Lawyer's Guide to Healing: Solutions for Addiction and Depression by Don Carroll

Foreword   Ed Hinson     xi
Foreword   Al J. Mooney, M.D.     xiii
Acknowledgments     xv
Introduction     1
Understanding Alcoholism and Other Addictions
Personality, Environment, and Addiction: Why Lawyers Use Alcohol and Other Drugs     5
The Addictive Personality: Is There a Link between Personality and Addiction?     8
Understanding Alcoholism: How Alcoholism Manifests in Various Forms     13
The Science of Addiction: What Research Reveals about the Causes of Alcohol and Drug Addiction     17
Joe's Brain: What Happens in the Brain Chemistry and Behavior of the Active Alcoholic     21
Self-Deceptive Thinking: Why Alcoholics Have Difficulty Admitting They Have a Problem     26
Addiction and Anger: How Addiction and Anger Interrelate     30
The Walls We Build: The Four Major Changes in Personality Influenced by Addiction     33
AA and the Establishment Clause: The Most Successful Treatment for Addiction Is Not a Religion     37
Redefining God: Why the Twelve Steps Work     40
Codependency and Addiction: The Lingering Impact on Children of Addicted Parents     42
Stress: Understanding the Link between Stress and Health     47
Reducing Stress with Alcohol: The Connections between Stress and Alcohol Use     53
Alcoholism in Older Adults: The Challenge in Preventing and Treating Adult Alcoholism     56
Compulsive Gambling: Understanding the Nature of a Process Addiction     58
Cocaine: Old Attitudes and New Dangers- How Changing Attitudes Have Affected Societal Use of a Dangerous Drug     61
Sleep Disorders: Sleep Problems May Be a Predictor of Alcohol Problems     65
Understanding Depression
Preventing Suicide in Lawyers: Understanding the Link between Addiction and Depression     69
Grandiosity, Injustice, and Depression: Identifying Causes of Depression in Lawyers     72
Beyond Relief: Helping Lawyers Achieve True Healing from Depression     75
Kitchen Table Friends: Freedom from Emotional Isolation as a Path to Healing     80
Understanding the Solutions
Attitude and Disease: Helping Lawyers Adopt Attitudes That Promote Healing     85
Old Ideas and Stories: How Telling and Listening to Stories Can Transform Us     89
Cave Paintings: How the Ancient Human Need for Oneness Can Heal     92
Hope: Understanding the Difficulties and Opportunities of Hope     95
From Willful to Willing: How the Will Can Keep Us Stuck or Help Us Heal     98
Stuck: How to Take an Emotional Inventory     101
Toward a Theory of Time: Our Experience of Time As a Way to Understand Meaning in Life      105
Accommodation or Transformation: How Our Perspective on Life Can Be Transformed     108
Against the Pollution of the "I": How Our Inner Vision Shapes What We See As the Outer World     111
Reconnecting through Experience: How the Process of Emotional Healing Works     116
Experience the Present: Learning to Let Go of Regret about the Past and Fear of the Future     121
Getting Out of the Box: Shifting How One Experiences Life     126
Reap the Promises: How Changing Our Experience of Life Changes Our Life     129
Learn to Reconnect: Healing through the Process of Connection     135
The Unhappiness Paradox: If We Have More, Then Why Are We Less Happy?     138
Feelings: How to Become Friends with Our Feelings     141
Beethoven's Counterpoint: How to Thrive under Difficult Circumstances     147
Good Mental Health and the Lawyer's Gift: What Is the Essential Nature of the Work We Do As Lawyers?     152
The Four Acknowledgments: Examining, Challenging, and Growing     156
Living on Purpose: Creating a Value-Driven Life     160
Living Life's Questions: Writing Exercises to Illuminate Lawyers' Lives     164
Finding Happiness: The Paradox of How to Be Happy     174
Notes     179
About the Author     183