Healing and Hope: Six Women from the Betty Ford Center Share Their Powerful Journeys of Addiction and Recovery
To take readers inside the famous addiction-recovery clinic that bears her name, Ford stitches together the stories of six who have been through its program and relevant recollections of her own struggle with alcoholism. She chooses six women to point up the peculiarities of women's addiction. Compared to male addicts, addicted women are more secretive, more easily inebriated, sustain liver damage sooner, present more complex psychological problems, and are more enabled by physicians and pharmacists. The overarching difference is that expectations of virtue are higher for women; consequently, they are more likely to see themselves as failures at love, motherhood, their professions--indeed, at living. Their addictions are attempts to "medicate" their perceived failures. It is remarkable, though Ford doesn't point it out, that one or both parents of five of the women were addicted and abusive, and the family of the sixth was emotionally repressed. Whatever leads a woman to addiction, she, not society, Ford says, must get herself out of it, although the 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous regimen and the fellowship of other reforming addicts, which the Ford Center provides intensively, are crucial to making an addict realize personal responsibility for recovery. With its six powerful personal stories and Ford's warm, authoritative overview, this is a solid popular introduction to the experience of recovery from addiction.Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.