Information for Family & Friends:

Recommended Books for Family Members -- Nonfiction

Alanon Faces Alcoholism
Under the Influence
by James Milam
(from the book's back cover) "Ten million Americans suffer from alcoholism, yet most people still wrongly believe that alcoholism is a psychological or moral problem, and that it can be cured by psychotherapy or sheer will power. Based on groundbreaking scientific research, Under the Influence examines the physical factors that sets alcoholics and non-alcoholics apart, and suggests a bold stigma-free way of understanding and treating the alcoholic."
Alcoholics Anonymous
Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself by Melody Beattie
Recovery: A Guide for Adult Children of Alcoholics
by Julie D. Bowden and Herbert L. Gravitz
(from the book's back cover) "Rich with insight and awareness, Recovery explores the secrets, fears, hopes and issues that confront adult children of alcoholics. Authors and widely respected therapists and ACOA workshop leaders, Herbert Gravitz and Julie Bowden detail in a clear question-and-answer format the challenges of control and inadequacy that ACOAs face as they struggle for recovery and understanding, stage-by-stage."
After the Tears: Reclaiming the Personal Losses of Childhood by Jane Middelton-Moz and Lorie Dwinell
Codependency and Family Rules by Robert Subby
Adult Children of Alcoholics
by Janet Woititz, Ed.D.
(from the book's back cover) "The legacy of growing up in an alcoholic home--or any type of dysfunctional environment--can follow us into adult life with negative consequences on health, work and love. Rather than continuing to allow our actions and reactions to be governed by an unhealthy childhood, author Janet Woititz offers answers on how to recognize, change and prevent the ghosts of our past from deleteriously influencing the present and future."
Love First: A New Approach
by Jeff Jay and Debra Erickson Jay
(from the book's back cover) "If alcoholics and addicts won't accept help until they're ready, what gets them ready? This book provides an answer in clear, concise terms. Dispelling two damaging myths--that an addict has to hit bottom and that intervention must be confrontational--the author's proven approach puts love first and shows families, step by step, what to do next."
Necessary Losses: the Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow by Judith Viorst
Struggle for Intimacy by Janet Woititz
The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self by Alice Miller
It Will Never Happen to Me
by Claudia Black
(from the book's back cover) "'It will never happen to me' is a line spoken by all who have been raised in a family where one or both parents have a problem with addiction. In addictive families most children move through adolescence appearing to survive the problems and hardships of life. They abide by the laws—Don't Talk, Don't Trust, Don't Feel. As resilient as children are, their survival techniques frequently contribute to a variety of problems in adulthood, among them depression, inability to maintain relationships, marrying an addict, or becoming addicted."
I'll Quit Tomorrow
by Vernon Johnson
(from the book's back cover) "This bestselling recovery classic has helped untold thousands of alcoholics onto the road to recovery...[it] presents the concepts and methods that have brought new hope to alcoholics and their fmailies, friends and employers. Abstinence is not the only objective of Johnson's breakthrough methods—his therapy aims at restoring the ego strength of the victim to assure permanent recovery."