Managing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: 12-Step programs and Vet Centers will help

“On March 4, 2007, combat veteran Chris Dana, put a .22 against his head, muffled it with a comforter and ended his life as quietly as a book drops. He had PTSD and didn’t get the help he needed.” These deeply affecting words were written by Eric Newhouse, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, in his […]

Memoirs of a Runaway

CEO looks back on his life as a troubled teen By Michael Kennon Outskirts Press $10. 95 Remembering vividly his own pain, shame and isolation as a runaway from age twelve to early adulthood, CEO Michael Kennon hopes his story will let the untold thousands of runaway children in the U.S. know that if he […]

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. […]

Sought Through Prayer and Meditation

Wisdom from the Sunday 11th Step Meetings At the Wolfe Street Center in Little Rock Geno W., with William G. Borchert Hazelden Foundation The Eleventh Step: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to […]

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 […]

Beautiful Boy

A father’s journey through his son’s addiction By David Sheff Houghton Mifflin Company $24 I’ve got a grandson who, at age 22, is drawing social security benefits in the aftermath of two catastrophic drug related accidents that badly damaged him physically and emotionally. And he still smokes pot.   I’ve got another grandson, 26, who […]

Sports Lover’s Guide to Recovery

Andrew L. Dieden Hazelden $14.95 Sports and recovery are similar, says Joanna M. Ceppi, a psychologist at Promises Treatment Center in California in the forward of Andrew Dieden’s book, “in that both require a person to exercise discipline, courage, and some form of surrender.” Andrew Dieden, lawyer, sports fan and a recovering drug addict develops […]

What it takes to pull me through

Why teenagers get in trouble and how four of them got out. By David Marcus (Houghton Mifflin) “Something began to churn inside Burns. It was a raw mixture of rage and fear and guilt—he didn’t know what to call it, but it was so intense that his heart pounded wildly. He felt dizzy. As he […]