You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In a field rife with misinformation, obfuscation, intimidation, and exploitation, this book represents a bright beacon of light that can pierce the fog and help save lives. It is full of good sense, accurate information, and helpful guidance for those who would like to free themselves from addictive behavior involving alcohol, gambling, prescription or nonprescription drugs, food, sex, shopping, and the like. I recommend it wholeheartedly.
Lance Dodes is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst with a wealth of experience working in or running programs dealing with alcoholism, substance abuse, and compulsive gambling. He also treats addicted individuals in private practice. What he has learned from his experience is epitomized in his assertion that:
Virtually every addictive act is preceded by a feeling of helplessness or powerlessness. Addictive behavior functions to repair
Page 912this underlying feeling of helplessness … because taking the addictive action (or even deciding to take this action) creates a sense of being empowered of taking control—over one's emotional experience and one's life. [p. 4, italics in original]
Dodes goes on to say that “rage at helplessness … is the nearly irresistible force that drives addiction” (p. 5, italics in original). The addictive behavior, he emphasizes, is not to be looked at as reprehensible weakness, but, on the contrary, as an effective, albeit destructive, action that serves to restore a needed sense of power by providing the capacity to do something. Dodes grants that Alcoholics Anonymous and its offshoots can be helpful to some people, but he seriously questions the usefulness of requiring people to declare that they are helpless and have to turn themselves over to an external power to control them. He cites studies indicating that only a very small percentage of people who join AA stay with it and remain sober. For the rest, he advocates the use of a therapeutic approach that coordinates exploring each patient's unique personal histor