Addiction is a family disease. One way or another, all - family, friends, and employers - are affected. True, some more severely than others, but the fallout is hard to avoid. Collateral damage is inevitable. Addiction is like fly paper - it's sticky.

Recovery from addiction can be sticky too. It provides a compelling alternative. It's not easy. Most don't choose it. Some try and fail. But those who stick can flourish in countless new ways.

Similarly, if you are a family member or friend exposed to this disease, then you have been deeply affected too, perhaps in ways you're not aware of yet. You deserve support too. Recovery is as important for you as it is for the addict close to you.

This book chronicles a recovery pathway, some indispensable tools, and directions for the journey. Clemmy's cartoons punctuate the trip and add needed chuckles. Addiction is serious business. Recovery doesn't have to be.

Leaving chaos, guilt, and shame behind, no longer burdened or entrapped, and armed with a new gratitude for life, everyone impacted by this disease can re-build, contribute, love, laugh, and thrive again.

"There are, of course, the obvious benefits gained in the recovery process in terms of heightened levels of functioning. There is as well the spiritual metamorphosis arising from gazing long and hard in a compassionate honest and vulnerable manner into one's brokenness. In so doing, one has the chance of discovering first-hand the stuff of which the heart is made. In a no nonsense, down-to-earth kind of way, one hits bottom. In so doing one discovers that the bottom gives way to a yet deeper depth in which is granted an intimate experience of the divinity of ourselves as invincibly lovable and whole in all our fragmentation."

-James Finley, Clinical Psychologist and Acclaimed Author of: Merton's Palace of Nowhere and The Contemplative Heart.