An accessible, well-written, and authoritative account that should help demystify AA for a broad range of readers.
An expert in addiction medicine explains how Alcoholics Anonymous works, from the perspectives of personal experiences and scientific research.
Galanter (Spirituality and the Healthy Mind, 2005, etc.) is a professor of psychiatry, director of the Division of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse at the New York University School of Medicine, and past president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine and the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry. Not an addict himself, Galanter has written previous books on addiction and treatment as well as on cults, faith healing, and spirituality. This background makes him especially well-suited to examine AA, the Twelve Steps program of recovery that centers on turning one’s will over to a higher power. This scholarly but approachable work is written for three audiences: people with substance abuse problems who wonder whether AA can help; family and friends of addicts; and health professionals who want a clear explanation of the AA fellowship. Part I discusses AA’s origin and evolution, controversies—particularly about the role of God or a higher power—and whether alcoholism is a disease. Part II examines the AA experience, including the steps, sponsorship, and spiritual awakenings (for some an awakening “is sudden and dramatic, and for others it comes on more gradually”). In Part III, Galanter considers AA as part of addiction treatment, the role of rehabs, and the overall question of the program’s effectiveness. Throughout, the author includes personal accounts by people in and out of recovery, a diverse set of experiences that sheds light on how AA works in practice. Well-informed and engaging, this volume backs up its observations and anecdotal accounts with evidence from research. This can yield surprising results: for example, patients in a study ranked spiritually oriented items as most important to their recovery, while their health professionals ranked these elements the lowest. Galanter is particularly insightful on spiritual awakening, showing the diversity of this experience, its importance to recovering addicts, and how it can be understood psychologically. His fair-minded approach also contrasts AA with other recovery methods and discusses AA’s limitations, such as treatment issues with addicts who are mentally ill.
An accessible, well-written, and authoritative account that should help demystify AA for a broad range of readers.Pub Date: May 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-19-027656-0
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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