Overcoming Your Alcohol Drug and Recovery Habits: An Empowering Alternative to AA and 12-Step Treatment by James DeSena, Jeffrey A. Schaler (Foreword by), Joseph Gerstein (Introduction)

A Total Eye-Opener!!
Makaylah, Self-sufficient & recovery-free, 03/24/2008

The obvious lack of perception certain readers display when they submit 'reviews' is rather scary. Overcoming Your Alcohol, Drug and Recovery Habits' author clearly states that the alternative he presents is not a PROGRAM. It's the distillation of a thinking process many independently sober, former substancers/drinkers use to identify and overcome their self-destructive addictive behavior. This thinking process or 'strategy,' if one wants to use that term, is laid out over the course of a number of chapters. If a recovery program is what someone desires, the author lists and explains some fine alternatives to AA in Appendix B. Also, revealing inequities, bad medicine, a problematic program, (AA), citing empirical findings and outing questionably competent 'recovery' practitioners is not a negative rant. It's stating facts and uncovering truth. Perhaps certain people cannot handle the truth and the fact that they, ultimately, are responsible for what they put and do not put into their bodies. The author's, (DeSena) discovery alternative to recovery is in itself empowering, positive and inspirational. It's self-suffiency at its best. This book is for you if you want to stand on your own two feet again and quit drinking/drugging without having to sit in meeting rooms for the rest of your life. If you need to hug teddy bears and hear people reply in kind, 'Thanks for sharing,' stick with AA and their Big Book.

There Are Many Roads to a Sober, Happy Life!
Ryan R., Sober & happy sans the AA program, 07/12/2004

I'm grateful to have found Overcoming Your Alcohol, Drug and Recovery Habits when I did. After enduring a traditional 12-step rehab and subsequent months of AA meetings, I knew this 'treatment' was not the road to recovery for me. This book opened my eyes to many resources and options for overcoming my addiction before I became immersed in what for me was ineffective and obtuse 12-step theology.----- Critics of Overcoming Your Alcohol, Drug and Recovery Habits often attack the author's character, not his message. It's clear to this former addict that the author of this book would like the still suffering substance abuser to know of all his or her recovery options; not just the AA way. It's sad that the addiction treatment community, despite its appallingly dismal sobriety success rate, (less than 5 per cent) in effect withholds alternatives to AA and 12-step treatment. It's also clear that there are other critics who would advise addicts who don't find AA helpful to simply not go. What these uninformed critics don't understand or refuse to understand is that AA and 12-step attendance is choicelessly thrust upon unwitting addicts when they submit to addiction treatment as currently practiced in the United States. Telling people who find AA unhelpful to simply not attend, and then, not offering viable alternatives to it, is ignorant counsel and meaningless at best.----- If you're unduly struggling, unhappy or not where you'd like to be in AA, give Overcoming Your Alcohol, Drug and Recovery Habits a read. You'll know what your options are and empower yourself to choose the sobriety path that makes sense and is right for you.

Also recommended: Addiction is a Choice, The Truth About Addiction and Recovery

This Book Is The Gift That Keeps On Giving
Brenda Santoro (Brenda6262@aol.com), free from alcohol AND recovery!, 04/11/2003

Dr. Jim DeSena’s book goes beyond what I had been searching for. While I had read many of the alternative AA recovery books and found them very helpful, it was Overcoming Your Alcohol, Drug and Recovery Habits that I found extremely helpful. As if the words were written especially for me, this book spoke to me like no other. The information in this book answered the gnawing questions about “recovery” that have plagued me for years. For one, all of the alternative books still spoke of recovering from alcohol and drugs. At best, they spoke of becoming fully recovered. But none of the alternative books ever suggested discarding the “recovery,” “recovering,” “recovered” mentality as Dr. DeSena’s book does. His use of the word, “Discovery” instead of recovery was a liberating breath of fresh air. I found this concept alone to be most empowering.--------------------- Also, Dr. DeSena’s unique look at the recovery process really hit home. This is a process that for many people in “recovery,” Dr. DeSena terms, “The Recovery Merry-Go-Round.” Rehab after rehab, therapist after therapist, and AA meeting after AA meeting was the recovery merry-go-round that I had been spinning on for years. Yet after all that, I never felt secure with my “sobriety.” My “sobriety” was merely a temporary “gift,” given one-day-at-a-time, which I could only keep if I continued working the AA program and attending meetings. I truly believe that all that is behind me now. I have chalked up my recovering past to a hard lesson that I’ll never repeat. I’ve begun to live a recovery-free life of Discovery. It’s something I never dreamed possible, but it is possible. I now know what freedom feels like. And for me, it’s not only freedom from alcohol and drugs, (I finally feel secure about my sobriety) but it’s also freedom from a lifetime of meetings and recovering. Now that’s a real gift! It’s clear why the title of Dr. DeSena’s book speaks of overcoming your alcohol, drug AND recovery habits. This book has changed my life. Thank you so very much Dr. DeSena, thank you.

Also recommended: The Miracle Method: A Radically New Approach to Problem Drinking. Addiction Is A Choice.

Move Over Betty Ford. The Truth that the Addiction/Recovery “Experts” Never Tell You!
Ben Abbott (benjiabbott@aol.com), No longer "in recovery", 02/18/2003

Jim DeSena has put into words what clearly many “recovering” people think and feel, but are too afraid, reluctant, embarrassed, or intimidated to say: That AA and 12-step programs are NOT the universal answer for everyone when it comes to beating an addiction.-------- After eight years of “recovering,” three stints in rehab, countless AA meetings, countless hours spent with Certified Alcohol Counselors and shrinks—I am finally free—Free from a lifetime of “recovering,” free from rehabs, free from AA, free from counselors, shrinks, and most importantly, I’m finally free from my self-destructive addiction to booze. This is a true, gut-feeling freedom I never experienced during my eight-year association with the one-day-at-time “recovering” community of Alcoholics Anonymous. For this, I will be forever grateful to finding Jim DeSena’s powerful and liberating book, Overcoming Your Alcohol, Drug and Recovery Habits: An Empowering Alternative to AA and 12-Step Treatment.-------- Overcoming Your Alcohol, Drug and Recovery Habits has opened my eyes to alternative 12-step methods and programs that the addiction treatment “experts” NEVER offered me. This knowledge alone, that alternatives do exist, has instilled in me a sense of control over my behavior and a peace of mind I never knew in AA, because my struggles with sobriety were ALWAYS blamed on my “denial,” or my failure to “work a good 12-step program.” It is said, “God helps those who help themselves.” If true, would God really mind if we found our sobriety through an alternative to the AA program? Would God try to stop us from saving our own lives?-------- I urge anyone who is struggling in his or her “recovery” to give Jim DeSena’s book a careful read. Give yourself the opportunity to free yourself not only from addiction, but also from a lifetime of dreary meetings with a “recovering” community that walks on eggshells, because their “sobriety” only lasts for 24-hour clips. Overcoming Your Alcohol, Drug and Recovery Habits will show you how to live recovery-free and beat your addiction for good, not one-day-at-a-time. As DeSena explains in his book, “Once you discover what you’re actually up against, quitting alcohol and other drugs will become a learned skill well within your ability, like learning to ride a bicycle. Yes, you’ll be a bit wobbly at first, but once you’ve learned—it’s over! There’s no need for daily practice—or one-day-at-a-time recovery.” You have everything to gain and nothing to loose except your self-defeating addictions, a lifetime of “recovering” and the backward looking, disempowering label of “alcoholic/addict” for life.

Nothing constructive. Just a rant.
A reviewer, A reviewer, 11/08/2007

A complete disappointment. The book is described as an empowering alternative to AA, therefore I was expecting a positive, constructive plan for recovery or 'discovery' as the book calls it. Instead, it's simply complaining about the pitfalls of the AA program- 14 chapters of it. The point is made in the first chapter and belabored for the entire book without providing any real constructive value or alternative. Where's the actual alternative program or strategy to AA that is promised and that I was looking for? Where's the positive, empowering tone that I need during this time of quitting alcohol? If you'd like to waste your time reading a negative rant, buy this book. I could've used something a lot more inspirational.