Download or read book Mark as Recovery Story written by John C. Mellon and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mark as Recovery Story interprets the Gospel of Mark in terms of alcoholism and Twelve-Step recovery. Identifying numerous previously unrecognized ambiguities in the gospel's Greek text, John Mellon portrays Mark's mysterious "insider" audience as a fellowship of ex-inebriates turned waterdrinkers, alcoholics whose spirituality of powerlessness resembled that of Alcoholics Anonymous today. Mellon discovers in Mark, the most enigmatic of the Jesus narratives, genre features of the former drunkard's sobriety story, and he reconstructs the first-person story Jesus would have told on his return to Galilee, culminating in his Last Supper words about wine and his Gethsemane prayer for removal of the cup.

Download or read book The Day and the Hour written by Pablo G. and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2015-05-26 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Moment of Clarity On Memorial Day, 1974, an itinerant drunk named Pablo made a spiritual discovery. Hunkered on a highway west of the Palouse, he glimpsed a life in disarray, shorn of insight, heading nowhere and running scared It takes a moment to recognize a life as your own. One thing is certain: that turning point, without light or air, from which hed struggle as from an undertow, was in fact a divine panic: terror not of heartbreak or brain seizure, but of spiritual death, the heart vacant and staggering without purpose. On that point hes definite. Sick, broke, without future, at a point of no return, a man is thrust face to the wall. On that day, in that hour, a breeze whispers in the trees, or it doesnt. Still to recall it makes him shudder.

Download or read book Buffy and Angel Conquer the Internet written by Mary Kirby-Diaz and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Buffy the Vampire Slayer transcended its cult-comic roots to achieve television success, spawning the spinoff series Angel and an academic movement along the way. This scholarly treatment takes a multidisciplinary approach to Buffy's fandom, which has expressed itself through fiction, videos, music, art, and other media. Ten essays analyze the sociology and anthropology of the fan community and how it uses the Internet to share its passion.

Download or read book Fat Kid Rules the World written by Kelly L. Going and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this outstanding, funny, and edgy debut, Going tells an engaging story of two unlikely friends who meet when a high-school dropout talks a boy out of suicide--and who ultimately save each other.

Download or read book Dancing with Demons written by Patricia Easteal and published by Australian Self Publishing Group. This book was released on 2024-02-20 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Dancing with Demons, Patricia Easteal weaves a story that is more than a tale; it's a journey into the tempestuous psyche of Franny/Frankie/Francine, otherwise known as Triple F. Travel with Triple F as she grapples with her inner demons and witness her perilous dance with trauma and its toxic effects, from starvation to substance abuse. Experience an odyssey that not only unveils the profound impacts of a traumatic childhood and turbulent adulthood on mental health, but also reveals the transformative power of therapy and twelve-step programs, leading to the light of self-discovery and redemption.

Download or read book Clapton written by Eric Clapton and published by Crown. This book was released on 2008-05-27 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With striking intimacy and candor, Eric Clapton tells the story of his eventful and inspiring life in this poignant and honest autobiography. More than a rock star, Eric Clapton is an icon, a living embodiment of the history of rock music. Well known for his reserve in a profession marked by self-promotion, flamboyance, and spin, he now chronicles, for the first time, his remarkable personal and professional journeys. Born illegitimate in 1945 and raised by his grandparents, Eric never knew his father and, until the age of nine, believed his actual mother to be his sister. In his early teens his solace was the guitar, and his incredible talent would make him a cult hero in the clubs of Britain and inspire devoted fans to scrawl “Clapton is God” on the walls of London’s Underground. With the formation of Cream, the world's first supergroup, he became a worldwide superstar, but conflicting personalities tore the band apart within two years. His stints in Blind Faith, in Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, and in Derek and the Dominos were also short-lived but yielded some of the most enduring songs in history, including the classic “Layla.” During the late sixties he played as a guest with Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan, as well as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and longtime friend George Harrison. It was while working with the latter that he fell for George’s wife, Pattie Boyd, a seemingly unrequited love that led him to the depths of despair, self-imposed seclusion, and drug addiction. By the early seventies he had overcome his addiction and released the bestselling album 461 Ocean Boulevard, with its massive hit “I Shot the Sheriff.” He followed that with the platinum album Slowhand, which included “Wonderful Tonight,” the touching love song to Pattie, whom he finally married at the end of 1979. A short time later, however, Eric had replaced heroin with alcohol as his preferred vice, following a pattern of behavior that not only was detrimental to his music but contributed to the eventual breakup of his marriage. In the eighties he would battle and begin his recovery from alcoholism and become a father. But just as his life was coming together, he was struck by a terrible blow: His beloved four-year-old son, Conor, died in a freak accident. At an earlier time Eric might have coped with this tragedy by fleeing into a world of addiction. But now a much stronger man, he took refuge in music, responding with the achingly beautiful “Tears in Heaven.” Clapton is the powerfully written story of a survivor, a man who has achieved the pinnacle of success despite extraordinary demons. It is one of the most compelling memoirs of our time.

Download or read book Alcoholics Anonymous written by Charles Bufe and published by See Sharp Press. This book was released on 1997-12-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book White Magic written by Elissa Washuta and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the PEN Open Book Award Longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Award A TIME, NPR, New York Public Library, Lit Hub, Book Riot, and Entropy Best Book of the Year "Beguiling and haunting. . . . Washuta's voice sears itself onto the skin." —The New York Times Book Review Bracingly honest and powerfully affecting, White Magic establishes Elissa Washuta as one of our best living essayists. Throughout her life, Elissa Washuta has been surrounded by cheap facsimiles of Native spiritual tools and occult trends, “starter witch kits” of sage, rose quartz, and tarot cards packaged together in paper and plastic. Following a decade of abuse, addiction, PTSD, and heavy-duty drug treatment for a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder, she felt drawn to the real spirits and powers her dispossessed and discarded ancestors knew, while she undertook necessary work to find love and meaning. In this collection of intertwined essays, she writes about land, heartbreak, and colonization, about life without the escape hatch of intoxication, and about how she became a powerful witch. She interlaces stories from her forebears with cultural artifacts from her own life—Twin Peaks, the Oregon Trail II video game, a Claymation Satan, a YouTube video of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham—to explore questions of cultural inheritance and the particular danger, as a Native woman, of relaxing into romantic love under colonial rule.

Download or read book Dopamine Nation written by Dr. Anna Lembke and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-01-03 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES and LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER “Brilliant . . . riveting, scary, cogent, and cleverly argued.”—Beth Macy, author of Dopesick, as heard on Fresh Air This book is about pleasure. It’s also about pain. Most important, it’s about how to find the delicate balance between the two, and why now more than ever finding balance is essential. We’re living in a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli: drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting . . . The increased numbers, variety, and potency is staggering. The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation. As such we’ve all become vulnerable to compulsive overconsumption. In Dopamine Nation, Dr. Anna Lembke, psychiatrist and author, explores the exciting new scientific discoveries that explain why the relentless pursuit of pleasure leads to pain . . . and what to do about it. Condensing complex neuroscience into easy-to-understand metaphors, Lembke illustrates how finding contentment and connectedness means keeping dopamine in check. The lived experiences of her patients are the gripping fabric of her narrative. Their riveting stories of suffering and redemption give us all hope for managing our consumption and transforming our lives. In essence, Dopamine Nation shows that the secret to finding balance is combining the science of desire with the wisdom of recovery.

Download or read book Thirst written by James B. Nelson and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the path of recovery. James Nelson writes, as he lives, with a very special blend of insight, wisdom, humor, and humility. Sobriety sustainers and spirituality seekers will be encouraged and enlightened by his work.

Download or read book Summary Dopamine Nation Anna Lembke M D written by Quick Savant and published by Quick Savant. This book was released on 2022-05-28 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This rather lengthy book is based on the original text of Dopamine Nation by Dr. Anna Lembke. Rather than the original book, this is a complementary summary book or study aid. An extension offers a brief review of additional addictions like caffeine, soft drinks, and energy drinks, as well as a brief list of strange or usual addictions. The addictions that Dr. Lembke explores include sex, various street and prescription drugs, and freezing water. The following comments are about Dopamine Nation. Instant New York Times and Los Angeles Times Best Seller “Brilliant…riveting, scary, cogent, and cleverly argued.” (Beth Macy, author of Dopesick As heard on Fresh Air) Finding an optimal balance between pain and pleasure is more important now than ever because of our self-immersion in overconsumption. We live in an era where we have unparalleled access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli, including drugs, food, news, shopping, gambling, gaming, texting, sexting, and social media abuses. The increasing quantity, diversity, and potency are mind-boggling. For a connected generation, the smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, giving digital dopamine 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As a result, we're all at risk of obsessive overconsumption. Dr. Anna Lembke, a psychiatrist and author, discusses the fascinating new scientific findings that explain why the never-ending quest of pleasure leads to pain...and what to do about it in Dopamine Nation. Lembke demonstrates how finding happiness and togetherness entails keeping dopamine in control by condensing sophisticated neuroscience into simple analogies. Her story is held together by the actual experiences of her patients. Their gripping tales of adversity and redemption inspire us all to better manage our consumption and alter our lives. Dopamine Nation demonstrates that integrating the science of desire with the wisdom of recovery is the key to attaining equilibrium.

Download or read book Nothing Good Can Come from This written by Kristi Coulter and published by MCD x FSG Originals. This book was released on 2018-08-07 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Kristi Coulter charts the raw, unvarnished, and quietly riveting terrain of new sobriety with wit and warmth. Nothing Good Can Come from This is a book about generative discomfort, surprising sources of beauty, and the odd, often hilarious, business of being human." —Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams and The Recovering Kristi Coulter inspired and incensed the internet when she wrote about what happened when she stopped drinking. Nothing Good Can Come from This is her debut--a frank, funny, and feminist essay collection by a keen-eyed observer no longer numbed into complacency. When Kristi stopped drinking, she started noticing things. Like when you give up a debilitating habit, it leaves a space, one that can’t easily be filled by mocktails or ice cream or sex or crafting. And when you cancel Rosé Season for yourself, you’re left with just Summer, and that’s when you notice that the women around you are tanked—that alcohol is the oil in the motors that keeps them purring when they could be making other kinds of noise. In her sharp, incisive debut essay collection, Coulter reveals a portrait of a life in transition. By turns hilarious and heartrending, Nothing Good Can Come from This introduces a fierce new voice to fans of Sloane Crosley, David Sedaris, and Cheryl Strayed—perfect for anyone who has ever stood in the middle of a so-called perfect life and looked for an escape hatch.

Download or read book Drunks written by Christopher Finan and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2017-06-27 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals the history of our struggle with alcoholism and the emergence of a search for sobriety that is as old as our nation. In Drunks, Christopher Finan introduces us to a colorful cast of characters who were integral in America’s moral journey to understanding alcoholism. There's the remarkable Iroquois leader named Handsome Lake, a drunk who stopped drinking and dedicated his life to helping his people achieve sobriety. In the early nineteenth century, the idealistic and energetic “Washingtonians,” a group of reformed alcoholics, led the first national movement to save men like themselves. After the Civil War, doctors began to recognize that chronic drunkenness is an illness, and Dr. Leslie Keeley invented a “gold cure” that was dispensed at more than a hundred clinics around the country. But most Americans rejected a scientific explanation of alcoholism. A century after the ignominious death of Charles Adams came Carrie Nation. The wife of a drunk, she destroyed bars with a hatchet in her fury over what alcohol had done to her family. Prohibition became the law of the land, but nothing could stop the drinking. Finan also tells the dramatic story of Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, who helped each other stay sober and then created AA, which survived its tumultuous early years and finally proved that alcoholics could stay sober for a lifetime. This is narrative history at its best: entertaining and authoritative, an important portrait of one of America’s great liberation movements and essential reading for anyone involved in the addiction community.

Download or read book How I Became My Father the Drunk written by William G. Borchert and published by . This book was released on 2015-08-01 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Addiction to alcohol and/or drugs is a devastating and incomprehensible disease. It reaches down into the very core of the alcoholic and his or her family and destroys their most precious possessions--love, faith, trust, confidence and finally hope. While intimate and painful at times this book tells the dramatic love story of one such family. It finally focuses on how the backlash of alcoholism foments anger and hatred between a father and son that eventually inundates the entire family. Every glitter of hope is seemingly drowned and growing despair leads to near devastation. Then, when all seems lost, the miracle of recovery gradually restores torn relationships and emotional health. That is why this deeply personal story was written--to show alcoholics and their families touched by the painful disease of addictions that hope does spring eternal and to encourage and guide them to reach out and seek the path to recovery."--Back cover.

Download or read book The Night of the Gun written by David Carr and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-11 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Carr was an addict for more than twenty years -- first dope, then coke, then finally crack -- before the prospect of losing his newborn twins made him sober up in a bid to win custody from their crack-dealer mother. Once recovered, he found that his recollection of his 'lost' years differed -- sometimes radically -- from that of his family and friends. The night, for example, his best friend pulled a gun on him. 'No,' said the friend (to David's horror, as a lifelong pacifist), 'It was you that had the gun.' Using all his skills as an investigative reporter, he set out to research his own life, interviewing everyone from his parents and his ex-partners to the policemen who arrested him, the doctors who treated him and the lawyers who fought to prove he was fit to have custody of his kids. Unflinchingly honest and beautifully written, the result is both a shocking account of the depths of addiction and a fascinating examination of how -- and why -- our memories deceive us. As David says, we remember the stories we can live with, not the ones that happened.

Download or read book War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning written by Chris Hedges and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: General George S. Patton famously said, "Compared to war all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God, I do love it so!" Though Patton was a notoriously single-minded general, it is nonetheless a sad fact that war gives meaning to many lives, a fact with which we have become familiar now that America is once again engaged in a military conflict. War is an enticing elixir. It gives us purpose, resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble. Chris Hedges of The New York Times has seen war up close -- in the Balkans, the Middle East, and Central America -- and he has been troubled by what he has seen: friends, enemies, colleagues, and strangers intoxicated and even addicted to war's heady brew. In War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, he tackles the ugly truths about humanity's love affair with war, offering a sophisticated, nuanced, intelligent meditation on the subject that is also gritty, powerful, and unforgettable.

Download or read book Happy Accidents written by Jane Lynch and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2011-09-13 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of 1974, a fourteen-year-old girl in Dolton, Illinois, had a dream. A dream to become an actress, like her idols Ron Howard and Vicki Lawrence. But it was a long way from the South Side of Chicago to Hollywood, and it didn't help that she'd recently dropped out of the school play, The Ugly Duckling. Or that the Hollywood casting directors she wrote to replied that "professional training was a requirement." But the funny thing is, it all came true. Through a series of happy accidents, Jane Lynch created an improbable--and hilarious--path to success. In those early years, despite her dreams, she was also consumed with anxiety, feeling out of place in both her body and her family. To deal with her worries about her sexuality, she escaped in positive ways--such as joining a high school chorus not unlike the one in Glee--but also found destructive outlets. She started drinking almost every night her freshman year of high school and developed a mean and judgmental streak that turned her into a real-life Sue Sylvester. Then, at thirty-one, she started to get her life together. She was finally able to embrace her sexuality, come out to her parents, and quit drinking for good. Soon after, a Frosted Flakes commercial and a chance meeting in a coffee shop led to a role in the Christopher Guest movie Best in Show, which helped her get cast in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Similar coincidences and chance meetings led to roles in movies starring Will Ferrell, Paul Rudd, and even Meryl Streep in 2009's Julie & Julia. Then, of course, came the two lucky accidents that truly changed her life. Getting lost in a hotel led to an introduction to her future wife, Lara. Then, a series she'd signed up for abruptly got canceled, making it possible for her to take the role of Sue Sylvester in Glee, which made her a megastar. Today, Jane Lynch has finally found the contentment she thought she'd never have. Part comic memoir and part inspirational narrative, this is a book equally for the rabid Glee fan and for anyone who needs a new perspective on life, love, and success. WITH A FOREWORD BY CAROL BURNETT