Ayrshire authors review "Addiction-Proof Your Child" by Stanton Peele

[The following review of Dr Stanton Peele's new book "Addiction-Proof
Your Child" is by Murdoch and Lilian and Murdoch MacDonald from
Ayrshire, Scotland, authors of "Phoenix in a Bottle", an account of
their own recovery from alcoholism.]

Dr Stanton Peele's new book "Addiction-Proof Your Child" is a concise
and commonsense piece of work that does exactly what the title
suggests, and gives parents a comprehensive guide to ensure their
offspring never fall victim to drug and other addictions, including
alcoholism.

At the same time, the book provides valuable advice on how best to
help a child who is already an addict or who is showing signs of
dependency.

Although he claims at the outset that his book is not revolutionary,
Dr Peele starts off by saying that we should disregard much of what
we are told about addiction and its treatment by governments, the
media and even some elements of the medical profession itself.

Reiterating what he has argued in previous books, the author points
out that addiction can take many forms, and need not be to a
substance, citing the examples of shopping, gambling, love and sex.

He goes on to deride the idea that addiction is an illness or a
disease, or that it is any kind of biological phenomenon beyond our
control, or that it has any genetic causation.

Addicts do not have a problem with heroin or with alcohol, Dr Peele
says, they have a problem with life.

He explains: "People become addicted to experiences that protect them
from life challenges that they can't deal with."

Not only should we not treat addiction as if it were a disease,
neither should we treat it as a crime.

Stanton Peele points out that alcohol and drugs are always going to
be available regardless of what society may do, and young people are
always going to be prone to experiment with them.

However, the good news is that drug use rarely leads to drug
addiction, any more so than taking a drink leads to alcoholism.

Moreover, of those people who do become dependent, the vast majority
mature out of their addiction of their own volition as their life
moves on.

So parents should think twice before rushing children with a drug or
alcohol problem into treatment, since surveys have proved that people
undergoing such treatments, particularly those based upon the 12-Step
programme of Alcoholics Anonymous, fare no better, or even not so
well as those who undertake to change their behaviour with no outside
assistance whatsoever.

What Stanton Peele says parents can and should do is to encourage
this natural maturing process by instilling their children with
positive values and a responsible attitude about themselves and their
place in society.

He says: "What kids need to protect them from addiction are the
fundamentals of a life: a sense of meaning and involvement,
purposeful activity and achievement, caring about themselves and
others, and the ability to manage themselves."

Stanton Peele goes on: "My approach includes recognising that
addiction is not limited to drugs, that people overcome addiction
when they are motivated and when their lives improve, and that
successful therapy for addiction builds on people's own motivation to
change, while teaching them better ways of coping."

Dr Peele argues that such an approach depends for success upon giving
children self-efficacy, a firm belief that they hold their destiny in
their own hands.

This is in stark contrast to the 12-Step programme, which is based
upon the false assumption that an addict is powerless against an
incurable lifelong disease.

As Dr Peele says: "Learning to assume adult responsibilities does not
mesh well with admitting powerlessness."

"No experience, including addiction, is beyond human beings' control.
People are most likely to escape addiction when their values
contradict continued addiction, and when they believe they can escape
it."

Stanton Peele's book provides much more detailed advice about how
parents can deal with offspring's addiction, and (even more
importantly) how to avoid it happening in the first place.

It claims to say little that is new, but rather to reassert some good
old-fashioned traditional virtues and values.

"Addiction-Proof Your Child" is nevertheless an urgent and much-
needed wake-up call to all parents, to the medical profession, and to
governments both here in the UK as well as in Stanton Peele's native
America.

Stanton Peele's website: http://www.peele.net

"Addiction-Proof Your Child" by Stanton Peele Phd JD is published by
Crown Publishing Group, Division of Random House Inc, price $14.95
(£7.39). ISBN 978-0307237576.

Murdoch and Lilian MacDonald
Ayrshire, Scotland.

Murdoch and Lilian MacDonald are the authors of "Phoenix in a
Bottle", an account of how they themselves reconstructed their own
lives after many years of chronic alcoholism.

Murdoch and Lilian's website:
http://www.alcoholicscandrinksafelyagain.com