A sturdy, cleareyed view of addiction as controllable and ultimately surmountable.
In this descriptive, narrative-driven account of addiction, the author challenges modern perceptions of addicts and offers a fresh approach to rehabilitation.
Groenewald describes himself as a “lesser spotted addict,” a person who has neither studied addiction at the collegiate level nor helped rehabilitate a family member or a friend. What he has done is create a theory about addiction based on personal experience and close scrutiny of others. Groenewald challenges the idea that an addict is powerless over his or her addiction, that substances could in fact rule over the human mind and body. His approach is controversial, as it undoes some of the major work of the past few decades in treating addiction as a disease requiring careful handling. Instead, Groenewald creates commandments, or statements that must be adopted by an addict willing to put in the work to recover. These include mantras such as, “We assert that we are not powerless,” and “We acknowledge that our behavior...has caused harm to others and ourselves.” It is only with these acceptances, Groenewald argues, that a person struggling with addiction can rise to take steps toward an addiction-free life. In one instance, the author presents an anecdote about overcoming a habit of using ChapStick. Though small-scale, the compulsion to reach for ChapStick each time lips become dry is a repetitive, comfort-seeking behavior—a description that might match other addictions, from food to heroin to cigarettes or shopping. The book is well-organized into “articles of association” that unfold the many layers of self-awareness an addict must develop. What’s more, each article is written in a pluralistic “we,” simultaneously indicating both the author and the reader, for a collective spirit that allows the message to feel less like an attack and more of a team rally or game plan. While each chapter does delve deeper into the themes of self-awareness and accountability, many of the associations are one and the same. For example, accepting that behaviors harm the self and others is quite similar to Article Eight, which states: “We acknowledge the existence of interconnectivity between all living things.” Nonetheless, strong messages like this merit repeating, and Groenewald has created an easily digestible swift kick for anyone tired of hiding behind powerlessness.
A sturdy, cleareyed view of addiction as controllable and ultimately surmountable.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4781-4403-8
Page Count: 172
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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