Life on the Rocks: Finding Meaning in Addiction Recovery

LIFE ON THE ROCKS is the first book to address addiction and recovery from a western philosophical perspective, offering a powerful set of tools sharpened over millennia. Aimed at treatment professionals as well as people newly sober or in long-term recovery, it introduces some of the core concepts and vexing questions of philosophy to help addicts and those affected by their addictions examine and perhaps transform the meaning they make of their lives. Without assuming any familiarity with philosophy, LIFE ON THE ROCKS illuminates issues all addicts and their loved ones face: self-identity, moral responsibility, self-knowledge and self deception, free will and determinism, fatalism, the nature of God and their relations to others. Addiction may be the starkest form of the most basic question a human faces: Shall I live or shall I die? If one chooses to live, then one must address the question of not only how to live, but how to live a good life. Addiction and recovery are, at their core, about the meaning of life. LIFE ON THE ROCKS is an indispensable guide to the deeply philosophical concerns at the heart of every addict’s struggle.