Addiction Reality

From my perspective as an addict, this story is a memoir and a true account of my personal experience working for a large auto manufacturing company and my own destructive path in which I abused and became addicted to prescription pills. At the time, I began to question all things and realized how I had become a bit slightly insane, yet I was able to capture many thoughts and feelings that circulated inside my head for this period of time. During this experience, I became consumed by everything, including my own addiction as well as the different addictions of society and the corporate entity. It’s not exactly straight forward, but there is a theme to it if one can dig it out, as the reader you have to put it together as a puzzle and understand you are inside the mind of someone who has collided with many issues and understandings of life not meant for everyone. There is also information in my story that needs to be told, as the public should be aware of certain issues. And this is just the beginning!

Through the vivid, true stories of five people who journeyed into and out of addiction, a renowned neuroscientist explains why the "disease model" of addiction is wrong and illuminates the path to recovery. The psychiatric establishment and rehab industry in the Western world have branded addiction a brain disease. But in The Biology of Desire, cognitive neuroscientist and former addict Marc Lewis makes a convincing case that addiction is not a disease, and shows why the disease model has become an obstacle to healing. Lewis reveals addiction as an unintended consequence of the brain doing what it's supposed to do-seek pleasure and relief-in a world that's not cooperating. As a result, most treatment based on the disease model fails. Lewis shows how treatment can be retooled to achieve lasting recovery. This is enlightening and optimistic reading for anyone who has wrestled with addiction either personally or professionally.

Scripting Addiction takes readers into the highly ritualized world of mainstream American addiction treatment. It is a world where clinical practitioners evaluate how drug users speak about themselves and their problems, and where the ideal of "healthy" talk is explicitly promoted, carefully monitored, and identified as the primary sign of therapeutic progress. The book explores the puzzling question: why do addiction counselors dedicate themselves to reconciling drug users' relationship to language in order to reconfigure their relationship to drugs? To answer this question, anthropologist Summerson Carr traces the charged interactions between counselors, clients, and case managers at "Fresh Beginnings," an addiction treatment program for homeless women in the midwestern United States. She shows that shelter, food, and even the custody of children hang in the balance of everyday therapeutic exchanges, such as clinical assessments, individual therapy sessions, and self-help meetings. Acutely aware of the high stakes of self-representation, experienced clients analyze and learn to effectively perform prescribed ways of speaking, a mimetic practice they call "flipping the script." As a clinical ethnography, Scripting Addiction examines how decades of clinical theorizing about addiction, language, self-knowledge, and sobriety is manifested in interactions between counselors and clients. As an ethnography of the contemporary United States, the book demonstrates the complex cultural roots of the powerful clinical ideas that shape therapeutic transactions--and by extension administrative routines and institutional dynamics--at sites such as "Fresh Beginnings."

Featuring the work of several up-and-coming scholars working to deepen theoretical perspectives on addiction and its relationship to social control and deviance, this volume fills a gap in addiction studies by offering critical perspectives that interrogate and challenge traditional and/or mainstream understandings of addiction.

The internet has transformed the world we live in, but it also poses new risks to our psychological well-being. This book provides an introduction to the issue of internet addiction, an increasingly common problem. All day, every day, we are connected to the internet, putting most people at some level of risk for internet addiction. Problematic internet use can take many forms, including overuse of social media and addictions to online shopping, gaming, or pornography. Such behaviors can cause anxiety, depression, sleep deprivation, loneliness, and physical health problems. People can lose their jobs and families, and in a few extreme cases, internet addiction has directly led to the death of the addicted individual or a child in their care. Internet Addiction is the latest volume in Greenwood's Health and Medical Issues Today series. Part I explores what internet addiction is, the many forms it can take, and the serious consequences it can have. Part II examines a number of controversies and issues, such as balancing the internet's benefits against its addictive nature. Part III provides a variety of useful materials, including case studies, a timeline of critical events, and a directory of resources.

There are awesome and powerful creative forces that can be fully tapped; that will absolutely unleash our dreams and hopes transforming them into a desired reality; or these very same forces will send us into the deepest darkest Hell we have ever known! If a person fails to understand that they have a huge responsibility to take full possession and control of this great creative power, then that failure to take this responsibility will always lead to these forces taking control of the person in an undesirable, destructive and potentially deadly manner. In other words opportunities and temptations to use drugs or alcohol will present themselves as a direct result of failing to take control of these forces or misusing their power! All addictions are a manifestation caused by the poor or improper use of these forces and powers! The very Powers that govern the ability for anyone to accomplish anything in their lives for their good; are the very same powers that can and will undermine and destroy those efforts! This book will give you the essential Eleven Powers and Eleven Arts that will enable you to change your life. The use of these Powers and Arts will enable you to take full control of not only your addiction, but provide endless opportunities to create and design an entire new Destiny! Addicts and alcoholics have inadvertently mastered the principles of success and use those very same concepts to assure their own failure and destruction! By forcing yourself to do what you dont want to do enables you to gain hold of and grasp these powerful forces and turn them in the direction of success instead of failure! Teach yourself and learn to direct the awesome creative forces within you and learn to turn your Possibilities into Probabilities!

You did it again. You drank. You got high. You slept with him/her. You surfed the Internet. What gift could you possibly find in so much failure? But when your helplessness drives you to turn to God and admit your need, you will experience the greatest gift of all—his presence, his kindness, his forgiveness and his peace. Author Erik Guzman ...

Addiction to alcohol and other substances is a growing problem today. The Alcoholics Anonymous 12 Steps Programme is the standard method for treating addictions, and defines an ordered program which, if completed, should break the addiction. However, the level of success here is low. Two main problems in this regard are the failure of the addict to complete the programme and their relapse back into addiction. Treatment of addiction by other methods is even less successful. A new approach is needed, one which better integrates those treating addiction. By combining the 12 Steps programme and the idea of “Life Script”, a concept from Transactional Analysis, this book demonstrates that a much higher success rate can be achieved. The author pioneered this approach for five years, achieving an improved rate of success from this combination. The book includes case studies to underpin its findings.

Addiction, argues Albert LaChance in this insightful book, affects more than the individual who suffers from it. Cultural Addiction shows how contemporary lifestyles have become addictive, consuming the planet's resources—soil, air, water—in a destructive way that comprises earth's life systems and endangers the survival of both humankind and other species. This book presents a 12-step program for recovery from these dangerous lifestyles. Identifying such traits as egocentricity, materialism, overeating and drinking, and apathy as products of addiction, the author draws on the world's spiritual traditions—Hinduism, Buddhism, shamanism, Christianity, and others—to show individuals and communities how to work together to overcome these problems. The 12-step Greenspirit program empowers people to change the way they live in their environment. This “cultural therapy” in turn creates a renewed culture dedicated to protecting—and respecting—the planet.

FULLY REVISED, COMPREHENSIVE, AND PRACTICAL BOOK OF THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF ADDICTION COUNSELING Learning the Language of Addiction Counseling, Fifth Edition introduces mental health professionals and students to the field of addiction counseling and helps them acquire the knowledge and develop the skills needed to counsel individuals who are caught in the destructive cycle of addiction. Drawing from her years of experience in working in the addiction counseling field as a counselor, trainer and educator, Geri Miller provides an engaging, balanced overview of the major theoretical foundations and clinical best practices in the field. Fully updated, the fifth edition offers a compassionate accountability, practice-oriented counseling framework and features: A research-based clinical application approach to addiction counseling that practitioners can turn to for fundamental, practical, clinical guidelines. Revised chapters that reflect important changes in research and practice, including new assessment instruments and new and expanded treatments. Additional case studies, interactive exercises, key points and other resources that facilitate the integration of knowledge into practice. A new chapter of "Supervision and Mentoring". Revised "Personal Reflections" section at the beginning of each chapter that provide an invaluable, unique perspective on the author's view of addiction counseling. Updated and expanded Instructor Resources that include brief video clips, PowerPoint slides, test bank questions for each chapter, and sample syllabi. From assessment and diagnosis of addiction to preparing for certification and licensure as an addiction counseling professional, this comprehensive book covers essential components required to work as a professional in the field of addiction counseling.