10th Anniversary Edition - If You Loved Me, You'd Stop!
What you really need to know when your loved one drinks too much.
How many times have you screamed "If you loved me, you'd stop!" at your husband or son after a particularly nasty bout of drinking? How many times has your wife or sister promised to cut back; to drink only on special occasions? How many times has your heart been broken when this time turned out to be just like all the times before? If you are one of the nearly 80 million Americans affected by someone's drinking, this book is for you.
This 10th Anniversary Edition includes research advances that explain
- what it is about coping with a loved one's drinking that is so harmful to the family member's physical and emotional health and quality of life
- why alcoholism is a brain disease and what it takes to treat it and why alcoholism is different than alcohol abuse
- what adverse childhood experiences, secondhand drinking, and toxic stress have to do with all of this.
This 10th Anniversary Edition not only shares these important advances in comprehensible language, but it offers suggestions for helping yourself. Because no matter how much you love someone whose drinking affects your life, and no matter how much they love you back, love will not and cannot make them stop.
Additionally, it can help those who struggle with a drinking problem understand what has happened to them and what they can do to change and/or treat it. It can also help family members whose loved ones have an opioid or other drug use disorder.
Educators; treatment and medical professionals; family law practitioners; juvenile and criminal justice professionals; community, business, and public policy leaders and others whose work involves substance use disorders and their impacts on family members, co-workers, and the community-at-large can benefit from reading this book, as well.
"10th Anniversary Edition If You Loved Me, You'd Stop!" is an essential read for understanding the science behind alcohol addiction. You'll discover things about yourself and your loved you didn't realize needed to be discovered. Lisa Frederiksen presents this powerful information in a concise, easy-to-understand way. As an adult child of an alcoholic on a healing journey, I learned more from this book than the dozens of clinical books I've read on the topic. It also provides practical coping and healing tactics for all those who love an alcoholic. "If You Loved Me, You'd Stop!" belongs in the library of all adult children of alcoholics and all those who are worried about a loved one's drinking. ~ Jody Lamb, adult child of alcoholic and author of “7 Things That Change Everything”
Lisa’s user-friendly book gives the reader hope and a better understanding of how a loved one’s drinking or other drug use disorders turn families upside down and how they may regain their balance. ~ Carolyn Younger, MFT, Family Program Director Muir Wood Adolescent and Family Services
Lisa Frederiksen’s book, “10th Anniversary Edition If You Loved Me, You’d Stop,” is an excellent resource for families concerned about a loved one's drinking. A thorough explanation of the difference between social drinking, alcohol abuse, and alcoholism and how excessive drinking affects the brain is included. Family members will have a much better understanding of their loved one’s drinking habits not to scold or confront, but rather to work towards finding a recovery process that makes sense for them. Lisa’s coined term, secondhand drinking, so clearly puts into focus what a family member goes through as they navigate the choppy waters of alcohol use disorder. With personal anecdotes, research, and tips on how family members can help themselves, this book is a must-read for anyone struggling with their loved one's excessive drinking. ~ Cathy Taughinbaugh, Certified Parent Coach, Founder of CathyTaughinbaugh.com
Please read this book. If you have a drinking problem, read the book. If you know or love someone who has a drinking problem, read this book. This book is full of information about alcohol use disorders and secondhand drinking that will help you understand your loved one, as well as yourself. Updated to include the most recent discoveries in brain science and social investigations, it makes clear that it is time to step into recovery and drop the stigma and shame. Truly a "must-read" for anyone in the treatment industry, for the families of those in treatment centers, and for those realizing it isn't "just me." ~ Kyczy Hawk, Yoga Instructor, Founder of YogaRecovery.com, and Author of “Yoga and the Twelve Step Path,” “Yogic Tools For Recovery,” and a series of word puzzle books combining recovery and yoga.
Quick Guide to Addiction Recovery: What Helps, What Doesn’t.
Addiction recovery – what can or should you do to help a loved one get help? Do they have to hit bottom? Should you show “tough love,” or is there another way? How do you know you’re even an alcoholic or drug addict?
So much of what we hear and believe about addiction and addiction recovery is bound up in stigma, misinformation, and shame. This fuels age-old beliefs that addiction is a choice and failure to stop is a lack of willpower, a moral weakness. Equally inaccurate is the assumption that relapse means treatment failed or the person didn’t want recovery badly enough.
So what’s changed? How is it possible to define addiction as a brain disease and explain that addiction recovery is all about “healing” the brain? And what is it that helps a person succeed in addiction recovery? What doesn’t? This and more is the subject of my latest Quick Guide. It’s titled Quick Guide to Addiction Recovery: What Helps, What Doesn’t.
Steven Kassels, M.D. "As a physician who is board-certified in both Emergency Medicine and Addiction Medicine and the Medical Director for an out-patient addiction service, I highly recommend "Quick Guide to Addiction Recovery". The author does a great job of explaining that addiction is a disease of the brain, no different than how diabetes is a disease of the pancreas. How a person develops the disease, what it takes to treat and recover from the disease, as well as what family members can do to help themselves, and through that effort, better help their loved ones is well elucidated. It is a free-flowing read with excellent resources linked throughout. I highly recommend it."
Quick Guide to Secondhand Drinking - A Phenomenon That Affects Millions
“Secondhand Drinking” – the negative impacts of a person’s drinking behaviors on others – is “A Phenomenon That Affects Millions.”
These behaviors are not intentional. They are not the “real” person coming out, rather they’re the consequence of the chemical in alcoholic beverages changing brain function when alcohol is misused.
The explosion in 21st-century brain research is radically changing our understanding of what happens to the brain when it’s under the influence of alcohol and when it’s on the receiving end of a person’s drinking behaviors. As a result, this science is giving us a new language for talking about a phenomenon that affects 90 million Americans and hundreds of millions more people worldwide. This phenomenon is Secondhand Drinking (SHD).
SHD crosses spectrums from those directly affected by SHD — family members living with someone whose behaviors change when they drink, for example — to a community’s citizens paying the quality-of-life costs and/or tax dollar contributions for law enforcement and criminal justice expenses of alcohol-related crimes.
Darlene Lancer, LMFT, Author of "Codependency for Dummies": "Secondhand Drinking is an important concept that underscores the impact of a practicing alcoholic on family, friends, and co-workers. This little ebook is packed with valuable information about the damage that the stress of living with an alcoholic does to one's nervous system and health. All the science is laid out and tips for self-care. Frederiksen explains why we automatically make excuses for behavior done under-the-influence, yet we would never do the same if it had followed drinking water. The most significant contribution this book makes is to breakdown the denial around someone's drinking, and hopefully get the reader to Al-Anon, as the author suggests. She emphasizes the futility of trying to change an alcoholic, in that alcohol changes the brain, and we can't change an alcoholic's brain when he or she is drinking. Only the consequences of their own drinking may do that. The next steps include detachment and setting boundaries and getting help with codependency."
Sandy Swenson, Author of "The Joey Song": "If you are one of the 91 million Americans affected by secondhand drinking, you need to read this book. Clear, concise and covering all the critical points, the “Quick Guide to Secondhand Drinking,” by Lisa Frederiksen is THE handbook for anyone who loves an addict."
Crossing the Line From Alcohol Use to Abuse to Dependence
Do you wonder why eating a big meal doesn't keep you from getting drunk? Do you believe coffee will sober a friend up? Do you wonder why some can drink far more than others and still not seem drunk?
In this book, readers will find the latest brain and addiction-related research and science discoveries written for the general public that debunks the common myths about drinking alcohol. Examining and challenging these common myths from a scientific perspective can help readers recognize what it takes to cross the line from alcohol use to abuse to dependence (alcoholism) and what it takes to stop the progression.
Tim Cheney, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Choopers Guide: "Once again, Lisa Frederiksen has done what she does best. She has taken an emotionally charged, complex subject riddled with myth and complicated with a myriad of conflicting theories and medical jargon and translated it into a well organized and intelligible synopsis of the alcohol use-abuse-dependence continuum and exposed and shattered the myths along the way. I suspect that if Einstein were alive today he would choose her to transform his theories into language that the masses would be able to easily digest and absorb.
This is the third publication concerning the disease of alcoholism that I have read by Lisa Frederiksen and I am consistently amazed at her gift of communicating her subject matter in a nonjudgemental, compassionate and factual manner. Her data is well researched and current. The reader walks away from the experience enlightened and shameless.
Loved One In Treatment? Now What!
Loved One In Treatment? Now What! offers the first-of-its-kind handbook for family members and friends navigating the path of a loved one’s substance abuse, addiction, treatment and recovery.
By combining the most current brain and addiction-related research with the author’s 40 years experience of coping with family alcoholism and alcohol abuse, this book gives readers the answers they are looking for and helps to ease the pain and confusion that accompany a loved one’s destructive behavior.
What makes Frederiksen’s book especially unique is her explanation of secondhand drinking/drugging (SHDD), namely the impact that one person’s substance misuse can have on others – how it happens, how it can be reversed and how family members and friends can live productive lives, regardless of what their loved one does.
Using easy-to-understand explanations of the latest research and graphically depicting the effect of substance misuse on the brain (thanks to advances in brain imaging technologies), Loved One In Treatment? Now What! answers additional questions, such as: How can addiction be a brain disease? What causes addiction? Why do some people become addicts/alcoholics and others do not? What is "effective" treatment? Is there a difference between treatment and recovery? Who among family members and friends can help a loved one get treatment? Or can they? What does coping with a loved one's addiction do to family members and friends, and what is available to help them?