Linda Dahl - Loving Our Addicted Daughters Back to Life: A Guidebook for Parents

Special Praise for

Loving Our Addicted Daughters Back to Life

Loving Our Addicted Daughters Back to Life is a heartbreaking and also heartwarming testament to the need to understand and address addiction as a preventable and treatable disease. As Linda Dahl eloquently demonstrates, countless families are not aware of the risk factors for this disease, how it may affect girls and women differently, or what to do if they have to face it. Instead, they are left to sift through a confusing array of providers rarely offering treatment known to be effective, and to blame themselves for relapses resulting from inadequate treatment or the disease itself. Loving Our Addicted Daughters Back to Life is an important resource for families, especially families with daughters. It is a message of hopethat addiction can be prevented and treated effectively and that people with the disease can learn to manage it and live healthy, productive lives.

Susan E. Foster, Executive Director, ABAM Foundations National Center for Physician Training in Addiction Medicine, and principal investigator for Women Under the Influence, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University

This is a very valuable and important book. Linda Dahl has written a touching and compassionate guide for those who are seeking addiction treatment for their daughters. She has clearly outlined the pain that mothers experience, as well as the need for and importance of specialized services for women and girls. As I think of the mothers who have called me over the years seeking advice about how to help their daughters, I wish I had had this resource to recommend. Any mother who is struggling to help her daughter will find Loving Our Addicted Daughters to be a gift.

Stephanie S. Covington, PhD, psychotherapist and author of A Womans Way through the Twelve Steps

Loving Our Addicted Daughters Back to Life is a significant contribution to the concerns around women and addiction. While validating the gut-wrenching pain of a mother with an addicted daughter, the book is offset with hopeful practical tips on discerning a chemical problem, finding help, as well as sensitive suggestions for greater understanding and hope. A timely reading with a balance of anecdote and research.

Brenda J. Iliff, former Director of Hazelden Womens Recovery Center and author of A Womans Guide to Recovery

Loving Our Addicted Daughters Back to Life brings hope to parents who have daughters struggling with addiction. Linda Dahl articulately combines her personal journey with some of the latest gender-specific addiction treatment research. This easy-to-follow guide provides parents with practical tools and resources, including a much-needed comparative listing of treatment centers.

Michael Gurian, co-founder of the Gurian Institute and author of The Wonder of Girls

Central Recovery Press (CRP) is committed to publishing exceptional materials addressing addiction treatment, recovery, and behavioral healthcare topics, including original and quality books, audio/visual communications, and web-based new media. Through a diverse selection of titles, we seek to contribute a broad range of unique resources for professionals, recovering individuals and their families, and the general public.

For more information, visit www.centralrecoverypress.com.

2015 by Linda Dahl

All rights reserved. Published 2015.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

Publisher: Central Recovery Press

3321 N. Buffalo Drive

Las Vegas, NV 89129

20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5

ISBN: 978-1-937612-86-3 (e-book)

Author photo by Duanne Shinkle-Simon. Used with permission.

Step One of the Twelve Step Program of Alcoholics Anonymous on page 85 reprinted by permission of AA World Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

Quote from Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th ed., page 33, reprinted on page 85 with permission of AA World Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

Publishers Note: This book contains general information about addiction, addiction recovery, and related matters. The information is not medical advice, and should not be treated as such. Central Recovery Press makes no representations or warranties in relation to the information in this book. If you have any specific questions about any medical matter discussed in this book, you should consult your doctor or other professional healthcare provider. This book is not an alternative to medical advice from your doctor or other professional healthcare provider.

Our books represent the experiences and opinions of their authors only. Every effort has been made to ensure that events, institutions, and statistics presented in our books as facts are accurate and up-to-date. To protect their privacy, the names of some of the people, places, and institutions in this book may have been changed.

Cover design and interior design and layout by Deb Tremper, Six Penny Graphics.

This book is for parents and loved ones who know a young woman who is using alcohol or other drugs. May it guide you to love her, and yourself, back to health.

Table of Contents

M y deep appreciation goes out to the families and young women who shared their stories in these pages. Also to the many dedicated professionals for their passion to impart knowledge that improves the odds for recovery from addiction for young women. To the parents of children with a substance use disorder who are committed to helping other such families. To the memory of Susan Zeckendorf, my longtime agent and dear friend. To Martha, my wonderful sponsor and friend: we were young alcoholics and drug users who took the help offered to us to recover from addiction and in four decades, we have never looked back. To my beloved daughter Kim (whose name, like that of all those who have shared their personal stories, has been changed to protect her privacy). You fought for your life, emerging from the depths of active addiction to become a vibrant example of recovery today. Finally, to the many young women and men and the parents Ive met who are working toward recovery and to those I havent yet met. You are living proof there is hope for the future.

Girls and young women use cigarettes, alcohol and other drugs for different reasons than boys and young men. [They] are more vulnerable than boys to substance abuse and addiction and its consequences.

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASAColumbia)

A n eminent physician who has worked for decades with young people suffering from addiction describes the drug crisis today in words that should shock and awe all of us: We are experiencing the worst drug addiction epidemic in United States history.

Whether its called substance use, risky use, drug dependence, substance abuse, substance use disorder, substance use disease, addiction, or alcoholism, taking mood-changing, mind-altering chemicals that may become habit-forming can at any point be harmful to the user. The label may carry shades of different meanings, but its the destructive illness that matters. Experimenting with alcohol and/or other drugs will lead only some to heartbreak and addiction, but, like in Russian roulette, nobody knows when the gun will fire.