[Ebook PDF] Loosening the Grip: A Handbook of Alcohol Information, 11th Edition

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Loosening the Grip: A Handbook of Alcohol Information, 11th Edition

ISBN-13: 978-0078028557
ISBN-10: 0078028558

Author: Jean Kinney (Author), M.D. Copans, Stuart A. (Illustrator), M.D. Horrigan, Andrew (Contributor), M.D. Price, Trevor R. P. (Contributor)

Accessible and comprehensive, Loosening the Grip remains an authoritative source for information about alcohol use and the problems associated with it, while also addressing the relationship between alcohol use and other drug use. This text presents the physical and psychological effects of alcohol alongside the impact of alcohol use on family and society. Special attention is given to addressing the range of responses to alcohol problems, prevention, harm reduction, brief treatment, engagement in treatment and aftercare, and addressing high risk drinking. Along with providing a historical foundation for the discussion of substance use, the book explains the facts about this complex issue in clear, engaging language. Loosening the Grip is widely recognized as a useful resource for future and current health care workers substance abuse clinicians, school counselors, mental health workers, community nurses, and others.

PREFACE

Material on alcohol and alcoholism is mushrooming. There are books, articles, scientific reports, pamphlets. On present use, past use, abuse. Around prevention, efforts at early detection, effects on the
family, effects on the body. When, where, why. And yet, if you are in the helping business and reasonably bright and conscientious and can find an occasional half hour to read but don’t have all day to search library stacks, then it’s probably hard for you to lay your hands on the information you need when it would be most helpful.
This handbook is an attempt to partially remedy the situation. It contains what we believe is the basic information an alcohol counselor or other professional confronted with alcohol problems needs to know and would like to have handy. The work here isn’t original. It is an effort to synthesize, organize, and sometimes “translate” the information from medicine, psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, sociology, and counseling that applies to alcohol use and alcoholism treatment. This handbook isn’t the last word. But we hope it is a starting point.
In the period since publication of the first edition of this handbook, what was then described as rapid growth in the literature has become a veritable deluge. Consequently, the demands on those in the helping professions are even greater. To be current would entail not only scanning the literature from the disciplines mentioned, but also looking at the many journals of the alcohol and substance abuse fields.
Since the first edition of Loosening the Grip, there have been many changes in the alcohol field. Perhaps most notably, there is no longer a distinct alcohol field in the way there was in the 1970s. Today the field
is substance abuse, which represents a merging of the previously separate worlds of alcohol treatment and drug treatment. Ever since the first edition of this book, people have asked about the title. Yes, there is a story behind it. When Gwen Leaton, my coauthor for the first five editions, and I were preparing the original text, an apt title did not leap forth. Somewhere along the line, in casual conversation
someone recounted a comment made by an alcoholic struggling to get sober. This person, discussing her drinking in a rather defiant and belligerent fashion, said, “If God didn’t want me to drink, He’d knock the
glass out of my hand!” One of us jokingly commented that we hoped whoever was present had supplied the obviously perfect retort, “He will; all you have to do is loosen your grip.” Somehow that metaphor caught the simplicity and the complexity, the ease and the difficulty, the “holding on” and “being held” that are a part of alcohol problems. An almost mandatory conclusion for book prefaces is an exhaustive listing of “all the persons whose support and assistance. . ..” Trusting that family, friends, and professional colleagues know who they are, you will find here a slight departure from that tradition. In fact, many of the most significant contributions to this work have been made by individuals whose names and identities, such as the woman in the example just given, are unknown—substance abuse clinicians,
those in the twelve-step groups, members of the clergy, school counselors, the medical profession—all those who have been responsible for the strides in our collective understanding and clinical practice, all
those whose efforts in their professional and private lives make loosening the grip possible.
Jean Kinney