Addiction Therapy and Treatment: A Systems Approach

Addiction is a national mental and medical health crisis, responsible for untold costs to society and severe suffering to innumerable people. Yet addiction treatment, as it is now practiced, fails half the time. The current treatment approach has changed little in the last 80 years and is a hodgepodge of often shady treatment approaches. This book presents a radically different addiction treatment paradigm, based on science, evidence and best practices, and has a success rate approaching 100% when followed closely. This model should profoundly upend the current addiction treatment industry. Nearly every addict lives in a social system--a family, workplace or community--that enables and supports, often unconsciously, the addict's addiction. Instead of the current addict-focused approach, this model extends treatment to the entire support system, starting treatment with the concerned family members. This model also proposes a single provider, the family recovery therapist, who manages treatment for the addict and the family from the first phone call through the first year of continuous sobriety. This book offers simple recommendations to both addiction treatment providers and family members impacted by this disease. It serves as a beacon of hope for families.