A Taste for Recovery: A Personal Story of Survival and a Roadmap to Restoring Physical Health

Shelley McAlpine is a native Californian. Growing up in an upper-middle class family, she was healthy, happy, well-liked, and active in school activities. She attended excellent universities and achieved a master’s degree from Rutgers University. At age thirty-eight, she had reached the top of her career as a human resources director and chief labor negotiator for city governments. She was happily married and living the American dream. Just a few years later, that abruptly came to an end.

The destructive element that was underlying her seemingly successful life was the disease of alcoholism. Members on both sides of her family were afflicted with the disease of alcoholism and, underneath the normal exterior, their lives were dysfunctional. She, too, had the disease and had been silently suffering from it since age eighteen and her first drink.

Her disease progressed until it finally destroyed her career, marriage, and any semblance of a successful, happy life. From that point, Shelley’s life began a downward spiral marked with numerous rehabilitation programs, detoxifications and psychiatric holds, DUI’s, jail, bankruptcy, and incidents that nearly ended her life.

Shelley not only survived to tell her story but became a California Licensed Advanced Alcohol and Drug Counselor (LAADC), an Internationally Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor (ICADC), and a Certified Life Coach. She has written a book about her struggle, survival, and her years of research that culminated in remarkable findings about the disease of alcoholism and the path to recovery.