If you purchase, read, and most importantly, USE 49 Tips and Insights for Understanding Addiction (you can buy it here), you are taking a positive step towards understanding Substance Abuse & Addiction. While there is no magic bullet that can cure everyone’s substance abuse and addiction issues, the material presented herein will go a long way towards helping you gain an understanding into the thought processes associated with, not only Substance Abuse and Addiction, but also with treatment and recovery. Once you understand the mechanisms underlying these things, you can then apply them to either your own, or something else’s, recovery. This award-winning book can change lives for the better.

While this book is both educational and inspiring, really, it isn’t meant as a benign and passive experience. It should challenge what you think about Substance Abuse and Addiction. Further, it should also help you understand the experience of being addicted. The reality is that most people who become addicted to something really don’t understand their own actions all that well, yet those people around addicts seem to think addiction is a simple matter of stopping. It isn’t.

You should treat each tip and insight as its own self-contained experience that provides you with ample material to apply within your own life. For each tip and insight, you should try to answer the following questions (I recommend that you read this book with a pen and notebook so that you can jot down ideas as you proceed through the material):

  • Does the tip & insight apply to my own experience? Why or why not?
  • In what ways can I use the material, today, that will bring about healthy change?
  • How does this material challenge my current beliefs about Substance Abuse and Addiction?
  • Do I agree with the tip & insight? Why or why not?
  • Did this tip & insight provide hope of recovery, why or why not?

By reflecting on the Tips & Insights, my hope is that you can define a path towards a healthy recovery that is relevant to your own life. While Substance Abuse and Addiction have describable and predicable trajectories, no two people’s recovery is the same. Each recovery takes a different amount of time and resources and in using this book as part of a comprehensive treatment program, I believe you can either find your own plan or help someone else define his or hers.

I hold a Master of Arts in Education; I am a Licensed Alcohol and Drug Counselor; and I am a certified Continuing Education Provider. I have been teaching, presenting and living these 49 Tips & Insights for well over twenty (20) years. This material has helped several people find their own paths towards health and I know that if you devote time and energy to reflect on this material, it can help you, too.

If you’d like to know more about me, I share my own struggles in overcoming Depression in my book, Journey to Aztlan, and I blog at jblea1016.com. I wish you all of God’s light and love on your path to health.