Divine Intervention will bring encouragement and hope to family members, friends, spouses or loved ones of an addict. It will challenge your thinking about addiction and enable you to best help your addicted loved one in a biblical manner. The task will not be easy; you cannot trust your feelings. But you can trust the Word of God, and the leading of the Holy Spirit. -- cover

Between alcohol, illegal drugs, prescription drugs, pornography, gambling, and eating disorders, fully 25% of the population of the United States is addicted to something. Those addictions are taking a massive physical, emotional, spiritual, and financial toll on individuals, families, and communities. The problem can feel insurmountable. But there is a solution, at once ancient and supported by the latest in neuroscientific research. With an honest assessment of the facts, yet always reaching out toward hopeful solutions, counselors Chip Dodd and Stephen James explain what addiction really is, how it works, and why it is so damaging to our hearts, souls, minds, and relationships. They then take us beyond mere coping techniques that allow us to function to the real solution--restoring our broken relationship with our Creator so that we can rediscover how to live fully the way we were created to live. Each chapter includes the personal story of a recovering addict, told from the addict's point of view. The authors also include a list of books, organizations, workshops, and treatment centers people can turn to for help along the road to lasting recovery.

A premiere addiction industry trailblazer and the "father of dual diagnosis" shares the life-changing approach to end any addiction, which has helped tens of thousands of people nationwide.

If you love someone with alcoholism or any other addiction, you may be looking anywhere you can for hope. If so, this book is for you. It presents the science of addiction in terms that are easy to understand, but also focuses heavily on practical concepts and techniques that you can start using right away. It answers many of the questions that come with loving someone who has an addiction, such as: What can I do to help? Why can't they just stop? Where can I find hope? What is involved in recovery? What should I expect if my loved one goes to treatment? What practical skills can I learn to deal with addiction? How can I find peace and even happiness in the midst of all this? All these questions and more are addressed to help you navigate the difficulties of being a family member to someone with addiction. This book can help you gain the knowledge and attitude you need and find realistic hope as you do. The author, Casey, is a clinical social worker and chemical dependency counselor who has lived with and around addiction for all his life. He is now a therapist specializing in family counseling for addiction. In this book, he shares the knowledge gained from conducting hundreds of family workshops and helping thousands of family members, and also weaves in his own narrative of recovery both as an individual and a family member.

Reconnect with dually diagnosed individuals using stories they can identify with! Addicted and Mentally Ill: Stories of Courage, Hope, and Empowerment is a powerful tool to recommend to your clients who are dually diagnosed. This book presents vignettes about people with mental illness and addiction whose situations are representative of what goes on in a dual-diagnosis in-patient setting. This nonclinical, easy-to-read resource will give you, your patients, and their family members unique insight on dual diagnosis and how co-occurring mental illness and addiction can be treated with the minimum amount of blame, shame, or poor decision-making. Addicted and Mentally Ill focuses on the most significant issues surrounding these individuals, such as: dual diagnosis and the family systemhow family can help or hinder treatment the reasons why dually diagnosed clients resist treatment the fear of losing self-identity in treatment the misunderstandings about dual diagnosisfrom the perspectives of the client, family members, and professionals in medicine and social work the role of hope, empowerment, and spirituality in recovery in dual diagnosis what the patient/client and family members can do to improve treatment options Addicted and Mentally Ill is unique for its storytelling format, consisting of brief tales and short explanations you can recommend to clients and families with limited clinical knowledge or time. This innovative tool answers many of the questions that dually diagnosed individuals may have and helps them learn of the issues surrounding their illness as well as their addiction. For those professionals who provide direct counseling to these clients or patients, this book offers an interesting and nonthreatening way to help them learn about treatment options. The stories in Addicted and Mentally Ill confront the life problems specific to dually diagnosed individuals, including: alcohol, drugs, and self-medication the difficulties of building trust in group therapy settings psychotropic medications illnesses such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression, and personality disorders suicide

The family recovery classic, Addict in the Family, has been revised and updated to offer parents and other family members even greater support when faced with the reality of a loved one’s addiction. Solid, actionable advice and information about what helps and what doesn’t—and how to care for themselves—make this an indispensable guide. For families of addicts, fear, shame, and confusion over a loved one’s addiction can cause deep anxiety, sleepless nights, and even physical illness. The emotional distress family members suffer is often compounded by the belief that they somehow caused or contributed to their loved one’s addiction—or that they could have done something to prevent it. Addict in the Family is a book about the pain of addiction, but more importantly it is a book of comfort, understanding, and hope for anyone struggling with a loved one’s addiction. As the compelling personal stories reveal, family members do not cause their loved one’s addiction—nor can they control or cure it. What family members can do is find support, set boundaries, detach with love, and eventually discover how to enjoy life more fully. This book helps them do just that—whether the loved one achieves recovery or not.

Companionship for the lifelong journey of recovery In Addiction and Recovery: A Spiritual Pilgrimage, Martha Postlethwaite--pastor and a person in recovery--reflects on her pilgrimage of healing through valleys of despair and vistas of resurrection. Addiction and Recovery is not just Postlethwaite's story, though. She also draws on the wisdom of pilgrims who have walked other paths to explore themes such as surrender, truth telling, shame, powerlessness, grace, forgiveness, and resurrection. Together, these chronicles bring hope to people who struggle with the disease of addiction and to those who love them. Each chapter ends with questions to reflect on with conversation partners or in a journal, and a spiritual practice. The spiritual practices are related to the chapter themes and serve as samplers, but they can be woven into the reader's own pilgrimage. Readers will recognize themselves in these stories and reflections, learn that they are not alone, and find reasons to hope as they make their own pilgrimage.