Showing results for "lost" in Addiction & Recovery

When she was told that her life expectancy may be as low as twenty-five if she did not stop drinking, Lauren felt absolutely nothing – then the sparks of despair. How was she here? Surely, sobriety was for middle-aged divorcées who’d lost everything, not young, struggling singers who didn’t have anything to lose in the first place? Besides, when alcohol is the only medicine that makes the world feel bearable, how can you possibly stop taking it? Six years later, Lauren has found her way to an intricate answer.

When the third Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous was published in 1976, 30 Personal Stories originally printed in the first and second editions were omitted to make room for new stories. Lost to posterity, these stories have remained unseen by millions who got sober using the third and fourth editions of the Big Book. Vital in both their content and message, these lost stories from the early decades of AA are no less powerful today than they were when first printed in 1939 or 1955. To listen to them now is to listen to them as brand-new stories of experience, strength, and hope.

In 2014, novelist Leslie Schwartz was sentenced to 90 days in Los Angeles County Jail for a DUI and battery of an officer. It was the most harrowing and holy experience of her life. Following a 414-day relapse into alcohol and drug addiction after more than a decade sober, Schwartz was sentenced and served her time with only six months' sobriety. The damage she inflicted that year upon her friends, her husband, her daughter, and herself was nearly impossible to fathom. Incarceration might have ruined her altogether, if not for the stories that sustained her while she was behind bars.

Dr. Carder Stout's clientele includes Oscar-, Golden Globe-, Emmy-, Tony- and Grammy-winners, best-selling authors, and billionaires. He may not be able to share their dark secrets, but for the first time, everyone will know his. At the age of 34, Carder would have gladly pawned the silver spoon he was born choking on for a rock of crack. His downfall was as swift as his privilege was vast - or had he been falling all along?

With raw grit and vulnerability, Scott recounts his life growing up in small-town USA and details the ways in which addiction and mental illness resulted in losses that no father, son, or brother should even have to endure. Alongside his youngest son, Wes, a medical professional in psychiatry, they take a closer look into the world of addiction and the epidemic we find ourselves to be in - revealing the causes, variables, and paths to consider moving forward.