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Can you eat just one chocolate…
The following release is provided for our media friends. For additional information, email publicity@impactpublishers.com.
Sex, Drugs, Gambling and Chocolate
Can you eat just one chocolate…or do you keep “sampling” until the box is gone? Does “just one beer” turn into…“one more for the road”?
If your bad habits have more control over you than you do, here’s good news: you don’t have to give up your bad habits or addictions in order to control them. The information is especially exciting for people with addictions to things such as sex or food — which most of us don’t wish to give up completely! This does contradict the teachings of most 12-step groups, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, which require total abstinence.
Clinical psychologist Dr. A. Thomas Horvath defines addiction as “repeated involvement with anything, despite excessive costs, because of craving.” He believes that “addiction” in its varying degrees is an extreme version of habit, and that both can be overcome with a psychological solution. “Of course, severe addiction can result in horrendous consequences,” comments Horvath, “but even severe addiction can be changed using normal human change processes.”
This conflicts with the traditional beliefs of 12-step groups, which view addiction as a medical and spiritual problem, requiring turning over one’s will and life to the care of a “higher power.” Horvath developed his “alternative treatment” because of the lack of options in American addiction treatment. “The idea that addiction could be resolved only by reliance on a higher power made no sense to me. I do not doubt that a spiritual awakening can resolve addiction and many other problems, but I do not believe it is the only method that will work.”
What does work? Horvath believes there are as many ways to overcome addiction as there are individuals: but the following steps are necessary in order to succeed:
- build and maintain motivation to change
- connect with others
- identify and develop alternative coping methods
- reduce resentment about changing
- identify, understand and cope with craving
- develop other satisfactions
- build a new, balanced life
- stay alert for problems and follow through all the way
Dr. Horvath offers specific coping methods in the new second edition of his book, Sex, Drugs, Gambling and Chocolate: A Workbook for Overcoming Addictions(Impact Publishers, Inc.), and advises that the willingness to change is crucial: “Regardless of the severity of their addictions, people are on a wide spectrum of willingness to overcome them. For one person, making an unfortunate remark (after a second drink) is enough to stop drinking. For another person, losing home and family because of enslavement to cocaine is not enough to decide to change.”
A. Thomas Horvath, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist practicing in La Jolla (San Diego), California . He is founder of Practical Recovery Services and past president of the San Diego Psychological Association and the San Diego Phobia Foundation. Currently the president of SMART Recovery, a network of support groups for individuals abstaining from any type of addictive behavior, he also served as president of the American Psychological Association’s Division on Addictions from 1999-2000.
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Adapted from Sex, Drugs, Gambling, & Chocolate: A Workbook for Overcoming Addictions, by Dr. A Thomas Horvath. Available at online and local bookstores or directly from Impact Publishers, Inc., PO Box 6016, Atascadero, CA93423-6016, www.impactpublishers.com, phone 1-800-246-7228.
