2008-2009. Richard S. Sandor, M.D.. © All rights reserved.
In this thoughtful, wise and extremely readable book, Dr. Richard Sandor, a highly experienced physician and psychiatrist, offers a welcome and exceptionally useful outlook on the addictions. From decades of deeply listening to alcoholics, drug addicts and their families, studying the scientific literature, facilitating treatment programs and fostering recovery for thousands of patients, Dr. Sandor has refined an over-arching perspective that fully integrates with what is known about the biological, psychological and social roots of addictions. His focus on the automatic, out of awareness, and out of control impulses and behaviors of addictions and on ways of contending with these ubiquitous problems yields numerous practical concepts and tools that will greatly help those suffering from addictions, their families and friends, and the array of peers and health professionals who strive to aid in recovery.
Joel Yager, M.D.
Professor, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of Colorado at Denver
Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California at Los Angeles
Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of New Mexico
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With gentle wisdom and simplicity, Dr. Sandor opens a window to understanding alcoholism and recovery. His book provides the student, the new professional, family member and layman with excellent tools, along with an enjoyable read.
James Conway, M.S.
Founder, Pacific Assistance Group
Course coordinator, Alcohol and Drug Studies Program, UCLA Extension
_____________________________________________________________________
Richard Sandor has given us a lucid, wonderfully written book, useful to clinicians, patients, and families alike, on the topic of addiction. It provides a direct line of thinking that is simple and direct, but supplemented by highlights from the history of medicine, by clinical vignettes, and by Sandor’s view of spirituality in relation to the higher power so integral to the twelve step approach that is so central to recovery from addiction. This view of spirituality has immense power, but it doesn’t distract from Sandor’s strictly clinical line of thinking. The book will be a beacon light to health professionals and to patients and their families who suffer from substance abuse of all sorts. It is an outstanding contribution that leaves the reader with a strong, brilliantly developed, and crucially important emphasis on automatism of the illness – even when it appears to be quiescent. This important treatment of the dormancy of the ‘beast’ of addiction, even during abstinence, is one that hits home solidly and is especially important as a book to be presented to patients struggling with the issue of acknowledgment of their addiction. Later in the book, Sandor takes up the central and easily misunderstood spiritual aspect of twelve step recovery and what is meant by spirituality in a way that makes clear that it is not just a sentimentalized religiosity that is being emphasized. Sandor’s philosophizing on these spiritual points is original and beautifully done. He stays unswervingly connected to his audience. Thinking Simply About Addiction is a brilliant book from which I learned a great deal.
Melvin R. Lansky, M.D., DFAPA
Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, UCLA Medical School.
Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst, New Center for Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles
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One of the 12 Step Programs uses THINK as an acronym for asking whether any communication is Thoughtful, Honest, Intelligent, Necessary and Kind. Rich Sandor's words about addiction are all that. But they are also simple in the best sense - Straightforward. This is especially true when he asks whether Spiritual Awakening is Necessary for Recovery. To resist this notion out of hand, before exploring its possibility, is to push away much that lies in the present moment, if we are fully awake.
Timmen L. Cermak, M.D.
Author of Marijuana: What's a Parent to Believe?
President, California Society of Addiction Medicine
Joel Yager, M.D.
Professor, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of Colorado at Denver
Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California at Los Angeles
Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of New Mexico
_____________________________________________________________________
With gentle wisdom and simplicity, Dr. Sandor opens a window to understanding alcoholism and recovery. His book provides the student, the new professional, family member and layman with excellent tools, along with an enjoyable read.
James Conway, M.S.
Founder, Pacific Assistance Group
Course coordinator, Alcohol and Drug Studies Program, UCLA Extension
_____________________________________________________________________
Richard Sandor has given us a lucid, wonderfully written book, useful to clinicians, patients, and families alike, on the topic of addiction. It provides a direct line of thinking that is simple and direct, but supplemented by highlights from the history of medicine, by clinical vignettes, and by Sandor’s view of spirituality in relation to the higher power so integral to the twelve step approach that is so central to recovery from addiction. This view of spirituality has immense power, but it doesn’t distract from Sandor’s strictly clinical line of thinking. The book will be a beacon light to health professionals and to patients and their families who suffer from substance abuse of all sorts. It is an outstanding contribution that leaves the reader with a strong, brilliantly developed, and crucially important emphasis on automatism of the illness – even when it appears to be quiescent. This important treatment of the dormancy of the ‘beast’ of addiction, even during abstinence, is one that hits home solidly and is especially important as a book to be presented to patients struggling with the issue of acknowledgment of their addiction. Later in the book, Sandor takes up the central and easily misunderstood spiritual aspect of twelve step recovery and what is meant by spirituality in a way that makes clear that it is not just a sentimentalized religiosity that is being emphasized. Sandor’s philosophizing on these spiritual points is original and beautifully done. He stays unswervingly connected to his audience. Thinking Simply About Addiction is a brilliant book from which I learned a great deal.
Melvin R. Lansky, M.D., DFAPA
Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, UCLA Medical School.
Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst, New Center for Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles
_____________________________________________________________________
One of the 12 Step Programs uses THINK as an acronym for asking whether any communication is Thoughtful, Honest, Intelligent, Necessary and Kind. Rich Sandor's words about addiction are all that. But they are also simple in the best sense - Straightforward. This is especially true when he asks whether Spiritual Awakening is Necessary for Recovery. To resist this notion out of hand, before exploring its possibility, is to push away much that lies in the present moment, if we are fully awake.
Timmen L. Cermak, M.D.
Author of Marijuana: What's a Parent to Believe?
President, California Society of Addiction Medicine