Before Hitting Bottom, Compassion for the Addict Down Under

This book explores addictions and how to conduct structured interventions with addicted people who are in denial and rejecting help.

This self-help guide includes the true story of how one mother helped her son take the first step into recovery and halt his addiction through a methodology described here called Structured Intervention.

The book is for anyone interested in a simple but referenced work based on the differing United States, Australian and Swedish approaches to the alcohol and other drug pandemic. Issues such as prison and law enforcement versus drug prevention are explored.

The work includes detailed charts for the following: signs of child predisposition to addiction, adolescence substance abuse signs, signs of depression, suicide predisposing factors, suicide behaviour signs, and eminent suicide signs.

An excerpt from the book follows:
"'I am an addict. I need your help. Don't allow me to lie to you and accept it for the truth, for in so doing you encourage me to lie. The truth may be painful for me, but find a compassionate way to show reality to me through an intervention. Don't let me outsmart you. This only teaches me to avoid responsibility and to lose respect for you at the same time....Don't lecture me, moralize, scold, praise or blame. I have a disease.' It is understandably difficult to comprehend that alcoholism and other drug addictions are a disease, especially when the powers-that-be convincingly teach that behaviour associated with the condition is a matter of personal responsibility...."