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    The Eight Affirmations of Alcohol & Drug Addiction (A Healing Guide)
    The Eight Affirmations of Alcohol & Drug Addiction (A Healing Guide)
    The Eight Affirmations of Alcohol & Drug Addiction (A Healing Guide)
    Ebook144 pages3 hours

    The Eight Affirmations of Alcohol & Drug Addiction (A Healing Guide)

    By David Thomas Dozier

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    About this ebook

    Negative addiction is not a disease, and therefore cannot be treated with medicines, medicinal attitudes, instructions, rewards for abstinence, or misleading ideologies and practices that in any way tell the alcoholic or drug abuser he is a victim.

    Addiction is not a complex condition as many addiction specialists will have us believe. The drama in which many addicts live may be very complex but the experience of addiction is not. It is part of the addictive personality. Positive addiction is nourishing and rewarding; negative addiction is hardly that. It is fueled by emotional need followed by emotional choice. It lacks the liberty of active decision.

    David Thomas Dozier presents a new adaptive approach to understanding victimization, lack of control, helplessness and the fatal attraction to pain and suffering. He challenges the false labels often used by addiction specialists to categorize their patients as victims of disease, emotional disorder and psychiatric pathology, all concepts that reinforce the negative drama that is addiction.

    He offers ways to help the alcoholic or drug addict allow natural change to occur through understanding and experiencing the powerful affirmations that each human being possesses. He shatters the stereotypes many organizations, specialists and treatment facilities use to diminish an addict's ownership of awareness, responsibility and active personal choice. He debunks ancient myths regarding addiction and in the end shows us that positive addiction is natural and often healthy.

    This book addresses all kinds of addicts, including what the author refers to as external addicts, those loved ones who desperately offer their love, attention, time and guidance in observed situations of torment and suffering. He suggests powerful ways to truly assist the addict through acceptance, faith and therapeutic guidance.

    The book does not dwell on proven techniques or on old established ways to redeem addicts. It is based on a new approach that involves awareness, acceptance, free personal choice and present-moment experience, all ways to simplify and demystify the false complexity associated with alcohol and drug dependence.

    While some of the contents of this book may appear controversial and sometimes inconsistent with the logic that drives our minds, our mechanism of thinking, the author shows us that we can learn to experience a powerful new perspective of what is going on in an addict's fanatic attraction to drama and the unremitting state of suffering and anger.

    The book is divided into six sections and uses a self-help group approach to interact with readers, a refreshing format of questions and answers by group members in a "room" the author says, "...(that) has no walls or visible boundaries. It's containment is marked only by the group and their experiences." The narrative extends beyond that venue, and its experience resonates in the growing awareness the reader uses to understand the truths we all have in common.

    The Eight Affirmations of Alcohol & Drug Addiction is a book not to be read in a conventional way but to be fully experienced through observation and awareness.

    David Thomas Dozier's first published book, Ordinary People As Healers (Smashwords, 2014) is available at many ebook retailers around the world.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDavid Thomas Dozier
    Release dateJul 14, 2014
    ISBN9781311962911
    The Eight Affirmations of Alcohol & Drug Addiction (A Healing Guide)
    Author

    David Thomas Dozier

    David Thomas Dozier is a freelance writer, poet and fiction writer. His ebook Ordinary People As Healers (With A Personal Sharing of Heart Disease Reversal) is published/distributed by Smashwords E-Publishing. The second revised edition of The Eight Affirmations of Alcohol and Drug Addiction (A Healing Guide) originally published on July 14 2014 is currently available in both e-book and paperback editions. Mr. Dozier's novel The Accidental Lives of Julian Landon has been published in paperback (available at Amazon Books) and in e-format at Smashwords. Mr. Dozier's novel, The Other Side of Impact was published in 2015 in both paperback and ebook formats. In 2016, his novel The Freak was published under the pseudonym Jude Westerman. He is currently at work on a non-fiction book to be published in late 2016.

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      Book preview

      The Eight Affirmations of Alcohol & Drug Addiction (A Healing Guide) - David Thomas Dozier

      The Eight Affirmations of Alcohol & Drug Addiction

      (A Healing Guide)

      David Thomas Dozier

      Copyright 2014, 2015 David Thomas Dozier

      ISBN: 9781311962911

      Smashwords Edition II, License Notes:

      Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

      Acknowledgments

      In loving memory of Mac, Don and Steve, whose lives and voices have provided the inspiration for this work.

      Thank you to John, whose sharing has taught me everything I know about addiction.

      And always for my wife, my best friend and editor.

      Contents

      Acknowledgments

      Notes

      Introduction

      Section 1

      The Eight Affirmations of Alcohol & Drug Addiction

      Section 2

      Strategies for Emotional Divestment

      The AA Model Versus the Awareness Model

      Learning Not to React to Emotional Triggers

      The Addictive Personality

      The Drama of Addiction

      Awakening to Awareness

      Choosing Your Lifestyle

      Debunking the Myths

      Section 3

      Elements of Positive Practice

      Adapting to Self-Worth

      Acceptance

      Intrinsic Peace

      Section 4

      Beyond the Drama

      Present-Tense Living

      Making It All Work

      The Ultimate Affirmation

      Section 5

      Tactics for People Who Care

      The External Addicts

      Allowing Consequences

      The End of the Affair

      Suggestions for Positive Intervention

      Section 6

      Overcoming the Crisis of Identity

      Who Are You Now?

      How Did You Get Here?

      Where Are You Going From Here?

      Conclusion

      End Notes

      Recommended Reading

      About the Author

      Appendix

      Notes

      IN this book I use the words alcoholic and substance abuser interchangeably. While neither term infers a victim of disease, the person who is injecting cocaine and heroin into his veins may require medical intervention and that treatment often involves medicines like gabapentin, vigabatrin and baclofen, which are basically anticonvulsants and muscles relaxants. The substances of cocaine and heroin often involve physical addiction and dependence, and their sudden cessation may cause physical reactions which require this form of treatment. I also use the terms alcohol and drug interchangeably.

      My usage of bi-gender reference is not meant to confuse the reader but only to underscore that addiction is not gender-specific. The purpose of my own personal reference is to remind the reader at all times that we are all addicts. How could I possibly write about addiction if I hadn't experienced many forms of it?

      While I challenge the principles and practices of organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous or Addicts Anonymous (AA), as well as those physicians and therapists who promote the concept of the disease model of addiction, I intend no disrespect for these organizations and practitioners. I just know there is a better approach.

      Introduction

      YOU may be an active addict or a person with a proud history of sobriety. Or you may be the anguished loved one of an addicted person. Many of you are the weary travelers of traditional treatment pathways. Sobriety may be a goal or it may be the carrot dangling in front of you on a stick. The word is used in virtually every treatment setting, including Alcoholics Anonymous, hospitals and in intensive treatment facilities. But what does sobriety really mean to you? Is it a state of non-indulgence, a condition achieved by drug and alcohol abstinence? By its very definition is abstinence an achieving state in which temptation must be confronted on a daily basis?

      If you view abstinence in this way, you may be prolonging your suffering and most likely setting yourself up for failure. Place any person in an imposed structure of prohibition and what often results is an increased desire to obtain what is forbidden.

      The word sobriety belongs to the past. It is a part of a lexicon created by social views and utilized by organizations, churches and officials who will have you buying into an antiquated system of rehabilitation.

      There is a way to manage addiction without taking medicines, participating in intense behavioral treatment programs, and attending groups that promulgate solutions like abstinence, token reward and giving up personal choice in favor of supplication to a higher power. You know that God really wants you to be independent and to use the moral strength He has provided you to make healthy personal choices based on free will, love and compassion, not on fear.

      There is a way. It is based on what the eight affirmations reminds us about ourselves: that we are not diseased, not victims, not the prisoners of our own making and certainly not social outcasts. We are ordinary people who now, in this very moment of experience, are about to make the first of many positive choices that will enrich our awareness, self-love, tolerance and positive addictions in a new world few of us thought existed, the world of full awareness, clarity, perspective, tolerance and present-moment experience.

      There is nothing complicated about this approach. You don't have to memorize instructions, plans, tenets or learn complex methodologies. The ideas, concepts and truths are all inside you, and have been all along. Since you won't be learning anything new (only awakening to your own awareness and knowledge), you don't have to worry about dedicated concentration and the discipline often associated with acquiring new knowledge. You may awaken to truths that have not been accessible to you in your state of negative drama, but these virtues have always been there, an intrinsic part of you.

      This book will help you understand what is defined as the addictive personality, a behavioral trait we all possess. It will not teach you how to stop your addiction dead in its tracks. But it will illuminate you about what may be causing you to indulge in alcohol and drugs (as well as other addictive behaviors). It is that awareness which will promote permanent healing and an end to the immense suffering you have been experiencing and causing others to endure. This book will show you how the healing concepts of acceptance, forgiveness and awareness work as powerful ways to change how you think about yourself, your strengths, weaknesses and disabilities.

      Let's face it: we are all addicts, and all life forms exhibit some form of addictive disposition. The tree is addicted to sunlight; the plant is addicted to the nutrients in the soil; the bee is addicted to nectar; and parasites are addicted to hosts. And the list goes on. On a much larger scale, suns, planets and moons are addicted to gravity. All life forms are addicted to self-preservation and the propagation of their species.

      As humans we have an abundance of addictive needs. We crave the sustenance of food, air, sunshine, companionship, love, sex and contentment. In this sense addiction is not a bad word. Positive addiction often results in growth and progress. If we preface the word with qualifiers like food, sex, work or alcohol and drugs, addiction becomes negative in nature. Anyone who appears to overly rely on an addictive source or exhibits behaviors consistent with social abnormality is then viewed as an addict. Society has a host of pejorative terms and stereotypes for these kinds of people.

      Society at large and many addiction specialists may have you believing that addicts require strict guidance, reformation, redemption and, in some radical views, punishment for their self-indulging behaviors. Some religious beliefs and practices will attempt to have addicts abdicate personal choice and responsibility in favor of obedience to a higher power, the God who will heal them. Organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous and Addicts Anonymous base their intervention methods on this premise. These approaches promote the disease model of addiction. Diseases require victims and antidotes, and interventions based on cures and rehabilitation.

      I am going to show you why this methodology doesn't work because addicts, you and I, are not patients in need of cure. We are just ordinary people who need to use awareness and perspective to understand why we are relying on emotional needs and choices in our lives. We are not diseased; nor do we view addiction as abnormal behavior.

      You will learn that addiction is a universal trait, one required for sustaining life and order in the universe. Through an understanding of the eight affirmations you will experience a an enlightened viewpoint that will help you demystify and simplify your relationship with the behaviors that foster negative addiction.

      You will learn to understand why you are not a victim and that you don't need treatment.

      You will develop the awareness and perspective that will serve to negate the false notions of dependence.

      You will learn to let go of negative addiction in favor of active personal choice in order for you to enjoy the positive experiences of indulgence.

      Even if you don't consider yourself an addict or you are the desperate loved one of an addicted person, you will be exposed to concepts and practices that will enhance your understanding and acceptance of the natural consequences of life. You will learn to experience by accepting and then letting go of emotions, mindsets, perceived obstacles, occurrences and sometimes people who block your way, who impede your own natural addiction to personal growth and fulfillment.

      But wait, I can hear you say, how can you suggest that I can do all of this myself, without support? I don't have confidence, much self-respect and sometimes not the inclination to get better.

      If you have read this far, you certainly have the inclination to seek a better relationship with yourself. You are going to need support as will others with whom you who have chosen to share your

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