Essential outreach on embracing and effectively managing a loved one’s addiction.
A sensible, family-focused guide to substance abuse.
In addressing family members who feel helpless when faced with addiction, Foote, Wilkens, and Kosanke draw on 40 years of substantiated analysis and clinical research from their Manhattan-based Center for Motivation and Change, a collective recovery treatment program founded on the hopeful principle that “people get better.” All three are aggressive proponents of the Community Reinforcement Approach and Family Training rehabilitation strategy, which introduces a real-world, motivational, coordinated approach to a loved one’s substance abuse. The guidebook begins with the basics, describing the nature of addiction as a “complex and multidetermined” problem, how it takes hold, and its underlying psychological causation, which can vary from chronic depression to bipolar disorder. With the assistance of co-author Higgs, the authors promote professional hope for “profound possibilities” through understanding, coping, helping and thriving. Bulleted lists and helpful exercises further assist families with identifying the stages of drug abuse, coping mechanisms, modes of self-care, limitations and the importance of positive communication. The book steers family members and supporters away from the trap of codependency yet comforts them in knowing that any ambivalence they may feel is completely normal and is simply the byproduct of life changes. The highlighted case studies clearly personify a wide array of situations of varying severity—e.g., discovering a spouse is a closet alcoholic or finding oneself at the mercy of opioid painkillers or unable to break a cigarette smoking habit. The authors also include a lengthy, significant chapter on treatment options and available levels of care, all stated, as is most of the book’s text, in accessible, everyday language. Objectively written and conveyed with congenial authority, the book offers collective hope to families of substance abusers.
Essential outreach on embracing and effectively managing a loved one’s addiction.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-0947-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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