Coming Clean: Overcoming Addiction Without Treatment

by Robert Granfield

Untold stories of people with substance addictions who have recovered without formal treatment

Despite the widely accepted view that formal treatment and twelve-step groups are essential for overcoming dependencies on alcohol and drugs, each year large numbers of former addicts quietly recover on their own, without any formal treatment or participation in self-help groups at all.

Coming Clean explores the untold stories of untreated addicts who have recovered from a lifestyle of excessive and compulsive substance use without professional assistance. Based on 46 in-depth interviews with formerly addicted individuals, this controversial volume examines their reasons for avoiding treatment, the strategies they employed to break away from their dependencies, the circumstances that facilitated untreated recovery, and the implications of recovery without treatment for treatment professionals as well as for prevention and drug policy.

Because of the pervasive belief that addiction is a disease requiring formal intervention, few training programs for physicians, social workers, psychologists, and other health professionals explore the phenomenon of natural recovery from addiction. Coming Clean offers insights for treatment professionals of how recovery without treatment can work and how candidates for this approach can be identified. A detailed appendix outlines specific strategies which will be of interest to addicted individuals themselves who wish to attempt the process of recovery without treatment.

Hardcover

First published May 1, 1989

Reviews

[Jason]

This was a really interesting book, and it elaborates well the importance of particular social contexts for the cessation of problematic patterns of drug use. Though, the book anchors much of its argument in the users' retention of "conventional" values and lifestyles -- conventional being an oblique (and at times direct) invocation of white middle-class norms. Showing how "natural" (i.e. recovery without the use of standardized treatments or self-help mutual aid groups) recovery is a viable option for people goes a long way towards productively challenging the disease model of addiction, but the lack of interrogation regarding what constitutes "conventional life" and why that might not be attractive to all people is a drawback of the analysis. How does natural recovery develop in social contexts of intense marginalization? Surely, it exists, but the book offers limited insights. In all, enjoyed, would recommend, and I think the insights are valuable if not a tad circumscribed.

[Mark Manderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good material.
Biggest takeaway:
Relapses are associated with three types of situations. Negative emotions, interpersonal conflict, and social pressure

[Rod · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great perspective