.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-54776243524029225592007-04-10T14:07:00.000-07:002011-02-13T11:27:08.929-08:00You Can Free Yourself From Alcohol and Drugs: Work a Program That Keeps You in Charge<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyOUIm4JIfc8bY8WLRfvF4zdDenTOKPQBSyTZonek6adR5o2N8eregsmgxFB4V9tR7yPCuDQOdyDjwgRfdFN6_ouCNfjZntTRD3h4ltfY3E-FiGgMqmnTHKZCO9K7Ns4V1odQRORWIZPg/s1600/freeyour.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5573257849937955378" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 76px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 115px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyOUIm4JIfc8bY8WLRfvF4zdDenTOKPQBSyTZonek6adR5o2N8eregsmgxFB4V9tR7yPCuDQOdyDjwgRfdFN6_ouCNfjZntTRD3h4ltfY3E-FiGgMqmnTHKZCO9K7Ns4V1odQRORWIZPg/s200/freeyour.gif" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br />By Doug Althauser, M.Ed., CSAC, MAC.<br />ISBN 1-57224-118-7<br /><br />Reviewed by Marty N.<br /><br /><br />Kaiser Permanente is the largest Health Maintenance Organization in the United States, and practically all of its centers include Chemical Dependency Recovery Programs (CDRP). When the Program Coordinator of one of these CDRPs writes a book about recovery, it pays to sit up and listen. Doug Althauser is Program Coordinator of the CDRP at Kaiser in Honolulu. His book, based on nearly ten years of clinical experience, is a fascinating effort to move beyond the old spiritual paradigm of the 12 Steps into a newer, more secular and more self-empowering recovery model. The book is of special interest to LifeRing members because many of its themes resonate with our own concerns.<br />In the Introduction to this book, Althauser makes the following historical observation:<br />In the 1970s, the culture of North America changed. People became less likely to discuss God or spirituality in informal group settings like AA or NA meetings. Furthermore, people began to express pride over their individual characteristics, like their culture, their gender, race, ethnicity, or personal philosophy.<br />This independence made it tough for a lot of addicts and alcoholics to accept the spiritual philosophy of Twelve-Step programs. Not surprisingly, chemically dependent people began to ask for alternatives to the Twelve Steps. As a result, three different groups began on a national level helping people to recover: Women for Sobriety, Secular Organizations for Sobriety (or Save Our Selves), and Rational Recovery. These groups provided an alternative to Twelve-Step programs. More importantly, these alternative programs worked.<br />(p. 2). Althauser’s clinical practice has led him to construct a recovery program that is better adapted to this newer, less traditionally spiritual, more diverse, and more proudly independent recovering population, and that has a higher appreciation of the alternative support groups.<br />What all different kinds of recovery approaches have in common, he says, is three basic things: (1) abstinence as a lifelong goal; (2) changes in lifestyle to minimize risks of relapse; and (3) use of a support group of some kind to maintain sobriety over time. When he says "of some kind," Althauser really means it. He recognizes that the 12-Step groups are much more widely available than the alternatives, but he intends his program to be compatible with any kind of group that helps a person stay abstinent, regardless of its ideology. He regards all such groups as more or less equally valid and helpful, and specifically includes LifeRing’s predecessor (SOS).<br />When Althauser begins to detail his program, it may seem at first sight that this is another in the long series of attempts to make the 12-Step program palatable by selectively ignoring and sugar-coating what it actually says. Thus, Althauser’s program consists of "Ten Goals" that must be done in order, like steps. The first goal is to admit that one is chemically dependent, somewhat like the First Step; and each of the subsequent goals is similarly developed via a brief interpretation of the corresponding points in the 12-Step program. On the surface this looks at first like another 12-Step clone.<br />But this appearance deceives. Althauser’s project is to extract from the Steps what he sees as "the therapeutic, that is, the non-spiritual recovery concepts" and to leave the rest behind. His effort, in his words, is to use from the 12 Steps only "the parts that work for everyone." He advises at the outset that his program is not a 12-Step program, that it has nothing to do with any 12-Step groups, and that 12-Step groups neither asked for the book to be written nor reviewed or approved it in any way.<br />Central to the Steps is "God" and a "Power greater than ourselves." Althauser handles this issue by translating all such references into the concept of "sources of support." These sources, he says, need not be "powers greater than oneself" but merely people one can trust to help one stay abstinent. He has no problem with clients who include God in their list of sources of support, but he advises that only people who can give you direct feedback can really be effective for you. So, for example, the list "God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Virgin Mary, Saint Mary Magdalena, my rosary, my priest, the Pope, the Bible and my church" contains only one possibly effective source of support, the priest, and he is probably too unavailable to give much feedback. The patient who made this particular list, Althauser recounts, soon relapsed.<br />Althauser’s approach throughout is informed with clinical experience and inspired by common sense. There is a good array of checklists to help a patient decide whether a self-diagnosis of chemical dependency is warranted. There is an excellent chapter on why abstinence is the appropriate lifetime goal. There is a wealth of good advice about high-risk and lower-risk lifestyle choices. Althauser wisely advises leaving deep psychological self-examination aside during early sobriety and focusing instead on examining one’s everyday behavior patterns. He gives numerous anecdotes to illustrate healthy and unhealthy lifestyle decisions among his patients. This book is a good compendium of sound information and advice for living sober.<br />At the center of Althauser’s program (around goal six) is "drafting your own sobriety plan." The plan is based on two lists: a list of one’s high-risk lifestyle elements and a list of the elements in one’s current life that help one maintain abstinence. The plan consists of detailed, specific actions that move away from the relapse-prone toward the more securely abstinent behaviors. Relapse or near-relapse is simply a sign that the program needs to be revised. Althauser emphasizes that each person’s plan must be based on that person’s actual individual life situation, and cannot be simply copied from a formula in a book. Althauser expressly recognizes that this individualized approach will result in a group whose members will have different sobriety plans. This diversity – perceived as threatening in traditional programs, where therapeutic uniformity is the goal -- is actually a sign that the program is working, and is a source of its strength.<br />This book may be particularly useful to that large number of early recovering people who are treading in 12-step waters without any real sense of direction. The book extends a branch to them by which they can pull themselves up to some solid therapeutic ground. The book belongs in every LifeRing member’s recovery library. It would make a good gift for a person newly embarking on the recovery path or a person still drinking but actively contemplating a change.<br />There are some weaknesses. Althauser contends at several points that his program captures the "real meaning" of the Steps by interpreting the words as they were understood when written in 1935. This effort is based on nothing more than a 1934 edition of the New Century Dictionary, and it isn't particularly persuasive. Also, to someone like myself who has had the privilege of doing all my recovery in LifeRing (formerly SOS), Althauser’s continuous effort to explain his program in terms of the 12-Step framework appears unnecessary and counterproductive, sometimes annoyingly so. I find myself wishing sometimes he would just "kick out the jams" and say what he means to say without trying to harmonize it first with the 12-Step viewpoint. But I can very well understand why someone in charge of a major treatment program in this day and age would still find it necessary to jump through that series of hoops.<br />In my view this book is an important one for LifeRing members. To my eyes there are two main lessons here. One is that the secular, do-it-yourself-with-group-support approach that LifeRing espouses is finding more and more echoes within the walls of the professional treatment community. What was once a closed shop where only 12-step groups need apply for recognition is opening up, little by little, to acknowledge the validity of alternative approaches, including LifeRing.<br />Althauser’s program, at its core, is built around the same idea as the LifeRing view, namely that if given the proper support and tools, each motivated recovering person can and will construct the sobriety program that works for that individual. It is gratifying to find prominent voices in the treatment profession who resonate with this important therapeutic idea, central to the LifeRing approach.<br />The main portion of the book is addressed to persons in recovery. The presentation is clear, respectful of the recovering reader’s intelligence, and filled with illustrative anecdotes. The author adds a postscript (Chapter 12) addressed to other treatment professionals. Here, Althauser lets his hair down and explains the "ten goals" in terms that have nothing to do with the 12 Steps but speak the language of cognitive behavioral psychology. There is much practical and strategic material here for staff meeting discussions; really, this last chapter contains the compressed outline of another whole book. I hope Althauser writes that sequel soon.<br />This review appears under the tittle "<a name="_Toc490208691">A Clinical Protocol Based on the Sober Self-Empowerment Concept</a>" in Presenting LifeRing Secular Recovery: A Selection of Readings for Treatment Professionals," LifeRing Press 2000. Go <a href="http://www.lifering.com/">http://www.lifering.com/</a>.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-31052661155651175962007-04-10T13:59:00.000-07:002011-02-13T11:34:50.438-08:00Whiskey's Children<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGkf3UrDN_6lq4gXOlZuhAGkTCZCjbJ9cmUH5mvQ5-T_tXI5KWTOd-0waO3N6GB_YVOyLjXDouXmgtJ4xRroOY_Adc6rP1-dXtA8ZgeDFxb4nXCYeB113YLbbhesO2llWRbT0y-mUGv-Q/s1600/whiskey.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5573259844147507890" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 73px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 115px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGkf3UrDN_6lq4gXOlZuhAGkTCZCjbJ9cmUH5mvQ5-T_tXI5KWTOd-0waO3N6GB_YVOyLjXDouXmgtJ4xRroOY_Adc6rP1-dXtA8ZgeDFxb4nXCYeB113YLbbhesO2llWRbT0y-mUGv-Q/s200/whiskey.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br />By Jack Erdmann and Larry Kearney<br />ISBN 1-57566 305 8<br /><br />Reviewed by Charlene C.<br /><br /><br />This is a book that hit me so hard, I read it in two sittings. Jack Erdmann, former salesman, presently an author and lecturer in San Francisco, captures the pure hell that is alcoholism with wit, grace and brutal honesty. Working with Larry Kearney, a poet and novelist, he relates the history of the Erdmann family, his great grandfather Louis, dead of DT's at 56, his grandfather, Arthur, who made his wine and beer in the basement, and his great uncle, Emil, who sold his father's Colt pistols for a pint of rye.<br />Erdmann does not cast the blame for his affliction on his ancestors. Rather, "I don't want anyone to think that this the story of a child abused by a family - it isn't - it is the story of a family abused by alcohol." And the alcohol takes him to dark places, to drunk tanks, crisis centers where the orderlies look like bouncers, to empty train stations where the sun is always going down.<br />We get a sense of a jazzman's life in the early Twenties: "bathtub gin, speakeasies and open touring cars at night with empties clanking on the floor." His father ran with the likes of Pee Wee Russell, Beiderbecke and Teagarden. Men who played and drank hard. We are shown the terrible paradoxes of his father, on one hand he is capable of beating his son, on the other he patiently teaches his son the words to "My Wild Irish Rose". His mother, too, a complex woman, soft and frivolous on the outside but with a tough core, which stands firm in the midst of the chaos. Even in genteel middle-class neighbourhoods, brutality, fueled by alcohol, blithely takes place behind lace curtains.<br />The story moves along like a movie, sometimes in soft focus, sometimes raw and jittery. The lines of reality are blurred, run into each other, get smudged by hallucinations, paranoia and the all encompassing need for that next drink. The obsession simply takes over an alcoholic's life. Erdmann says: "..for anyone born with the disposition, the first drink will open him up like a flower, physically and emotionally, and he'll keep coming back for more. The fact is alcohol is a chemical and its effects are cold, mechanical, and predictable. When you begin drinking alcoholically, you get on a train. You neither grow nor learn emotionally, you just ride. The last station is hell. And when you get there, you remember you left behind tickets for your children."<br />One excerpt that sums up the terrible damage alcoholism does to families:.."it's always the same--the same goddamn pain romanticized and trivialized, the dully accepted. It wires families together for generations, the children learning to keep their shoulders tense against the random shocks. They think it must be "their" fault. And then "they" raise children who have tense shoulders and chests full of jangling fear and grief. None of it's necessary. It's time to stop."<br />In "Whiskey's Children", it's all there: self-loathing, blind repetition throughout the generations, false starts, rationalizations and utter exhaustion. The constant sense of a life put on hold, in limbo, in between train stations. The healing begins when another drunk puts out an albeit shaky hand to one who still suffers .."those who have nothing share the only substance they can find." Call it empathy, call it the kindness of strangers or simply call it as Erdmann does, "visible grace." This is a convincing story of rehabilitation, the reconciliation of a scarred and broken family, an inspiring chronicle of one man's return from the hell that is alcoholism.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-79448324151313134152007-04-10T13:55:00.000-07:002011-02-13T11:45:40.843-08:00Understanding the Alcoholic's Mind: The Nature of Craving and How to Control It<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0JnT8G5KwDZKFSIUEkjKm5gkB9Mwrstcgwkqxjct_yhLdiEX5VmUDNMroYLniQIHwyVj_RqsYRC_L4BG-SB9QNzxg_Bga9zcNzLaKtqnLoutkf1FaJ0bHyJBUO3IhfJ2wB9zBkhs-T1c/s1600/understanding.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5573261778877741938" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 85px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 131px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0JnT8G5KwDZKFSIUEkjKm5gkB9Mwrstcgwkqxjct_yhLdiEX5VmUDNMroYLniQIHwyVj_RqsYRC_L4BG-SB9QNzxg_Bga9zcNzLaKtqnLoutkf1FaJ0bHyJBUO3IhfJ2wB9zBkhs-T1c/s200/understanding.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br />By Arnold M. Ludwig, M.D.<br />ISBN 0195059182<br /><br />Reviewed by Diane J.<br /><br /></div><div></div><div> </div><div> </div><div>I have a confession to make (no, no, not THAT one)--I bought this book strictly because of the subtitle. And it was definitely a good impulse: Understanding the Alcoholic's Mind is a fascinating and elegant little book on craving and relapse, the cognitive distortions that accompany both, and methods used by successfully sober alcoholics to "avoid or resist temptation." The strength of this book is in its vivid presentation of thinking patterns that support drinking and of thought techniques that can be used against these. </div><div><br />Ludwig, a member of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Kentucky and a prolific researcher and author, begins his book with the flat acknowledgement: "There is no general agreement about the nature, cause, or treatment of alcoholism"--a truism he drives home with a brief discussion of the "paradoxes and contradictions" in current attitudes. Searching for "a common area of overlap" that will allow a clear description of "what individuals need to do to insure sobriety", Ludwig proposes that the answer is "in the mind," and sets out to describe the ways in which alcoholics can change "their thoughts, attitudes, and motivations." </div><div><br />As you may be aware, the alcoholic's mind is an interesting but not exactly low-maintenance piece of work, and Ludwig does it some justice in the chapters that follow. In "The Lure of the Sirens", he traces the ways in which some alcoholics "covertly maneuver to arrange a slip", complete with some disconcertingly plausible examples, and links this to a persistent unconscious belief that one can SOMEDAY, SOMEHOW learn to drink safely again, that "this time will be different." (In a lengthy footnote essay, Ludwig ties this insight into an interesting critique of Marlatt and Gordon's work on the 'abstinence violation effect'.) </div><div><br />The following chapter details nine "drinking scripts" Ludwig identified in the course of his research, patterns of thoughts and attitudes that tend to accompany and intensify craving. Ludwig notes that this kind of thinking is hardly unique to alcoholics, but that it presents special dangers for them given the possible severe consequences of acting on it. He considers the scripts "private self-statements, a type of nonvocal inner speech" that mediates between the intention to drink and the actual act of drinking. </div><div><br />The scripts, which are vividly described and quite recognizable, include "the escape script" (all I want is a little peace....); "the relaxation script"; "the romance script"; the "to-hell-with-it script" (a personal favorite); "the self-control script" (more popularly known as the "I'll just have one--maybe two" script); and, for good measure, the "NO control script": "Just as believing in one's ability to handle alcohol intake is usually a setup for relapse, the attitude of not being able to control cravings virtually insures it." </div><div><br />Having surveyed the distorted thinking that accompanies craving, Ludwig turns his attention to "the mystery of craving" itself, in a chapter that combines anecdotes about craving with an excellent and balanced survey of cognitive-behavioral studies of craving, including research into environmental cues, conditioned responses to emotional states, and the highly individual nature of each alcoholic's personal "Pavlov's bells". (It should be noted that Ludwig makes little attempt to deal with the biology of craving, except to note that it increases markedly if the craver actually drinks.) His ultimate point is that craving is not a mysterious or uncontrollable event, that an individual can learn to predict the likelihood of craving and to resist it, and that it weakens and disappears if the alcoholic abstains for an extended period. </div><div><br />All well and good, but how exactly is this craving, drinking-thinking, planning-for-relapse alcoholic going to be motivated to abstain for long enough to weaken those cravings? And what techniques can she or he possibly bring to bear against powerful cravings triggered by personal cues and the seductive "logic" of the inner drinker whispering from the favorite "drinking script"? I do not think Ludwig has done a particularly persuasive job of answering the first question, but his answers to the second are intriguing and useful. </div><div><br />Ludwig's discussion of the "devloping the proper frame of mind" (adequate motivation) for sobriety is preceded by his survey of the often dismal recovery statistics and review of practically every available treatment modality. The chapter title, "On and Off the Wagon", gives some indication of his tone. While he is generally approving of AA, he does not shrink from the low success rate, notes the existence of other sobriety organizations, and suggests that "the very process of group affiliation" may support abstinence. He then proceeds to discuss "hitting bottom", in what is probably the weakest section of the book, piling up suitably striking anecdotes about various "bottom experiences" and "spiritual conversions to AA" without much analysis. It is clear that he believes that the "spiritual experiences" he portrays have purely psychological explanations, but he escapes by making reference to William James in the text, burying his scientific explanation in a 7-page footnote, and concludes with "If God doesn't intervene, alcoholics will have to find a way of resisting temptations on their own." (Thank you, and about time, too.) </div><div><br />Back on his own cognitive-behavioral ground, Ludwig spends the rest of the book detailing ways of resisting temptations, and they are good ones. He opens by pointing out that some commonly used thought-control techniques are relatively ineffective. Direct counterpoint thinking, "fighting a craving head-on", can fuel it. Resolving NOT to do something can create more difficulties than it solves, as "The picture of NOT doing triggers an image of doing what the individual is resolved not to do...[but] individuals cannot visualize "NOT", so the image of drinking may grow in intensity if you merely oppose it with the idea of "NOT DRINKING." He suggests that you should instead picture a substitute behavior every time the image of the unwanted behavior occurs to you. </div><div><br />Other "mind-control" techniques covered include "distraction", "substitution", "thought-ignoring" and "thought-stopping," "postponement", "playing the thought through" and "immediate negative conditioning". If some of these sound like methods you are already using, they probably are: the advantage of Ludwig's presentation is that he gives a clearly organized description of each one and notes its strengths and weaknesses. He also discusses their similarity to Buddhist meditation techniques for focusing concentration.<br />The nine "drinking scripts" from the earlier chapters are matched by five "sobriety scripts" drawn from Ludwig's interviews with recovering alcoholics. These are "the negative consequences script," the "benefits of sobriety script", the "rationality script", the "avoid-the-first-drink script", and the "prayer script". Again, you will probably recognize some or many of these, but they are vividly detailed, often in the words of the interview subjects, and you will probably find ideas and phrases that will work for you. </div><div><br />The final chapter, "The Sober Mind", is a brief and rather pedestrian discussion of "living sober." The most interesting portion of it is an extended footnote essay in which Ludwig offers his "personal sobriety formula".(Since this is the third time I have had to refer the reader to the footnotes, let me just urge you to READ the footnotes: there are several full-length essays in there on subjects ranging from Marlatt's Relapse Prevention theory and Gregory Bateson's "The Cybernetics of Self" to drug-induced religious experiences. Ludwig could have used a more adventurous editor.) </div><div><br />All in all, I found this to be an interesting and very useful book. It can be quite valuable to have a "classification system" for those drink-fighting thoughts, and at least one of those drinking scripts is guaranteed to hit a nerve if you are familiar with alcoholism.</div><div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-75037914612075145732007-04-10T13:49:00.000-07:002007-04-12T09:28:19.605-07:00Under Your Own Power: A Secular Approach To 12 Step ProgramsBy Ronald L.Rogers and Chandler Scott McMillin<br />ISBN 0-0399-51849-5<br /><br />Reviewed by Don G.<br /><br />This is the second Rogers/McMillin book that I’ve reviewed for BookTalk.<br />In their introductory, entitled "Recovery for The Non-Believer", they discuss their experiences as addictions treatment facilitators, where for every believer they encountered either an atheist or agnostic or non-believer that was recovering "under their own power".<br />Chapter Two discusses the challenge of faith for the non-believer. The authors contention is that even though you don’t need God to recover, you do need faith. They discuss different approaches to faith: The Traditional Model - "God Is Everything" , The Twelve Step Model - "God of our Understanding", and faith in what they call The Chronic Disease Model - "Whatever Works" . However, in the concept of "Whatever Works" they issue a caution to look out for people\institutions that are simply out to deceive you and not help you in your recovery.<br />Chapter Three looks at Ten Milestones on the Road to Recovery. Chapters Four and Five discuss working the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions for the non-believer. Self Help groups discussed in this section include AA, SOS, Rational Recovery and Women For Sobriety.<br />The last two chapters are lengthy, but contain much information on understanding addiction and the paradox of relapse. Some of the subjects covered in these two chapters include an excellent discussion on the stages of addiction, as well as the stages of recovery.<br />As mentioned in their earlier book, <a href="http://www.unhooked.com/booktalk/under_your_own_power.htm#Relapse">Relapse Traps, (also reviewed in BookTalk</a>), much use is made of visualization exercises and of analysis of cognitive distortions that the alcoholic/addict suffer from. Overall, I liked the book. The views given are balanced and not biased towards any approach that I could see.<br />Comment by Diane J.:<br />Don: Thank you for the thoughtful reviews of the Rogers/McMillin books, but I wish you would consider altering the last sentence or two of the new one. "Under Your Own Power" really isn't "balanced and not biased toward any approach." It's a pretty heavy-fisted sales job for AA and the 12 steps (I think the subtitle should have been "How to train yourself to believe in God while pretending that's not what you're doing"--laugh).<br />And the deck-stacking examples and mind-games they play with "faith" vs. "religion" are straight out of the "It's a SPIRITUAL program, dummy" school of AA argument. (They also offer one of the versions of the Milam model of addiction as a possible appropriate target of your faith, without any acknowledgement of the truth that it is one theory among several, all non-proven.)<br />There are good things in it, of course, particularly in the "relapse traps" discussions, as you point out so well, but I think the review would be stronger for acknowledging that this is a book with a very pro-AA bias, IMHO.<br />Thanks again for the reviews. It's clear that you want to be very fair to the books you comment on; I think this time you might have been a little TOO fair (laugh).Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-31212370087215536242007-04-10T13:41:00.000-07:002011-02-13T11:52:20.562-08:00Under The Influence: A Guide to the Myths and Realities of Alcoholism<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJnZQHTp5hUH6WXUAni5V8FHSu23yMVDNZVpTgtR4PKE-lnMlDbkZW4EzP3Dy-o_70hherZjQSZIY556cr_-U1n2T2eHVqKsfcTfpU3gQI2LxP0Qbt1Tv9KTp-FoYUXenX4sI2k3svSPA/s1600/underinf.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5573264241881587298" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 69px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 115px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJnZQHTp5hUH6WXUAni5V8FHSu23yMVDNZVpTgtR4PKE-lnMlDbkZW4EzP3Dy-o_70hherZjQSZIY556cr_-U1n2T2eHVqKsfcTfpU3gQI2LxP0Qbt1Tv9KTp-FoYUXenX4sI2k3svSPA/s200/underinf.gif" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br />By Dr. James R. Milam and Katherine Ketcham<br />ISBN 0553274872<br /><br />Reviewed by Don G.<br /><br /><br />This "classic" book on alcoholism is a fascinating, yet complex read (in the reviewer’s opinion!)<br />Milam describes in his opening chapter the deep schism that exists among scientists, physicians and addiction treatment facilitators over the nature of the disease of alcoholism. Alcoholism among many researchers and legislators in the United States is still regarded as a moral issue rather than a disease -- even though the American Medical Association has recognized it as a disease since 1956! </div><div><br />Chapter Two discusses alcohol itself - as a chemical, as a drug and as a food. The chapter describes how the body processes alcohol, and that it is selectively addictive - affecting only about 10% of the world’s population. Chapter Three discusses the predisposing factors that make an alcoholic what he/she is. Alcoholics and non-alcoholics essentially drink for the same reasons -- but at some point the alcoholic’s drinking changes from that of the non-alcoholic.<br />"The alcoholic appears to be using alcohol to solve his problems. The reality, however is that an abnormal physiological reaction is causing the alcoholic’s increasing emotional and psychological problems. Something has gone wrong inside." (pg. 33-34) </div><div><br />Chapters Four through Six discuss in great detail the progression of alcoholism from adaptation in the early stage (increased tolerance, improved performance) to the middle stage (physical dependence, craving, loss of control) to the final, deteriorative, stage of the disease (physical damage to the body from drinking, including fatty liver, cirrhosis, and pancreatitis - among a few of many ailments). </div><div><br />Chapter Seven shows an alcoholic as he progresses through the stages of the disease as discussed in Chapters Four through Six. Chapters Eight and Nine discuss getting an alcoholic into treatment and also discuss guidelines for looking for a treatment program. While these two chapters are helpful, there is a strong pro-AA stance to them. Milam also describes what he feels a Model Treatment Program should offer the person entering it, and what should be expected of the patient while in treatment. </div><div><br />Chapter Ten is on Drugs and the Alcoholic. Milam discusses how alcohol in combination with other drugs can be deadly -- especially tranquilizers. Alcoholics suffer from cross-tolerance ..." their cells are already chemically altered by long exposure to large doses of alcohol, and these alterations affect the cells’ reactions to other drugs...it accounts for the alcoholic’s ability to continue to function with tranquilizer or sedatives doses which would be incapacitating or even lethal for non-alcoholics.’ (pg.172) Milam also discusses cross-addiction in Chapter Ten. </div><div><br />Chapter Eleven is entitled "Beyond Prejudice and Misconception." Here, Milam discusses where he feels changes should be made in how we look at alcoholism. One of his main points is that there should be definitions that all of the scientific and medical community agree upon when it comes to alcoholism and its treatment. He discusses the need for setting alcoholic research priorities, prevention and education. One of the major points he makes is that the medical, law and insurance professions must change in their view of alcoholism. </div><div><br />This was considered a groundbreaking book when in was first published in 1981. In 1998, there is still much of the book that will interest the alcoholic who wants to know how the disease affects them, and what can be done about it.</div><div> </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-52863301121130857002007-04-10T13:35:00.000-07:002011-02-13T11:54:57.104-08:00Trauma and Recovery<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp-EnZjLycT6EDly1w503wFhZ9TyfTjvM_DU8FhhyphenhyphenFSMYKkQFMd3mjSvnD1cDD1lPgO6FaAbURuWqRsTzQA6lqYVHWcOc3seCAvxcTVon4Mre_ze5gMGkWJe1MwLpnjTARX2mLekD6CMU/s1600/bkherman.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5573264821738117218" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 91px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 140px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp-EnZjLycT6EDly1w503wFhZ9TyfTjvM_DU8FhhyphenhyphenFSMYKkQFMd3mjSvnD1cDD1lPgO6FaAbURuWqRsTzQA6lqYVHWcOc3seCAvxcTVon4Mre_ze5gMGkWJe1MwLpnjTARX2mLekD6CMU/s200/bkherman.gif" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br />By Judith Herman, M.D.<br />ISBN 0-465-08730-2<br /><br />Reviewed by Marty N.<br /><br /><br />Craig W. turned me on to this book at one of our Book Nights at the Thursday night SOS meeting in Oakland. As the title implies, it is a book about recovering from trauma. Craig said that even though he had not suffered any particular physical trauma, such as being beaten or sexually abused or shellshocked in war, nevertheless the book spoke to him very centrally. After reading it, I came to agree, and began to understand why. </div><div><br /><a name="starthere">Dr. Herman</a> spent twenty years studying women who had been raped or violently abused as children, as well as men who had been prisoners of war or had the Vietnam vets’ syndrome. She makes a strong case that the prevalence of violent trauma in our society is much greater than is generally believed. She puts herself in the shoes of the victims of societal atrocities and tries to describe what that feels like, and what happens inside. </div><div><br />The central experience of trauma, Dr. Herman writes, is powerlessness. When the organism first confronts a threat, it goes into a fight-or-flight reaction. But when neither fight nor flight avail, the human defense mechanisms disintegrate. Overwhelmed, the emotional and cognitive systems become severed (disassociated) from each other, so that the person thinks without feeling or feels without thinking. The victim adopts a permanent state of aroused vigilance, even when no immediate triggers are present. Echoes of the traumatic event intrude on ordinary activities. Finally, the victim may go into surrender mode, numbing down all except the most constricted systems, and frequently resorting to collaboration with the abuser. </div><div><br />There is a well-known link between childhood trauma and adult alcoholism, particularly among women. Dr. Herman describes alcoholism and other drug addictions as among the common traits found in survivors of childhood abuse, along with insomnia, sexual dysfunction, dissociation, anger, suicidality, and self-mutilation. She describes excess use of alcohol and drugs as a method of dissociation and constriction that many trauma victims employ when they are unable to achieve these protective altered states spontaneously. </div><div><br />While abuse of alcohol and drugs is a frequent sequel of trauma, the experience of being addicted to alcohol can be a kind of trauma in its own right. The realization that one is trapped in a joyless cycle of chemical self-destruction is authentically terrifying. I remember well those many mornings when I looked in the mirror and saw a slave. In those days, neither resistance nor escape availed. The experience of powerlessness is ingrained in the life of an active addict. And so, with that background, I began to read Dr. Herman’s book, just as Craig did, as a book about surviving and recovering from a trauma called addiction. </div><div><br />Part II of the book is entitled Stages of Recovery. Dr. Herman opens it with these words:<br />"The core experiences of psychological trauma are disempowerment and disconnection from others. Recovery, therefore, is based upon the empowerment of the survivor and the creation of new connections. Recovery can take place only within the context of relationships; it cannot occur in isolation…. The first principle of recovery is the empowerment of the survivor. She must be the author and arbiter of her own recovery. Others may offer advice, support, assistance, affection, and care, but not cure. Many benevolent and well-intentioned attempts to assist the survivor founder because this fundamental principle of empowerment is not observed. No intervention that takes power away from the survivor can possibly foster her recovery, no matter how much it appears to be in her immediate best interests." </div><div><br />I quoted this at length because it seems to me that this understanding is central to what we try to do, and largely succeed in doing, in our SOS meetings. As everyone knows by now, we do not see ourselves as owners and vendors of a magic "Program" which we try to impress on newcomers. We stress to the contrary that the recovering alcoholic can and "must be the author and arbiter of her own recovery," exactly as Dr. Herman writes. What we supply to each other is support, assistance, affection, care and advice if asked for, but not "cure." Because we adhere to "this fundamental principle of empowerment," we steer clear of ideologies that would assign the recovery-creating power to supernatural beings, or to magical objects such as doorknobs, because such an assignment takes away from the survivor a power that is rightfully and necessarily hers, and this cannot foster recovery, no matter how benevolent it may appear.<br />The principle of empowering the patient gives some therapists a great deal of trouble, accustomed as they are to seeing themselves as powerful and the patient as helpless. Dr. Herman is a vigorous advocate of "patient power." She speaks from two decades of experience of working in groups for battered and abused women, survivors of childhood abuse, incest, rape and other atrocities, as well as with men exposed to traumas of war and imprisonment. These are individuals who manifest all kinds of dysfunctionality, as do we alcoholics and addicts. Nevertheless, or rather, precisely because of this fact, insists Dr. Herman, "the more the therapist accepts the idea that the patient is helpless, the more she … disempowers the patient." Likewise, I think it’s fair to say that when addiction counselors begin with the premise of the alcoholic’s or addict’s helplessness, they disempower the patient’s recovery and become part of the problem rather than the solution. </div><div><br />Dr. Herman’s experience in her battered women’s survivor groups indicated that the first task is to establish a sense of safety. No progress can be made until the person feels and is safe. (p. 159) This is a point that applies to our recovery groups as well. We usually understand the "safety" issue as one of anonymity and confidentiality. These are basic, but there is more. A good atmosphere in a meeting is where participants feel free to speak about their personal experiences, but don’t feel pressured to disclose more about themselves than is comfortable for them at the moment. Sometimes our participants only offer their opinions on a topic; they say "I think " such-and-such and "I agree with X" or "I disagree," but rarely disclose any of their own experiences. This superficial level of talk suggests that these speakers don’t feel safe in the meeting, and if this becomes the standard for the whole meeting for a prolonged period, then it’s time to stop and reassess. Not much healing or empowerment will take place if people don’t feel safe to talk about what really is going on with them. Similarly, not much progress will be made if people talk in slogans or formulas. </div><div><br />Talking – the simple act of talking in a group about one’s experiences – is a therapeutic process. Members of self-help groups know this. Dr. Herman’s treatise validates it scientifically. In a remarkable chapter, she writes that even the medical symptoms of trauma, the "physioneurosis," can be reversed "through the use of words." Talk in a safe environment that comes straight from the heart, and allows repressed feelings to surface without premeditation, creates privileged moments of insight. This kind of talk is very probably the real active ingredient of all successful self-help groups. It is the reason why they work when they work. All the rest is ornament or baggage. SOS is wise to concentrate its effort on constructing and facilitating this central process, and in deflecting any effort to burden this force with any programmatic, religious, spiritual or political overlay. </div><div><br />The third and last stage of recovery, in Dr. Herman’s view, is reconnection with others. Here again the self-help groups play a vital role. In the groups, the individual survivors begin to experience bonding with one another, recover a sense of self-worth, and learn methods that allow them to make changes in their real world pathways. For many survivors at this stage, it is helpful to become engaged in campaigns to address the causes of their victimization, and in educating the public. </div><div><br />In conclusion, this is not intended as a book about alcoholism or addiction. On those occasions when Dr. Herman speaks of recovery from alcoholism directly, her text does not rise above the brainless rubber-stamping of 12-step methods that marks the run of the mill, and this is a definite weakness of the work. But if we look at the larger picture, this is one of the most illuminating books about addiction that has been written in recent years. If we understand addiction as not merely a sequel of trauma, but as a trauma in its own right, then the work is rich in insights and lessons for us. I am grateful to Craig W. for sharing the work and I would recommend it unhesitatingly to anyone interested in understanding more about the recovery process.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-11414950097957921982007-04-10T13:30:00.000-07:002011-02-13T11:57:18.984-08:00The Thinking Person's Guide to Sobriety<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrDJtPUYdjkfp2aDB63-Lu7oXHZRCRorcgLVHn5hn2IpJZUpCq2NAo8H0VTGYawomp12fLvhVh9pxjGVae0UjLVVgdw-pC3xvt9q8yKJQ0QoDuHZOFFWKqJ_kbDAZCJo6_IGJrkKPHajo/s1600/thinkper.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5573265545551319426" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 77px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 115px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrDJtPUYdjkfp2aDB63-Lu7oXHZRCRorcgLVHn5hn2IpJZUpCq2NAo8H0VTGYawomp12fLvhVh9pxjGVae0UjLVVgdw-pC3xvt9q8yKJQ0QoDuHZOFFWKqJ_kbDAZCJo6_IGJrkKPHajo/s200/thinkper.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br />By Bert Pluymen<br />ISBN 1-880092-40-9<br /><br />Reviewed by Don B.<br /><br /><br />I was immediately drawn to this book while browsing through the recovery section of a bookstore by its title -- after all, I consider myself to be a "thinking person." I just had to read it -- and glad I did. It's now a permanent part of my recovery library. </div><div><br />The book is largely anecdotal (primarily the author's own story, plus many others -- which can become tedious) combined with interesting scientific facts and studies. Although each recovery involves AA, it's not excessively pro-AA. The author is very open-minded when it comes to alternative support groups -- mainly Women For Sobriety and SOS. He provides his e-mail address and we have communicated frequently, ever since I read his book, about SOS. If there was a meeting in Austin, I'm sure he'd be there. </div><div><br />The author is a self-described "high bottom" alcoholic, recognizing his alcohol addiction before getting into serious legal, financial, or career problems. He prefers the term "alcohol addiction" to "alcoholism" and stays away from "disease theory" -- although he does bring up hereditary, ethnic, economic, and environmental contributions towards addiction. </div><div><br />Overall, I consider this to be one of the best recovery books I've read -- and shared with others at our SOS meeting. While not revealing anything that was new to me, it is well-written and an enjoyable read. Also of interest, is a separate section dealing with women and alcohol that is especially good. </div><div><br />(January 1998)</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-57511597674801999452007-04-10T13:25:00.000-07:002011-02-13T12:02:00.979-08:00Thinking in Pictures<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj98dQe4FQ3wJUXmnmJ3lEUvrmlmWFYgk9ocHXNGpGFXZ8HREqPQVKiWQ5r3M3uzTYX661kRMGeTSIA-whzdZTU77q-zO5CGYv402va3CS0rED8GsxxL1jSbJDaIzIck5-V5n5x3LY4IYg/s1600/thinkpic.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5573266681461215026" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 74px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 115px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj98dQe4FQ3wJUXmnmJ3lEUvrmlmWFYgk9ocHXNGpGFXZ8HREqPQVKiWQ5r3M3uzTYX661kRMGeTSIA-whzdZTU77q-zO5CGYv402va3CS0rED8GsxxL1jSbJDaIzIck5-V5n5x3LY4IYg/s200/thinkpic.gif" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br />By Temple Grandin<br />ISBN 0-679-77289-8<br /><br />Reviewed by Marty N.<br /><br /><br />It begins with "A." It runs in families. Its cause is unknown. Blood tests and similar diagnostic technology can't identify it; the diagnosis is solely behavioral. It's often seen together with depression and other disorders. It was long believed psychiatric in origin, caused by frigid mothering and an excess of stubborn, antisocial character traits. Those who have it are typically wrapped up in themselves, incapable of seeing the other person's viewpoint, given to outbursts of rage but rarely capable of empathy. They are emotionally immature and low in social skills. They are apt to disregard authority and manners, to be dirty, disheveled and rude of speech. The disorder often afflicts persons of above-average intelligence. If not addressed, it may prove totally disabling. There is a great range of presentations. There is no cure; and treatment has confounded experts for many decades. Recovery means learning to identify one's personal triggers, to become attuned to one's bodily and mental warning signs, to experiment with lifestyle, diet, exercise and sometimes medications until something works. Relapse is common and progress is slow. With proper treatment and by taking advantage of support groups, persons who have it can lead productive lives and even make outstanding contributions to society.<br />No, it's not alcoholism or addiction. Temple Grandin's Thinking in Pictures is the story of her childhood and life with autism. I want to thank Claudia P. of the email list for recommending this book to me. I know a few things about substance abuse but knew nothing about autism beyond what was shown in The Rain Man. I found the book a fascinating education about a neighboring disorder and an inspiring story of personal recovery. </div><div><br />Instead of dwelling on her defects, Grandin took what she was handed and made lemonade. She was almost incapable of verbal thinking, but excelled at visual and spatial thought. She was extremely fearful around people and incapable of catching on to the flow of human emotions; but she discovered that she felt peaceful around cattle and excelled at understanding the perceptions and feelings of cows, sheep and other prey mammals. She was appalled at the stupidity and cruelty with which cattle were being handled in much of the meatpacking industry. Impassioned by the cause of improving the animals' treatment, she developed a career designing better cattle handling equipment in feedlots and slaughterhouses. To get there, she had to break the gender barrier in the industry, becoming the first woman in the feedlots and slaughterhouses and paving the way for many others. She worked with single-minded devotion and energy, amassing an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior and of animal-handling equipment. She became a great success in her field. Today more than one third of the cattle in the U.S. packing industry are processed in equipment Grandin designed. She divides her time between consulting in the cattle-handling industry and lecturing about autism. </div><div><br />For the alcoholic and addict in recovery, there are wonderful insights in Grandin's story. She is a strong believer in focusing on the positive. "I think there is too much emphasis on deficits and not enough emphasis on developing abilities," she writes. She found it liberating to recognize that the various psychiatric, psychological and moralistic theories of autism were nonsense; that her problems "weren't the result of my weakness or lack of character," and that the problem lies in the neurochemistry of the brain, particularly the limbic system. </div><div><br />Grandin believes that the perceived defects of many autistic people, such as becoming fixated on a subject, can be turned into assets by cultivating a deep knowledge of a subject area and becoming expert in it. She praises the Internet as a wonderful medium of communication and growth for people with impaired social skills and emotional deficits. She accepts her emotional limitations ("I don't know what a deep relationship is") and, like Einstein, she derives joy and even sensuous pleasure from a successful new insight or design. She wastes no time bemoaning her verbal deficits, but instead celebrates her visual capabilities. Deeply engaged in the daily business of conveying thousands of her hoofed soul-mates to their deaths, she says she lives each day all out, as if it were her last. Incapable of an emotional religious faith, but made anxious by the thought of an unordered universe, she constructs a notion of an impersonal God out of some hypotheses of quantum mechanics, which amount to the belief that all things are interconnected and that what goes around comes around. She disbelieves in an afterlife, and sees that immortality is achieved in this world only by the effect that one's thoughts and actions have on other people. </div><div><br />Thank you, Claudia, for leading me to this book. As a person preoccupied with issues of alcoholism and other chemical dependency, I sometimes get tunnel vision and forget about the many, many other disorders and disabilities in the world. The story of Grandin's education about the physiological basis of her disability and her liberation from moralistic thinking, her unfailing concentration on the positive, and her tremendous grit in the face of opposition, recalled the story of Helen Keller and had a similar moving effect on me. It is good from time to time to put alcoholism in its perspective. On the scale of disabilities and disorders, addiction is one of the most hopeful. Unlike Grandin, once we get started we can expect to recover complete cognitive and emotional functioning, often rather quickly; and the inability to drink or use drugs at all, which remains our lifelong burden, is a trivial deficit in the grand scale of things. Certainly a timely book for Thanksgiving!</div><div> </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-7436300786292502852007-04-09T19:05:00.000-07:002011-02-13T12:04:55.461-08:00The Recovery Book<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOmjYXu_RtSt35qGuETkeW1j8p-6d3yBEjmQXS7w46ymCMVMKIDibLO0FtzynoxYF7yVSwJHWWl3UTPE3OLjpauwiVGPSA-PqU0YDSMxEAY1HOX8uoPf5vYFJSIuzAEFMJikqnJvCMDGE/s1600/recvrybk.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5573267468305914626" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 76px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 115px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOmjYXu_RtSt35qGuETkeW1j8p-6d3yBEjmQXS7w46ymCMVMKIDibLO0FtzynoxYF7yVSwJHWWl3UTPE3OLjpauwiVGPSA-PqU0YDSMxEAY1HOX8uoPf5vYFJSIuzAEFMJikqnJvCMDGE/s200/recvrybk.gif" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br />By Arlene Eisenberg, Howard Eisenberg, Al J. Mooney M.D. </div><div>ISBN 1-85487-292-3 </div><div><br />Reviewed by Aongus C.<br /><br />This large volume is one of the most ambitious books on recovery that I have read. It is no less than an encyclopedia of recovery, covering physical, mental and spiritual health. The focus is resolutely practical: the authors concentrate on topics such as illnesses, feelings, relationships, diet and exercise, financial and career issues. </div><div><br />Co-author Al Mooney is a medical director of the Willingway Hospital, a treatment center in Georgia. His family has been ravaged by alcoholism, as a moving introduction explains. Perhaps this accounts for the informed realism of the book. His co-authors, Arlene and Howard Eisenberg, are described as writers of best selling medical books; this handbook is a model of readability. </div><div><br />They treat recovery as a journey in time, and divide the process into three phases: Phase One: early recovery (the first year or two); Phase Two: rebuilding your life after the fog of early recovery lifts; Phase Three: prolonging and enjoying your life (includes advice on smoking and diet). </div><div><br />Each phase gets a section to itself, and each section in turn is divided into a series of short articles. For example, the ten chapters dealing with Phase One cover more than 200 topics including AA and alternative groups, cravings, the many emotional and psychological obstacles to staying sober, medical check-ups and possible physical damage caused by your addiction, social, family and sexual relationships, panic and anxiety attacks, emotional difficulties such as anger and resentment. </div><div><br />There's some interesting advice on coping strategies when life seems to get the better of you. The other sections of the book follow a similar pattern. Mooney and the Eisenbergs are committed but clear-headed proponents of AA. You'll find over 40 pages advocating the AA program. The authors insist that you do not have to be an AA member to benefit from the book -- and their claim stands up, since the advice dispensed is so down to earth. They acknowledge the problems that some people have with the concept of a Higher Power and even warn against relying too much on one to save your life. More important, perhaps, they give a brief description of Rational Recovery and SOS, and some contact information. This is where I first heard of SOS.<br />This book is also what convinced me that I am an alcoholic. I was attempting a course of controlled drinking at the time. I read the section on Phase One with a mounting sense of recognition. I could identify completely with the picture of the alcoholic and dry drunk it painted. For so practical a book, it had a powerful emotional impact. It was enough to stop me drinking! "The Recovery Book" helped change my life. I'd have to recommend it.</div><div> </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-1259353551191060682007-04-09T18:47:00.003-07:002011-02-13T12:06:36.748-08:00The Real AA: Behind the Myth of 12-Step Recovery<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0CBeKUoitP5laYcG_lQ9y32lZ_9qwE-wDZP94XmqysZVIWMvKUBfacj8nE2xRta3TXigF3FszSULaMHb5gBPctw8kcTpxH27SztLBSv2Sa1UdNCwDPvA4EoCvedoFQzBktUo-cVmCUuY/s1600/realaa.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5573268018192463618" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 77px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 115px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0CBeKUoitP5laYcG_lQ9y32lZ_9qwE-wDZP94XmqysZVIWMvKUBfacj8nE2xRta3TXigF3FszSULaMHb5gBPctw8kcTpxH27SztLBSv2Sa1UdNCwDPvA4EoCvedoFQzBktUo-cVmCUuY/s200/realaa.gif" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br />By Ken Ragge<br />ISBN 1884365140<br /><br />Reviewed by Marty N.<br /><br /><br />This is the second edition of the authors' More Revealed: A Critical Analysis of Alcoholics Anonymous and the Twelve Steps, whose cover showed a Sherlock Holmes character tearing the sheep's mask off a blood-slavering wolf. It is Ragge's thesis that AA is a cult, that its methods are comparable to brainwashing, and that practice of AA's program "usually makes the underlying problems of alcoholics and addicts much worse."<br /><br />Ragge begins his exposition with a short sketch of the Oxford Groups, a Protestant evangelical sect out of which AA evolved. He shows that a number of the insidious conversion techniques of the Oxford Groups are alive today in the AA program. After a digression of five chapters in which Ragge expounds his own theory of the addiction problem, of which more later, the author then picks up the attack again in Ch. 9, "Meetings." This describes in a generic way all the elements of an archetypical AA meeting, with the standard speeches, the standard audience responses, and the insecure feelings of the newcomer in the middle of it all. It is Ragge's view that this environment is similar to that of an "addictive family system" in which the individual's own perceptions and feelings are denied and he is made to adopt a synthetic and dysfunctional identity. Ragge finds that the prevalence of cliches in the meeting talk serves as a short circuit for critical thought and is symptomatic of mind-control cults.<br /><br />The following two chapters then take the newcomer into the organization and through the 12 steps, one by one. Ragge points out that the organization presents itself at the outset as a "broad highway," where everything is only "suggested" and nothing is required. This "soft sell" lures the newcomer in. Then comes the "90 in 90" proposal, where the newcomer is encouraged to do a "trial run" of 90 meetings in 90 days to see if he likes it. The real purpose and effect of the 90/90, according to Ragge, is to separate the newcomer from his social network, isolate him, and envelop him in the AA environment to the exclusion of all else. Once AA has become the sole source of the individual's information and social support, then the newcomer is induced to get a sponsor and do the steps.<br /><br />The general thrust of the steps, in Ragge's view, is to demolish the individual's sense of self and make him dependent on AA. Ragge calls the Steps "a prescription for helplessness, self-alienation and depression." Ragge points out that around steps four and five, the program takes the newcomer through a fundamental paradigm switch. Earlier, the newcomer's problem was defined as a medical disease, for which the individual is blameless. Now "medical" is morphed into "moral" and the message is that the individual drank because of "defects of character." This immediately reloads the burden of guilt and shame that the medical disease theory might have discharged, and the individual now defines himself as a thoroughly bad and worthless person. Survival beyond this point is possible only through divine grace; redemption is attainable only by bringing in others to start the process anew.<br /><br />Ragge provides an unflattering portrait of some of the "model recoveries" obtained by this means, including that of AA co-founder Bill Wilson himself, who spent eleven years in morbid depression, and Kitty Dukakis, whose AA involvement led her from a trivial diet pill habit to a major dual diagnosis with an Rx for lithium. In a follow-up chapter, Ragge sketches very briefly the anonymous infiltration of AA into the medical profession, into Congress and state legislative bodies, courts, and the media. Finally, Ragge discusses the plight of the person who leaves AA, isolated, with shattered ego, profoundly depressed, and therefore likely to relapse or commit suicide; Ragge gives some suggestions for surviving this transition and returning to normalcy.<br /><br />The portions of the book that expose AA are worthwhile reading. Ragge has drawn heavily on AA's own literature and on his own experience in the program, and the chapters ring with credible detail and with emotional sincerity. Obviously Ragge's experience is not that of everyone, and many will dismiss his account as a malicious caricature, but Ragge's core feeling of abuse and manipulation at the hands of the 12-Step program has so many echoes in the personal histories of other survivors that one cannot dismiss it as a mere idiosyncrasy. This is a soapbox polemic, but it is a necessary and readable antidote to the AA-idolatry that dominates the collective brainwaves.<br /><br />Going into the book in more particulars reveals an uneven product. Some of his insights I have not seen before, e.g. his analysis of the fourth and fifth steps as a bait-and-switch from the medical to the moral model; this I think a valuable contribution to the analysis. Some of this subject matter, e.g. Bill W.'s belladonna trip and his depression, and the role of anonymity in penetrating secular institutions, has been described much better and more persuasively elsewhere, e.g. in William L. White's <a href="http://www.unhooked.com/booktalk/index.html#Slaying">Slaying the Dragon</a>. Some of it is, I believe, ludicrous, as when he claims that "Shit Happens" is an AA slogan. Some of it is stretched, as in the equation of the Oxford Groups and AA; Ragge admits that AA's anonymity principle represented a complete break with the OG, but he does not see how central this rule is to AA's modus operandi; it is the very engine of AA's secular infiltration. Some of Ragge's terminology I find annoying, such as use of the term "grouper" to describe AA participants; a grouper is a fish. It is also important to realize that Ragge criticizes AA's "spirituality" from a religionist rather than from a humanist viewpoint. And, as might be expected in a pamphleteering effort of this kind, Ragge leaves it a mystery why AA does in fact serve as a vehicle by which a great many drunks successfully maintain abstinence -- more than through any other organized effort at this time. Still, the main thrust of this expose of AA is keenly felt, richly documented, and worth a wider audience. Even if Ragge is only half right, his study goes a long way to explain AA's apparently abysmal retention rate and the low abstinence rate of AA participants, discussed in Ch. 2; and this would tend to shed light on AA's abhorrence at being subjected to quantitative outcome studies.<br /><br />Unfortunately, this workmanlike pamphlet is undermined by the addition of six or seven embarrassingly thin and unnecessary chapters in which Ragge spins out his own theory of addiction. In a nutshell, he believes that adult addiction is a psychological disorder caused by childhood abuse. Although there is evidence showing that many addicts suffered childhood abuse, there is no evidence that all or even most abused children become addicts. Ragge's chapter attacking the medical disease theory, which long antedates AA, is a clumsy hatchet job, and his analysis of animal experiments is deplorably unsupported by any research of the past 20 years; contrast, for example the monumental work of <a href="http://www.unhooked.com/booktalk/lowinson.htm#Gardner">Eliot Gardner</a>. Ragge advises the drinker to avoid support groups and look for a psychotherapist instead, but to drop instantly any therapist who suggests a diagnosis of alcoholism! In this thin and strained denial that such a thing as alcoholism exists, Ragge reveals himself as an acolyte of Stanton Peele, the writer-for-hire of the alcohol industry, who does a gushing introduction for the book. Predictably, Ragge's pop-psych etiology leads up to the irresponsible conclusion in Ch. 15 that the drinker is probably better served by aiming for moderation than for abstinence. Audrey Kishline's work, which attempts to draw a clear line of demarcation between alcoholics and problem drinkers, is a model of clinical responsibility by comparison. Jack Trimpey, co-founder of Rational Recovery, contributes a laudatory foreword. A firm editorial hand would have greatly improved this title and enhanced the author's credibility by excising the transparently self-indulgent chapters on addiction and moderation so that Ragge's vigorous expose of AA could stand on its own merits.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-20368659186718265042007-04-09T17:59:00.000-07:002011-02-13T12:08:41.653-08:00The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJNXxYHrK8UAnJk7ts1yM_-5VCWQwJFwQ__Oj5HqLJaRJP0MbuK4p7nKqwTiXxguitEnI0OtxKisA2GbTRnC6ip_LN0_4SwXEQyB5huzImGxaod0bdQJnI3exs-O_E1QV9iXWVjseBAhg/s1600/lonerngr.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5573268564320115346" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 76px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 115px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJNXxYHrK8UAnJk7ts1yM_-5VCWQwJFwQ__Oj5HqLJaRJP0MbuK4p7nKqwTiXxguitEnI0OtxKisA2GbTRnC6ip_LN0_4SwXEQyB5huzImGxaod0bdQJnI3exs-O_E1QV9iXWVjseBAhg/s200/lonerngr.gif" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br />By Sherman Alexie<br />ISBN 0060976241.<br /><br />Reviewed by Randy M.<br /><br />This collection of twenty-two short stories came to my attention in a community college lit class a year and a half ago. I was so intrigued by it, I bought my own copy and couldn't put it down until I had finished it. The stories are all connected in some way and deal with life on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Though not specifically addressing the issue as the primary topic, alcohol abuse is part and parcel of reservation life and plays a significant role in nearly all of the stories. Here is an excerpt from one entitled A Train Is an Order of Occurrence Designed to Lead to Some Result. The first time I read it, I was struck with an overwhelming force of recognition and identification. The setup is this. Samuel Builds-the-Fire (Grandfather of Thomas) has been working as a maid in a local motel for years. On his birthday, he goes to work early only to discover that his boss is cutting back on the budget and has to let Samuel go. He starts to walk home.<br /><br />"What was God but this planet's maid?" Samuel asked himself as he found himself walking to the Midway Tavern, were all the Indians drank in eight-hour shifts. Samuel hadn't ever been fired from a job and he had never been in a bar, either. He had never drunk. All his life he had watched his brothers and sisters, most of his tribe, fall into alcoholism and surrendered dreams. But today Samuel sat down at the bar, unsure of himself, frightened. "Hey, partner," the bartender said to Samuel. "Ain't seen you in here before." "Yeah," Samuel said. "Just got into town, you know?" "Where you from?" "A long way from here. Doubt you ever heard of it." "Oh, I know all about that place," the bartender said and set a cocktail napkin in front of Samuel. "So, what are you drinking, old-timer?" "I'm not sure. Do you have a menu?" The bartender laughed and laughed. Embarrassed, Samuel wanted to get up and run home. But he sat still, waited for the laughter to end. "How about I just give you a beer?" the bartender asked then, and Samuel quickly agreed. The bartender set the beer in front of Samuel; the bartender laughed and had the urge to call the local newspaper. You got to get a photographer here. This Injun is going to take his first drink. Samuel lifted the glass. It felt good and cold in his hand. He drank. Coughed. Set the glass down for a second. Lifted it again. Drank. Drank. Held the glass away from his mouth. Breathed. Breathed. He drank. Emptied the glass. Set it down gently on the bar. I understand everything, Samuel thought. He knew all about how it begins; he knew he wanted to live this way now. With each glass of beer, Samuel gained a few ounces of wisdom, courage. But after a while, he began to understand too much about fear and failure, too. At the halfway point of any drunken night, there is a moment when an Indian realizes he cannot turn back toward tradition and that he has no map to guide him toward the future. "Shit," Samuel said. It was quickly his favorite word.<br /><br />In The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn't Flash Red Anymore, two guys hanging out on a porch notice that the light isn't working. One says...<br />"Shit, they better fix it. Might cause an accident." We both looked at each other, looked at the traffic signal, knew that about only one car an hour passed by, and laughed our asses off. Laughed so hard that when we tried to rearrange ourselves, Adrian ended up with my ass and I ended up with his. That looked so funny that we laughed them off again and it took us most of an hour to get them back right again.<br /><br />The stories are sometimes funny, sometimes grim, but always powerful. Alexie has a way of entertaining with a pleasant narrative, then wrapping it up with a poignant and often disturbing conclusion. I don't know what else to add about this book. Attempting to analyze it any further would do it, and you, a disservice. Pick it up for an enjoyable and thought provoking read.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-71792780708887596082007-04-09T17:46:00.000-07:002011-02-13T12:33:58.204-08:00The Invisible Alcoholics<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvKxoyDRKrHFiHAsG0iBga5ins5w3xWhACYB2Sk_0ZZ5p_6Rt9xHY3vYn5YMK8tEKG4T6hIySwBwm8Zuf4hon_ZES35jimloqo1o917NhcJlkiQzmLSasuCuhvJEzkJfGIWTOAfU-V-h8/s1600/invisible.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5573275059590295106" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 85px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 128px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvKxoyDRKrHFiHAsG0iBga5ins5w3xWhACYB2Sk_0ZZ5p_6Rt9xHY3vYn5YMK8tEKG4T6hIySwBwm8Zuf4hon_ZES35jimloqo1o917NhcJlkiQzmLSasuCuhvJEzkJfGIWTOAfU-V-h8/s200/invisible.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div></div><br /><div>The Invisible Alcoholics: Women and Alcohol<br />By Marian Sandmaier<br />ISBN 0-8306-3843-1<br /><br />Reviewed by Carol I.<br /><br />In "Invisible Alcoholics: Women and Alcohol," Marian Sandmaier explores differences in treatment for women, social attitudes towards them, and contributing factors to their drinking - also looks at the impact of class, sexual preference, etc.<br /><br />Both this and Larson's book (<u>Seven Weeks to Sobriety</u>, also reviewed here) mention AA but that's not their focus (in fact Sandmaier's book lists SOS and Rational Recovery as resources)</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-16097958868758695242007-04-09T17:41:00.000-07:002011-02-13T13:46:53.426-08:00The Fix<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqD_f4C8ZVKksxhPKa_Dd2I2eST2o2n5IxSbC2aTOHQMyY-hvuH7vf3IePS53gP_bYE76onreAaTrpTZEajoKs5rhvn2EaOT8SAfhNpr_ssWREhd4FTYkxYnDvVgxQ7I9Hgw-ZLCB8V5c/s1600/thefix.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5573293858470187234" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 77px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 115px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqD_f4C8ZVKksxhPKa_Dd2I2eST2o2n5IxSbC2aTOHQMyY-hvuH7vf3IePS53gP_bYE76onreAaTrpTZEajoKs5rhvn2EaOT8SAfhNpr_ssWREhd4FTYkxYnDvVgxQ7I9Hgw-ZLCB8V5c/s200/thefix.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br />By Michael Massing<br />ISBN 0684809605<br /><br />Reviewed by Gillian Ellenby<br /><br /><br />The book is an easy enough read, but is kind of a mess in the way it is<br />For those of us who have only thought of substance problems and recovery issues in terms of our own lives and limited circle of experience this book is a must-read. It provides an eye-opening look into the way that policy decisions are made in Washington, and how these decisions actually can affect people's lives.Michael Massing gives us an account of the United States Drug Policy since the Nixon administration, interwoven with the lives of two real people actually affected by the policy decisions: a crack addict who goes into treatment, and a manic counselor who organizes treatment for addicts. He covers the years from Nixon's largely successful attempts to control the heroin epidemic of the late sixties and early seventies, to the current situation - no reduction in numbers of addicts, huge jail populations, and massive amounts of money being funneled into futile attempts to control the supply side of the problem.He gives us tremendous insight into how personal egos and political agendas get in the way of rational, well-thought-out strategies to alleviate problems. And he reminds us that the issue of how to treat any kind of addiction is indeed a political issue.The book is a real page-turner. I found that I could hardly wait to get to the end of the story! I found myself reduced almost to tears on many occasions, partly due to frustration at all the wasted opportunities that he describes, and partly due to sadness at the broken lives he talks about. But I also felt hopeful as he describes the tremendous strides towards rehabilitation made by one of his real-life characters.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-29653700525733263732007-04-08T11:05:00.000-07:002011-02-13T13:55:37.860-08:00The Fifth Discipline and Fieldbook<div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyddwhAJ6S9QM5837ND8s-T7swYmGwn_FP8YG1OcVzBApzNx7PzaV49bOU_Mem6w05CipE0nfzE6l7fe4HZIE_phrjls_WWe8UL-pOhyphenhyphen9CO9pRgOipd9JEsir7fANr3EBLRNuEe2d2QFM/s1600/fifth.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5573294838281511666" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 76px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 115px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyddwhAJ6S9QM5837ND8s-T7swYmGwn_FP8YG1OcVzBApzNx7PzaV49bOU_Mem6w05CipE0nfzE6l7fe4HZIE_phrjls_WWe8UL-pOhyphenhyphen9CO9pRgOipd9JEsir7fANr3EBLRNuEe2d2QFM/s200/fifth.gif" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><br /><strong>The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization</strong><br />By Peter Senge (1990).<br /><br /></div><div><br /><strong><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN0T12Y6AEtB31gZqAUNTMh0lBzn5dtTF7inLt58wheyKMoRAs7vECJqSdyuLaFzeuZAYhmqa4e-4tuKM2NmG0PM4Quw3oM4jfqfOCrPIFSBv5WOeXPJMx002Vs2ab8R3xawscnXaTTcY/s1600/fifthfbk.gif"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5573295088062482146" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 75px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 91px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN0T12Y6AEtB31gZqAUNTMh0lBzn5dtTF7inLt58wheyKMoRAs7vECJqSdyuLaFzeuZAYhmqa4e-4tuKM2NmG0PM4Quw3oM4jfqfOCrPIFSBv5WOeXPJMx002Vs2ab8R3xawscnXaTTcY/s200/fifthfbk.gif" border="0" /></a>The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization</strong><br />By Peter Senge et al. (1994) </div><div> </div><div>Both books reviewed by Marty N.<br /><br /><br />These two books launched the concept of the "learning organization." Within the world of corporate management theory, the Learning Organization ("LO") is the antithesis of the rigid hierarchical models on which most of the major corporate enterprises of this century have been erected. It is the author’s view that these authoritarian structures are today in crisis because they have failed to engage and to utilize the intelligent passion of the great majority of people who work for them. They have become rigid, dogmatic and blind, and as a result have lost market share to livelier competitors both here and abroad, or have disappeared altogether.<br />The "fifth discipline" of the title is systems analysis, a way of thinking about organizations in a non-linear manner by studying the consequences, frequently unintended, of every organizational structure and action. The consequence of authoritarianism, Senge holds, is to stifle team learning, discourage personal mastery, foster inaccurate mental models, and kill the vision that motivates. The LO theory aims to transform the resulting giant trunks of deadwood into fresh young saplings before they crash and fall. </div><div><br />Senge is a senior lecturer at MIT and a member of the Center for Organizational Learning at the Sloan School of Management there. Fortune, Harvard Business Review, Business Week and other business publications have pointed to the "learning organization" model as perhaps the most important development in management theory in the second half of this century. Highly in demand for seminars and presentations, Senge has leveraged his books into chairmanship of the Society for Organizational Learning, a collaborative that lists a gallery of Fortune 100 corporations among its sponsors. There are numerous advocates of LO theory and there is a busy mailing list, learning-org, bringing together management people from business, education, nonprofits and the military. Despite the radical flavor of some of Senge’s ideas, these are not the ravings of a fringe lunatic; on the contrary, they seem well on their way to becoming the mainstream, at least in doctrine if not in practice. </div><div><br />The books came to me almost by serendipity. My wife, a schoolteacher engaged in school reform, brought home the Fieldbook and suggested I might find interesting stuff in it. She was quite right. Although addiction is a minor theme in the LO theory, both books can be read with little translation as if they were sobriety manuals. After reading the Fieldbook, I went out and bought the 1990 text. Generally, the early book is more theoretical, and the Fieldbook has more practical detail. </div><div><br />I found LO theory easily applicable to my situation as an engaged member of a sobriety organization. By "learning," Senge obviously means something different from going to classes; it means a lifelong practice of investigating, experimenting, moving, growing in capacity and insight; it means a life of "integrity, openness, commitment, and collective intelligence." That seems to me a pretty fair approximation of the skills that a long-term addict needs to have in order to stay sober. Learning in this sense also points toward the rewards that come when a brain is allowed to work free of addictive substances. Learning is not something separate from doing or living; it is an engaged, intelligent mode of being in the world. </div><div><br />On the larger scale, a "learning organization" is one that creates a reality in which its vision and practice flourish almost effortlessly, and whose members have the feeling of being part of a truly "great team." To get to that point, however, requires a long and strenuous effort, and much "practice, practice, practice." </div><div><br />Senge and his collaborators classify the transformative work to be done into the five disciplines of personal mastery, shared vision, team learning, mental models, and systems analysis. All five lines of work contain useful ideas for being a better member of a sobriety team. </div><div><br />Personal mastery comes, in Senge’s view, when an individual has a clear vision of a goal, combined with an accurate reading of reality. The gap between the vision and the reality sets up a "creative tension" that energizes the individual. In pursuit of personal mastery, the individual acquires the necessary capacities and creates whatever methods and rules are necessary to realize the vision. </div><div><br />Basic to acquiring personal mastery is a dedication to the truth: "Seeing and telling the truth is a fundamental component of personal mastery, and of the related discipline of shared vision.... Because creative tension depends on a clear understanding of current reality, it drains away as soon as people lie to themselves or each other." </div><div><br />The great enemy of personal mastery, says Senge, is the belief in one’s powerlessness and lack of self-worth. He says that the culture indoctrinates most people to believe either that they lack the capacity to get what they want, or that they are unworthy to achieve their goals. These beliefs are very difficult to eradicate. They may create a vicious circle in which we fail to move forward because we believe we are powerless, and we reinforce our feelings of powerlessness because we have failed to move forward. </div><div><br />A key element in achieving personal mastery, Senge writes, is to train and utilize the powers of the subconscious. Our subconscious mind can handle far more complex problems and more quickly than can our consciousness. For example, in driving a car in traffic or playing a musical instrument we perform with seeming effortlessness a task that our conscious minds at first approach could perform only very poorly, if at all. Senge points out that the subconscious "is highly subject to direction and conditioning." After much practice, practice, practice, there comes a "flip of the switch" in the subconscious when we have achieved mastery; for example, we begin to dream in the foreign language we have studied. </div><div><br />These points about personal mastery have obvious applications to our work as persons learning sobriety. Our vision is a sober life; our reality is filled with stresses and problems. The belief in our own powerlessness and/or lack of worth holds us back from realizing our vision, and may lock us in an all-too familiar loop of defeat. But if we can still see and speak the truth, we can break out of that cycle. Many of the sobriety tools that we have available, particularly the Daily Dos and other repetitive acts, are designed to work on the subconscious. Jim Christopher’s Triumph workshops are based centrally on the idea of training the subconscious (the "lizard brain"), very much in agreement with Senge’s theories. Senge’s "personal mastery" discipline holds many useful lessons for persons overcoming addictions. </div><div><br />Shared vision is the glue that holds together the personal mastery efforts of a learning organization’s members. On the one hand, if the individuals have widely disparate personal visions, their efforts will not come into alignment and the organization will not cohere. On the other hand, because individual psychology is so deeply cultural and organizational in its makeup, the organization's shared vision may become the vision that guides the personal mastery efforts of the individuals. A shared vision creates within an organization the same creative tension as within an individual. However, cautions Senge, the shared vision is rarely found in the group’s compulsory mission statement. It may be implicit, unspoken, or even unknown to its members. Discovering and articulating that vision is one of the primary tasks of the organization’s leadership. "Every organization has a destiny; a deep purpose that expresses the organization's reason for existence. We may never fully know that purpose, just as an individual never fully discovers his or her purpose in life. But choosing to continually listen for that sense of emerging purpose is a critical choice that shifts an individual or a community from a reactive to a creative orientation." </div><div><br />Hearing and articulating that vision is not a matter of a handful of people going into a room and drafting a mission statement. It takes much time, considerable philosophical depth, and requires an ongoing process of listening to the organization’s members. An important task of leadership is to organize processes by which the vision can emerge. When it does emerge, it is a powerful energizer, because it taps into the deepest motivation that people have – deeper than money, fame, or power – namely to be part of some effort that is larger than themselves, to be of service to the community and to the world. </div><div><br />It seems to me that one of the useful efforts of our upcoming ’99 SOS convention, and of the preconvention period, is to work on refining and deepening our shared vision. We emerged initially with a "negative" vision, as is the case with most political and social movements (anti-colonialism, anti-slavery, anti-war, etc.). We got together to achieve sobriety "without" something (religion, God, spirituality, dogmatism) and to get "away from" a bad place, like the tribes of Moses fleeing Egypt. There has been growing up, it seems to me, the more "positive" side of that original view, a vision of what we are for. We have a job to do, all of us, to fill in further the design and color of that emergent vision. </div><div><br />Team learning, the "third" of the disciplines (they are actually meant to be worked in any order, as needed), is the process by which personal mastery and shared vision come into alignment. In conventional organizations, a great deal of effort goes into making sure that the organization is not as intelligent as its leading members; this Senge calls "skilled incompetence." This negative distribution of learning is reinforced by methods of communication that communicate as little as possible. Conventional advocacy and "discussion" amount to little more than exchanges of gunfire, and the natural response of all participants is to barricade what they know and cover their behinds. No team learning, much less creation of a learning organization, can take place while its internal conversations are of this type. </div><div><br />Senge views these practices as so ingrained in corporate culture that an outside consultant is usually necessary to introduce management to different modes of discourse ("skilled discussion" and "dialogue"). Establishing actual communication in groups requires that members define each other as colleagues, not enemies, and that each person dares to be vulnerable and to admit to ignorance. Otherwise no learning can take place. The books, particularly the Fieldbook, outline several different games that groups can play to bring hidden conflict to the surface without harm to group cohesion, and for discussing the undiscussable topics that usually lurk beneath the surface of organizations that are stuck. </div><div><br />It seems to me that our normal discourse in our recovery meetings is far better than that of the usual corporate management groups. We are all colleagues in recovery, and generally we are good at admitting our ignorance and being vulnerable. I see "team learning" take place at practically every meeting. I don’t believe that we need outside consultants to make the talk in our recovery meetings flow – on the contrary, we could teach the consultants a thing or two.<br />However, there is very little if any conversation at present between the meetings. I don’t mean casual social conversation between members of different meetings who know each other. I mean organized dialogue between representatives of different meetings in the same city or area. And if we view the representatives of all the meetings in the country as one team, there is virtually no sustained conversation at all, and therefore team learning at the national level is almost nonexistent. </div><div><br />The national newsletter, with its quarterly schedule, cannot sustain a conversation about current concerns. The convenor’s email list is the only channel that can carry the flow of team learning nationwide and internationally at the present time, and fortunately most convenors now have the ability to go online. Our upcoming convention will be literally the first opportunity ever for many of the attendees to practice "team learning" on the national scale. We can learn from the Senge books about the qualities that will make productive dialogue at the convention: tempering advocacy with inquiry, linking theory with implementation, and speaking in the service of truth and for the interests of the whole. </div><div><br />Accurate mental models are necessary both for elaborating a vision and for understanding the reality. Mental models can be complex theories but are more often simple images, assumptions and stories. Drawing on cognitive psychology, Senge writes that mental models are inner programs that govern our perceptions, feelings, thoughts and actions. Major problems arise when the really operative models lie buried beneath the surface. As the Detroit automakers demonstrated, entire industries can espouse tacit mental models that no longer match reality.<br />Reshaping mental models is, in Senge’s view, a key point of leverage for effecting organizational change. He offers several exercises for bringing tacit mental models to the surface so they can be examined. A starting point for applying the lever is the gap that often develops between what people really feel and think, which Senge calls the "left-column" items, and what people say in formal business meetings (the "right column"). </div><div><br />Achievement of uniformity of mental models is not at all the goal of these exercises, Senge says. Although a successful dialogue may result in an alignment of models, a conformity of mental models in an organization is not necessary and is a sign of mental poverty. Congruency must not be forced, because it leads to shallowness in motivation and lack of resiliency. In passages that sound very much like our <a href="http://www.lifering.com/">Sobriety Handbook</a>, Senge writes: </div><div><br />Don't impose a favored mental model on people. Mental models should lead to self-concluding decisions to work their best. … Self-concluding decisions result in deeper convictions and more effective implementation. … People are more effective when they develop their own models -- even if mental models from more experienced people can avoid mistakes…. It's important to note that the goal is not agreement or congruency. Many mental models can exist at once. Some may disagree. All of them need to be considered and tested against situations that come up.<br />The existence of multiple mental models within an organization assures that different perspectives are brought to bear on a problem and that the collective intelligence of the organization can be greater than that of any of its parts. Successful organizations bring their diversity of mental models to the surface and cherish their differences. Organizations that have no differences or that suppress them are moribund. </div><div><br />Reading Senge’s remarks about mental models made me feel that SOS as an organization has been on the right track all along on this issue. We have always maintained that individuals can and must develop their own mental models for staying sober, and that only self-developed models can have the depth and inner force to sustain the individual successfully through the challenges that recovery poses. We treasure the diversity of different mental models that exists within our ranks, and we are so bold as to believe that this diversity makes us both more attractive and more effective as a sobriety organization. We would benefit by adding a still greater diversity of mental models to our toolbox, by raising the level of clarity and articulation of the models that we have, and by providing members with threads and maps that allow them more readily to locate what is available and try it on for size. </div><div><br />Systems thinking is the fifth and most fundamental of the disciplines whose practice makes a learning organization. Just as the learning organization is the antithesis of the hierarchical organization, systems thinking is the antithesis of linear thinking. Linear thought assumes that action flows from top to bottom, that motion goes from A to B, much in the manner of most people’s understanding of Newtonian mechanics. Systems theory thinks in circles: an action goes from A to B but there is a reflux action that goes back from B to A – frequently with unintended results. </div><div><br />Senge introduces the topic with "the beer game" (an unfortunate and unnecessary choice of subject matter), a seminar exercise in which a sudden modest increase in consumer demand for the "Lover’s Beer" brand leads the retailer and the wholesaler and the brewery into a massive spiral of overproduction ending in a collapse of the manufacturer – surely an unintended consequence. Dee Hock, a prominent corporate guru aligned with the LO trend, formulates this as a sardonic law of the universe: "Everything has both intended and unintended consequences. The intended consequences may or may not happen; the unintended consequences always do." The Senge books are illustrated throughout with circle diagrams showing various positive and negative feedback loops, either simple or combined into common patterns. It is Senge’s thesis that these reflux effects are frequently unseen and that they form structures which hold us prisoner so long as we are unaware of them. </div><div><br />Senge identifies a half dozen "archetypes" – organizational patterns that recur so frequently that systems thinkers can spot them on sight. The one that is most relevant to the current state of our organization is the archetype Senge calls "Shifting the Burden." In this pattern, a symptom of an underlying structural problem is relieved by a "quick fix," which in turn aggravates the underlying problem, which leads to more reliance on the "fix," and so on, until the organization goes into what Senge calls an "addiction loop." When this occurs, "the addiction becomes worse than the original problem, because of the devastation it wreaks on the fundamental ability to address the problem symptom." </div><div><br />In our case, the underlying structural problem was that we did not have the financial capacity, a decade ago, to sustain an organizational presence at the national level. We shifted the burden of that problem to a single outside funder, the Council for Secular Humanism. The unintended but inevitable consequence of this fix has been that the financial sponsor has complete ownership of the organization on the national level and considers SOS as its "subcommittee." As a consequence, our capacity to sustain a national organization from below has hardly developed and may even have atrophied. We seem to be linked to outside funding in an addictive loop, and what Senge calls "a powerful tendency toward addictive denial" is evident.<br />Senge’s advice for situations like this is multi-pronged. He suggests reflection: what was the original problem, and how else could it have been solved? He urges openness to hear other people’s views of what the problem is and how it can be fixed. It is crucially important, he writes, to articulate the long-term goals clearly and often, and to work on practical measures that support the underlying solution. If possible, go cold turkey on the addictive fix; if not, gain time to strengthen the long-term solution and develop alternative resources. These are wise words of advice as we approach the business meeting (Delegates’ Assembly) of our ’99 convention.<br />Senge avoids giving any pat formulas for how leadership in a LO should operate. No amount of reshuffling the organizational structure will produce a LO. But the bias is clearly in favor of decentralization, delegation, and a maximum of local autonomy.<br />If leadership no longer means issuing orders or playing the charismatic messiah, what does it mean? </div><div><br />Leadership means, firstly, designing the organizational structure – the leader as architect.<br />Then, the leader is a teacher who facilitates the learning process in the entire organization: assisting people to develop their own mental models, creating an environment in which personal mastery and team learning can flourish. The leader achieves leverage by "helping people achieve more accurate, more insightful, and more empowering views of reality." On the qualities of the leader as facilitator of the members’ self-empowerment process, Senge paraphrases Lao-tzu: "the bad leader is he who people despise. The good leader is he who people praise. The great leader is he who people say 'we did it ourselves.'" Our <a href="http://www.lifering.com/">Handbook</a> makes the identical point, end of Ch. 3. </div><div><br />The leader of the LO may also become de facto the steward of the organization’s shared vision, and this is positive; but the steward must remember that a vision cannot be owned. A vision is like a child, of which Kahlil Gibran wrote: they come through us, but they are not of us.<br />Finally, and most importantly, the leader models the qualities esteemed in the organization and its members. "Ultimately people follow people who believe in something and have the abilities to achieve results in the service of those beliefs. Or, to put it another way, who are the natural leaders of learning organizations? They are the learners."<br />The essence of a learning organization, Senge concludes, is being a member of a "great team." Through active participation, the individual experiences a "deep learning cycle," which entails "the development not just of new capacities, but of fundamental shifts of mind, individually and collectively." The evidence of "deep learning" is that we can do things we couldn't do before. We can have real conversation instead of chatter. We can see larger systems and forces at play and we can construct publicly testable hypotheses about them. We become aware of the presence or absence of spirit or vision; we know when we are following our vision, or when we are simply reacting. We begin to "tell a new story." In a learning organization, people become willing to reveal uncertainties and ignorance and incompetence, because only in this way can we learn. Gradually "a deep confidence develops within us," because we have experienced "the power of people living with integrity, openness, commitment, and collective intelligence." These are ideas that resonate deeply with many of us in recovery from lives of addiction.<br />It seems to me that Senge’s effort to recast the corporate world into this new mold is probably doomed. The inertia of the old behemoths founded on maximization of profit and on the externalization of costs – human, environmental and political – may prove too great, particularly against the background of the worldwide deflation that is in progress as I write this. But the concept of the learning organization may find fertile ground in the little hidden places of refuge where profit is not the prime directive, where people gather to be real with each other, and where "learning" is not only a metaphor for a vibrant way of being in the world, but a necessity of personal and organizational survival.</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2482000572431548443.post-1572860156281542922007-04-08T10:25:00.000-07:002011-02-13T13:58:35.821-08:00The Easy Way To Stop Smoking<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEtpGTlklbKdvpKa3nQkkEVYNArGEZ0zBziwo0rKgxo86mwQSKZRBntmLR1tiuXFkx8NUgt163oBRNpJSaxXAhGgVuhyphenhyphenyq4moIcHeVI-CJ86e9VVCeLQTwjAB-Mzo0ik651foktpr06Og/s1600/easy.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5573296880305581970" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 76px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 115px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEtpGTlklbKdvpKa3nQkkEVYNArGEZ0zBziwo0rKgxo86mwQSKZRBntmLR1tiuXFkx8NUgt163oBRNpJSaxXAhGgVuhyphenhyphenyq4moIcHeVI-CJ86e9VVCeLQTwjAB-Mzo0ik651foktpr06Og/s200/easy.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div><br />By Allen Carr<br />ISBN 076071200X<br /><br />Reviewed by Raymond B.<br /><br /><br />Allen Carr's latest edition of his book "The Easy Way To Stop Smoking" gives a good outline of his method. He has now expanded this to include weight loss, stopping drinking, losing the fear of flying etc. He sharply criticizes AA and the treatment center industry and a new book “The Easy Way To Stop Drinking” is forthcoming. His criticisms of AA are wide-ranging, but basically he is critical of any organization which encourages what he describes as “group-dependence”. So, I suppose SOS would come under this also. He appears to view support groups/recovery meetings in much the same way as Jack Trimpey -- an unnecessary impediment to living a drink/drug-free life. He does tend towards absolutism -- “My way or no way”, but I chose to ignore that, as there is a lot of good stuff in his thinking and methods.<br /><br />Basically, I was presented with the following :<br /><br />1. Nicotine is actually very easy to come off-the withdrawals are very mild and only last a few hours.<br /><br />2. All the carcinogens have left the body three weeks after the last cig.<br /><br />3. The "withdrawals" are illusory and come from the individual's own fear of not smoking, plus brainwashing by multi-national conglomerates. I was shown examples of subliminal advertising which were shocking, to put it mildly eg. people trying to hang themselves because they couldn't smoke etc.<br /><br />In a nutshell, the Carr method seems to be the simple truth about smoking.<br /><br />In addition to reading the book, I also attended one of his courses-a one-day affair comprising lecture, cross-talk and a spot of hypnotherapy at the end for good measure. I have had no cravings for a cig, nor am I overeating. I have no trouble sleeping and no-one has said I am more bad-tempered than usual (apart from this damn computer). I felt a bit peculiar for the first few hours, but basically that has been all I have had to endure. I feel OK.<br /><br />Allen Carr's website is at : http://www.qwerty.co.uk/allencarr.<br /><br />A lot of people in the UK has stopped smoking purely by reading his book, without any sessions at all.<br /><br />The one thing he is missing is any sort of group support. He does have a help line, though it is UK only.<br /><br />I have to stress, though, that if what you are looking for is scientific propositions backed up by rigorous research and data-analysis, you won’t find it here. Carr basically states his view and then provides examples which back up his claim.<br /><br />As you can tell, I am a big fan of Allen Carr. I do have some reservations about the method etc. but the fact is that I haven't smoked, nor have I had the horrific withdrawals I went through so many times. I feel good without a cig. That is the best recommendation I can give.<br /><br />One last word of caution for an audience with a secular outlook-I read his latest book "The Easy Way to Lose Weight" recently and he announces in it that he has metaphysical beliefs in a "Creator" (vague and unspecified , but supernatural all the same) and describes atheism as an immature outlook. While his method is brilliant (because it works) I don't know that I would care for the sort of self-indulgent pontificating he seems to have turned to, to flesh out his pages. . He is most definitely not a theist in the conventional sense of the word, but his pseudo-metaphysical ramblings may turn some people off.<br /><br />~Ray B. is a member of SOS in the UK.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0