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When I began the Compulsion and Recovery Research Project in 1992, I did so in response to the schism between professionals who were leaders in the addiction recovery field. Known as the D and A Debate, this schism resulted in changes in government policy, funding and service provision, causing great confusion to people suffering with addictions. It was described by the media as 'addiction treatment now a battleground'.As a family therapist specialising in addictions recovery, I became concerned about this battle between leaders in the recovery field and its impact on the community. I had experience in running halfway houses for people recovering from addictions and knew that abstinence with AA worked. I embarked on a research project which used a dialectic/narrative method inquiry method, interviewing leaders in the conflict and others who contributed progressive ideas to recovery. This process aimed at ensuring there was validity, rigour and ethics in the research process. Importantly as a result of this inquiry, I came to believe that the Drug and Alcohol Debate (D and A Debate) protagonists need not dogmatically defend their own model to the point of being in conflict, as all their treatments work, and it was valid to concede that different models work for different people in different stages of their recovery - 'whatever works works, and not to be judged by others'. (Nicotine Anonymous The Book, 1992:113) / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This is a narrative of the Sugarman Project, a community project in Central Australia concerned with research into ancient Mediterranean and Greek traditions of alcohol use and abuse. The project was initiated as a response to a request from an Aboriginal man for a ‘story about alcohol’ which would fill a missing link in traditional Aboriginal conceptualisation of alcohol. The ‘story’ would have a role in indigenous treatment of alcohol abuse, put in a symbolic form consistent with oral teaching methods of indigenous custom. The project is centred around the development of an original performance script. The thesis describes the origin, context, development, rationale and implications of the project, especially with a view to considering the potential of the mythologem of Dionysos as a therapeutic paradigm in intercultural substance abuse work. Particular attention is given to the relationship between Aboriginal and European therapeutic practitioners and the use of myth, metaphor, symbolic function and specific Aboriginal ‘dreaming stories’ as a source and backup to therapeutic practice. Principal themes include the role of mythopoetic symbol formation in the development of thinking; reflections on the presence of theriomorphic serpentine imagery in the work; the role of stories as mental containers of therapeutic theory; reflections on the ‘milieu’ needed for implementing intercultural therapeutic procedures; examples of positive indigenous responses to alcohol work; preliminary notions on cross cultural transference communications; and reflections on primal states associated with alcohol intoxication. The conclusion is that the experience of developing a Western myth in concert with Aboriginal colleagues confirms the value of the initial, seminal suggestion that ‘dreaming stories’ have an authentic place in the repertoire of alcohol treatment and education / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Doctor of Philosophy / This thesis studies the relationship between subjective experience and social environment during recovery from alcoholism in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). As a result of participation in AA meetings, many alcoholics undergo healing transformations involving a sense of acceptance of themselves, others and the world. In early sobriety these experiences often remove an alcoholic’s desire to drink. Outside AA, however, alcoholics frequently experience subjective unravelling – a sense of conflict with themselves, others and the world. For many, this subjective state is associated with actual or potential craving for a drink. Regular participation in AA meetings alleviates these states. This thesis construes the relationship between subjective experience and immediate social environment in terms of ‘experiential stakes of relevance’. This conceptual category can be used to characterise both the structural properties of the social environment and the key attributes of the subjective experience of agents within this environment. Listening to stories at AA meetings results for many alcoholics in a radical change in ‘experiential stakes of relevance’. It is argued that the process of spontaneous re-connection with one’s past experiences during AA meetings is akin to the process of mobilisation of embodied dispositions as theorised by Bourdieu. Transformation in AA takes place in the space of a mere one and a half hours and involves processes of intensification of experience. These are analysed in terms of Bourdieu’s notion of ‘illusio’ and Chion’s notion of ‘rendu’. The healing experiences of acceptance presuppose a social environment free of interpersonal conflict. This thesis argues that the need to structurally eliminate conflict between alcoholics has turned AA into a social field which is sustained by the very healing subjective experiences that it facilitates. In the process, AA has developed structural elements which can best be understood as mechanisms inverting the social logic of competitive fields. The fieldwork entailed a detailed ethnographic study of one particular group of Alcoholics Anonymous in Sydney’s Lower North Shore as well as familiarisation with the more general culture of AA in Sydney. Methods of investigation included participant observations at AA meetings and interviews with a number of sober alcoholics in AA.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Psychology Department, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

This is a qualitative research project that seeks to understand the meanings that Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselors (CADC's) have ascribed to their life experiences in relation to their choices about higher education. The participants are four Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselors in Oregon who have less than bachelor degrees. The research is based on a case study method of inquiry in which the participants discuss their life experiences and their thoughts about their educations during in-depth, semi-structured interviews. The findings are grouped into two themes that emerged from the data: The themes are: 1) resiliency and 2) personal transformation. In keeping with the literature, this study indicates that people can and do develop resiliency characteristics well into adulthood. It also suggests that reflection can be a vehicle for catharsis and personal transformation. / Graduation date: 2003

<p>This study explores the possible resilient factors which prevent young people who have been exposed to parental alcohol abuse from abusing alcohol themselves. Additionally, this study explores the coping mechanisms of young people living with a (n) alcohol abusing parent(s). This study uses a qualitative methodological design. The initial plan was purposive sampling. However it became evident that this type of sampling is not possible as no suitable candidates were found. One participant volunteered to participate in the study and suggested a few other suitable candidates. The candidates were contacted and invited to become part of the study. Individual interviews were conducted with the participants, using an interview guide and a voice recorder. The researcher ended up using snowball sampling as the candidates suggested other possible candidates. The findings suggest that the participants experienced an array of emotional, developmental and socio-economical difficulties. Feelings of shame, fear, anxiety and a deep sense of unhappiness about the situation was shared by all the participants. The family, friends and some teachers were instrumental in helping to find coping mechanisms during this challenging time of growing up with an alcohol abusing parent. Religion, academics, and positive role-modelling were contributing factors to their resilience in not using alcohol themselves even though they were exposed to alcohol-abusing parents.</p>

In-utero ethanol exposure may result in fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). Studies have suggested that women who drink ethanol are more likely to consume illicit drugs. Detection of such exposures has been done via meconium and hair testing and can serve to direct needed prevention methods and appropriate management and intervention for the neonate and the mother. This study examined maternal diabetes as a possible confounder for in-utero ethanol exposure testing and determined the trends in drug use associated with heavy in-utero ethanol exposure in a high-risk obstetric Canadian population. It was determined that maternal diabetes does not produce false-positive results in testing for in-utero ethanol exposure. Furthermore, heavy in-utero ethanol exposure was detected in 15.5% of samples and was associated with an increased exposure to amphetamines (OR=3.30) and opiates (OR=2.01), but a decreased exposure to cannabinoids (OR=0.61) when compared to neonates with no heavy in-utero ethanol exposure.

Alcohol-related expectations have been defined as the anticipated consequences from consuming alcohol (Brown, Goldman, Inn, & Anderson, 1980). Previous research has been conducted to examine the role of alcohol expectations in the co-occurrence of alcohol problems with anxiety and depressive symptoms. In the current study, the relationship between alcohol problems, anxiety and depressive traits, and alcohol expectancies were examined within a male juvenile correction sample. Specifically, statistical analyses were conducted to test the degree to which alcohol expectancies combined with anxiety/depression traits improve the prediction of alcohol-related problems beyond that of anxiety/depression traits alone. Archival data were collected from 205 incarcerated male adolescents who completed both the Alcohol Expectancy Questionnaire -- Adolescent Form (AEQ-A) and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory--Adolescent (MMPI-A). Two research hypotheses were tested using correlation and regression analyses. The results demonstrated that depressive traits significantly predicted an increase in alcohol-related problems, and the addition of expectancies related to global positive changes and increased social behavior produced a significant gain in the prediction of alcohol problems. Furthermore, anxiety traits significantly predicted an increase in alcohol-related problems, and the inclusion of tension reduction expectancies yielded a significant gain in prediction. The results suggest that alcohol-related problems may be exacerbated by the presence of reinforcement-based expectancies in male juvenile offenders who are concurrently experiencing elevated levels of anxiety and depressive traits. These findings have implications for prevention and treatment programs that utilize cognitive-behavioral and expectancy challenge techniques to affect change in problematic alcohol consumption behaviors. / "December 2006."