Understanding the high-functioning alcoholic : professional views and personal insights
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Understanding the high-functioning alcoholic : professional views and personal insights
（The Praeger series on contemporary health and living）
Praeger, 2009
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Who is the typical alcoholic among the 12.5 million living in the United States now? Many, if not most of us when asked that question, would envision a skid row bum or someone at least out of work or with little education locked into a low-skill, low-paying job. But that is not accurate, according to the results of a national study released in June, 2007 by the National Institutes of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The NIAAA determined that alcoholics in the United States really fall into five subtypes, including nearly 20 percent who are highly functional alcoholics, well-educated with good incomes. They include corporate presidents, powerful politicians, police, lawyers, doctors, scientists, and other highly-skilled, highly-educated people who are middle- to high-income and by most accounts successful. In this unprecedented book, mental health counselor Sarah Benton takes us into the worlds and minds of so-called high-functioning alcoholics, to understand how people so intelligent and achievement-oriented get drawn into states in which they secretly cannot control their liquor consumption but still manage to excel in their careers.
The book includes a look at celebrity alcoholics like singer Eric Clapton and actor/comedian Robin Williams, as well as alcoholics in high positions including Chris Albrecht, former Chairman and CEO of HBO. Other high-profile people included in this book are Miss USA 2007 Tara Conner and football legend Joe Namath. With her own story of alcoholism and her recovery woven into the text, Benton takes us into the lives and challenges of these well-educated and successful people, seeking to understand how, when, and why they became addicted, as well as the reasons their alcoholism is, for most, so hard to admit, cope with, and recover from.
Table of Contents
Part I: Active Alcoholism
1. Introduction: High-Functioning Alcoholics
2. In the Beginning: High-Functioning Alcoholics in High School
3. Freedom: High-Functioning Alcoholics in College
4. Adrift: High-Functioning Alcoholics as Emerging Adults
5. Falling Uphill: Professional, Intelligent and Alcoholic
6. Attempts to "Cure" the Problem: Out of Control and Hitting Bottom
Part II. Recovery
7. A New Start: The Paths to Sobriety
8. Spirituality, Religion and the Bottle: Filling the Void
9. Transformation: The Twelve Steps
10. The Challenge: Life in Recovery
by "Nielsen BookData"