Clinical Works on Alcoholism

The Truth about Addiction and Recovery

Stanton Peele & Archie Brodsky with Mary Arnold

In this revolutionary analysis of addiction, Stanton and Archie Brodsky draw on years of research to refute the contention that addictions are biologically based diseases that last a lifetime. Examining addiction within the context of people's lives, they show that addictive behavior is a way of coping with situational stress — and that it can be overcome without medical treatment or 12-step groups.

Get Your Loved One Sober: Alternatives to Nagging, Pleading, and Threatening

Robert J. Meyers & Brenda L. Wolfe

The Community Reinforcement Approach (CRA) has long been noted by researchers to be an especially effective treatment for alcoholism. It involves examining the critical areas of the individual's life (work, family life, leisure time) for pressure points to reinforce sobriety where these are often sources for problem drinking. As an extension of CRA, Robert Meyers and others have developed CRAFT — Community Reinforcement Approach Family Training — to teach concerned significant others (family and friends of problem drinkers and drug users) how first to protect themselves and carry on with their own lives, and also to practice non-confrontational skills to help the problem users to improve, including seeking treatment. Of course, one issue would be what treatment they seek — and whether this treatment is useful in itself. Nonetheless, spouses and others intimately tied to the alcoholic/addict are often in a position, for their own safety and quality of life, of requiring that the problem users take concrete actions. CRAFT has been demonstrated empirically to lead far more frequently than Johnson-style Interventions or Al-Anon to alcoholics and addicts taking such steps.

Sober for Good: New Solutions for Drinking Problems — Advice from Those Who Have Succeeded

Anne M. Fletcher

In Sober for Good, Anne Fletcher combines popular journalism with personal research — interviewing scores of people about how they overcame their drinking problems. Since she refuses simply to 'round up the usual suspects' — graduates from AA and Betty Ford — Ms. Fletcher presents a very different picture of alcoholism and remission than we usually encounter. Many in her book do not use AA or treatment, refuse the label of "alcoholic," and use a variety of personal techniques to achieve sobriety. Fletcher does describe some controlled drinkers, but is too conservative on this issue — "it's risky to try moderate drinking if you've been contentedly abstinent for an extended period of time." Of course, if you're contentedly abstinent, you should certainly remain so. But for many who wonder whether they are locked into AA bromides for a lifetime, the answer is "not necessarily," and there is no rule that people may not experiment with and succeed with alternatives to abstinence at all points in their recovery. But this is nitpicking compared to the larger truths Anne Fletcher describes so well — sobriety is a personal resolution that can take just about any form that some individual can imagine for him or herself.

Alternatives to Abstinence: Controlled Drinking and other Approaches to Managing Alcoholism

Heather Ogilvie

It will never go away — since some people cut back their problematic drinking, including some rather severe alcoholics, and since, in fact, the standard means for dealing with a drinking problem among the majority who avoid treatment is to cut back, books will continue to be written about controlled drinking no matter how aggravated it makes the NCADD. Heather Ogilvie is a well-informed lay person who examines the literature and the controversy, and recognizes this reality. The book is sprightly and well written.

Recovery Options: The Complete Guide

Joseph Volpicelli and Maia Szalavitz

Written by a University of Pennsylvania medical researcher and addiction program manager, and a former addict/12-step program graduate/radical New York journalist, this book describes and welcomes all approaches to addiction/alcoholism. The authors are admirably eclectic; thus, disease advocate Volpicelli declares in existential and cognitive-behavioral terms about a relapsed alcoholic he treated, "While Martin had broken his addiction to alcohol, he never found alternative resources of pleasure or skills for coping with other people's demands." Szalavitz, meanwhile, describes her successful treatment at a private 12-step facility, but states: "The notion that the 12-step way of recovery is superior to others is not backed by research — people can recover without AA, NA, or CA and be just as healthy. . ." Volpicelli administers naltrexone to reduce alcoholic craving, and then welcomes patients' reduced drinking (most 12-step advocates, for whom abstinence is a spiritual mission, will not tolerate this approach). Szalavitz meanwhile interviews a woman who succeeded in Moderation Management, who had previously tried to cut down on her own but failed, and also tried AA "but 'detested it'." While this book puts nobody down (except for Straight, Inc. and assaultive programs of its ilk), and conveys radical ideas (such as harm reduction), its "everyone-means-well-and-deserves-a-prize" outlook is both Pollyanna and avoids crucial issues — such as, should less-well-known approaches antithetical to the 12 steps be publicly supported? After all, despite the prevalence of so many wonderful approaches to addiction in America, no one is arguing that addiction is going away, or even that it is improving.

Moderate Drinking: The Moderation Management Guide for People Who Whant to Reduce Their Drinking

Audrey Kishline, introduction by Stanton Peele

The official handbook of Moderation Management, a non-profit, national self-help program that supports moderate drinking as a reasonable and attainable recovery goal for problem drinkers. Based on her own unsatisfactory experience with abstinence-based programs, Kishline offers inspiration and a step-by-step program to help individuals avoid the kind of drinking that detrimentally affects their lives.

The tragic deaths caused by Audrey Kishline when she was drinking and driving remind that the problems posed by alcoholism often surpass the capacity of individuals, organizations, and society to prevent them at our present stage of knowledge. Certainly no one has all of the answers here. I continue to believe that the principles behind Moderation Management are valid for a significant number of problem drinkers.

Motivational Interviewing: Preparing People to Change Addictive Behavior

William R. Miller & Stephen Rollnick

Miller and Rollnick describe the client-centered approach to addiction — the opposite of coercive, didactic approaches that command people to change their behaviors. Instead, people change when they are able to highlight for themselves critical values in their lives that conflict with the addictive behavior. Motivational interviewing is a technique for assisting the individual to make this cognitive shift.

Handbook of Alcoholism Treatment Approaches: Effective Alternatives

Reid K. Hester & William R. Miller (Eds.)

A collection of the approaches to alcoholism — such as the community reinforcement approach, brief interventions, and motivational interviewing — which have been shown to work.

Changing for Good

James O. Prochaska, John C. Norcross & Carlos C. DiClemente

Three acclaimed psychologists share their groundbreaking, clinically-proven discovery: lasting change doesn't depend on luck or willpower, but is a process that can be successfully managed by anyone who understands how it works.

Liberating Solutions to Alcohol Problems: Treating Problem Drinkers Without Saying No

Douglas Cameron

This book is wonderful. It is wise and courageous, practical and effective. Most important, it offers us a sane alternative to the expensive and exploitative contemporary American approach to treating alcoholism as a disease.