Tag Archives: book reviews

Book Review: Incomprehensible Demoralization – An Addict Pharmacist’s Journey to Recovery by Jared Combs

Talk about a provocative title! Not only that, but the cover art shows a skull with an open mouth and colorful pills cascading into it from above. This is just a preview of what’s to come inside the pages from pharmacist addict and alcoholic Jared Combs.

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Book Review: Now That You’re Sober by Earnie Larsen with Carol Larsen Hegarty

Anyone who’s gone through treatment or got themselves clean by persistent attendance at 12-step fellowship groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Sexaholics Anonymous and others, knows that the going can be pretty rough at times. Fresh out of treatment, it’s both a blessing and a time fraught with temptations and challenges. Even [...]

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Book Review: Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher

Irreverent, impossibly funny, starkly revealing – these are perfect descriptors of the hard-to-put-down book by Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking. Yes, that Carrie Fisher, daughter of actress Debbie Reynolds and former crooner (and irrepressible womanizer, according to his daughter) Eddie Fisher. You might remember Carrie as Princess Leia from Star Wars, that little blockbuster film that [...]

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Review: In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts – Close Encounters with Addiction, by Gabor Mate, MD

When we think of hungry ghosts, it certainly conjures up an image of some pretty frightening specters. In the field of addiction treatment and recovery, such descriptors seem totally appropriate. Think of it. Hungry, as in devouring, destroying, seeking to annihilate. Ghosts, as in haunting spirits and thoughts never leaving our presence. Now, with the [...]

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Book Review: Methland, The Death and Life of an American Small Town by Nick Reding

Meth is a tough subject to talk about. Many Americans don’t know very much about meth, much less anything accurate. Some people think meth was once a big problem but has since dissipated. Others only have a vague idea or gnawing worry that maybe meth isn’t gone from the landscape of America – it’s just [...]

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Book Review: The New Codependency by Melody Beattie

Twenty-five years after Melody Beattie wrote her groundbreaking book, Codependent No More, and following publication of three other books on codependence (Beyond Codependency, The Language of Letting Go, and The Codependents Guide to the Twelve Steps), the author is back again, this time with The New Codependency. This latest work sheds new light on how [...]

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Book Review: She Bets Her Life by Mary Sojourner

Walk a while in Mary Sojourner’s shoes (She Bets Her Life: A True Story of Gambling Addiction) and you’ll quickly realize what a slippery slope gambling addiction is – especially for women. Written from personal experience, the book is at all times brutally honest, and alternately funny, heartbreaking, warm and wise. The author takes readers [...]

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Book Review – The Chemical Carousel: What Science Tells Us About Beating Addiction, by Dirk Hanson

Science writer Dirk Hanson takes readers on a journey of understanding about addiction in The Chemical Carousel: What Science Tells Us About Beating Addiction. In a conversational tone, Hanson acts as teacher and storyteller as he sheds considerable light on the still-largely unknown field of addiction science. Some may wonder that there actually is such [...]

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