This book was created over many years in an effort to illuminate the condition that has plagued the female gender since human creation. Over the years various aspects of life presenting itself fueled the stop and go efforts to present these stories. As life presented itself I have been blessed to accomplish many goals, and with the support from family and friends, Ive lived through the death of loved ones, and finally Ive grown to gather myself and present the experiences you are about to read.

Janet "Shady" Shahadi is abandoned by her Irish mother and raised by her Arab father. After numerous unsuccessful relationships, Shady meets Bobby Summerville, a Black law student who deepens her knowledge of the world, but as their personalities clash, the lovers part ways. Ultimately, after meeting the woman who will become her biographer, Shady is forced to confront her painful past and start down the path to healing.

Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and The Boston Globe An authoritative, illuminating, and deeply humane history of addiction—a phenomenon that remains baffling and deeply misunderstood despite having touched countless lives—by an addiction psychiatrist striving to understand his own family and himself “Carl Erik Fisher’s The Urge is the best-written and most incisive book I’ve read on the history of addiction. In the midst of an overdose crisis that grows worse by the hour and has vexed America for centuries, Fisher has given us the best prescription of all: understanding. He seamlessly blends a gripping historical narrative with memoir that doesn’t self-aggrandize; the result is a full-throated argument against blaming people with substance use disorder. The Urge is a propulsive tour de force that is as healing as it is enjoyable to read.” —Beth Macy, author of Dopesick Even after a decades-long opioid overdose crisis, intense controversy still rages over the fundamental nature of addiction and the best way to treat it. With uncommon empathy and erudition, Carl Erik Fisher draws on his own experience as a clinician, researcher, and alcoholic in recovery as he traces the history of a phenomenon that, centuries on, we hardly appear closer to understanding—let alone addressing effectively. As a psychiatrist-in-training fresh from medical school, Fisher was soon face-to-face with his own addiction crisis, one that nearly cost him everything. Desperate to make sense of the condition that had plagued his family for generations, he turned to the history of addiction, learning that the current quagmire is only the latest iteration of a centuries-old story: humans have struggled to define, treat, and control addictive behavior for most of recorded history, including well before the advent of modern science and medicine. A rich, sweeping account that probes not only medicine and science but also literature, religion, philosophy, and public policy, The Urge illuminates the extent to which the story of addiction has persistently reflected broader questions of what it means to be human and care for one another. Fisher introduces us to the people who have endeavored to address this complex condition through the ages: physicians and politicians, activists and artists, researchers and writers, and of course the legions of people who have struggled with their own addictions. He also examines the treatments and strategies that have produced hope and relief for many people with addiction, himself included. Only by reckoning with our history of addiction, he argues—our successes and our failures—can we light the way forward for those whose lives remain threatened by its hold. The Urge is at once an eye-opening history of ideas, a riveting personal story of addiction and recovery, and a clinician’s urgent call for a more expansive, nuanced, and compassionate view of one of society’s most intractable challenges.

This is the most hard-hitting, true story of drug and alcohol addiction and recovery you will ever read. Told in poems by an addict who was on the point of death, through his treatment and recovery process and into a new life. Who should read this book? Anyone with any kind of addiction problem, their friends and family and all the Charities and Services who are there to help.Drug & Alcohol teams, Police & Prison Officers, GPs, Clinic & A&E staff, Paramedics, & Ambulance Crews. "I hope this will enable you to understand us a little better and help more of us into successful treatment and recovery." Stuart Hardy-Taylor

Through the vivid, true stories of five people who journeyed into and out of addiction, a renowned neuroscientist explains why the "disease model" of addiction is wrong and illuminates the path to recovery. The psychiatric establishment and rehab industry in the Western world have branded addiction a brain disease. But in The Biology of Desire, cognitive neuroscientist and former addict Marc Lewis makes a convincing case that addiction is not a disease, and shows why the disease model has become an obstacle to healing. Lewis reveals addiction as an unintended consequence of the brain doing what it's supposed to do-seek pleasure and relief-in a world that's not cooperating. As a result, most treatment based on the disease model fails. Lewis shows how treatment can be retooled to achieve lasting recovery. This is enlightening and optimistic reading for anyone who has wrestled with addiction either personally or professionally.

Israel Bodkin's journey began when he was a youngster and fled Lithuania just before the Nazis arrived. After fifty years in New York City he thinks he understands the boundaries of his life. But now his beloved wife is dead, and his family lives in Miami, a place Israel imagines as the New Babylon, a center of luxury, license, and wickedness. When his son insists he come to live with him, Israel reluctantly begins the next stage of his life's passage. He enters a world of bi-racial, tri-ethnic chaos he never bargained for. But all things are possible in the New Babylon. Israel discovers an unlikely new career as a radio talk show host and becomes a reluctant political activist. Interaction with a sometimes manic collection of new friends affirms what he already knows-that life is about making demands and fulfilling commitments. What you can't always predict are the consequences. Israel's story is as old as history and as new as today's headlines, and his adventures will move you to laughter and to tears.

Breaking free of outdated explanations and rigid "rules" for recovery, The Abstinence Myth offers a hopeful, research-based framework for transformation by an addiction expert and renowned TEDx speaker who overcame his own addiction and has guided hundreds of clients into lives of joy and purpose. In this simple yet radical new book, Adi Jaffe, PhD, draws on his own life experience, cutting-edge research, and work with hundreds of clients and families to offer a new perspective on addiction and a new pathway out of its grasp. The Abstinence Myth introduces the IGNTD RECOVERY METHOD, including: - Details of Adi's dramatic and inspiring personal story. - The Mythology of Addiction and how it gets in our way with spiritual, biological, psychological, and environmental assumptions that are, in fact, only true some of the time for some people. - Why the concept of "abstinence" is often a barrier to change and is not necessary for everyone for all time. - Important research that will shift your thinking, sense of hope, and success. - Why shame can keep holding you back--and finding the way out. - An explanation of the 3 IGNTD principles and the 9 steps to personalize your unique recovery path. It's time to throw out the "rulebook". You can overcome the hopelessness, the doubt, and move forward. You can create a life you're proud of. Whether you're seeking help for yourself, a loved one, or anyone you might be guiding through a personal transformation, The Abstinence Myth will change lives.