BOOKS AND FILMS OFFER INSPIRATION FOR GETTING -- AND STAYING -- SOBER

When I wanted to get sober more than 20 years ago, I found
inspiration in "The Courage to Change" (Houghton Mifflin), a
collection of conversations author Dennis Wholey conducted about
alcoholism with a few dozen famous reformed drunks, including singer
Grace Slick, writer Elmore Leonard, and a few guys I admired who
threw baseballs 90 mph.

Two things struck me in particular as I read Wholey's book: The
inevitable progression of the disease and the infinite variety of
recovery. It gave me hope when I needed a metaphysical pick-me-up.

A different book, also titled "Courage to Change" but subtitled "One
Day at a Time in Al-Anon II," has been a comfort to parents, spouses
and friends of alcoholics and addicts for more than a decade. It's a
"daily reader" - a collection of short meditations on topics such as
"manipulation" and "letting go" built around pithy stories,
reflections and quotes.

"I used to sit in my favorite chair first thing in the morning and
read it before my daughter got up," says a friend, whose former
husband is an alcoholic. "It causes you to stop and reflect. It
helped me to appreciate that the best gift you can give someone is
the power to make their own decisions and mistakes."

The granddaddy of the daily readers - there are dozens in print
targeted to many niches - is "Twenty-Four Hours a Day" by Richmond
Walker. First issued in 1954, it has sold more than 8 million copies
in 30 countries for the prolific publishing arm of Hazelden, the
alcohol and drug rehabilitation center based in Center City, Minn. In
keeping with the Alcoholics Anonymous practice of taking "moral
inventory," the book reinforces the responsibility of alcoholics to
treat their disease.

"It helps you realize that alcoholism does not come out of the
bottle; that it's all about the character defects and shortcomings
that a person has, and that you have to change in order to stay
sober," says William G. Borchert, who wrote the screenplay for "My
Name Is Bill W.," a 1989 television movie that won an Emmy for actor
James Woods. The video of that docudrama has become a staple in
rehabs worldwide, and Warner Home Video recently reissued it on DVD.

Borchert is also the author of "The Lois Wilson Story," a new
Hazelden biography about the wife of the co-founder of Alcoholics
Anonymous, whose own achievements are finally coming to the fore. The
co-founder of Al-anon, Lois was the first person to identify
addiction as a "family disease."

"Without Lois, there would have been no twelve-step program because
there would have been no Bill Wilson," Borchert says. "She sustained
him for 17 years of horrific drinking until he found recovery."

The most influential recovery book is Bill Wilson's own 1939 classic,
"Alcoholics Anonymous" (AA Services), which has gone through four
editions and sold more than 25 million copies. In keeping with the AA
tradition of anonymity, it does not bear his name. Nearly 1 million
English-language bound copies are distributed each year; "The Big
Book" is also available to download or read for free at
www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.

Two books helped me understand my relationship with my daughter,
Carrick, who was addicted to heroin. "Terry" (Plume), by former Sen.
George McGovern, is a father's story of his daughter's fatal dance
with alcohol and drugs from her teen years to the morning she was
found frozen to death at 45 outside a bar. Martha Tod Dudman's
"Augusta Gone" (Simon & Schuster) is a mother's struggle to
understand her teen daughter's manipulation, theft, drug use and
disappearance from home, as well as her own guilt and doubts.

Carrick herself says that the German film "Christiane F.: A True
Story," is the most powerful cautionary tale of teenage addiction she has seen.

"Moyers on Addiction: Close to Home," a five-part TV series produced
by Bill and Judith Moyers, first aired on PBS in 1998, is still
available for sale and circulates in some library systems. It holds
up exceedingly well, and guides are available to download for
employers, heath professionals, families, teachers and general
viewers at www.thirteen.org/closetohome/html/guides.html.

Many informative narratives also have illuminated addiction and its
impact on others for me over the years. "The Harder They Fall"
(Hazelden) by Gary Stromberg and Jane Merrill, like "The Courage to
Change," features interviews with celebrities about their addiction
and recovery and reaffirms both the common threads and unique cut of
each person's disease.

Caroline Knapp's "Drinking: A Love Story" (Delta), Pete Hamill's "A
Drinking Life: A Memoir" (Little Brown), and J.R. Moehringer's "The
Tender Bar" (Hyperion) are all compelling memoirs by newspaper
reporters that capture the allure of alcohol. Of course, all three
authors eventually realize that, as a bartender told Moehringer,
"Drinking is the only thing you don't get better at the more you do it."