Thinking Simply About Addiction

Thinking Simply About Addiction PDF Author: Richard Sandor
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781585426881
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
A profound yet practical guide to understanding addiction and recovery from an authority on the subject. No social problem today causes greater confusion than addiction. Whatever form it takes — alcohol, heroin, cocaine, nicotine, etc. — it tears apart homes and relationships, destroys careers and futures, and leaves loved ones asking: Why couldn't he stop once and for all? Or "get better"? Or control himself? Despite everything that's been said and written, many people remain deeply confounded about these problems. The addiction-treatment field itself is in a state of civil war because there is no consensus on what addiction is, much less what to do about it. Based on years of hard-won experience by a preeminent specialist in addictive behavior, Thinking Simply About Addiction explains the core truth of addiction: It is not a neurosis, a physical malady, a behavioral choice, or, in the narrowest sense, a moral failure. It is an automatism — an involuntary, non-stoppable behavior that once triggered leaves the addict powerless. It is a human problem and a part of human nature. As such, it is something that we all experience. In four to-the-point chapters, Thinking Simply About Addiction rises above the noise level and provides real-world help and new ways of thinking for addicts and those who care for them. Its insights are so profoundly clear and sensible that many readers will be able to say: Finally, someone gets it.

Thinking Simply About Addiction

Thinking Simply About Addiction PDF Author: Richard Sandor
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781585426881
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book

Book Description
A profound yet practical guide to understanding addiction and recovery from an authority on the subject. No social problem today causes greater confusion than addiction. Whatever form it takes — alcohol, heroin, cocaine, nicotine, etc. — it tears apart homes and relationships, destroys careers and futures, and leaves loved ones asking: Why couldn't he stop once and for all? Or "get better"? Or control himself? Despite everything that's been said and written, many people remain deeply confounded about these problems. The addiction-treatment field itself is in a state of civil war because there is no consensus on what addiction is, much less what to do about it. Based on years of hard-won experience by a preeminent specialist in addictive behavior, Thinking Simply About Addiction explains the core truth of addiction: It is not a neurosis, a physical malady, a behavioral choice, or, in the narrowest sense, a moral failure. It is an automatism — an involuntary, non-stoppable behavior that once triggered leaves the addict powerless. It is a human problem and a part of human nature. As such, it is something that we all experience. In four to-the-point chapters, Thinking Simply About Addiction rises above the noise level and provides real-world help and new ways of thinking for addicts and those who care for them. Its insights are so profoundly clear and sensible that many readers will be able to say: Finally, someone gets it.

Thinking Simply about Addiction

Thinking Simply about Addiction PDF Author: Richard S. Sandor
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781101021859
Category : Alcoholism
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description


Addictive Thinking

Addictive Thinking PDF Author: Abraham J Twerski
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1592858066
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
The unpredictability and anxiety associated with the coronavirus pandemic can cloud and confuse everybody's thinking. Excuses, self-deception and addictive logic can harm your recovery and relationships. Don't let it. Author Abraham Twerski reveals how self-deceptive thought can undermine self-esteem and threaten the sobriety of a recovering individuals and offers hope to those seeking a healthy and rewarding recovery. Abnormal thinking in addiction was originally recognized by members of Alcoholics Anonymous, who coined the term "stinking thinking." Addictive thinking often appears rational superficially, hence addicts as well as their family members are easily seduced by the attendant--and erroneous--reasoning process it can foster. In Addictive Thinking, author Abraham Twerski reveals how self-deceptive thought can undermine self-esteem and threaten the sobriety of a recovering individual. This timely revision of the original classic includes updated information and research on depression and affective disorders, the relationship between addictive thinking and relapse, and the origins of addictive thought. Ultimately, Addictive Thinking offers hope to those seeking a healthy and rewarding life recovery.

Theory of Addiction

Theory of Addiction PDF Author: Robert West
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470674210
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
The word ‘addiction’ these days is used to refer to a chronic condition where there is an unhealthily powerful motivation to engage in a particular behaviour. This can be driven by many different factors – physiological, psychological, environmental and social. If we say that it is all about X, we miss V, W, Y and Z. So, some people think addicts are using drugs to escape from unhappy lives, feelings of anxiety and so on; many are. Some people think drugs become addictive because they alter the brain chemistry to create powerful urges; that is often true. Others think that drug taking is about seeking after pleasure; often it is. Some take the view that addiction is a choice – addicts weigh up the pros and cons of doing what they do and decide the former outweigh the latter. Yet others believe that addicts suffer from poor impulse control; that is often true… And so it goes on. When you look at the evidence, you see that all these positions capture important aspects of the problem – but they are not complete explanations. Neuroscience can help us delve more deeply into some of these explanations, while the behavioural and social sciences are better at exploring others. We need a model that puts all this together in a way that can help us decide what to do in different cases. Should we prescribe a drug, give the person some ‘tender loving care’, put them in prison or what? Theory of Addiction provides this synthesis. The first edition was well received: ‘Throughout the book the reader is exposed to a vast number of useful observations...The theoretical aims are timely, refreshing, ambitious and above all challenging. It opens up a new way of looking at addiction and has the potential to move the field of addiction a considerable leap forward. Thus we wholeheartedly would like to recommend the book for students as well as scholars. Read and learn!’ Nordic Studies on Alcohol and Drugs ‘The book provides a comprehensive review of existing theories - over 30 in all - and this synthesis of theories constitutes an important contribution in and of itself... West is to be commended for his synthesis of addiction theories that span neurobiology, psychology and social science and for his insights into what remains unexplained.’ Addiction This new edition of Theory of Addiction builds on the first, including additional theories in the field, a more developed specification of PRIME theory and analysis of the expanding evidence base. With this important new information, Theory of Addiction will continue to be essential reading for all those working in addiction, from student to experienced practitioner – as urged above, Read and learn!

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts PDF Author: Gabor Maté, MD
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
ISBN: 1583944206
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 522

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Book Description
A “thought-provoking and powerful” study that reframes everything you’ve been taught about addiction and recovery—from the New York Times–bestselling author of The Myth of Normal (Bruce Perry, author of The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog). A world-renowned trauma expert combines real-life stories with cutting-edge research to offer a holistic approach to understanding addiction—its origins, its place in society, and the importance of self-compassion in recovery. Based on Gabor Maté’s two decades of experience as a medical doctor and his groundbreaking work with people with addiction on Vancouver’s skid row, this #1 international bestseller radically re-envisions a much misunderstood condition by taking a compassionate approach to substance abuse and addiction recovery. In the same vein as Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts traces the root causes of addiction to childhood trauma and examines the pervasiveness of addiction in society. Dr. Maté presents addiction not as a discrete phenomenon confined to an unfortunate or weak-willed few, but as a continuum that runs throughout—and perhaps underpins—our society. It is not a medical “condition” distinct from the lives it affects but rather the result of a complex interplay among personal history, emotional and neurological development, brain chemistry, and the drugs and behaviors of addiction. Simplifying a wide array of brain and addiction research findings from around the globe, the book avoids glib self-help remedies, instead promoting a thorough and compassionate self-understanding as the first key to healing and wellness. Dr. Maté argues persuasively against contemporary health, social, and criminal justice policies toward addiction and how they perpetuate the War on Drugs. The mix of personal stories—including the author’s candid discussion of his own “high-status” addictive tendencies—and science with positive solutions makes the book equally useful for lay readers and professionals.

Starve the Monster

Starve the Monster PDF Author: Hugh Quigley
Publisher: Hypnoarts
ISBN: 9781999764104
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
If you're a professional looking at stopping; and reclaiming your life, then this remarkable book by addiction expert, Hugh Quigley PhD, reveals how you can kill your addiction thinking. See Your Future More Clearly, Take Charge Of Your Life and Gain Peace Of Mind.

The Urge

The Urge PDF Author: Carl Erik Fisher
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525561455
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and The Boston Globe An authoritative, illuminating, and deeply humane history of addiction—a phenomenon that remains baffling and deeply misunderstood despite having touched countless lives—by an addiction psychiatrist striving to understand his own family and himself “Carl Erik Fisher’s The Urge is the best-written and most incisive book I’ve read on the history of addiction. In the midst of an overdose crisis that grows worse by the hour and has vexed America for centuries, Fisher has given us the best prescription of all: understanding. He seamlessly blends a gripping historical narrative with memoir that doesn’t self-aggrandize; the result is a full-throated argument against blaming people with substance use disorder. The Urge is a propulsive tour de force that is as healing as it is enjoyable to read.” —Beth Macy, author of Dopesick Even after a decades-long opioid overdose crisis, intense controversy still rages over the fundamental nature of addiction and the best way to treat it. With uncommon empathy and erudition, Carl Erik Fisher draws on his own experience as a clinician, researcher, and alcoholic in recovery as he traces the history of a phenomenon that, centuries on, we hardly appear closer to understanding—let alone addressing effectively. As a psychiatrist-in-training fresh from medical school, Fisher was soon face-to-face with his own addiction crisis, one that nearly cost him everything. Desperate to make sense of the condition that had plagued his family for generations, he turned to the history of addiction, learning that the current quagmire is only the latest iteration of a centuries-old story: humans have struggled to define, treat, and control addictive behavior for most of recorded history, including well before the advent of modern science and medicine. A rich, sweeping account that probes not only medicine and science but also literature, religion, philosophy, and public policy, The Urge illuminates the extent to which the story of addiction has persistently reflected broader questions of what it means to be human and care for one another. Fisher introduces us to the people who have endeavored to address this complex condition through the ages: physicians and politicians, activists and artists, researchers and writers, and of course the legions of people who have struggled with their own addictions. He also examines the treatments and strategies that have produced hope and relief for many people with addiction, himself included. Only by reckoning with our history of addiction, he argues—our successes and our failures—can we light the way forward for those whose lives remain threatened by its hold. The Urge is at once an eye-opening history of ideas, a riveting personal story of addiction and recovery, and a clinician’s urgent call for a more expansive, nuanced, and compassionate view of one of society’s most intractable challenges.

Trauma and Addiction

Trauma and Addiction PDF Author: Tian Dayton
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0757396704
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
For the past decade, author Tian Dayton has been researching trauma and addiction, and how psychodrama (or sociometry group psychotherapy) can be used in their treatment. Since trauma responses are stored in the body, a method of therapy that engages the body through role play can be more effective in accessing the full complement of trauma-related memories. This latest book identifies the interconnection of trauma and addictive behavior, and shows why they can become an unending cycle. Emotional and psychological pain so often lead to self-medicating, which leads to more pain, and inevitably more self-medicating, and so on--ad infinitum. This groundbreaking book offers readers effective ways to work through their traumas in order to heal their addictions and their predilection toward what clinicians call self-medicating (the abuse of substances [alcohol, drugs, food], activities [work, sex, gambling, etc.] and/or possessions [money, material things].) Readers caught up in the endless cycle of trauma and addiction will permanently transform their lives by reading this book. Therapists treating patients for whom no other avenue of therapy has proved effective will find that this book offers practical, lasting solutions. Case studies and examples of this behavioral phenomenon will illustrate the connection, helping readers understand its dynamics, recognize their own situations and realize that they are not alone in experiencing this syndrome. The author deftly combines the longstanding trauma theories of Van der Kolk, Herman, Bowlby, Krystal and others with her own experiential methods using psychodrama, sociometry and group therapy in the treatment of addiction and posttraumatic stress disorder. While designed to be useful to therapists, this book will also be accessible to trade readers. It includes comprehensive references, as well as a complete index.

Is It Love Or Is It Addiction?

Is It Love Or Is It Addiction? PDF Author: Brenda Schaeffer
Publisher: M J F Books
ISBN: 9781567310719
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Offers advice & a practical guide to making relationships work

The Addicted Lawyer

The Addicted Lawyer PDF Author: Brian Cuban
Publisher: Post Hill Press
ISBN: 1682613712
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Brian Cuban was living a lie. With a famous last name and a successful career as a lawyer, Brian was able to hide his clinical depression and alcohol and cocaine addictions—for a while. Today, as an inspirational speaker in long-term recovery, Brian looks back on his journey with honesty, compassion, and even humor as he reflects both on what he has learned about himself and his career choice and how the legal profession enables addiction. His demons, which date to his childhood, controlled him through failed marriages and stays in a psychiatric facility, until they brought him to the brink of suicide. That was his wake-up call. This is his story. Brian also takes an in-depth look at why there is such a high percentage of problematic alcohol use and other mental health issues in the legal profession. What types of therapies work? Are 12-step programs the only answer? Brian also includes interviews with experts on the subject as well as others in the profession who are now in recovery. The Addicted Lawyer is both a serious study of addiction and a compelling story of redemption.