Central Recovery Press LLC

The New York Times bestselling author of My Grandmother's Hands surveys America's deteriorating democracy and offers embodied practices to help us protect ourselves and our country. 

"All of us need to read this book—and then act on it.”—Angela Rye, NPR political analyst and former CNN commentator

"Resmaa Menakem is one of our country's most gifted racial healers. His brilliant new book could not be more timely."—Michael Eric Dyson, author of Entertaining Race and Long Time Coming

In The Quaking of America, therapist and trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem takes readers through somatic processes addressing the growing threat of white-supremacist political violence.

Through the coordinated repetition of lies, anti-democratic elements in American society are working to incite mass radicalization, widespread chaos, and a collective trauma response in tens of millions of American bodies. Currently, most of us are utterly unprepared for this potential mayhem. This book can help prepare us—and possibly prevent further destruction. This preparation focuses not on strategy or politics, but on practices that can help us

The Quaking of America is a unique and perfectly timed guide to help us navigate our widespread upheaval and build an antiracist culture.

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER

"My Grandmother's Hands will change the direction of the movement for racial justice."— Robin DiAngelo, New York Times bestselling author of White Fragility

In this groundbreaking book, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of trauma and body-centered psychology.

The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze, and it endures the trauma inflicted by the ills that plague society. Menakem argues this destruction will continue until Americans learn to heal the generational anguish of white supremacy, which is deeply embedded in all our bodies. Our collective agony doesn't just affect African Americans. White Americans suffer their own secondary trauma as well. So do blue Americans—our police.

My Grandmother's Hands is a call to action for all of us to recognize that racism is not only about the head, but about the body, and introduces an alternative view of what we can do to grow beyond our entrenched racialized divide.

• Paves the way for a new, body-centered understanding of white supremacy—how it is literally in our blood and our nervous system.

• Offers a step-by-step healing process based on the latest neuroscience and somatic healing methods, in addition to incisive social commentary.

A gritty, down-to-earth guide for real-life couples 

Conflict is a natural part of any intimate relationship. Yet most couples either avoid it or try to smooth over their differences. This often results in at least one partner compromising their integrity—and stunting their own growth.

Monsters in Love challenges the idea that conflict between partners is unhealthy or something to avoid. Instead, it encourages both people to stand by what they need and who they are—but to do so with compassion rather than competitiveness or vengefulness. 

This book is about the reality of committed, intimate relationships, which are designed to inspire both people to grow up. It challenges some common misperceptions about what makes for a successful partnership. It also rocks the boat of psychotherapy, calling out therapists who don't bring their best to their clients. 

Instead of comforting fantasies or false promises, Monsters in Love offers you and your partner a chance to make your relationship—and your lives—much bigger and more emergent. 

Now in paperback—the definitive history of how the"Big Book" of Alcoholics Anonymous was written, edited, and finally brought to press.

It has been over forty years since Ernie Kurtz wrote Not-God, the last truly professional treatment of the history of Alcoholics Anonymous. While many books dealing with A.A. history have been written since then, Writing the Big Book is the first to bring that same kind of exhaustive research, scholarly discipline, and informed insight to the subject.

Schaberg’s book—telling a detailed story that begins in October of 1937 (when a book was first proposed) and ends in April of 1939 (when Alcoholics Anonymous was published)—is based primarily on the wealth of 1930s documents currently preserved in several A.A. archives. Woven together into an exciting narrative, these real-time documents provide an almost week-by-week account of how the book was slowly put together. It is a story that unfolds with many unexpected turns and more than a few revealing departures from the hallowed stories so widely circulated by A.A. members in the past.

Writing the Big Book presents a robust and vivid picture of how Alcoholics Anonymous operated and grew in its earliest days along with a vast amount of previously unreported details about the cast of colorful characters who made that group so successful. Most surprising is the emergence of Bill Wilson’s right-hand man, Hank Parkhurst, as the unsung hero in this story. Without Hank there would have been no book, but his unfortunate slip back into drinking just months after it was published resulted in him being almost completely written out of the supposedly factual stories told later.

Fast paced, engaging, and contrary, Writing the Big Book will decisively change whatever you think you know about early A.A. history and the ways in which this book—so central to the worldwide growth of this important twentieth century movement of spiritual recovery—actually came into being.

A far-ranging examination of how the effects of addiction and trauma in the family can reverberate for generations

Trauma and addictive disorders are often a result of psychological injuries experienced as a child. These injuries typically produce long-term and harmful generational consequences on loved ones and other family members. Claudia Black presents a searing portrait of a broken family system, exploring how addiction and trauma develop and how their damaging repetition uproots and frequently destroys one's family tree. Filled with vignettes highlighting the various causes of trauma, Dr. Black helps readers understand its physiology and psychology and gives them healing, proactive steps to build healthier relationships.

Claudia Black, PhD, is internationally recognized for her pioneering and cutting-edge work with family systems and addictive disorders. Her work with children affected by drug and alcohol addiction in the late 1970s fueled the advancement of the codependency and developmental trauma fields. Dr. Black's passion to help young adults overcome obstacles and strengthen families built the foundation of the Claudia Black Young Adult Center at The Meadows. Not only is Dr. Black the clinical architect of this innovative treatment program, she is also actively involved with the treatment team, patients, and their families.

A new edition of Dr. Claudia Black's comprehensive manual designed for addiction treatment professionals for use treating patients affected by depression

This fully updated and revised edition is meant for clinicians versed in identifying and treating depression within the context of treating addiction. What sets this book apart from other depression workbooks is that it holds a healthy respect for cognitive behavioral modalities while recognizing the role of effective and spiritual interventions related to depressive disorders.

Dr. Black provides didactic information and reproducible handouts. In many of the strategies sections, she presents ideas and formats for structured interventions. The use of handouts in the form of written exercises, checklists, sentence stems, structured dialogues, and/or art activities is an integral part of this therapeutic technique.

In Changing Course—now fully revised and updated—Claudia Black extends a helping hand to anyone overcoming the complex trauma of growing up in an impaired family system.

Don't talk. Don't trust. Don't feel.

Being raised in a dysfunctional family system, whether unpredictable and chaotic or overly rigid and joyless, can set the course for chronic emotional pain in adulthood. Changing Course is a gentle, affirming guide to healing from childhood experiences of loss, abandonment, fear, and shame.

Through carefully crafted questions, charts, exercises, and real-life stories of people impacted by various types of family impairment, Dr. Black skillfully presents an interactive process of healing from childhood wounds. You will learn four essential steps you can use to let go of old hurtful beliefs and behaviors and develop new skills for both redefining self and negotiating relationships.

An essential guide to the challenges men face in creating healthy and engaged relationships in all areas of their lives. 

"For every man who has wandered through the entanglements of love, unwilling to ask for directions, and secretly hoping for a guide, Dan Griffin offers a clear and comprehensive road map."—Terrence Real, bestselling author of I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression.

Every idea is presented through the lens of the "Man Rules"—the often unconscious ideas men carry with them into every relationship they have—that affect their ability to find true connection. A Man's Way through Relationships offers practical advice and inspiration for men to define, with their partners, their own sense of masculinity, and thus heighten their potential to love and be loved.

Dan Griffin excerpts interviews with men who share their innermost lives and experiences with relationships. He draws from his own life with over two decades of recovery and ten years of marriage. Readers will learn to recognize how their ideas about masculinity have shaped who they are and how they approach there relationships. 

From the authors of the Irrelationship series comes an insightful guidebook for enhancing the most vital relationship in every person's life—the one they have with themselves.

Making Your Crazy Work for You adopts the irrelationship model to present a step-by-step program for self-understanding and catalyzing change. Our "crazy" refers to our unique reaction to our own pain, fear, and anxiety brought on by isolation from others and ourself. This unrecognized isolation can occur even when we are surrounded by other people in our daily lives. However, by learning to listen to our craziness, we can use it as a tool for ending isolation and opening up to love.

Drawn from the authors' personal experience and clinical practice, each chapter features new case studies, exercises, and tools to help readers to 

• reverse unhealthy behavior patterns
• learn to access their genuine emotions, needs, and ideas
• create better relationships
  

The authors share lessons they learned about conflict, whether a small fight, a real battle, or even a period of war, to help couples reset into a different state of love by using a dynamic five-step model to rebuild and maintain a foundation of vulnerability, empathy, and intimacy.

Conflict and turmoil--the intimacy of everyday life--is the foundation great relationships are built on. Based on decades of helping couples address conflict and achieve long-lasting love, the authors created a simple five-step process for reconciling differences, taking couples in crisis from rupture to repair.

Their tool—the PACER model (Pause, Accountability, Collaboration, Experiment, and Review)—takes into account cultural differences, past hurts, and current crises. It is an opportunity for not just healing but for growth. Packed with interactive exercises that make real change possible, Love, Crash, Rebuild offers readers in any type of romantic partnership—straight, gay, nonbinary, interracial, etc.—a single toolbox that can help bring a new understanding of what a successful relationship should look like.

This groundbreaking new book includes dozens of client anecdotes and stories of the authors’ relationship as a mixed-race couple, who are also couples’ therapists, that highlight how a simple process can address and resolve all ruptures, large or small. Couples will learn how to take a deeper look at what is lying underneath their issues and find a healthier outlook on their relationship.

"Lucid, clear, visionary"—Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps The Score

An expert's inspiring, deeply personal account of how childhood trauma can be overcome.

From the moment they’re born, babies seek a loving parental attachment. When that connection is absent, it derails childhood development in ways that can last a lifetime. The annual health costs of illness related to child trauma for North America and Europe alone are 1.3 trillion dollars. Child trauma is much more widespread than previously thought and passes from one generation to the next. But that’s not the end of the story—there is overwhelming evidence that this intergenerational transmission can be disrupted. 

So why isn’t the eradication of childhood trauma a tier-one public priority, like defense or growth?

In Trauma Proof, Benjamin Perks argues that it must be, and that we can tackle it as a public health problem like COVID-19, by 1) Making sure everyone is aware of the risk; 2) Preventing transmission; and 3) Opening pathways to healing.

Perks shows we have the tools to make these three things happen, and the evidence to show they work. The fields of psychology, neuroscience, and medicine have made huge leaps in the past 25 years. We now know what causes Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), how to reduce them, and how to address them. For the first time in history, we know child mistreatment is not inevitable. 

Combining expert interviews and intensive reportage from Jamaica to Scotland, from Brooklyn to Birmingham, Perks shows the steps we can take to stem the epidemic of childhood trauma. He also shares his personal story of growing up in violent group homes, fathering a child at fifteen and finding his way, in his thirties to healing. 

Trauma Proof is a rallying call to address child trauma as the public health crisis it is—because we can do better for kids, and we should.

“I read Jessie and Calen’s book with my heart in my throat, at times, my eyes burning with tears. It is a gripping, heartbreaking, and ultimately, life affirming, step-by-step account of how mental illness can shatter a family, but also how that family, through love and resilience, can not only survive, but triumph."—Glenn Close

“Writing the book was like putting it back together, my fall into psychosis and how I began to recover.”—Calen T. Pick, featured in People

For eighteen years, everyone looked up to Oliver. He was smart, funny, good-looking, and a talented artist. Everyone wanted to be his friend. But after his eighteenth birthday, he became morose and moody. He watched familiar faces melt into unknown strangers. Oliver fights to silence the sinister voice that tells him scary things as he tries to exist in a world that no longer makes sense to him. Oliver’s parents and siblings grapple with how to help him find treatment while his delusions, anxiety, and hallucinations intensify. However, finding treatment proves to be even more difficult since Oliver's mother is bipolar and his father holds onto the denial he has regarding Oliver's increasingly dangerous behaviors.   

Based on the authors’ own experiences, Silence You follows a family coping with crisis. Oliver, the eldest son, is suffering from schizophrenia. As he goes through treatment, his parents and siblings deal with the repercussions. In particular, Oliver's mother, Elizabeth, must come to terms with her own mental illness and the role it may have played in Oliver's illness.

"A compelling, clear-eyed look at the changing norms around youth sports, family, and what it means for us to spend meaningful time together."—Hua Hsu, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Stay True

More Than Just a Game presents original research, first-person stories, and a much-needed perspective regarding what has become a multibillion-dollar industry that involves forty-five million kids. Are the current practices good for young athletes and their families? What is gained and what is sacrificed when the goal is winning at all costs? 

In this confusing environment, parents struggle to maintain a sense of equilibrium, wondering how to balance their child's athletic "career" with "normal" developmental goals and family life. Authors and researchers Bjork and Hoynes offer knowledge, support, and a meaningful way forward, as well as a way back to letting our kids play, grow, and thrive. They examine the most pressing issues in youth sports, including 

• How taxing athletics can be developmentally for children. 
  
• The financial impact the ever-popular travel teams have on families. 
  
• Excessive time commitments and expectations. 
  
• The conundrums and challenging decisions the families of young athletes’ face. 
• Inherent disadvantages of being a young athlete facing inequities.

Bottled explains the perils moms face with drinking and chronicles the author’s path to recovery, from hitting bottom to the months of early sobriety—a blur of pain and chaos—to her now (in)frequent moments of peace. 

An award-winning research psychiatrist exposes myths about childhood trauma and PTSD and provides evidence-based solutions.

A compassionate and accessible guide for parents whose children have experienced traumatic or life-threatening events written by one of the foremost authorities on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in children and adolescents. Dr. Scheeringa understands the desperation many parents feel and explains the impact of trauma, simplifies the science into layman’s terms, debunks the myths, and provides direction on navigating the confusing maze of the mental health world to find appropriate care.

Chances are someone you know is a sex addict (or is living with one).

Sex addiction is a growing menace that threatens all strata of our society, destroying millions of marriages, damaging reputations, contributing to suicides and in some cases prison sentences, and wasting mind-boggling amounts of money. But there is hope.

Sex addiction is treatable. Through the rigorous recovery program detailed in these pages, it is possible for sex addicts to stop all of their destructive behaviors—forever. The recovery road is long and difficult, but also very rewarding. Marriages have not only been restored, but enriched. By following the steps described in Stop Sex Addiction, addicts and their partners have found the path to freedom from sex addiction. You have taken the first steps along that path by picking up this book. The wisdom it contains will lead to real hope and true freedom. 

Milton Magness, D. Min., MA, LPC, CSAT, is the founder and director of Hope & Freedom Counseling Services in Houston, Texas. He is a licensed professional counselor and a certified sex addiction therapist.

"A truly poignant read that shines a light on the humanity in neurodivergence, the heart of parenting, and the soul of psychotherapy.”—Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again 

A profoundly thought-provoking, funny, and hopeful memoir about adapting when life doesn’t go to plan, redefining family, and creating your own path.

One afternoon, Emma Nadler gets a call from her daughter's doctor that changes her life forever. Faced with the realities of raising a child with a rare genetic condition, Nadler must confront her preconceptions of motherhood and her perfectionistic beliefs.

With a generous wit and a wide-open mind, Nadler—who also happens to be a psychotherapist—offers a rare window into the unconventional ways she and her family adapt to their improbable path. Every relationship in her life—with herself, her husband, children, friends, and even clients—is reimagined as she navigates the heartbreak and hilarity of her daily life.

As she and her husband join the 53 million caregivers in the United States, Nadler wrestles to belong in a society that devalues both caregivers and people with disabilities. She challenges the scripts that mothers should be martyrs, or that self-sacrifice is a necessary component of love. Nadler illustrates the complexity, grief, and joy of living an unexpected life, all with the wisdom of a therapist, the heart of a loving parent, and the ingenuity of a queer woman who refuses to be shackled by cultural expectations.

The Unlikely Village of Eden is an insightful and wholehearted look at the long-ignored realities so many families live with daily. Nadler is a trusted guide who confronts both hope and despair as she gives readers the gift of what it looks like to redefine love, success, family, and community.

A profoundly personal account of the impact of complex trauma on a man’s life.

Larry Ruhl’s father sought comfort from his only son, smothering him not only with his affection, but his sexuality—blurring critical boundaries that would prove deeply debilitating. Larry’s mother, with her spiraling, ever-changing mental illness kept the family in a constant state of anxiety. By the time Larry graduated from high school, overwhelming sadness and suicidal thoughts took root, plaguing him for decades.

Breaking the Ruhls will resonate deeply with many who have experienced similar trauma, boundary violations, and abuse within the family. Ruhl mines his own experiences with sexual confusion, addiction and recovery, relationships, career struggles, and therapeutic breakthroughs, while demonstrating it is possible to heal and thrive.

• Ninety-three percent of juvenile sexual assault victims knew their perpetrators. For 80 percent of those, that perpetrator was a parent.

• Shines a spotlight on complex trauma involving sexual abuse and help others shed the shame that sexual abuse survivors unfairly carry.

Larry Ruhl serves as a board member for Taking Back Ourselves, which facilitates weekends of recovery for survivors of sexual abuse, and is a registered speaker with RAINN (Rape Abuse Incest National Network). He previously served as a board member at Male Survivor, a leading organization in the fight to improve the resources and support available to male survivors of all forms of sexual abuse. Today he takes meetings into addiction treatment centers as a way to shed shame and draw the parallels between addiction and sexual abuse.

Claudia Black's seminal relapse prevention workbook has been revised and updated!

People in recovery from addiction need to be award of the potential for setback and the range of challenges that can, and often do, lead to relapse. To assume or simply hope it will not occur is denial. A Hole in the Sidewalk supports the necessary work required for relapse prevention from all forms of addiction: alcohol and other drugs, nicotine, sex, work, spending, screen, gambling, food, and relationships.

Dr. Black provides robust tools for those who take their recovery seriously and want to maximize there knowledge and take actions to minimize the possibility of a return to active addiction. Whether or not someone has a history of relapse or wants to be proactive in their effort of avoiding potential stumbling blocks, this newly updated workbook is a major asset in their sustained recovery.

In this important and transformative guide, three experienced practitioners identify the widespread dysfunctional dynamic they call "irrelationship," a psychological defense system two people create together to protect themselves from the fear and anxiety of real intimacy in a relationship.

Drawing on their wide clinical and life experience, the authors look at the behavioral "song-and-dance" routines repeatedly performed by couples in irrelationships. Readers will find a valuable framework for understanding their challenges with action-oriented tools to help them navigate their way to fulfilling relationships.

Mark B. Borg, Jr., PhD, is a community psychologist and psychoanalyst, and a supervisor of psychotherapy at the William Alanson White Institute.

Grant H. Brenner, MD, is a board-certified psychiatrist in private practice, specializing in treating mood and anxiety disorders and the complex problems that may arise in adulthood from childhood trauma and loss.

Daniel Berry, RN, MHA, has practiced as a Registered Nurse in New York City since 1987 and has worked for almost two decades in community-based programs.

Mass trauma has made entire towns and cities into monuments of heartbreak and loss. Here is a book to guide the communal recovery.

After the horrific tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, local caregivers, civic leaders, and first responders had the daunting task of navigating emotional and physical trauma as they stitched their community back together. The recovery process takes years, and as the coordinator of the Newtown Recovery and Resiliency Team, Melissa Glaser managed the town’s response. She developed a unique set of therapeutic and transferable best practices that other communities can learn from. The impact of an intense media presence and the long-term financial needs of recovery work are also included in Healing a Community. Through heartbreaking insights, Glaser conveys the importance of meeting traumatized individuals where they are at in the process. 

Lessons learned in Newtown can be used to create a universal community mental health disaster plan so leaders, therapists, and families know what to do the next time tragedy occurs.

We all want our relationships to be healthy—but who knows how to make that happen? Husband and wife authors Steve and Angie McCord, a couple with more than twenty years in recovery each, share with you the sound advice and spiritual exercises that have helped their own relationship grow and thrive. 

In A Spiritual Path to a Healthy Relationship you will learn effective tools and solutions for achieving the relationship you desire, including:

• Envisioning the qualities you want in a mate and identifying "must haves" and "deal breakers"
  
• Transitioning from self-reliance to partnership
• Overcoming relationship fears and getting past intimacy roadblocks
• Nurturing positive communication, gratitude, and spiritual connection
• Applying prayer and meditation for a more peaceful relationship

Steve McCord is a licensed marriage and family therapist who has provided counseling to individuals, couples, and families since 1991. Angie McCord is a certified life coach specializing in personal and professional relationships. They bring their avid quest for spiritual growth to their professional lives and have been actively involved in the recovery community for more than twenty and thirsty years, respectively. As leaders of couples retreats, they find great joy in mentoring others. Steve and Angie were married on March 30, 2003. 

Experience the benefits of recovery through the practice of yoga.

Recovery from active addiction is a lifelong journey that can take many paths. By aligning yoga philosophy and poses with each of the Twelve Steps, Kyczy Hawk presents a physical and spiritual guide that complements and augments any twelve-step practice.

Highlighting her own yogic journey through the steps, Hawk provides an enlightened way of thinking that allows readers to investigate how they think, feel, and believe by using a new vocabulary to process traditional recovery principles.

• Current findings increasingly support yoga and mindfulness as promising complementary therapies for addictive behaviors (Complementary Therapies in Medicine, 2013).

• Provides clear and concise instructions requiring no prior knowledge and enabling people to experience the benefits of this ancient practice in the comfort and privacy of their own home.

• Key yoga terms are explained clearly and all poses are accompanied by illustrations.

• Consistent practice will lead to a more positive outlook on life and help eliminate harmful attitudes and behaviors. It can also create a balanced lifestyle, bringing greater harmony, stability, and enjoyment.

• Anyone can benefit from yoga, regardless of ability, age, belief system, or life circumstance.

Kyczy Hawk is a certified yoga instructor. She lectures on yoga and recovery throughout the Bay Area and has been a presenter at the Art of Yoga Project and Niroga Institute's Yoga Therapy teacher training. As the Success Over Addiction and Relapse (SOAR) yoga teacher specialty-training founder, she has taught yoga instruction workshops throughout the United States. She hosts a weekly yoga recovery meeting on In The Rooms and manages the Willow Glen Yoga Studio in San Jose, CA.

A groundbreaking patient workbook with an emphasis on healing the whole person

An excellent tool for treatment professionals, patients, and families that provides education and exercises to help individuals navigate the process of recovery, setting the stage for deep healing and providing actionable tips for physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health. Those working through this resource will find the encouragement, expertise, and pragmatism they need to rediscover their true selves and find stability in a recovery-focused life.

In the mid-sixties, Tom Catton searched for meaning by experimenting with pot, LSD, and other drugs popular then—but instead of the spiritual connection he sought, Catton found himself hooked in the web of addiction and consumed by feelings of separation. In this earnest, insightful, and wonderfully written book, Catton, now in long-term recovery, describes how he transcended his challenges through the study and practice of meditation and introspection. 

Along the way, he journeyed across the world, from the beaches of Hawaii to the streets of Kolkata (Calcutta), meeting remarkable "teachers," like the magnetic Flobird, who became his mentor, his spiritual guide, and his friend. She inhabits the pages of this book, along with other singular world figures Catton met in his sojourn—like the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa. They are all here, in The Mindful Addict, and their lessons and love infuse these pages with wisdom and heart.

An indispensable, compassionate end-of-life resource

After four decades of training volunteers to sit at the bedsides of the dying, psychologist and Shanti founder Charles Garfield has created an essential guide for friends, family, and healthcare professionals who want to ease someone's final days but don't know where to begin.

Garfield presents practical advice about finding connection, honesty, and peace while being of the greatest service to those at the end of life. By focusing on the reciprocal and healing relationship between the living and the dying, which continues until the last breath, he offers a path toward clarity and wholeness, and even growth. Life's Last Gift is an emotional lifeline for anyone who feels lost and filled with grief during this final stage of life.

A go-to guide on how to confront, heal from, and ultimately thrive after the devastation of betrayal by a partner's compulsive sexual or other addictive behavior

The first book specifically for partners affected by addictive behavior that addresses, in detail, how to identify, create, and maintain boundaries as a vital component of self-care and an indispensable tool for healing and growth. Through working the 5-Step Boundary Solution partners will

What happens when one harrowing incident changes your life, splitting it between before and after?

On the fourth day of what Lara Naughton thought would be two weeks of bliss in Belize, she was kidnapped and assaulted by a man pretending to be a cabdriver. Held in the depths of the tropical forest—alone with the jaguar man—she found that compassion was her only defense.

Lara’s survival and journey of healing is poignant, compelling, and exceptional. Bending the limits of reality, she uses myth to process her experience. As Lara seeks a new understanding of herself, her lyrical, haunting prose reveals a belief that there is room for compassion—for self and and others—even in the midst of violence.

Lara Naughton is an author and documentary playwright. Her work includes Never Fight a Shark in the Water: The Wrongful Conviction of Gregory Bright. She is a certified Compassion Cultivation Trainer through The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University School of Medicine. She lives and teaches in New Orleans.

A new edition written especially for behavioral health practitioners from one of the world's foremost experts on addiction and family system dysfunction, Dr. Claudia Black.

Addiction passes through families from one generation to the next. Family Strategies provides a wealth of information and guidance proven to be effective with families challenged by addiction--whether to alcohol or other drugs, gambling, food, sex, etc. Through authoritative direction and reproducible handouts, professionals are given the structure and resources to help families they work with successfully transition to recovery.

The single book therapists everywhere will recommend to all of their patients, because at some point or another, we all behave like dicks.

Why this book? Because you might be a dick: a mean-spirited, self-focused individual who thinks and acts as though everyone else in the world can only be understood—and whose only importance is defined—in terms of their relationship to you. Being a dick might feel powerful in the short term, but it is not helping you in the long term because this flawed character trait is exactly what’s keeping you from attaining what you may want most: personal fulfillment, satisfying work, a loving committed relationship, and lifelong friendships.

Anyone, at any time, can be a dick. Yet Don’t Be a Dick is especially for people who have noticed how their own behavior tends to backfire, leaving them feeling isolated and unsure why their seemingly justified actions consistently yield such poor results. If you’re constantly using the refrain, It’s not me, it’s them whenever something goes wrong, Mark Borg is here to tell you that it is, in fact, you. The good news is there is something you can do to reverse these behaviors and live a happier, more fulfilling life.

Krovitz-Neren's innovative step-by-step program teaches parents how to reconnect with the entire family in the wake of addiction and how to be in charge again. The program is designed to help parents let go of the addicted family system and begin parenting with renewed strength and positive powder. By applying these profoundly simple strategies partners can expect to: 

• Experience a deeper emotional connection with their children
• Enjoy clarified family values, rules, and boundaries
• Have improved parenting skills that allow them to create greater joy within the family

“In Sociometrics, Tian Dayton masterfully integrates principles of group dynamics and psychodrama therapies with insights into bodily states and feelings gained from contemporary neuroscience. Sociometrics infuses therapeutic principles in an intuitive and functional program that shifts the agent of healing from the therapist to the group. We learn that through sociometrics, the threads of healing are woven as the client experiences a reconnection with the inner self and a connection with others.”—Stephen W. Porges, PhD, Distinguished University Scientist, Indiana University; Professor of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina; creator of the Polyvagal Theory

Embodied, relational processes designed to add experiential therapy into addiction treatment centers, IOPs, and one-to-one or group therapy settings.

Relational trauma can cause a loss of connection with the self and impact our ability to engage comfortably in intimate connection with others. Feeling misread, neglected, or abused by the people we want most to be loved by is a traumatizing experience that is cumulative. When these relational wounds remain unseen and unresolved, they can become the pain pump fueling self-medicating and dysfunctional behaviors that silently pass down through generations. 

Sociometrics are embodied, research-based processes that educate clients about trauma, grief, and resilience as they offer in-the-moment, experiential relational trauma repair. Created by Dr. Tian Dayton to fit easily into outpatient programs, clinics, and one-to-one settings, sociometrics help to take the guesswork out of incorporating experiential therapy into treatment. They give therapists a clear process that builds momentum for deep change and personal growth. Harnessing the therapeutic power of the group, they teach skills of emotional literacy and self- and co-regulation.

The combination of sociometrics and simple role plays allow the body, as well as the mind, to find a voice. They draw on the theory base of psychodrama and sociometry, the first forms of mind/body, experiential therapy created by the father of group therapy, Jacob Levy Moreno.

What happens when your partner, your primary person, in an instant, becomes a source of danger and pain?

The Betrayal Bind introduces new language, concepts, and imagery to explore the crucial relational dilemma that betrayed partners face when their significant other is unsafe to connect to, yet connection is the key to healing. 

Discovering a partner’s sexual betrayal spins your world out of control. In a split second, your sense of safety is shattered, your trust is gone, and everything you thought you could count on is in question. 

Betrayed partners, whether dealing with an isolated infidelity or a pattern of sexual compulsivity, need immediate support to navigate the new terrain of their relationship. They need a clear articulation of betrayal trauma, a thorough education about their normal attachment-based reactions, and a proven path to healing. 

By focusing on how a partner’s attachment system functions in the wake of sexual betrayal, The Betrayal Bind offers a new, game-changing exploration into an age-old problem and connects the dots from research to the lived experience of betrayed partners.

Claudia Black's bestselling classic on the experience and legacy of being raised in an addictive household.

In an all too familiar scenario, played out in millions of homes every day, children who grow up in addictive families abide by certain rules: don't talk, don't trust, don't feel. The rigid survival roles and youthful coping behaviors they take on, such as the responsible child, the adjuster, the placater, and the acting-out child can eventually contribute to problems of depression, loneliness, and addiction in adulthood.

Using poignant personal stories, thoughtful explanations, and helpful exercises, Black helps readers gain personal insights and develop new skills that lead to a healthier, happier, more fulfilling life.

While continuing to recognize alcohol as the primary addiction within families, this newly revised edition of It Will Never Happen to Me, which has sold more than two million copies, broadens concepts to include addictive disorders involving other drugs, money, food, sex, and work.

The powerful practice of yoga, with all its diverse approaches and time-honored traditions, meets twelve-step recovery.

Those in recovery who yearn to connect more fully in the suggested "prayer and meditation" of Step Eleven will welcome this delightful book from a fresh voice in recovery literature. Kyczy Hawk's experiences of addiction and recovery make her a relatable, compassionate guide to an integrative practice that addresses the threefold aspects of addiction―body, mind, and spirit―for a new experience of recovery and of physical and spiritual health.

What are the keys to genuine happiness?

In contrast to stimulus-driven pleasure, genuine contentment comes from living a life of meaning that aligns with one's values. John Bruna provides readers with the practical wisdom and methods to cultivate deeper satisfaction and contentment in everyday experiences. He identifies common traps people fall into looking for happiness that actually create stress, worry, and fear, offering authentic mindfulness-based solutions to counteract them.

The increasing popularity of secular mindfulness in the United States mainstream has unfortunately produced a wide variety of teachings that water down and sometimes misrepresent this important philosophy and approach to living. In direct contrast, this invaluable book maintains the substance of the entire teaching as a program that is accessible to people of all spiritual traditions or no spiritual tradition.

John Bruna is a counselor, educator, and mindfulness and spiritual teacher. In 2005, he was ordained as a Buddhist monk in the Tibetan tradition through the Gaden Shartse Monastery in India. In 2012, he became a Certified Cultivating Emotional Balance Mindfulness Teacher via the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies. Currently, John is the director of the Way of Compassion Foundation and cofounder of the Mindful Life Program.

"This raw and emotional tale is a roller coaster through the depths of addiction, tragedy, hard work, and redemption. It is proof that with hard work, anything is possible."—Sanjay Gupta, MD, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent

Follow Joe Putignano on a harrowing journey from the US Olympic Training Center to homeless shelters to shooting heroin on the job to being declared dead. This story goes beyond addiction. It is about the fragility and tenacity of the human spirit and how that spirit can redeem each and every one of us by helping to push us through the darkness, whether the darkness is from death, divorce, or the disease of addiction.

Acrobaddict is a story about the close relationship between athletics and drug addiction—how the same energy, obsession, and dedication that can create an Olympic athlete can also create a homeless drug addict.

Expert guidance for parents on growing up their kids

Psychologist Carl Pickhardt offers insight from his thirty years of experience counseling caregivers on how to navigate the adolescent development process—from eight to eighteen. For most parents, the onset of puberty brings an unexpected, even unwelcome change in their child’s behavior, which can cause bewilderment, confusion, and sadness. Dr. Pickhardt’s comforting and knowledgeable voice points out that not only can growth change many beloved characteristics of their child, but also it can alter dynamics in the relationship. Parents, teachers, and caretakers will find comfort with effective practices to help kids achieve responsible independence from the end of childhood through young adulthood and beyond.

A step-by-step program that shows how to recognize everyday narcissism in ourselves and others and respond in healthy ways.

Narcissism, in all forms, is a belief that the world revolves around us, and that what happens in the world happens because of us. Most of us live with a form of narcissism so deeply embedded that we don't even know we have it. This "everyday narcissism" (EN) comes from a combination of childhood wounds and powerful myths we were taught as children. Everyday Narcissism helps readers understand how EN manifests in their own lives, and teaches them how to heal it. This awareness provides a foundation for creating greater happiness, more fulfilling relationships, less reactivity, and more meaning.

• An essential purchase for anyone having difficulty in a relationship, with a partner, coworker, family member, or other loved one.
• This is the first book for the general reader to specifically address everyday narcissism (EN).
• Features a Foreword by Anne Katherine, best-selling author of Boundaries and Where to Draw the Line.

Dr. Claudia Black's remarkable book designed specifically for children growing up in families ravaged by addiction.

Children who grow up in addicted families usually learn at a very young age that it is not safe for them to openly talk about their family experiences. This updated edition of My Dad Loves Me, My Dad Has a Disease gives children ages five to twelve the opportunity to work through their feelings of loss, loneliness, fear, and frustration, both verbally and through drawing exercises. Through sharing their thoughts and feelings, children can develop a better understanding of addiction and how it affects their parent(s).

Written from a child's point of view, this book has helped thousands of children and is a springboard for children to understand their own recovery process in a family ravaged by addiction.

A lawyer turned drug counselor examines the disruption many families endure when addiction impacts their lives.

Based in part on her own family’s journey, Ellen Van Vechten explains the science of addiction, the theory of treatment, and the Twelve-Step model of recovery, providing sensible information and tips for reasoned action in support of a loved one while fostering personal growth and recovery.

Powerlessness over another's addiction has a caustic effect on the family. Too often parents and partners equate "letting go" with "giving up." While acceptance of a lack of control is essential to coping with the disease within the family system, there is nothing passive about supporting a partner or child on their journey to recovery. This concept is the foundation of Van Vechten's original approach to empower individuals with knowledge, which when coupled with acceptance allows any family dealing with active addiction to make thoughtful and reasoned decisions to facilitate the recovery of both their loves ones and themselves.

Psychologist and best-selling author Charles Garfield shares an uplifting vision as he takes us on a journey of a lifetime.

Some of the most profound growth of our lives can happen in the home stretch, the years after age sixty or so. It’s a time when we can finally crystallize the meaning of what we’ve been and done and fully expand into the self we’ve always intended to be. But, says psychologist Charles Garfield, that can only happen if we first loosen the grip of the life we’ve led so far, the one that’s been focused outwardly—on activity, achievement, and the idea of success—and let our souls lead the way.

In Our Wisdom Years, Dr. Garfield skillfully and practically guides readers through nine tasks that can transform the struggles of aging, bringing fulfillment, joy, and serenity. Drawing on the understandings that come from both his work as acclaimed “success guru” in the 1980s and the truths distilled from volunteering with those at the end of life, Garfield offers a fresh, uplifting vision of the wholeness that awaits us.

Dr. Garfield shares how we can gracefully let go of the younger selves we’ve been and walk through the opening that keeps beckoning toward this soul-driven version of later life. He encourages us to take the risk of being fully alive as our years pass. This is no small task—aging is not for the faint of heart! The beautiful paradox of growing older is that none of the gifts of age are available without the kind of loss that forces us to confront mortality in a way we can’t deny. In the face of loss, we’re changed and expanded by truths that come from the heart, not the mind. We learn that we’re more than our bodies, part of something much larger than we are, and that love and kindness matter most of all.

A cohesive addiction treatment model based upon the concept that addiction recovery is a learned skill.

This step-by-step guide designed is drawn from the basic concepts found in Dr. Earley's Recovery Skills Manual: A Neuroscientific Approach to Treating Addiction. It is designed to help practitioners implement RecoveryMind Training (RMT) in outpatient practice (ASAM Level 1), IOP (Level 2.1), Partial Hospitalization (Level 2.5), or Residential program (Levels 3.1 to 3.7).

To be successful, the learning involved in recovery has to overcome the complex and hard-wired entrainment produced by the use of highly reinforcing drugs, including alcohol. The RMT model describes the dynamics of active addiction with regard to its effects on the brain—motivations, drives, memories, and cognitive distortions—with the term Addict Brain. Recovery is facilitated through the learning of a structured set of skills that promote changes in thoughts, beliefs, and actions, and bring about Recovery Mind.

In this delightfully funny book, Dr. Hollis shares her path to permanent weight loss and demonstrates how little it has to do with what you are eating or what's eating you. It will teach you to start eating to nurture your true inner being to know when enough is enough. By changing how you behave, how you interact with others, how you face your own dark side, and by accepting life on life's terms, losing your fat and keeping it off is finally within your reach.

Judi Hollis, PhD is a licensed family therapist who is maintaining her own seventy-pound weight loss. She opened the nation's first eating disorders unit and has been featured on CNN, Inside Edition, and Oprah. She is the author of Fat Is a Family Affair,Fat & Furious, and Hot & Heavy.

Finally, there is hope for millions of Americans in recovery from chronic pain and addiction who want healing without the risks posed by opioid painkillers.

With its revolutionary approach to living fully with chronic pain rather than attempting to obliterate all pain by using ever-increasing doses of addictive drugs, this revised and updated edition of Dr. Mel Pohl's award-winning book is filled with evidence-based suggestions for healing from chronic pain as a whole person, not a collection of symptoms. 

The revised and updated A Day without Pain also includes: 

• A new foreword by Claudia Black, PhD.
• New expanded discussion of the brain and how it is affected by pain and suffering 
• New vignettes to illustrate the principles of pain recovery (or pain treatment)
• New information on working with the emotional aspects of chronic pain
• Updated and most current data from LVRC chronic pain recovery program

A 2019 Nautilus Silver Book Award Winner

You can't fix what you don't see. But with awareness and the right tools, real change can and does happen.

No matter how hard we try, many of us struggle to make love work with our partners. The problem, as clinical psychologist Dr. Ron Frederick explains, is that our brains are running on outdated software. Without us knowing it, our early relationship programming causes us to fear being more emotionally present and authentic with our partners—precisely what’s needed to build loving connections. But we don’t have to remain prisoners to our past.

Grounded in cutting-edge neuroscience and attachment theory, Loving Like You Mean It shares a proven four-step approach to use emotional mindfulness to break free from old habits, befriend your emotional experience, and develop new ways of relating. The capacity for deep, loving connections is inside all of us, waiting to come out. By practicing the science behind loving like you mean it, your relationships can be fuller and richer than you ever imagined.

Successful health? Healthy success? You can have both with Success Starts Within, your guide to science-backed strategies rooted in the principle that outward success begins with inner wealth.

Drawing from the latest research in neuroscience and positive psychology, mindset and resilience expert Chazz Scott shares practical strategies for what he refers to as radical self-care—an approach to living that helps us transcend negative thinking, gain inner confidence, improve focus, and develop meaningful relationships—so that we may achieve true fulfillment in our personal and professional lives. 

Success Starts Within addresses the urgent need for regular, continual self-care and personal growth. It provides proven techniques to alleviate stress and anxiety, boost life satisfaction, and improve whole-body health. At a time when the health-care industry is overwhelmed, this book offers practical, science-based solutions anyone can integrate into their daily routine. Some of the science-backed strategies that will help readers learn numerous skills, include how to

• Counter burnout and accelerate success in both professional and personal domains
  
• “Slow down to speed up” productivity, achieve wellness, and improve fulfillment
  
• Prioritize daily self-care, without it feeling burdensome
  
• Make wise decisions and choose intelligent actions for growth, based on a clearer understanding of how the mind and body operate
  
• Tune into their own thoughts, emotions, and feelings to discover what serves them and what doesn’t—and then how to use that information to achieve what is desired
  
• Explore their purpose in life and align their values with their goals
  
• Build better relationships with themselves, others, and their communities
  

Packed with tips and step-by-step exercises, this book empowers readers to establish a firm foundation of whole-body health so that success can follow naturally. 

A self-help manual for partners affected by sex addiction.

Those who act out sexually, whether through pornography, cybersex, prostitutes, voyeurism, and/or multiple affairs, leave their partners reeling in rage, incredible shame, and isolation. In this taboo-shattering and practical guidebook, partners affected by sex addiction can learn to develop healthy boundaries and make positive changes in their lives. The skills-building exercises presented are designed to help partners better understand the disease of addiction and how it is affecting their relationship. Intimate Treason provides a path to healing that gives voice to partners' truths as they travel on their own journey of recovery.

Written in clear and compelling language, this book gives therapists and counselors the information and tools needed to help their clients successfully recover from addiction. It highlights current trends in addiction treatment, as well as address a wide range of related topics, including neurochemistry, drugs of abuse, and process addiction, such as gambling, food, and sex. 

Barry Solof, MD, FASAM, is a graduate of Yale Medical School and has been practicing addiction medicine for thirty-five years. He is the medical director of Michaels' House, a nationally recognized rehabilitation facility for addiction and co-occurring disorders, located in Palm Springs, California.

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) occurs commonly in both men and women, but is frequently misdiagnosed in men, resulting in either no treatment (or worse, jail time) or the wrong treatment. Dr. Nowinski lays out the origins of BPD in men and helps a man determine if BPD describes the problems in living he's experienced, and if so, how to fix them.

Joseph Nowinski, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in private practice and the author of numerous books. His most recent books include Saying Goodbye: A Guide to Coping with a Loved One's Terminal Illness and Almost Alcoholic: Is My (Or My Loved One's) Drinking a Problem?

The Trouble with Trauma is the story of how the idea of psychological trauma appeals to the human mind.

Trauma impacts many people psychologically, but the evidence on the long-term physical effect is incomplete. Theories that psychological trauma can permanently damage your brain, cause physical disease, and change your essential character have become staples of human thought worldwide.

Dr. Scheeringa explains how those theories are widely believed whilst not being true, and at the heart of the story is an explanation of how humans choose to ignore scientific evidence and practice self-deception based on heuristics for survival. Heuristics is a rapid and efficient method to make judgments about threatening situations, which may be especially relevant during an epidemic and the spread of misinformation.

But The Trouble with Trauma is more than a critique of social policy. This is a book for anyone who wants a better understanding on how groupthink and herd mentality works and improves our ability to understand scientific fact. Dr. Scheeringa sheds light on why we choose to ignore scientific evidence while engaging the reader in a lively conversation on how we come to believe.

Robyn Cruze, a mental health advocate who found recovery from an eating disorder, has teamed up with therapist and friend Espra Andrus to provide expert guidance for those seeking eating disorder recovery, their loved ones, and treatment professionals.

This revised edition offers new insights and stories, updated approaches to nutrition, and answers to such pressing questions within the eating disorder community as: Does the word "recovered" have a place in the recovery process? What about notions of "good," "bad," "health," and "unhealthy" foods? How does soothing the self rather than fighting the eating disorder fit into recovery?

Making Peace with Your Plate helps unshackle us from our fears, anxiety, and the need to control by providing proven strategies for recovery and taking back our power from the illness.

An indispensable guide to the deeply philosophical concerns at the heart of every addict's struggle. 

Addiction and recovery are, at their core, about the meaning of life. Life on the Rocks is the first book to address addiction and recovery from a Western philosophical perspective, offering a powerful set of tools sharpened over millennia. It introduces some of the core concepts and vexing questions of philosophy to help addicts and those affected by their addiction examine and perhaps transform the meaning they make of their lives.

Without assuming any familiarity with philosophy, Dr. O’Connor illuminates issues all addicts and their loved ones face: self-identity, moral responsibility, self-knowledge and self-deception, free will and determinism, fatalism, the nature of God, and their relations to others. Life on the Rocks is an indispensable guide to the deeply philosophical concerns at the heart of every addict’s struggle.

Peg O’Connor, PhD, is professor of philosophy and gender, women, and sexuality studies at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota. She is the author of the popular Psychology Today blog “Philosophy Stirred, Not Shaken” and contributor to the Pro Talk series at Rehabs.com.

A unique narrative on a unique time, offering solace to people nearing retirement and also for those who are retired.

Poised for Retirement is not your parents’ retirement guide, nor is it a financial planning guide; rather, it’s the relatable story of an ordinary working woman reflecting on her life and career.

Written with humor, compassion, and poignancy, Nayer’s poetic prose is also inspirational. Easy to implement visualizations and breathing and sleep techniques are offered at the end of each chapter. Readers will gain insight and wisdom as the author learns to create a new and healthier life during this important transition.

• A timely topic for Baby Boomers (born between 1946 – 1962), representing twenty percent of the US population by 2029.
• Every month more than a quarter-million Americans turn sixty-five.
• Includes interviews with a diverse group of experts and laypeople who share their experiences as they face the same decision point in their lives.

Louise Nayer, is a writer and educator. She was a professor of English and creative writing for over twenty-seven years at City College of San Francisco. Presently, she is part of the San Francisco Grotto Writer’s Collective and teaches workshops at OLLI UC Berkeley. Her book Burned: A Memoir was an Oprah Great Read and won the 2011 Wisconsin Library Association Award. She lives in San Francisco, California.

A compassionate guide to help Gold Star parents cope with the grief and loss of their military son or daughter.

Author Joanne Steen tackles the subject that terrifies parents of military personnel—the death of their son or daughter on active duty. In short, easy-to-read chapters Gold Star parents find thoughtful explanations and trustworthy advice for coping with military grief. Steen weaves together realistic examples with voices of other Gold Star parents, connecting the readers to the wisdom of those parents who have walked in their shoes.

Chapters for relatives, friends, and professional service providers of Gold Star parents are also included, supplying them with what they need to know about military loss; what to expect in the parents; and best practices on what to say and ways to help support them. Gold Star parents will find a path to survive their life-changing loss and develop the resilience to move forward.

Joanne Steen has more than twenty years’ experience in the grief and loss field, with a specialty in military loss. She is a board-certified counselor, instructor, Gold Star widow, and the founder of Grief Solutions, a training company on grief, loss and resilience. Steen is also the coauthor of Military Widow: A Survival Guide (Naval Institute Press, 2006)

The definitive guide to all things related to addiction and its treatments—newly revised.

An unforgettable memoir about the turmoil of antidepressant withdrawal and the work it takes to unravel the stories we tell ourselves to rationalize our suffering.

Brooke Siem was among the first generation of minors to be prescribed antidepressants. Initially diagnosed and treated in the wake of her father’s sudden death, this psychiatric intervention sent a message that something was pathologically wrong with her and that the only “fix” was medication. As a teenager, she stepped into the hazy world of antidepressants just at the time when she was forming the foundation of her identity. For the following fifteen years, every situation she faced was seen through the lens of brokenness.

A decade and a half later, still on the same cocktail of drugs, Brooke found herself hanging halfway out her Manhattan high-rise window, calculating the time it would take to hit the ground. As she looked for breaks in the pedestrian traffic patterns, a thought dawned on her: “I’ve spent half my life—and my entire adult life—on antidepressants. Who might I be without them?”

Unfurled against a global backdrop, May Cause Side Effects is the gripping story of what happened when, after fifteen years and 32,760 pills, Brooke was faced with a profound choice that plunged her into a year of excruciating antidepressant withdrawal and forced her to rebuild her entire life.

An illuminating memoir for those who take, prescribe, or are considering psychiatric drugs, May Cause Side Effects is an honest reminder that the road to true happiness is not mapped on a prescription pad. Instead, Brooke’s story reveals the messy reality of how healing begins at the bottomless depth of our suffering, in the deep self-work that pushes us to the edges of who we are.

An insightful guide to understanding the mysteries of the mind and how we can change for the better.

How can it be that perfectly intelligent people do such obviously counterproductive things so much of the time? Why do we do the things we know we shouldn't do, and why do we fail to do the things we know we should do? The simple answer to these questions is that the unconscious mind greatly influences all that we do.

Written by an experienced clinical psychologist with a knack for describing complex ideas in a lively and easy to comprehend way, Wisdom from the Couch will change the way you think about your internal and external life.

In this beautifully written, insightful book, author Tony Greco brings together the helpful lessons learned during his own recovery when he used the established techniques of chronic pain recovery explored in the books. A Day without Pain and Pain Recovery: How to Find Balance and Reduce Suffering from Chronic Pain, both published by Central Recovery Press.

Meditations for Pain Recovery is a key resource to help your recovery from chronic pain when you have co-occurring or underlying addiction. The book makes use of the twelve-step principles and the Four Points of Balance in a holistic, contemplative manner, based on proven recovery principles. 

Dr. Sylvester "Skip" Sviokla lived life as a successful, driven, athletic, and brilliant graduate of Harvard Medical School, reveling in wealth and glamour as a "celebrity doctor" until addiction brought his life crashing down. This real-life "Dr. House" had it all (he thought) until addiction took everything. Miraculously, recovery gave him back his family, his self-respect, and much more.

The media is filled with celebrity addiction stories, so people will be drawn to the author’s experience as a “doctor to the stars.” Having attended the most famous university and medical school in the world, Dr. Sviokla’s story will also be relevant to a larger audience, including medical professionals and those seeking answers about addiction.

Sylvester "Skip" Sviokla III, MD, is a 1967 graduate of Harvard College (where he was a two-year starter on the football team, culminating in his receiving one vote for the 1966 Heisman Trophy and an offer to try out for the Chicago Bears) and a 1972 graduate of Harvard Medical School. He was owner and medical director of Skip Sviokla Entertainment Medicine, Inc. and of Medical Weight Management, Inc., in Massachusetts.

Kerry Zukus is an alumnus of Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he studied composition and arranging while appearing as an actor in theaters all over New England.

A vivid and enlightening oral account of homelessness in the Las Vegas storm drains and the hard work of re-entering mainstream society.

Are you aware that hundreds of people live underground in the flood channels of Las Vegas? Few people were until Matthew O'Brien grabbed a flashlight, tape recorder, and expandable baton for protection and explored the storm-drain system in depth. This research resulted in his landmark book Beneath the Neon. Now the drains have been covered by CNN, Fox News, NPR, Dr. Phil, the New York Times, the BBC, Al Jazeera, and many other media outlets. They have even found their way on to popular TV shows, including CSI, Criminal Minds, and into mainstream movies.

But the fact that several of these drug- and gambling-addicted tunnel dwellers have clawed their way out of the drains and turned around their lives has received far less attention. Dark Days, Bright Nights shares their harrowing stories and provides a unique perspective on one of America's most fascinating cities. It also paints a larger picture of homelessness and recovery in America. These stories are the happy (though not Hollywood) ending to the infamous tunnel tale.

The narrative is complemented by bios and stark, black-and-white images of the survivors, putting a scarred, knowing face to the unblinkingly honest accounts.