Thinking Simply About Addiction: A Handbook for Recovery

by Richard Sandor

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Author: Richard Sandor

Publisher: Jeremy P. Tarcher

Paperback:
ISBN 10: 1585426881
ISBN 13: 978-1585426881

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.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Sandor, a psychiatrist specializing in addiction, has put together a thought-provoking, compassionate guide for alcoholics and other addicts to understand and overcome their disease. Sandor explains addiction as a disease of "automaticity," a change in the functioning of the central nervous system "that cannot be eliminated but can be rendered dormant." Total abstinence, Sandor asserts, is the only way to control this automatic mechanism. He compares alcoholism to allergies, both of which involve a "pathological reaction to a substance," and discusses the biological, sociological and psychological factors that make some vulnerable. In Sandor's view, medical intervention is necessary for withdrawal symptoms, but the goal of treatment is "dedicated, active membership in a 12-step group" like Alcoholics Anonymous for life (in large part for the spiritual component, which necessitates "turning our will and lives over" to a higher power). Though understanding, practical and enlightening, the handbook's broader message, that addiction teaches "the same timeless lessons that bring meaning to all human suffering," is bound to be controversial.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

RICHARD S. SANDOR, M.D. , is a board-certified psychiatrist with more than twenty-five years experience in the addiction field. He has served as a medical director at several different nationally recognized drug and alcohol treatment programs, including the Betty Ford Center (Los Angeles outpatient), Promises Treatment Center, and Saint John's Health Center, has been on the clinical faculty of UCLA, and has served as president of the California Society of Addiction Medicine from 1993 to 1995.

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Thinking Simply About Addiction: A Handbook for Recovery