Recovery Resources from the Library

Drawing on effective mindfulness and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) strategies, Sober Starting Today Workbook offers a compassionate pathway for getting sober--and staying sober. With this workbook, you'll learn how to avoid triggers, manage urges and cravings, identify alternatives to using, balance difficult emotions, and deal with challenging social situations. Along the way, you'll also strengthen your mind-body connection as you practice mindful breathing and grounding activities, learn powerful self-compassion techniques, and explore healthier eating and sleeping habits.

There are many well-known recovery programs that work for millions of people, but not everyone. If you have found the more common recovery solutions not a good fit for you or your situation, the message of hope inside may be just what you are looking for.

Providing a holistic overview, this compassionate mindfulness workbook helps you adjust your response to life's challenges with simple meditations and exercises that teach you how to live in the present. You'll find ways to increase your self-awareness and better understand your triggers as you learn skills that help you foster honesty and compassion toward yourself.

This book chronicles the author's experience with sobriety and recovery, offering relief and hope to recovering substance abusers and their loved ones. With optimism and humor, the author explores an enduringly human struggle--living with a consciousness addicted to alteration. While documenting the world of active addiction and his recovery from substance abuse, the author guides others on their own journey with sobriety. Chapters provide reminders and meditations to the newly recovering; lists of activities and life experiences to enjoy in sobriety; insights into a world seen through "clear" eyes; etiquette for the refined recoverer; behavioral observations and humorous anecdotes from addicts on the mend. Wrapped in satire and wit, this honest, funny, and personally reflective guidebook will be recognizable and helpful to recovering addicts and to their friends and families.

This book provides a comprehensive examination of the various forms of addiction, its physical and mental complexities, and, unlike other sources on addiction, effective evidence-based interventions that promote a healthy recovery.

A Hole in the Sidewalk supports the necessary work required for relapse prevention from all forms of addiction: alcohol and other drugs, nicotine, sex, work, spending, screen, gambling, food, and relationships.

In this book, addiction expert Suzette Glasner-Edwards offers evidence-based techniques fusing cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), motivational interviewing, and mindfulness-based relapse prevention to help you move past your addictive behaviors.

Alcohemy takes an in-depth look at the Why, How, and Belief factors of alcohol dependency. It prepares you well for an alcohol-free life by systematically examining your upbringing, values, benefits versus consequences, desires versus fears, old versus new actions, and dealing with unhelpful friends.

The Wisdom to Know the Difference is an addiction recovery workbook based in acceptance and commitment therapy, or ACT. Research shows that ACT is a powerful treatment for alcoholism, drug addiction, depression, and other issues, and it can be used alone or in combination with any 12-step program.

Stories of Addiction Recovery explores first-hand structured accounts of addiction recovery through the G-CHIME model. G-CHIME is an adaptation to the CHIME model of mental health recovery, specifically targeted at addiction recovery. Identifying important components of recovery (Growth, Connectedness, Hope, Identity, Meaning in life, and Empowerment), G-CHIME considers aspects of positive psychology such as empowerment and hope as well as recognizing elements of addiction recovery such as connection and meaning in life.

Hernandez's mission to find the families of the twenty-eight Mexicans who were killed in the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos Canyon formed the basis for his acclaimed documentary novel All They Will Call You. In this riveting new work, Hernandez continues his search for the plane crash victims while also turning the lens on himself and his ancestral past, revealing the tumultuous and deeply intimate experiences that have fueled his investigations--a lifelong journey haunted by memory, addiction, generational trauma, and the spirit world. They Call You Back is the true chronicle of one man's obsession to restore dignity to an undignified chapter in America's past, while at the same time making a case for why we must heal our personal wounds if we are ever to heal our political ones.

In 1991, when he was 13 years old, Lenny Duncan stepped out of his house in West Philadelphia, walked to the Greyhound station, and bought a ticket--the start of his great American adventure. In this deeply personal story about growing up Black and queer in the U.S., he recounts hitchhiking across the country, spending time in solitary confinement, battling for sobriety, and discovering a deep faith, examining pressing issues like poverty, mass incarceration, white supremacy, and LGBTQ inclusion through an intimate portrayal of his life's struggles and joys.

Navigating poverty, violence, and instability, a young James Plummer had two guiding stars--a genius IQ and a love of science. But a bookish nerd is a soft target, and James faced years of bullying and abuse. As he struggled to survive his childhood in some of the country's toughest urban neighborhoods in New Orleans, Houston, and LA, and later in the equally poor backwoods of Mississippi, he adopted the persona of "gangsta nerd"--dealing weed in juke joints while winning state science fairs with computer programs that model Einstein's theory of relativity. Once admitted to the elite physics PhD program at Stanford University, James found himself pulled between the promise of a bright future and a dangerous crack cocaine habit he developed in college. With the encouragement of his mentor and the sole Black professor in the physics department, James confronted his personal demons as well as the entrenched racism and classism of the scientific establishment. When he finally seized his dream of a life in astrophysics, he adopted a new name, Hakeem Muata Oluseyi, to honor his African ancestors.

Don't Count Me Out chronicles the life of Bruce White from the beginning of his drug use in elementary school through criminal acts fueled by his need for drugs, to his miraculous recovery three decades later and involvement in the treatment of addicts, where he is now a leader in the rehabilitation field.

Loving the Present is one woman's story of how she overcame mental illness and addiction, and includes helpful tips, spiritual tools, and personal and professional insights designed to make the path to recovery easier for those seeking freedom. Combining insights on Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, and other world religions with the practical spirituality of the Twelve Steps, she describes how to navigate the dual disorders of mental illness and addiction and focuses on mindfulness as a primary tool in the journey of recovery.

Born and raised in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Margo Talbot grew up with a distant mother who "ruled the household with her eyes"; a father who opted to spend much of his time away from home; and four siblings struggling to deal with their particular domestic situation. As a result of her family's dysfunction and her own growing mental illness, young Margo rarely smiled, had difficulty connecting with others, and was plagued with a black wave of anger and sadness that overshadowed much of the world around her. In time, drugs, alcohol, sex, and violence became her primary ways to connect with herself and others. From the depths of suicidal depression and a conversation with Death, Talbot eventually found solace and redemption in both the healing power of nature and the glory of climbing frozen landscapes in some of the world's most pristine and challenging environments.

Bob Ramsay had it all -- and lost it all, often. At forty, he lived in a drug treatment centre in Atlanta. Starting over back in Toronto, he began dating an older woman, a doctor named Jean Marmoreo, who had three angry kids of divorce. The chances of this relationship lasting were zero. But they married and created a very different "out there" life for themselves, climbing mountains, running marathons, and exploring the ends of the earth. Then one day Bob's heart stopped, and life got much worse after it was re-started. But once again, perseverance and love won over fate, and today, Bob turns connection into an art form, while Jean Marmoreo is a MAiD doctor -- leading her patients across the thin veil between life and death.

In his critical and clinical introduction to this splendid anthology--the first of its kind--psychiatrist and poet Mark S. Bauer considers mental disorders from multiple perspectives and challenges us to broaden our outlook. He has selected more than 200 poems from across seven centuries that reflect a wide range mental states--from despondency and despair to melancholy, mania, and complete submersion into a world of heightened, original perception.

This is the first self-help workbook based on cognitive processing therapy (CPT), one of the gold-standard treatments for PTSD. Leading authorities--including the originator of CPT--have created a complete program featuring step-by-step exercises, practical tools that you can download and print as needed, and empathic stories of people working toward recovery.

Eating disorders are serious conditions that can be hard to treat; however, the chances of overcoming an eating disorder increase when exposure therapy is used as part of the overall treatment strategy. Exposure therapy involves confronting (rather than avoiding) challenging scenarios that evoke distress, and though this technique has typically been used mainly by psychotherapists, people struggling with eating disorders can use it on their own to reduce troubling eating behaviors. Eat Without Fear provides practical, reader-friendly information about this innovative, scientifically supported approach, as well as guidance on how to apply it effectively to beat an eating disorder using a “team approach” that involves family members, friends, and other loved ones. Readers will benefit from the use of easy-to-understand language describing the key concepts of eating disorders and how exposure therapy can help treat them. Additionally, the book guides readers through therapeutic activities that enable them to effectively practice exposure therapy techniques on their own.

In this workbook, psychologist Michael Tompkins offers evidence-based cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) skills to help you target and tear down the emotional avoidance barriers that drive your anxiety and depression. By engaging with the emotions you've been seeking to avoid, you'll learn, "I can handle this feeling." You'll also find strategies to help you stay calm during emotional situations; and discover relaxation and mindfulness techniques to deal effectively with difficult thoughts and feelings, and improve your mood and well-being.

40 simple, brain-changing neuroscience techniques for overcoming trauma.

In this innovative workbook, trauma specialist Glenn Schiraldi presents practical, evidence-based skills to help you heal from ACEs. In addition to dealing with the symptoms, you'll learn to address the root cause of your suffering, change the way your brain responds to stress and the outside world, and soothe troubling memories.

Don't Believe Everything You Feel offers a groundbreaking approach blending CBT and emotional schema therapy to help you explore your own deeply held personal beliefs about emotions, determine if these beliefs are helpful or harmful, and find the motivation to adopt alternative, healthier coping strategies. Each chapter contains exercises such as self-assessment, expressive writing, or guided questioning to help you manage your emotions more productively.

Packed with the most effective skills for assessing and treating anxiety, this evidence-based workbook contains the latest clinical research. You'll find an arsenal of tools for quieting worry, ending negative self-talk, and taking charge of your anxious thoughts.

The Anorexia Recovery Skills Workbook offers an integrated and comprehensive program to help you rebuild a healthy relationship with food, gain a sense of autonomy and independence, develop a sense of self-worth and self-esteem, and set healthy goals for the future.