The Addict's Dilemna

"Addictive behavior attempts to repair a state of bad feeling but is a Faustian Bargain that perpetuates itself and often asks the ultimate price. Addiction can be compared to an unhealthy, fanatical love." Abstract of article.

Addiction and Its Mechanisms of Defense

"Harmful and ultimately  painful addictive behaviors require a bodyguard of lies, distortions, and psychotic denial to fend off the natural corrective consequences of cognitive and behavioral dissonance resulting from addiction." From the article.

Addiction, Lies and Relationships

"As the addictive process claims more of the addict's self and lifeworld his addiction becomes his primary relationship to the detriment of all others. " From the article.

Alcohol Addiction: A Psychobiological Approach

Drug Therapy of Alcohol Dependence 
           Acamprosate(Campral), Antabuse, Odansetron, ReVia(naltrexone)

Excuses Alcoholics Make

"By the time a chronic addictive process such as alcoholism has become frankly problematic it has invariably acquired a complex and sophisticated array of psychological defense mechanisms aimed at protecting its continued existence by minimizing the cognitive dissonance the addict experiences as a result of his progressively irrational self- and usually other- harmful behavior." From the article.

The Experience of Loss and Deprivation in Early Recovery From Addiction

"The early stage of recovery from a serious addiction such as alcoholism is usually experienced by the addict, not as recovery, but instead as loss, deprivation or even punishment. For the addict, the un-addicted life rarely seems worth living. And the prospect of a life without his addiction often seems to him like a cruel jest when it is dignified with what to him is the ridiculous name of recovery."  From the article.

The Female Partner of the Male Alcoholic

"Abstinence may be as hard or even harder than drinking for the alcoholic because it reveals so many problems that were obscured by the familyÇs focus on alcohol. Denial remains as strong as ever as the family has to face the harsh realities of delusion, illusion and collusion that have dominated its reality during drinking and that are now revealed during the period of abstinence. "  

Getting Away With Addiction?

"Addiction is its own consequence because addiction distorts and stereotypes the psyche of the addict by enslaving the self to a false and unhealthy center -addiction- from which all radii subsequently emanate and around which the circumference of the addicted self is henceforth constructed and maintained."  

Intervention for Alcoholism and Addiction

"The technique of intervention gives those who care about the alcoholic-addict a tool and a forum by which they can express their concern in a structured, focused format that often leads to the first step in the direction of recovery." 

Obstacles to Recovery From Addiction

"The principal obstacles to recovery from any addiction are ignorance, shame, dishonesty, and personal exceptionalism.

"Unfortunately for the addict these roadblocks to recovery are almost always cleverly situated and sited like military forts to provide mutual support in fending off all attempts at recovery." 

Prescription Drug Abuse

           Information, discussion of concepts, treatment, resources.

Prolegomenon to the Metaphysics of Recovery

"Entering the world of recovery from addiction can be like exploring a vast, frightening and unknown continent without maps, guides or landmarks of any kind - despite the fact such such maps, guides and landmarks exist in bounteous plenty if only those in need of them were able and willing to make use of them. But usually it is not so; and the perplexed alcoholic or addict, a rugged and defiant individualist to the end typically insists upon making and discovering his own way."

Resistances to AA Attendance

"Given all of the powerful obstacles and resistances to AA attendance and acceptance, the wonder is not that so many alcoholics refuse to go to meetings or, if they go, decline to return - but that any at all do so and that at least some of these keep going back until they are able to connect with the program and begin to receive help from it." 

What is Recovery?

"Recovery at its simplest and indeed in its essence is about nothing more or less than the recovery of life itself. It is about getting back something of value(life), not merely giving up something that is strongly desired(addiction)." 

Why Is Recovery So Hard?

"Addiction invades and destroys the self the way a malignant tumor invades and destroys the body."

Worried Sick About His Drinking?

"The wife of the drinking alcoholic believes herself to be in a troubled relationship with the person who drinks too much. But, at least in the more advanced cases, she is actually in a relationship with the addictive process itself. "

Your First AA Meeting: An Unofficial Guide for the Perplexed

"Practically nobody looks forward to going to their first AA meeting. In most cases this in fact is an occasion of shame, dread and despair. The majority of individuals going to AA for the first time are doing so reluctantly, either because they have promised someone else to go or because they have been directed to attend by a judge, an employer, a therapist or an addictions treatment program. Even first timers who "go on their own" are usually in an intensely ambivalent and negative state. Nobody wishes to require the help that is provided by AA, and as a result virtually everyone attending their first meeting wishes that they were someplace else doing something else." 

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