Platform Books LLC

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.

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. 

Through the story of the brief, brave life of a promising poet, the president and CEO of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art evokes the turmoil and tragedy of the Vietnam War era.

In That Time tells the story of the American experience in Vietnam through the life of Michael O'Donnell, a bright young musician and poet who served as a soldier and helicopter pilot. O'Donnell wrote with great sensitivity and poetic force, and his best-known poem is among the most beloved of the war. In 1970, during an attempt to rescue fellow soldiers stranded under heavy fire, O'Donnell's helicopter was shot down in the jungles of Cambodia. He remained missing in action for almost three decades.

Although he never fired a shot in Vietnam, O'Donnell served in one of the most dangerous roles of the war, all the while using poetry to express his inner feelings and to reflect on the tragedy that was unfolding around him. O'Donnell's life is both a powerful, personal story and a compelling, universal one about how America lost its way in the 1960s, but also how hope can flower in the margins of even the darkest chapters of the American story.

Since we imagine something intentional about a community both in its formation and its function as a new entity, there is something both baffling and attractive about the idea of a “plant community.” Do plants know what they’re doing? Some claim our attention: good to eat, good to smell, get stuck to your clothes. For a majority, plants or plant communities arouse a restricted admiration: lawn. A lawn can be a plant community, an atrocious one to be sure. But I’m thinking of plant communities in the eyes of God, where the plants foregather in ancient times and set out toward infinity. These deserve the word community, and the individuals who make them up are original in the extreme, as they must be: they live in a tough town.

It is our luck that the eternal aspects of these daredevils have fallen to the eye of artist Lindy Smith who has used the sun in ways known best to her to reveal the souls of plants as lives, as archetypes, as semaphore. Their shapes seem to belong to dreams while for all their unexpectedness they are no more accidental than dreams. What we see emerges from the lives they’ve lived in deep time; their importance hangs over them as an aura. 

We long to say their names: milkweed, mullein, bulrush, fescue, rush, yarrow. Or, on the other hand, sumpweed, pigweed, spurge. They belong to the things we see for the first time while recognizing we’ve known them always, hence the longing to absorb their eternal forms. Creation—we have it by our fingertips, just. Smith’s images Smith has discovered the souls of so many plants I thought I knew and left their essential signatures on my mind that I will never see them in the same way again, or more to the point, forget them again. I wish I knew enough about the process to understand what help the sun has been in finding these plants out. But here they are, seen by an artist, and what help it is.—from the Preface by Tom McGuane

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.

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 indispensable, compassionate end-of-life resource

After four decades of training volunteers to offer comfort 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 how to begin.

Dr. 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.

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. 

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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. 

The definitive history of writing and producing the"Big Book" of Alcoholics Anonymous, told through extensive access to the group's archives.

Alcoholics Anonymous is arguably the most significant self-help book published in the twentieth century. Released in 1939, the “Big Book,” as it’s commonly known, has sold an estimated 37 million copies, been translated into seventy languages, and spawned numerous recovery communities around the world while remaining a vibrant plan for recovery from addiction in all its forms for millions of people. While there are many books about A.A. history, most rely on anecdotal stories told well after the fact by Bill Wilson and other early members—accounts that have proved to be woefully inaccurate at times. Writing the Big Book brings exhaustive research, academic discipline, and informed insight to the subject not seen since Ernest Kurtz’s Not-God, published forty years ago.

Focusing primarily on the eighteen months from October 1937, when a book was first proposed, and April 1939 when Alcoholics Anonymous was published, Schaberg’s history is based on eleven years of research into the wealth of 1930s documents currently preserved in several A.A. archives. Woven together into an exciting narrative, these real-time documents tell an almost week-by-week story of how the book was created, providing more than a few unexpected turns and surprising departures from the hallowed stories that have been so widely circulated about early A.A. history.

Fast-paced, engaging, and contrary, Writing the Big Book presents a vivid picture of how early A.A. operated and grew and reveals many previously unreported details about the colorful cast of characters who were responsible for making that group so successful.

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?

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.

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.

Arnie Wexler's compulsive gambling spiraled out of control....after forty-plus years in recovery, he's become a nationally known expert on gambling addiction.

Wexler's life as a gambler began on the streets of Brooklyn, New York, flipping cards, shooting marbles, and playing pinball machines. At age fourteen he found the racetrack, a bookie, and started playing the stock market. His obsession with gambling accelerated until a fateful day in 1968 when it all came crashing down.

Wexler's gripping narrative leads us through the dungeon of a compulsive gambler's world—chasing the big win and coming up with empty pockets—and how his addiction drove him and his wife, Sheila, to the edge of life. With help, they managed to escape, and together they have devoted themselves to helping others with the problem they know so well.

All Bets Are Off provides a revealing picture of how the often hidden addiction of compulsive gambling ravages the lives of both the addict and those around him or her. It is a brutal cautionary tale, and also an inspiring story of hope and healing for anyone affected by problem gambling.

A vital guide to overcome the barriers to achieving intimacy and meaningful connection

People in resilient relationships are co-owners, experience reciprocity, and are better prepared to meet challenges authentically and effectively. In this sequel to the best-selling Irrelationship, the authors use examples from their clinical practice to review the concept of irrelationship and expand the DREAM Sequence, a tool used by affected couples to address perennial relationship issues.

By mutually and mindfully viewing the relationship as a third entity, separate from each individual, couples will learn how to live in and with the ambiguity of empathy, intimacy, vulnerability, and emotional investment and view relationship sanity as a deliberate and joyful undertaking to maintain and deepen connection.

Drawn from over twenty-five years of experience, this comprehensive manual sets forth how to evaluate priorities, understand options, and face bedrock issues so caregivers can make informed decisions for their loved ones, while balancing their own needs and gaining peace of mind.

Author and family caregiving expert David Levy provides a model for effective planning and decision-making, focusing on the nonclinical aspects of caregiving (legal, financial, emotional, and social), which are often neglected by medical professionals:

David Levy, JD is a gerontologist and a recognized family caregiver expert. Levy holds a Doctor of Jurisprudence and is a Florida Supreme Court Certified Family Mediator in family caregiving and a certified Family Conflict Dynamics Profiler. He facilitates weekly family caregiver support groups and counsels family caregivers, both pro bono and privately.

The only parenting book based on a school-tested method

As co-founder of Outreach Concern, Inc., one of the largest school-based counseling services in the country, Dr. Rick Capaldi developed a guide to raise kids into confident, independent adults. His "three Rs"—Read your child's environment, Regulate their emotional temperature, and Redirect their behavior—will help parents and teachers steer children toward emotional stability and success. This model has been effectively utilized in counseling over a half-million children and parents in over 900 schools, resulting in the development of cooperative, successful, and highly productive family relationships.

A poignantly funny account of renowned writer and humorist Neal Pollack's years as a marijuana addict.

Beginning innocently enough in his 20s, Neal Pollack discovers that pot makes everything—food, music, sex—better. Getting married, having a kid, and enjoying professional success do nothing to dampen Pollack's enthusiasm for getting high. As cannabis grows stronger and more widely available, the expansion and acceptance of marijuana Big Business shadows Pollack's dependence.

By 2014, Neal is a correspondent for a national marijuana newspaper, mostly because it means free pot. Diving into the wild, wicked world of weed with both lungs, Pollack proceeds to smoke, vape, and eat his way to oblivion, leading to public meltdowns and other embarrassing behavior. After his mother dies in 2017, he spirals out of control, finally hitting bottom during a reckless two-day gambling and drug-filled binge, culminating in a public crack-up at the World Series in Dodger Stadium. Three weeks later, he quits.

After joining a twelve-step program, Neal outs himself as a marijuana addict in a 2018 New York Times op-ed piece, leading to his decision to document his experience as a cautionary tale for the millions of recreational users in the hazy age of legalized weed.

An empathetic look at the grieving process providing a path to acceptance and peace for those who must continue their life journey after a loved one dies.

Tackling one of life’s greatest mysteries, Rabbi Ben Kamin examines the diverse ways we mourn the death of a loved one. Drawn from his forty-plus years of counseling the bereaved, Kamin shares stories filled with people from all walks of life to provide thoughtful insights on how we encounter and endure grief. Using his own experience of the heartbreaking loss of his father, he stresses the importance of not deferring the process of grieving at the risk of harming one’s physical, emotional, and spiritual health. An empathetic and simple spiritual guide that offers a path to acceptance and peace for those who must continue their life journey after a loved one dies.

Living mindfully, people in recovery can learn skills that allow them to recognize and know their own worthiness and value, empowering them to fully engage with life on life's terms in ways that are productive and meaningful to them. Former Buddhist monk John Bruna outlines the seven skills of living mindfully in recovery: values, attention, wisdom, equanimity, compassion, loving-kindness, and action.

The Essential Guidebook to Mindfulness in Recovery is a self-paced curriculum that can be integrated into any recovery program. Whether people are new to recovery or in long-term recovery, they will be able to use the mindfulness practices in this guidebook to consciously create healthy habits that support their recovery and the lives they want to live.

An active and personalized way for people in recovery to extend and strengthen their yogic investigation of the Twelve Steps.

Designed for use as a companion to Yogic Tools for Recovery, this workbook allows a person from any fellowship to document his or her progress through the Twelve Steps. In the introduction of each step, yogini Kyczy Hawk focuses on a recovery concept and breaks down its healing message, utilizing the wisdom of the yoga sutras. Then, she leads readers through a self-exploration of the yogic principles aligned with the step, providing introspective questions along with activities such as poses, visualizations, breath practices, and meditations.

By working the steps in this manner, both men and women, regardless of age and physical ability, will learn how to synthesize the artifacts and memories of addiction in a new, holistic way, leading to contentment as they find their true path.

Sam Louie grew up torn between cultures as part of a first-generation Chinese immigrant family from Hong Kong living in a predominantly African American neighborhood in the United States. He experienced the duality of existence with the tension of two vastly different worldviews, his identity intertwined with the country he lives in and his ancestral ties. What traditions and cultural beliefs get preserved, what gets discarded, and what gets lost in translation? Beneath it all was the presence of three generations of addiction, trauma, and shame.

In this bold, insightful book, he documents the challenges of immigrant experiences and how maladaptive coping mechanisms in the form of compulsive behaviors were a means to gain a sense of adequacy due to the cultural tide of shame and ostracism within his own ethnic heritage and the external world.

Louie's journey of resiliency in navigating multiple cultural forces in the face of adversity and racism can give readers a new understanding of hope, perseverance, and the resources necessary to heal.

Recover. Rinse. Repeat.

Dana Bowman can’t escape the lure of perfectionism, trying to be a flawless wife, mother, and person in recovery. When Dana experiences a short-lived relapse during the Christmas holiday, she has the startling realization that recovery is more than just giving up alcohol.

In this funny and revealing follow-up to her best-selling book Bottled, Dana reflects on how we live in a society of excess, always pushing ourselves to do and be better. However, it doesn’t take her long to realize that self-care and getting over herself is the key to happiness.

An easy-to-follow guide that will help parents understand screen dependence at home.

Recreational screen media use is quickly replacing family time, by no fault of parents. They are doing the best they can based on the information available to them, which claims nothing can be done to stop their children's screen dependence.

Parents seeking change need a new framework for action. Breaking the Trance does not blame parents or vilify technology, but it does give parents clear and effective strategies to implement immediately. The results will restore a sense of care and connection within the family.

George T. Lynn, MA, LMHC, is a psychotherapist from Bellevue, Washington, who has pioneered the use of psychotherapy for adults and children with neuropsychological issues. George is author of the Survival Strategies for Parenting series, Genius! Nurturing the Spirit of the Wild Oppositional Child and The Asperger Plus Child.

Cynthia C Johnson, MA, utilizes in-home individualized therapeutic tutoring to help unique K–12 learners reach their full potential. She is the founding director of the Venture Program at Bellevue College in Washington, the first degree program in the nation designed for students challenged with learning and intellectual disabilities.

From the best-selling author of The Mindful Addict comes an eloquent and motivating introductory guide to meditation.

For anyone interested in greater physical and mental health, increased mental clarity, and reduced stress, follow Tom Catton as he takes you step-by-step through mindfulness techniques that yield endless benefits by improving mind-body-spirit consciousness.

He shares his insights, developed over four decades, in an inviting and accessible narrative. Now you, like generations of people around the world, can find a more balanced life with greater peace, harmony, and enjoyment through these meditative practices.

Tom Catton has been in recovery since 1971. His story appears in a twelve-step fellowship recovery book with more than seven million copies in circulation around the world, and he has been taking twelve-step meetings into Hawaii's prison system since 1984. He is also a retired marathon runner. Tom is trained in Tibetan singing bowl therapy and healing. He is on the advisory board of the Buddhist Recovery Network and teaches a meditation group in Hawaii.

Ending compulsive sexual behavior is just the beginning.

Drawing on personal and professional experience, psychotherapist Andrew Susskind examines issues such as shame, grief, narcissism, and codependency to demonstrate how people use out-of-control sexual behavior to cope with brokenheartedness and trauma. He offers strategies to cultivate sustainable sexual sobriety, sharing his own healing narrative, as well as those of others who’ve chosen to bare their truths. No one is ever too hurt or isolated to achieve reliable relationships and emotional intimacy. This is a guidebook for every person seeking long-term healing from sex addiction.

A revealing, hopeful account of a young woman's ascent out of the bleak despair of addiction and how recovery helped her confront the traumas and secrets that kept her living in the dark for so long.

In her first memoir, Blackout Girl, Jennifer Storm enthralled readers with the haunting account of her descent into addiction, which began when she was raped at twelve years old. But against all odds, she survived, and ultimately thrived.

In this courageous and insightful sequel, Jennifer continues her story through recovery and the self-discovery that followed. With fearless honesty, she chronicles her journey as she embarked upon a new life without alcohol or other drugs, finally facing her traumatic past, confronting her buried emotions, and revealing the long-hidden truth about her sexuality. This book conveys a beaming message of hope for those facing similar adversities.

A trailblazing physician and health researcher shares her journey of perseverance and discovery.

Anne McTiernan's second memoir begins in 1982, soon after she completed her doctoral training in public health research at the University of Washington at the age of twenty-nine. She and her husband are now parents to four-year-old and three-month-old girls. Realizing that jobs in her field are scarce, especially for women, Anne decides the only option for their financial security is to become a medical doctor. Overcoming her fear and life-long struggle with inadequacy, she moves the family 3,000 miles to New York to begin medical school.

Within a few months of starting this new life, Anne is in deep trouble. She is overwhelmed by the competing demands of motherhood and medical training and feels isolated. The stress builds, until Anne suffers a series of paralyzing panic attacks that threaten her ability to function. She begins psychotherapy and starts on a journey of self-discovery, realizing she has to change to survive.

Claudia Black's updated bestselling primer for women whose partners are acting out sexually.

Multiple affairs, compulsive pornography, prostitutes, and voyeurism—no matter their “drug” of choice, men who act out sexually leave their partners reeling in fear, rage, shame, and isolation. But there is hope. Bestselling author Claudia Black’s revised edition of her classic work Deceived offers women in relationships plagued by sexual betrayal the validation and guidance to create a new path of clarity, direction, and confidence.

Dr. Black uses stories of women who have been through a wide variety of experiences to help readers develop the understanding and skills to confront the trauma of the betrayal. She offers them the opportunity to shift from their overwhelming emotions to action derived from self-esteem and integrity. Deceived encourages women to proactively emerge from traumatic stress and emotional isolation and discover their power to facilitate their own healing, allowing them to move forward in their lives.

A revised edition of the best-selling solution-oriented guide to identifying and healing over-involvement or "entanglement" in relationships. 

Anyone who has struggled with balancing his or her own needs and desires with those of another person will benefit from Nancy Johnston's sensible, easy-to-follow method for changing the course of relationships. Disentangle combines psychoeducation, personal anecdotes, clinical case vignettes, and skills-building exercises.

Johnston describes how to turn this cycle around with self-assessments and experiential exercises designed to address essential aspects of self-awareness, distortions in thinking, communication style and tools, and spirituality. 

Disentangling is the process of creating enough emotional space between oneself and the other person in order to better see the reality of the relationship and make healthier conscious decisions about it.