A Travel Guide for Treatment Professionals
William White, Hazelden Publishing, 1996 (2nd Ed.)
If treatment programs cannot provide an alternative identity and alternate mechanisms to sustain esteem, they have no basis upon which to compete with the culture of addiction”
I read this book in 1991 and recently re-read it. I still think it is an excellent and comprehensive guide even for very experienced professionals, but it also had great value for me in my own experience of recovery.
I would recommend the first section (Book One) especially for professionals who are not themselves recovering from addiction. The second section for anyone seeking information about recovery, the treatment process, and resources for both professionals and their clients.
For some clients, their skill and reputation as a hustler may be the most significant status and recognition they have ever achieved.”
Pat McGuire is a Principal of RecoverySI, with more than forty years in recovery. Her bio is here.
To “sustain self-esteem”…so crucial. Yet one of our WFS members came back to us after an AA meeting during which she was “shunned” because she had relapsed. She is hurt and now ashamed. How does this hep sustain self-esteem? WFS would never ever do that.
Just wondering.