Overcoming Addictions – The Power of our Hometowns and Local Neighborhoods

by David Palmer When World War II began in 1941, my father gave up his high paying public relations job on New York’s Madison Avenue, bought the local newspaper, the Summit Herald, in our home town of Summit, N.J. and went to work. He was forty, had a wife and kids, and was therefore exempt from […]

Alcoholism Doesn’t Know Your Birthday (and doesn’t care)

One Day At A Time | David Palmer

Beware of alcohol, seniors. Your defenses are down. Nobody seems to have noticed, but the old folks are having trouble with alcohol, and it’s time we did something about it. That was the word I got when I interviewed Dr. David Lipschitz, author and one time chairman of the geriatrics department at the University of […]

A wild, insightful, often hilarious trip to sobriety – Mary Karr story

Mary Karr - LIT

Mary Karr, author of Liar’s Club, Cherry and LIT, a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry; and a Peck professor of literature at Syracuse University, was asked once by her four year old son, Dev, to take him to church. At best an agnostic at the time, Mary asked “why?” and Dev answered, “Because I want to […]

Faced with five life sentences, inmate finds redemption

I used to be an over-the-road truck driver. Have you ever found yourself driving at night on a long unfamiliar stretch of highway in a place you’ve never been? After miles and miles, the reality that you’re lost sets in; by then, you’ve been lost for so long you can’t recall how many miles and […]

Texas Tech’s Recovery Program

An escape from Animal House, Texas Tech’s innovative recovery program tackles collegiate alcohol and drug abuse. There are 50,000 college-eligible kids in America today who are too strung out on alcohol or other drugs to get in let alone make the grade. Unfortunately, the way things are now, it may be just as well. If […]

Moments of Clarity

By Christopher Kennedy Lawford William Morrow $25.99 “The morning of February 17, 1986, I woke up, as usual, with that weight in the pit of my stomach, knowing that all I had in front of me was another day of dancing with the 800-pound gorilla of addiction.” And so begins Chris Lawford’s “moment of clarity” […]

Max the magician wows audiences with his strong message of recovery

For over a decade, illusionist Maxwell Blade has delighted visitors at Hot Springs’ Historic District with his long-running magic show at the Historic Malco Theatre. His new location next door to the Gangster Museum of America showcases up-close “parlor magic” and classic sleight–of-hand. Although blessed with talent, Maxwell has for many years struggled with addictions. […]

My Name is Funky

My Name is Funky, and I’m and alcoholic By Tom Batiuk Published by Hazelden Thirty-five years ago, Tom Batiuk (rhymes with “attic”), a high school art teacher, launched his Funky Winkerbean comic strip about an amiable character with a goofy first name and an assortment of quirky friends at Westview High. There was Crazy Harry […]

Alcoholism and Addiction Cure

A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery How to heal the underlying causes How to end relapse How to end suffering By Chris Prentiss Power Press, $15.95 Chris Prentiss, who operates a pricey treatment center in Malibu called Passages, has been running numerous spots on TV urging people to buy his book, The Alcoholism and Addiction […]

From the jungles of Vietnam to rescue at Delancey Street

  The Reverend James M. Lamb, clinical supervisor over substance abuse treatment at Varner Prison in Grady, Arkansas, and at one time associated with San Francisco county jails and San Quentin state prison in California, discovered alcohol and drugs when he was 15. They took control of him for the next 29 years. Lamb, who […]