The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure= A holistic approach to total recovery
I wish everyone struggling with addiction of any type would read this book. This is not new information, just resisted by the average person because it's safer to stay average. If you truly, really want to be skyrocketed into the 4th dimension you so often hear about, then this book will (with it's extensively researched and proven method of healing) have to be taken to heart and accepted. Be corageous! Go back and get that little girl or boy, (your inner child) you abandoned so long ago. STRETCH, RISK, OR DIE! as Ronda Britten talks about in her book Fearless Living. I took the Alcoholism and Addiction Cure to show some friends at AA, and I felt so sad for them because they could not entertain the idea, just for a moment, that AA's 70 year old paradigm, or belief that they have been struck with a life long disease, COULD BE wrong! No, I choose not to drink, but my life long chronic depression is gone, and I am an integrated whole person now after doing the healing work, and truly see myself and this entire planet radically different than before when I was covering up my anxiety and pain with liquor and pills. Since I read this book, sitting in an AA meeting is a whole new experience because I have a more evolved perception of addiction. Step-1 should be more specific and read: My feelings were unmanagable. Step-4: Took a fearless inventory of my FEELINGS! FEEL, DEAL, HEAL! Alcohol is NOT the issue!!!!!A disruption in your energy due to underlying anxiety is! This book not only explains the truth of the problem, but has given you the path to healing on a silver platter. The only question now is how badly do you want the brass ring?? Carrie from Cameron Park

Read These Other Books First
Lessee here. I pay $20.00 for a brochure on a $68,000.00 treatment program not funded by any insurance company offering a gaggle of techniques that do not appear to be algorithmically integrated... when I could simply buy a few -other- books on amazon.com to see the statistical evidence on the most effective treatment regimens.

Hmm. This is tough.

I rarely make blanket statements like this, but after 22 years in the field and working with a -wide- variety of approaches (from 12 Step, gestalt and hypnotic to cognitive, pharmacologic and psychodynamic), I'm forced to say, "Enjoy the book, but keep your credit cards in your wallet." And...

Look these up on amazon.com:

Beck, Wright, Newman, Liese: Cognitive Therapy of Substance Abuse; Gorski: Staying Sober, and Passages Through Recovery; Frances & Miller: Clinical Textbook of the Addictive Disorders; Ellis: A Guide to Rational Living; Perkinson and Jongsma: The Addictions Treatment Planner; Rotgers and Davis: Treating Alcohol Problems; and Rassmussen: Addiction Treatment - Theory and Practice; etc.

And if you can find Sharron Ekleberry's phenomenal Seminar on Substance Abuse and Personality Disorders, read -it- for sure.

Frankly, this book smacks of marketing scheme, though it does (all too briefly) chase down several of the issues that do need to be dealt with to assure long-term abstinence without relapse or addiction-switching.

One can get the job done for a lot less than $68,000.00, however. A -lot- less.

A Contradiction to the "Rule"
I too, am a "recovering" alcoholic with 23 years of sobriety, and I am very grateful for the gift of finding the treatment that worked for me. I stumbled across Chris Prentiss quite by mistake today, after taping a 30 minute program on the subject "Alcoholism and Addiction Cure." I felt like I had found someone who heard the same "voice" that I had heard within myself for the past 20 years. I too, consider myself an intelligent (I cannot tell you what my IQ is and I am still going to college, part time, and working full time for a large healthcare concern, but I consider myself extremely intelligent and open to new ideas)and open minded individual.
What I do know? I come from a family of addicts; my father's father emigrated from Germany before Hitler's control over that country was irrevocable and he was an alcoholic who passed the "disease" down to his sons - my father, the youngest son, died an alcoholic at the young age of 58. I will not go into detail about my childhood traumas other than to say that I began my journey into my own addiction (lucky me, my drug of choice was alcohol) when I was 15 years old. It culminated with my experiencing panic attacks in my early 20s and subsequent heavier drinking ensued in my desperate attempt to quell my rising panic attacks - I was running away from my childhood pain and I was self-medicating.
What I discovered, quite by accident and to my great relief and immense gratitude was a therapist, who was one of, if not "the," early humanistic therapists in the treatment arena. This woman walked with me through my treatment, unpeeling the layers of protection that I had wrapped by battered and abused psyche within and, after seven years of on again, off again, therapy (each new level, each new unveiling, opened doorways that I had shut and hidden behind) I walked into my first Al Anon meeting and within a month's time, my first AA meeting. I remember the intense self loathing and reluctance that I felt at having to go to that meeting where I had to admit to myself and others that I WAS AN ALCOHOLIC - the one thing that I hated my father for I had become.
The main reason I began my road to recovery in AA was, I knew I needed the strength and support of a fellowship where meeting and talking to others, who were traveling the same lonely, frightening path that I was on, would help me to "stay sober," while I continued with my individual therapy. But as much as I cherish those first couple of years in AA, I came to the realization that there had to come a time where not drinking became a personal choice and not just the choice of the group. I saw too many people who switched their addiction from the drugs or alcohol, to the group and who wouldn't miss a meeting if their lives depended on it and for many it did. And then there were the ones who moved on to other 12 step programs because they were sober but now they were attending Overeaters Anonymous or Workaholics Anonymous or Co-Dependents Anonymous because the root causes for their original addiction remained. Yes, it was healthier than being in the addiction but they still seemed frozen in time because they were still "dependent" on something outside of themselves for validation and strength or had simply switched addictions.
I left AA, but I stayed sober because I began my journey in one-on-one therapy where I was willing to do the work, no matter how painful, to heal my wounded psyche. And I did it with a therapist who allowed me to heal at my own pace and who never, ever, led or told me what I should feel, think or do. She was my guide, my mentor, my belief system when I did not believe in myself, and she let me go when it was my time to go.
When I was in my addiction I always felt like I didn't fit in with the rest of the world; but when I left AA with the belief that one had to finally make their choice not to use, a personal choice and stop being co-dependent on an outside source, I felt like I was different, there, too, and did not "fit in" with the traditional treatment for addicts. I truly believe the reason for relapse is because AA cannot provide the intense therapy necessary to find the root cause of an individual's addiction - I think "getting sober" is the easy part, staying sober, is the hardest thing to do, because then all you have is this open, gaping wound and you will eventually return to the original addiction or find another one to cover the untreated wound.
Today, I feel exonerated and I would encourage anybody who is struggling with recovery to read the book and go find a good therapist, preferably one who is humanistic or holistic (I truly believe you have to treat the mind, the body and spirit because ALL of you is involved in the addiction not just your diseased physical being) and be willing to do the work - not just counting 12 steps and giving it all up to an outside source. I am a deeply spiritual being and I believe addiction stands between you and that spirituality but you must find your own path and be willing to go it alone while in therapy, but know that you are never alone in healing. And by all means, incorporate the individual therapy with a group, such as AA, because it is extremely healing to hear your fears, pain, anger and frustrations, echoed in others - it depletes that sense of aloneness.
I am grateful for 23 years of sobriety and I am grateful that there are those in recovery programs who finally "get it" and are working on treating the mind, body, spirit! Don't give up on yourself or someone you love in addiction - I only wish those who came before, and lost to addiction, had the same opportunity.
"Seek not the favor of the multitude, for it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of the few, and number not the voices, but weigh them." Immanuel Kant

alcoholism treatment
I like the fact that it gives a more flexable approach to recovery than the very rigid (although , successful ) suggestions put forth by AA and NA. It looks to the underlying causes of the repatative destructive behaviors associated with alcoholism (in my Case). One more tool to help those still suffering that have a bias towards AA and other 12 step recovery groups.

Jim Bowen

People are putting a price on life here.
I have noticed that some posters are upset about the price of being "cured." I am not an addict, but my best friend was, and I would have sold my house out from underneath me if it could have cured him.

I knew that he had a real problem when he was fourteen years old, and knew where he was heading from my experiences in college -- people I knew. He was given an unnecessary tonsillectomy, and the well-meaning surgeon prescribed (Acetaminophen) #4 (with codeine). This was in 1971.

I have taken the same drug, without problems, usually for dental pain. I have never taken it for more than two days.

Well, my best friend was introduced to the same feelings that I get when I do something exceedingly well, only his performance dropped off to near zero. Later, he met a junky nurse, and I knew that it was game-set-match. I intervened and ran her off.

I knew I had no control over his addictions, but I did everything I could do to buy time. He finally went to a detox center and became a sponsor at Narcotics Anonymous. By this time he was married, and my wife learned that they were beginning to use again (she went through detox with him), and I had a decision to make. Something told me that he would not survive the year.

He had learned that narcotics lead to institution, jail, and death. Well, he was arrested for "uttering a forged instrument," which is to say, forging a prescription. Back to detox.

By this time, he was, in my opinion, too old for me to treat him as a child, and I made it clearly known to him that I would be there to intervene only if he asked. I had pulled him out of desperate straights before, but against his (temporary) will.

His junky wife found him dead one Christmas morning, about ten years ago. He had accidentally overdosed. I had an intervention plan set up for the 26th, and missed it by one day.

One of the lines of a poem I wrote to him before his first detox included, "May you find peace in Oaklawn's Gardens, and Sleep the Never-Ending Sleep you Seek. I have seen it all before, but this was my best friend Keith." I hope, somehow, that he did find that peace. He was a gifted person, and my best friend. I frightened him with that poem, and in his last days, he somehow knew what was going to occur. He reported "lucid dreams, where he was with (a friend who had died of drug abuse). I was supportive, and only this one poem was pessimistic.

A copy of that poem is in his casket. It should not be forgotten that people do manage to become addicted to drugs and return to a normal life. These drugs were designed for pain, not getting high. He slipped away one day before I was going to intervene with his recovered addicts alongside me.

If you have an addicted friend, their life is in your hands. Please do not forget that. The price of the regimen in this book is the price of life. Find a way to do whatever it takes, or lose your friend or loved one.I know this post is too long, but it, like and along with the book, will save lives.