Learned Optimism

By Martin Seligman
ISBN 0-394-57915-1

Reviewed by Steve Snyder


Want to learn how "learned helplessness" can often lead to depression - a good argument against the "powerlessness" idea of 12-step programs?

And, at the same time, would you like to learn, from evidence gathered in controlled studies, about the emotional, mental and physical health benefits of positive thinking? And how that positive thinking can be developed in a purely secular context?

In other words, for anyone looking for personal growth as part of his or her sober lives, Learned Optimism is just the book for you. Martin E.P. Seligman is professor of social science and the director of clinical training in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

His psychological background is generally from the cognitive therapy school of thought, being one of the early leaders in research in this field back in the 1970s. He developed the theory of learned helplessness in the early 1970s, one of the major blows to behavioral theory.

How does this relate to alcoholism or addiction? Simple. From my personal experience, pessimistic thinking can be an easy trigger to drinking, especially if it is leading into depression. A more optimistic outlook on life, as Seligman shows, usually includes the belief that I have control and effectiveness in how I am living my life. It also has more emotional stability. Both of these facts can make the abstinence journey easier.

Seligman says three specific modes of thought in dealing with negative events in life separate pessimists and optimists.

The first is the belief in the permanence of negative events. The pessimist will say, "Diets never work" while the optimist will say, "I'm just eating out too much right now." The pessimist will say, "Women are always turning me down" while the optimist will say, "She just isn't interested in dating right now."

However, when good things happen, the styles are reversed, Seligman says. The optimist will then say, "I'm always lucky" whereas the pessimist will say, "It's my lucky day today."

The second difference is the belief in the pervasiveness of events.

Pessimists will say, "All bosses are tyrants" or "All men are jerks," whereas the optimist will say, "Mr. Bigstaff is a tyrant" or "Billy Bob is a jerk."

Again, the tables are turned on good events.

When he or she gets an A on a test, the pessimist will say, "I'm smart in math" whereas the optimist will say, "I'm smart."

The third difference in what Seligman calls explanatory style is personalization.

The pessimist believes he or she always causes bad events to happen to him or herself. The pessimist would say, "I have no golfing skill" whereas the optimist would say, "I have no golfing luck" or maybe even, "The wind was blowing" or "The sun was in my eyes."

Again, the pessimist and optimist reverse styles for good events.

At softball, the pessimist might say, "Our team won the game," whereas the optimist says, "I won the game."
"The good news is that pessimists can learn the skills of optimism and permanently improve the quality of their lives," Seligman says. "Even optimists can benefit from learning how to change.

"Becoming an optimist consists … of learning a set of skills about how to talk to yourself when you suffer a personal defeat."

For persons early in sobriety, wanting help to dialogue with their "addict" voices, this is certainly encouraging. For all recovering people familiar with Albert Ellis' ABC method, Seligman's final chapter on how we can become more optimistic will be quite familiar.

In short, for those wanting something "more" out of secular sobriety, this book could be a very good read. Learned Optimism is a bit old, as a 1990 book, but still insightful, I believe.

Ashes to Ashes

By Richard Kluger
ISBN: 0375700366

Reviewed by Steve Snyder.


There may still be a few people in America, besides major tobacco company executives, their employees and their hired legal guns, who argue that there is no demonstrated causal link between smoking and cancer and that nicotine is not addictive.

Yet, these companies’ own research departments knew of some of the health problems 40 years ago and more. And for those who may have heard the basics of the tobacco companies stonewalling, some of the details can still paint a callous picture. Thirty years ago, Lorillard was making the first efforts at a deliberately "safe" cigarette, using a burning catalyst and an additive, partly as a way to break out of its No. 4 position among cigarette companies. But company legal counsel said "no," worried about liability over conventional cigarettes it sold.

That and more can be found in Ashes to Ashes, for those still wondering about all the details of Big Tobacco. Ashes to Ashes, by Richard Kluger, is a detailed look at the history of tobacco, beyond that, the history of the cigarette and above all, the history of the major American tobacco companies, including their deceptive marketing strategies and their half-century of willful denial and obfuscation over the clear causal links between cigarettes and lung cancer, first in the research history, then cigarettes and cardiopulmonary disease, cigarettes and other cancers, and cigarettes and emphysema.

For nonsmokers, Ashes to Ashes has other importance. It details research on environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), commonly known as second-hand smoke. Over the last decade, studies by the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as various heath research centers, have detailed a moderate connection between second-hand smoke and lung cancer and a stronger connection, with greater likelihood of adverse health conditions, between ETS and cardiopulmonary disease.

Since Ashes to Ashes is a 1996 book, it doesn’t include details about the Medicaid lawsuit filed in the later 1990s by a number of states, which resulted in multibillion-dollar settlements by the tobacco companies, and which further exposed those companies’ decades of deceit on the danger of cigarettes.

But, up to the mid-1990s, this is all presented in detail, including:

1940s-1960s ads which made borderline health claims, including when cigarette filters were first introduced, without doing anything that might provoke a then-toothless Federal Trade Commission.
Advertising graphics, such as beach scenes, which underscored these hints at healthfulness.
Details of marketing to children, including cigarette giveaways to youth outside concerts into the 1970s.
Aggressive efforts to expand U.S. cigarette sales abroad, including using federal government muscle on trade deficit issues to push American cigarette sales in Japan and other Asian countries as a key part of reducing trade deficits.
How tobacco companies bought and funded the research of outside scientists, including some on government study panels who leaked information back to them. In other cases, particularly with British psychologist Hans Eysinck, the Tobacco Institute, Big Tobacco’s lobbying and PR front group, paid for years for him to continue studies and reports on cigarettes as being purely a psychological habit and not physiologically addictive.
The American Medical Association’s unconscionable actions, especially in trading southern tobacco states’ Congressional votes against Medicaid and Medicare in exchange for not supporting the first Surgeon General’s report in 1964. The political timidity of the American Cancer Society is also reported in detail.
How federal smoking legislation, after the first Surgeon General’s report, was usually written on a "lowest common denominator" base of what Big Tobacco would accept without too much of a fight.
Cynical arguments that tobacco companies actually saved the government money, with smokers being less of a drain on Social Security through their earlier deaths.
How state and local efforts, such as nonsmoking areas, became the primary fighting ground.
How, already in the late 1970s, the Food and Drug Administration was being urged to put cigarettes on its list of controlled toxic substances and regulate cigarettes as a drug delivery device.
And, finally, part of why the FDA hasn’t done this – or simply outlawed cigarettes – and why the various states haven’t taken more restrictive action. Governments, too, are hooked – on the millions and millions of dollars annually at the level of the various states and more than 10 billion a year in federal excise taxes. Other countries, with cigarette taxes even higher, are more hooked. And, in America, tobacco state Congressmen still have power on Capitol Hill, as well as Republicans generally not being of a mind to further regulate tobacco.
However, at the end of the book, Kluger offers his personal plan to induce Big Tobacco to step into the 21st century and to begin to step away from its deadly product, especially as lawsuits mount up.

Kluger says Washington should offer tobacco companies blanket liability from further suits, except for contaminated products. In exchange, the excise tax would be pegged at half of wholesale cigarette prices, the FDA would have the power to regulate maximum tar and nicotine yields, cigarette packs would advertise total chemical content, not just tar and nicotine yields, and federal price supports to tobacco growers would be phased out.

Even with recent lawsuits like the one in Florida, it’s not a bad prescription. However, with the current national political leadership, it’s, sadly, not likely to happen.

Part fascinating history, part science story, part akin to a detective story and part morality play, Ashes to Ashes, by Richard Kluger, is published by Alfred A. Knopf.