"We Have Recovered : the Common Solution Program of Recovery returns its readers to the fundamental message and planned program of action offered to the world of alcoholism and addiction in 1939 when the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous was published ; the same fundamental message that resulted in a 75% recovery rate by 1955. If you are an alcoholic or addict; or you love one, this book is for you. Questions asked and answered have led to a changed life for thousands of sufferers and their families. Answers to questions like: Am I really an alcoholic or drug addict? -- Why can't I stop drinking once I take the first drink? -- why do I keep picking it up and using again and again, when I don't want to? -- Why doesn't attendance at meetings or church services solve my problem? -- How can I help this person? -- What can I do about it all? -- Is there really a way out? Junkie or juicer. Meth or martinis. Chemicals or cocktails...Insightful, practical and solidly grounded in the Big Book of AA, the companion piece, We Have Recovered, is written for you."--back cover
A 75th anniversary e-book version of the most important and practical self-help book ever written, Alcoholics Anonymous. Here is a special deluxe edition of a book that has changed millions of lives and launched the modern recovery movement: Alcoholics Anonymous. This edition not only reproduces the original 1939 text of Alcoholics Anonymous, but as a special bonus features the complete 1941 Saturday Evening Post article “Alcoholics Anonymous” by journalist Jack Alexander, which, at the time, did as much as the book itself to introduce millions of seekers to AA’s program. Alcoholics Anonymous has touched and transformed myriad lives, and finally appears in a volume that honors its posterity and impact.
In this ground breaking book, Anne Wayman, clean and sober for almost 25 years and with multiple works published by Hazelden, explores two myths that grown up in the 12 Step movement: never-ending recovery, and perpetual powerlessness. Convinced that the 12 Steps offer the best chance for lasting recovery, she challenges the movement to acknowledge the fear behind the myths, and let them go so that the Program can reach its full potential. Working from original source material, she explains the nature and development of the myths. She documents the damage they do to individuals and the movement as a whole, including its relative failure in areas of poverty where it is most needed. With true compassion and understanding she shows exactly what 12 Steppers need to do to let go of the myths, and become Powerfully Recovered, as the original Program intended. "It's about time!" Bruce K. "Powerfully Recovered! has helped me articulate something I've been feeling for years." Kathy B. "This book makes a powerful and positive difference for anyone in any 12 Step Program." Grace S.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “An unflinching examination of how our drinking culture hurts women and a gorgeous memoir of how one woman healed herself.”—Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Untamed “You don’t know how much you need this book, or maybe you do. Either way, it will save your life.”—Melissa Hartwig Urban, Whole30 co-founder and CEO The founder of the first female-focused recovery program offers a groundbreaking look at alcohol and a radical new path to sobriety. We live in a world obsessed with drinking. We drink at baby showers and work events, brunch and book club, graduations and funerals. Yet no one ever questions alcohol’s ubiquity—in fact, the only thing ever questioned is why someone doesn’t drink. It is a qualifier for belonging and if you don’t imbibe, you are considered an anomaly. As a society, we are obsessed with health and wellness, yet we uphold alcohol as some kind of magic elixir, though it is anything but. When Holly Whitaker decided to seek help after one too many benders, she embarked on a journey that led not only to her own sobriety, but revealed the insidious role alcohol plays in our society and in the lives of women in particular. What’s more, she could not ignore the ways that alcohol companies were targeting women, just as the tobacco industry had successfully done generations before. Fueled by her own emerging feminism, she also realized that the predominant systems of recovery are archaic, patriarchal, and ineffective for the unique needs of women and other historically oppressed people—who don’t need to lose their egos and surrender to a male concept of God, as the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous state, but who need to cultivate a deeper understanding of their own identities and take control of their lives. When Holly found an alternate way out of her own addiction, she felt a calling to create a sober community with resources for anyone questioning their relationship with drinking, so that they might find their way as well. Her resultant feminine-centric recovery program focuses on getting at the root causes that lead people to overindulge and provides the tools necessary to break the cycle of addiction, showing us what is possible when we remove alcohol and destroy our belief system around it. Written in a relatable voice that is honest and witty, Quit Like a Woman is at once a groundbreaking look at drinking culture and a road map to cutting out alcohol in order to live our best lives without the crutch of intoxication. You will never look at drinking the same way again.
This book is for anyone who is impacted by addiction trauma or abuse that is ready to learn about healing and recovery * Therapists, Universities, Treatment centers, people who are new or seasoned in recovery. The purpose is to help people seek out SOLUTIONS to these everyday problems. Are you looking for hope, and courageous answers to helping yourself or a loved one recover from the effects of unresolved trauma * as it gets played out as addiction and family dysfunction? WE DO RECOVER FROM ADDICTION, SHAME, ABUSE, NEGLECT, ABANDONMENT We do recover from being mistreated We can reclaim our dignity, our health, our relationship with ourself. This book is created to help others find solutions, hope, improve their lives, and live their best life regardless of what has or has not happened to them in their life. We need to know and believe that recovery is possible! We need to know that we can recover and hold space for our people to heal Rather than enabling addiction and letting life or a family be lost to the disease of active addiction (self-abandonment).
Eating Disorders Anonymous: The Story of How We Recovered from Our Eating Disorders presents the accumulated experience, strength, and hope of many who have followed a Twelve-Step approach to recover from their eating disorders. Eating Disorders Anonymous (EDA), founded by sober members of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), have produced a work that emulates the “Big Book” in style and substance. EDA respects the pioneering work of AA while expanding its Twelve-Step message of hope to include those who are religious or seek a spiritual solution, and for those who are not and may be more comfortable substituting “higher purpose” for the traditional “Higher Power.” Further, the EDA approach embraces the development and maintenance of balance and perspective, rather than abstinence, as the goal of recovery. Initial chapters provide clear directions on how to establish a foothold in recovery by offering one of the founder’s story of hope, and collective voices tell why EDA is suitable for readers with any type of problem eating, including: anorexia nervosa, bulimia, binge eating, emotional eating, and orthorexia. The text then explains how to use the Twelve Steps to develop a durable and resilient way of thinking and acting that is free of eating disordered thoughts and behaviors, including how to pay it forward so that others might have hope of recovery. In the second half of the text, individual contributors share their experiences, describing what it was like to have an eating disorder, what happened that enabled them to make a start in recovery, and what it is like to be in recovery. Like the “Big Book,” these stories are in three sections: Pioneers of EDA, They Stopped in Time, and They Lost Nearly All. Readers using the Twelve Steps to recover from other issues will find the process consistent and reinforcing of their experiences, yet the EDA approach offers novel ideas and specific guidance for those struggling with food, weight and body image issues. Letters of support from three, highly-regarded medical professionals and two, well-known recovery advocates offer reassurance that EDA’s approach is consistent with that supported by medical research and standards in the field of eating disorders treatment. Intended as standard reading for members who participate in EDA groups throughout the world, this book is accessible and appropriate for anyone who wants to recover from an eating disorder or from issues related to food, weight, and body image.
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Empathy Exams comes this transformative work showing that sometimes the recovery is more gripping than the addiction. With its deeply personal and seamless blend of memoir, cultural history, literary criticism, and reportage, The Recovering turns our understanding of the traditional addiction narrative on its head, demonstrating that the story of recovery can be every bit as electrifying as the train wreck itself. Leslie Jamison deftly excavates the stories we tell about addiction -- both her own and others' -- and examines what we want these stories to do and what happens when they fail us. All the while, she offers a fascinating look at the larger history of the recovery movement, and at the complicated bearing that race and class have on our understanding of who is criminal and who is ill. At the heart of the book is Jamison's ongoing conversation with literary and artistic geniuses whose lives and works were shaped by alcoholism and substance dependence, including John Berryman, Jean Rhys, Billie Holiday, Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson, and David Foster Wallace, as well as brilliant lesser-known figures such as George Cain, lost to obscurity but newly illuminated here. Through its unvarnished relation of Jamison's own ordeals, The Recovering also becomes a book about a different kind of dependency: the way our desires can make us all, as she puts it, "broken spigots of need." It's about the particular loneliness of the human experience-the craving for love that both devours us and shapes who we are. For her striking language and piercing observations, Jamison has been compared to such iconic writers as Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, yet her utterly singular voice also offers something new. With enormous empathy and wisdom, Jamison has given us nothing less than the story of addiction and recovery in America writ large, a definitive and revelatory account that will resonate for years to come.
Robby Gallaty is not who you think he is. In Recovered, pastor and author Robby Gallaty tells the story of how God radically saved him from his addictions and called him into a life of discipleship. Robby grew up in a very religious Catholic family who attended church every Sunday and confession on Saturday if needed. Very rarely did he miss a Saturday night dinner and a movie with his parents and sister Lori. You can imagine how devastated they were when Robby stole $15,000 from them to fuel his drug addiction. Two years earlier, he was rear-ended on his way home from work by an 18-wheeler. Two herniated discs in his neck and back forced him to rely on pharmaceutical drugs to cope with the pain. Within three months, he transitioned to street drugs, heroine, and cocaine, after blowing through his thirty-day prescription in two weeks. Robbing his parents was the only option to prolong his drug habit. Shortly thereafter, Robby hit rock bottom. But God wasn’t done with him. After a trip to rehab followed by a relapse and a second rehab visit, Robby surrendered his life to Christ, and nothing has ever been the same. This story—a story of salvation and new life—is for any reader who: wonders if God is done with them has messed up time and time again is battling drug or alcohol addiction or other destructive behaviors has a loved one in the throes of addiction needs to be reminded of the miraculous salvation found in the gospel
This classic book, written 17 years ago but still selling more than 13,000 copies every year, has been completely updated and expanded by the author. "I used to drink," writes John Bradshaw,"to solve the problems caused by drinking. The more I drank to relieve my shame-based loneliness and hurt, the more I felt ashamed." Shame is the motivator behind our toxic behaviors: the compulsion, co-dependency, addiction and drive to superachieve that breaks down the family and destroys personal lives. This book has helped millions identify their personal shame, understand the underlying reasons for it, address these root causes and release themselves from the shame that binds them to their past failures.
