The Beyond Addiction Workbook for Family and Friends: Evidence-Based Skills to Help a Loved One Make Positive Change

This review is from one of the forgotten 5 million family members in the UK affected by substance use disorder in their home. Our journey began back in 2008, but if yours is is just beginning, the information in this book is among the best we have found to date.You may not yet have heard of approaches such as CRAFT (Community Reinforcement And Family Training), MI (Motivational Interviewing) and ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) but these modern, evidence based techniques are all used in the development of this workbook. Better still, these skills are delivered in a simple easy to understand fashion that can be used in the highly stressful situations we find ourselves in.From our experience of getting professional support, the material in the book is a great bench mark for those providing holistic support for those in recovery and their families. This workbook is a great update and practical guide to their previous excellent and widely read “Beyond Addiction”.If you are contemplating setting up a peer support group, or want to update and improve your existing group, this book is an ideal resource. ITC is designed from the ground up for family support, not adapted from a recovery program.The ITC method is broken down into three sections – Understanding, Awareness and Action. This resonates with families and helps us to have more compassion for our loved ones, whilst acknowledging our own difficulties. The action section means we are not “powerless” over our loved one’s recovery. ITC includes ways of positively collaborating and rewarding, which results in improved relationships and recovery outcomes.We have now been providing free support for families since 2016 learning from various organisations and methods. In the last year we have moved over to using the latest ITC approach and it is a really good fit for us and we receive really positive feedback from the families we support.The authors are extremely knowledgeable, high experienced and deliver these evidence-based strategies with true compassion in a user-friendly way. Sending a big thank you to the CMC team! (cmcffc.org/about/our-team)Dave and Tina (Alternat+ves.org)