Love and Addiction

Rating:
Summary: A disturbing, provocative, and archtypal self help book
Review: I had the luck of finding this presently out of print book in a used book and clothing store in the mid-West. Peele's LOVE AND ADDICTION is about the most concise, eye-opening and, in light of how the problems he documents in American society have only been geometrically exacerbated in the twenty-five years since it was published (now inlcuding an addiction to guns), the most disturbing of the self-help books I have ever read. With the exception of Nancy Friday's JEALOUSY, not since Bradshaw's HOMECOMING, published in 1991, has a book with a psychological theme sent such powerful vibrations through me, forcing me to look again at my life. It effectively removes the veil covering the sad connection between diametrically opposed (and mutually ineffective) views on politics, religion, sex and sexual freedoms, romance, family, marriage, relationships, crimes of all kinds and the spectre/epidemic of drug addiction in the U.S.- as well as the international history of it all.

Many have said with wisdom- often quoting Martin Luther King or a Buddhist philosopher- that we are all joined together in one unified life, like threads in the fabric of society, and until we are all free, no one or group of us truly are. LOVE AND ADDICTION proves such poetic wisdom scientifically for the western mind, and its increasingly growing more fragile soul. Dr. Peele begins to show us the paradox of American society that is crippling us: how we are being psychologically crushed under the weight of our own technological innovations and tremendous freedoms, and how that affects ever single one of us, in all of our relationships, with everyone and everything.

You will learn more about your world- including that of present day self-help book writers with the same problems he delineates- than you may ever have wanted to know. Because he says what you think you already know in a way that makes it all but impossible to ignore.

This book needs to be reprinted, and made available to the general public, now. Twenty-five years later, its prophetic visions and common sense approach have yet to be surpassed.

Rating:
Summary: The best book of its kind - and i've read them all.
Review: This book goes against the grain on much of what we have learned about addiction (whatever your poison may be). You will soon see why. It offers many real-life case samples, offers insight and solutions. It is written with fierce intelligence. This is not "bathroom reading", like i consider so many self-help books to me. This is a "thinking persons" book, utterly haunting, yet equally helpful. If you have unhealthy, addictive relationships, you MUST read this book.