The Natural History of Alcoholism Revisited

Author: George E. Vaillant
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674044568
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 463

Book Description
When The Natural History of Alcoholism was first published in 1983, it was acclaimed in the press as the single most important contribution to the literature on alcoholism since the first edition of Alcoholic Anonymous’s Big Book. George Vaillant took on the crucial questions of whether alcoholism is a symptom or a disease, whether it is progressive, whether alcoholics differ from others before the onset of their alcoholism, and whether alcoholics can safely drink. Based on an evaluation of more than 600 individuals followed for over forty years, Vaillant’s monumental study offered new and authoritative answers to all of these questions. In this updated version of his classic book, Vaillant returns to the same subjects with the perspective gained from fifteen years of further follow-up. Alcoholics who had been studied to age 50 in the earlier book have now reached age 65 and beyond, and Vaillant reassesses what we know about alcoholism in light of both their experiences and the many new studies of the disease by other researchers. The result is a sharper focus on the nature and course of this devastating disorder as well as a sounder foundation for the assessment of various treatments.

Addiction

Author: Gene M. Heyman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674264436
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 213

Book Description
In a book sure to inspire controversy, Gene Heyman argues that conventional wisdom about addiction—that it is a disease, a compulsion beyond conscious control—is wrong. Drawing on psychiatric epidemiology, addicts’ autobiographies, treatment studies, and advances in behavioral economics, Heyman makes a powerful case that addiction is voluntary. He shows that drug use, like all choices, is influenced by preferences and goals. But just as there are successful dieters, there are successful ex-addicts. In fact, addiction is the psychiatric disorder with the highest rate of recovery. But what ends an addiction? At the heart of Heyman’s analysis is a startling view of choice and motivation that applies to all choices, not just the choice to use drugs. The conditions that promote quitting a drug addiction include new information, cultural values, and, of course, the costs and benefits of further drug use. Most of us avoid becoming drug dependent, not because we are especially rational, but because we loathe the idea of being an addict. Heyman’s analysis of well-established but frequently ignored research leads to unexpected insights into how we make choices—from obesity to McMansionization—all rooted in our deep-seated tendency to consume too much of whatever we like best. As wealth increases and technology advances, the dilemma posed by addictive drugs spreads to new products. However, this remarkable and radical book points to a solution. If drug addicts typically beat addiction, then non-addicts can learn to control their natural tendency to take too much.

Adaptation to Life

Author: George E. Vaillant
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674072154
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 415

Book Description
Between 1939 and 1942, one of America's leading universities recruited 268 of its healthiest and most promising undergraduates to participate in a revolutionary new study of the human life cycle. The originators of the program, which came to be known as the Grant Study, felt that medical research was too heavily weighted in the direction of disease, and their intent was to chart the ways in which a group of promising individuals coped with their lives over the course of many years. Nearly forty years later, George E. Vaillant, director of the Study, took the measure of the Grant Study men. The result was the compelling, provocative classic, Adaptation to Life, which poses fundamental questions about the individual differences in confronting life's stresses. Why do some of us cope so well with the portion life offers us, while others, who have had similar advantages (or disadvantages), cope badly or not at all? Are there ways we can effectively alter those patterns of behavior that make us unhappy, unhealthy, and unwise? George Vaillant discusses these and other questions in terms of a clearly defined scheme of "adaptive mechanisms" that are rated mature, neurotic, immature, or psychotic, and illustrates, with case histories, each method of coping.

Alcoholics Anonymous

Author: Charles Bufe
Publisher: See Sharp Press
ISBN: 1884365752
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
This well researched, painstakingly documented book provides detailed information on the right-wing evangelical organization (Oxford Group Movement) that gave birth to AA; the relation of AA and its program to the Oxford Group Movement; AA's similarities to and differences from religious cults; AA's remarkable ineffectiveness; and the alternatives to AA. The greatly expanded second edition includes a new chapter on AA's relationship to the treatment industry, and AA's remarkable influence in the media.

Triumphs of Experience

Author: George E. Vaillant
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674067428
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 473

Book Description
At a time when people are living into their tenth decade, the longest longitudinal study of human development ever undertaken offers welcome news for old age: our lives evolve in our later years and often become more fulfilling. Among the surprising findings: people who do well in old age did not necessarily do so well in midlife, and vice versa.

Alcohol at Work

Author: Clive Tobutt
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317182707
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 467

Book Description
In the European Union many individuals will partake in drinking a little wine with their lunch or dinner to aid their enjoyment of the meal or as an appetizer for food. Alcohol is also a drug of dependence. Some individuals will drink too much and some of them will become addicted. Access to alcohol, binge drinking, and younger drinkers can lead to unsafe workplaces, absenteeism, fraud and criminal behaviour. Alcohol at Work is a definitive guide to the problem, exploring its nature and scale and providing a complete range of ideas and techniques to help create a policy in the workplace and develop appropriate and effective measures for monitoring and tackling alcohol abuse. The key collective message is solve the problem - take the alcohol, not the person, out of the workplace. In the UK alone, research puts the cost of alcohol abuse in the workplace at £2 billion a year. This is a must-have reference for human resource, occupational health and risk managers, as well as those involved in tackling criminal behaviour such as fraud and violence at work resulting from alcohol abuse and addiction.

Quit Smoking Weapons of Mass Distraction

Author: Simon Chapman
Publisher: Sydney University Press
ISBN: 1743328540
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
Who keeps telling smokers they can’t quit without help? For decades there have been far more ex-smokers than smokers, and an estimated 75% of smokers quit without drugs or professional help. But smoking cessation is a global phenomenon serviced by multibillion-dollar industries, including the pharmaceutical and e-cigarette sectors and health professionals. These industries try to denigrate unassisted cessation and promote their products and services – “weapons of mass distraction” – as essential to successful quitting. This contributes to the medicalisation of a process that, before these products were available, had a natural history where drugs and expertise were absent, yet millions of people around the world still quit. Simon Chapman AO is one of Australia’s foremost experts on strategies to minimise harm from tobacco. In Quit Smoking Weapons of Mass Distraction, he reviews the early history of quitting smoking and the rise of assisted quitting, and gives insight into the forces that have tried to undermine smokers’ agency to stop. Chapman also provides actionable policy solutions to help people actually quit smoking. "This is a splendid read for anyone interested in what really works to reduce smoking, and what helps to keep Big Tobacco in business." — Mike Daube AO, Emeritus Professor in Public Health, Curtin University "Chapman is indispensable reading for anyone wanting to help the billion-odd smokers end their addiction. A powerful and important book!" — Robert N. Proctor, Professor of the History of Science at Stanford University

Spiritual Evolution

Author: George Vaillant
Publisher: Harmony
ISBN: 0767930045
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
In our current era of holy terror, passionate faith has come to seem like a present danger. Writers such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens have been happy to throw the baby out with the bathwater and declare that the danger is in religion itself. God, Hitchens writes, is not great. But man, according to George E. Vaillant, M.D., is great. In Spiritual Evolution, Dr. Vaillant lays out a brilliant defense not of organized religion but of man’s inherent spirituality. Our spirituality, he shows, resides in our uniquely human brain design and in our innate capacity for emotions like love, hope, joy, forgiveness, and compassion, which are selected for by evolution and located in a different part of the brain than dogmatic religious belief. Evolution has made us spiritual creatures over time, he argues, and we are destined to become even more so. Spiritual Evolution makes the scientific case for spirituality as a positive force in human evolution, and he predicts for our species an even more loving future. Vaillant traces this positive force in three different kinds of “evolution”: the natural selection of genes over millennia, of course, but also the cultural evolution within recorded history of ideas about the value of human life, and the development of spirituality within the lifetime of each individual. For thirty-five years, Dr. Vaillant directed Harvard’s famous longitudinal study of adult development, which has followed hundreds of men over seven decades of life. The study has yielded important insights into human spirituality, and Dr. Vaillant has drawn on these and on a range of psychological research, behavioral studies, and neuroscience, and on history, anecdote, and quotation to produce a book that is at once a work of scientific argument and a lyrical meditation on what it means to be human. Spiritual Evolution is a life’s work, and it will restore our belief in faith as an essential human striving.

Promoting Self-Change From Addictive Behaviors

Author: Harald Klingemann
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387712879
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Book Description
One of the few books on the topic, this updated edition offers alternatives to disease models of addiction by exploring personal pathways to recovery. Focusing on alcohol and drug problems, it provides a literature review of 40 years of studies on self-change with particular emphasis on the current decade and methodological issues (starting with how much or how little treatment constitutes "treatment"). The 24 experts keep the coverage consistently readable, and dozens of brief narratives from individuals who have successfully recovered from an addictive behavior without formal help lend valuable personal perspectives.

The ASAM Principles of Addiction Medicine

Author: Shannon Miller
Publisher: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
ISBN: 1496371003
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 1984

Book Description
Publisher's Note: Products purchased from 3rd Party sellers are not guaranteed by the Publisher for quality, authenticity, or access to any online entitlements included with the product. Thoroughly updated with the latest international evidence-based research and best practices, the comprehensive sixth edition of the American Society of Addiction Medicine’s (ASAM) official flagship textbook reviews the science and art behind addiction medicine and provides health care providers with the necessary information to not only properly diagnose and treat their patients, but to also serve as change agents to positively impact clinical service design and delivery, as well as global health care policy.