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    Quick Guide to Addiction Recovery: What Helps, What Doesn't
    Quick Guide to Addiction Recovery: What Helps, What Doesn't
    Quick Guide to Addiction Recovery: What Helps, What Doesn't
    Ebook69 pages47 minutes

    Quick Guide to Addiction Recovery: What Helps, What Doesn't

    By Lisa Frederiksen

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    About this ebook

    “Alcoholism a disease? No way! Cancer is a disease. All they have to do is put down the bottle!”

    “If he cared enough about what he was doing to his parents, he’d get help. It’s that simple.”

    “She’s been through rehab before – I don’t see how this time will be any different.”

    Likely you've heard statements like these. Perhaps you’ve even thought them, yourself.

    So much of what we believe about addiction and addiction recovery is bound up in stigma, misinformation and shame. This fuels age-old beliefs that addiction is a choice and failure to stop is a lack of willpower, a moral weakness. Equally inaccurate is the assumption that relapse means treatment failed or the person didn’t want recovery badly enough.

    But times are changing. There is an active addiction recovery movement now gaining momentum. The word is spreading that more than 23 million Americans are living their lives in recovery from addiction, meaning they no longer use drugs and/or alcohol and have changed their lives through their recovery process. And President Obama's 2014 Presidential Proclamation of September as National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month included the following statement: “Research shows addiction is a chronic disease of the brain which can be prevented and treated. However, the stigma associated with this disease – and the false belief that addiction represents a personal failing – creates fear and shame that discourage people from seeking treatment and prevents them from fully rejoining and contributing to their communities.”

    So what’s happened? How is it possible to define addiction as a brain disease and explain that addiction recovery is all about “healing” the brain? And what is it that helps a person succeed in addiction recovery and what doesn't?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateOct 30, 2014
    ISBN9780990790020
    Quick Guide to Addiction Recovery: What Helps, What Doesn't

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      Book preview

      Quick Guide to Addiction Recovery - Lisa Frederiksen

      Introduction to Quick Guides and Lisa Frederiksen

      Most people have no idea more than 23 million Americans are living in long-term recovery from addiction to alcohol and other drugs. Most people have no idea addiction is a chronic, often relapsing brain disease, which explains, in part, why more than 23 million Americans struggle with the disease of addiction but only 10% get the help they need.

      Addiction Recovery – What Helps, What Doesn’t is the subject of this Quick Guide, which is one in a series of Quick Guides that will cover a range of related topics, including: secondhand drinking, a phenomenon that affects millions, and the brain facts about puberty most teens and parents don’t know (brain facts that if understood could have a powerful influence on how we prevent underage substance misuse).

      21st Century brain research and science is the link running through all of these Quick Guides. It is this research and science that has unleashed an explosion in discoveries about the human brain, its development, its functioning, what changes it, what can heal it, its ability to regenerate cells, why addiction can cause a person to lie, cheat and steal from those whom they love the most, what improves its health and more. It is this science, simplified, that is attention grabbing and results in people self-electing to change because it’s generally never been heard before or at least not in the context described in one of these Quick Guides. This science is giving people of all ages, when tailored properly, the ah-ha information they’ve needed – the why and how – to change substance misuse patterns, deal with stress differently (such as that associated with secondhand drinking), hold off on drinking until age 21, treat addiction as the brain disease it is, seek help for mental illness and so much more. This science is that powerful because it shatters the stigma, misinformation and shame that surround these issues.

      But it doesn’t help if we don’t understand it, which is the point of my Quick Guide series. I have been researching, writing, speaking and consulting on a host of brain and addiction-related topics since 2003, a pivotal year for me. It was the year one of my loved ones entered residential treatment for alcoholism and I was plunged into a whole new world. As the author of several books by that time, I was well versed in researching complex subjects and elected to shift my efforts to understanding this new world, starting with trying to figure out why they called it a disease. Having learned to re-eat after 12 years bulimia and anorexia, I had always assumed people who drank too much could learn to re-drink. Thus I had tolerated and coped with what I would soon understand was almost 40 years of various family members and friends’ alcohol misuse or alcoholism prior to the bottom falling out in ’03.

      What I have uncovered and since shared in my recent books, If You Loved Me, You’d Stop!, Loved One in Treatment? Now What! and Crossing The Line From Alcohol Use to Abuse to Dependence, presentations, blog, workshops, articles, videos, radio and Internet interviews, is truly revolutionary. Please visit my website, BreakingTheCycles.com, for more information.

      Thank you for reading this particular Quick Guide, Addiction Recovery: What Helps, What Doesn’t. And please know the research on which this information is based is advancing rapidly, so facts, resources and links cited in this Quick Guide may have changed, depending on when you’re reading it.

      Chapter 1 Stigma, Misinformation and Shame

      Alcoholism a disease? No way! Cancer is a disease. All they have to do is put down the bottle!

      If he cared enough about what he was doing to his parents, he’d get help. It’s that simple.

      She’s been through rehab before – I don’t see how this time will be any different.

      Likely you’ve heard statements like these. Perhaps you’ve even thought them, yourself.

      So much of what we

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