Getting It: Building Motivation From Relapse (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781478269663)

George DuWors, MSW, has been working with addictions and 12 step programs since 1972. Almost from the beginning, he has been haunted by the question of what stops so many people, dying of their addictions, from embracing the skills and way of life offered by 12 step recovery. Since 1978, he has been almost obsessively focused on the type of thinking that precedes the first drink or drug of physical relapse. He identified just two, "wishful thinking" and "expletive thinking." (These correspond closely to what the AA "big book" labels as the "casual" and the "deliberate" relapse.)This single-minded focus has led to the publication of numerous articles and two editions (Hogrefe:1992, 2000, ) of the book, "White Knuckles and Wishful Thinking, Learning from the Moment of Relapse In Alcoholism and Other Addictions." DuWors has facilitated "Motivation for Maintenance" workshops across North America and in Europe. For 35 years now, his working assumption has been: the better we understand this thinking and how it happens, the better we can help addicts and alcoholics protect themselves against it. Embracing solution-focused therapy, motivational interviewing, and the stages of change, as he originally embraced 12 step recovery and psychotherapy, his original question evolved into,"What is the difference between those who continue to work at recovery, long after treatment and abstinence and those who do not?" This led to identification of 8 "motivational discrepancies" found at those moments of addictive relapse. Directly and explicitly connecting those discrepancies to 12 step recovery made this workbook possible. DuWors practices in Bellevue and Everett, Washington. He commutes by ferry from the bucolic village of Langley on Whidbey Island. He is married to Kate Davies, author of "The Rise of the U.S. Environmental Health Movement." He has three sons, three daughters-in-law, three grandsons, and five granddaughters.