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Announcement

Posted on July 31, 2023, tagged as Heroic Journey, Twelve Steps, addiction

I am pleased to announce that my new book, The Twelve Step Pathway: A Heroic Journey of Recovery, is now scheduled for release by the publisher, Rowman & Littlefield on November 1, 2023. With this book I present the idea of recovery from addiction as a heroic journey. I explain the heroic journey as an eight stage process as delineated by Joseph Campbell. I also devote some space to ideas of Carl Jung, a pioneering psychiatrist who played an inadvertent but key role in the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous. The stages of the journey are 1) the call to adventure; 2) refusal of the call (or wish to refuse); 3) acceptance of the call and receipt of gifts that will promise success; 4) the adventure; 5) achievement of the quest; 6) the call to return to the kingdom with the treasure; 7) refusal of the call to return (or wish to refuse); and 8) return to the kingdom with the treasure for the benefit of the heroes’ community. I give background on Bill Wilson, a cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, and identify how each of the twelve steps play an important role in the successful journey. A chapter is devoted to explaining the disease of addiction. Included in the book are stories of eight individuals, written in their own words, in which they tell what their life of active addiction was like, what happened to arrest the disease, and what their life is like now as a recovering person. I also include the story of the biblical patriarch Jacob. I show how each of the stories illustrate the components of a heroic journey. Finally, at the end of the book I include a workbook to help the reader examine his or her own life and recovery from the point of view of a heroic journey. As more information about the publication becomes available, I will post it.