Discusses the causes and dangers of chemical dependency, its effects on the family, and ways to get help in dealing with this problem.

The headlines ring with stories of opioid addiction and overdose. Parents complain about their children’s screen addiction, law enforcement decries the flood of fentanyl, scores of Americans overdose and die daily, and teen alcohol poisoning and marijuana-induced psychosis rates continue to rise. Disabling depression and anxiety are diagnosed at alarming rates in families across the country. Now, more than ever, families struggle to live with, care for, and protect their family members suffering with addiction or mental illness. Kenneth Perlmutter, a California psychologist with 30-plus years in the field, has written Freedom from Family Dysfunction specifically for family members who love someone battling addiction or mental illness who want to break the cycles of codependency and relapse plaguing their dysfunctional systems. The combination of compelling vignettes, lively dialogues, and step-by-step instructions makes this guidebook an indispensable tool for the parents, partners, adult children, and the clinicians who treat them, to heal the powerlessness, pain, and impossibility of life with someone they’ve been trying to help, sometimes for decades. Perlmutter takes a systemic and inter-generational view, combining current knowledge with his deep personal experience of addiction and family dysfunction to guide readers toward understanding their systems, their positions in them, and the forces that keep things stuck. “Stress-Induced Impaired Coping (SIIC)” is the term he’s coined to describe his ground-breaking model of family system pathology and recovery. He invites families to see themselves not as dysfunctional, but as wounded, as they work toward connection, closeness, and the restoration of systemic mental wellness and sustainability. Best of all, the method works regardless of whether the one identified as “the problem” makes changes or not. Family members who take up Perlmutter’s method will: · ​create closeness by pursuing connection over being right · reject “tough love" · learn to communicate authentically and to set boundaries confidently and fairly · rebuild trust, authenticity and equality in family relationships · reduce chaos, anxiety and distress in the mind and in the home · shift the entire family system itself toward wellness

It is estimated that as many as 34 million people grew up in alcoholic homes. But what about the rest of us? What about families that had no alcoholism, but did have perfectionism, workaholism, compulsive overeating, intimacy problems, depression, problems in expressing feelings, plus all the other personality traits that can produce a family system much like an alcoholic one? Countless millions of us struggle with these kinds of dysfunctions every day, and until very recently we struggled alone. Pulling together both theory and clinical practice, John and Linda Friel provide a readable explanation of what happened to us and how we can rectify it.

This "little green book," as it has come to be known to hundreds of thousands of C.O.A.'s and A.C.O.A.'s, is meant to help the reader understand the roles children in alcoholic families adopt, the problems they face in adulthood as a result, and what they can do to break the pattern of destruction.

Parents affected by addiction can enable their children’s substance abuse and even model addictive behaviors learned from their own parents, passing the cycle on from generation to generation. Learn what you can do to help yourself, your children, and future generations break the cycle of addiction and addictive behaviors. Parents affected by addiction can enable their children’s substance abuse and even model addictive behaviors learned from their own parents, passing the cycle on from generation to generation. Learn what you can do to help yourself, your children, and future generations break the cycle of addiction and addictive behaviors.Having grown up with a parent in the throes of addiction, or who got physically sober but perhaps not emotionally so, you know the ravages of addiction firsthand. Through counseling, self-help groups, or classic books such as Adult Children of Alcoholics, you may have an understanding of how the patterns and behaviors associated with addiction play out within families, but applying that knowledge to your own approach to relationships and parenting is another story.In Unwelcome Inheritance, Lisa Sue Woititz combines her own insights with the unpublished contributions of her late mother, the early leader in the Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA) movement, Dr. Janet Woititz, uncovering how multiple generations of people affected by addiction continue to enable their children’s substance abuse and how, without realizing it, they continue to model the addictive behaviors learned from their own parents. These ACOA pioneers then bring to light these hidden behavior patterns—including impulsivity, misplaced loyalty, people pleasing, insecure parenting styles, and multiple compulsive and addictive behaviors—so that you can take a clear look at how you got to this point. Additional points of inquiry, illustrated by stories from the trenches of the ACOA movement, help you explore what you can (and can’t) do to help your children, your children’s children, and yourself lead healthy, balanced lives.

This helpful book underscores the importance of working with both the individual and family as part of a comprehensive biopsychosocial approach in assessment, intervention, and treatment of chemical addiction. With many case studies highlighting the treatment guidelines, Chemical Dependency is an ideal guide for professionals and students in addictions studies, mental health, and other human service related fields intent on working with and providing services to individual and family addiction.

For the millions of Americans who suffer in alcoholism-torn lives of loneliness, fear, shame, guilt, hurt, anger, and frustration, Another Chance offers invaluable insights and solid steps toward recovery. It shows what is happening with the alcoholic, within the alcoholic family, and within the world of professional treatment for chemical dependents, their co-dependents, and their adult children. The first edition won the prestigious Marty Mann Award, which honors outstanding contributions and achievements in alcoholism communications. Building on the success of that first edition, Wegscheider-Cruse has expanded this book to address issues of: adult children of alcoholics, the importance of spirituality in recovery, a powerful therapeutic experience called a Family Reconstruction, and co-dependent therapists and their need for treatment.