Stanton Peele's Bookshop

Addiction-Proof Your Child

Will your kids drink or smoke marijuana? Quite possibly. But don't panic. In a world where binge drinking, recreational and prescription drug abuse, chronic overeating and anorexia, and internet gambling and pornography are all too common among teens, it's time to rethink conventional wisdom about addiction. We clearly need something more than "just say no." This book is the alternative.

7 Tools to Beat Addiction

Once again, Dr. Stanton Peele confronts the sacred cows of the addiction / recovery industry with a new book that shows how to overcome addiction with or without treatment. In 7 Tools to Beat Addiction, Peele liberates readers from the disease model of addiction and presents a program for recovery based on his thoroughly grounded and sane perspective on the nature of addictions of all kinds.

Resisting 12-Step Coercion: How to Fight Forced Participation in AA, NA, or 12-Step Treatment

Stanton Peele, Charles Bufe, with Archie Brodsky

Stanton and his colleagues respond to the overwhelming use of coercive referrals to substance abuse treatment (read "12-step treatment") in the United States with a primer on the legal, ethical, and clinical aspects of such treatment. The authors find that the empirical basis for claims that 12-step treatment is useful is weak at best. Important research has found no benefits — or even negative results — from assignment to AA and related treatments, and certainly other treatments are at least as effective. Moreover, a personal resolution to participate in a particular treatment is an important component in effective therapy.

The Meaning of Addiction

Stanton Peele

The Meaning of Addiction presents an entire non-reductive, experiential model of addiction. It became a major nondisease text, including use at Harvard. It has become the classic expression of the extensive research that shows addiction cannot be resolved biologically — lived human experience and its interpretation are central to the incidence, course, treatment, and remission of addiction.

The Truth About Addiction and Recovery

Stanton Peele & Archie Brodsky, with Mary Arnold

In this revolutionary analysis of addiction, Stanton Peele and Archie Brodsky draw on years of research to refute the contention that addictions are biologically based diseases that last a lifetime. Examining addiction within the context of people's lives, they show that addictive behavior is a way of coping with situational stress — and that it can be overcome without medical treatment or 12-step groups. A practical nondisease approach to addiction, based on the methods both of self-curers and of effective motivational, skills-training, and community-based therapies.

Diseasing of America

Stanton Peele

A popular book explaining the movement in America toward disease theories of behaviors and their negative consequences for law, morality, and social and individual health. Diseasing of America was widely reviewed, largely positively, including JAMA, Health Affairs, American Health, Psychology Today, Psychiatric News, and JSA.