Andrew L. Dieden
Hazelden $14.95
Sports and recovery are similar, says Joanna M. Ceppi, a psychologist at Promises Treatment Center in California in the forward of Andrew Dieden’s book, “in that both require a person to exercise discipline, courage, and some form of surrender.”
Andrew Dieden, lawyer, sports fan and a recovering drug addict develops this idea with numerous examples of high achievement taken from the lives of sports figures while weaving in his own story of addiction and recovery including the final days.
“Very near the end, after a New Years binge in Chicago,” Dieden reports, “I was denied admission onto my connecting flight out of Arizona that was to take me home to California. I was too drunk.
“I decided to make the most of being too drunk to fly by going out on the town. I ended up smoking weed on a fire escape in a ghetto with a couple of strippers. The strippers stole my wallet and luggage, including my return ticket.”
While his tone is light and often downright funny, Dieden’s message is serious and easy to grasp.
“In this book,” he says, “we’ll begin by covering our commitment to a positive productive lifestyle. Next, we’ll discuss the training program that makes us fit enough to execute that lifestyle. Finally, we’ll see how to maintain our fitness in order to continue living our useful, happy and contented lives.”
Throughout the book, Dieden calls upon our best impulses. He talks about Chicago Bear Walter Payton overcoming a potentially career ending football injury, Nascar driver Danica Patrick becoming successful in a male dominated field and Sebastian Coe, transcending numerous difficulties to run the world’s first sub four-minute mile.
And in this Olympic year, he calls upon us to reflect on Wilma Rudolph overcoming polio to win the 100, 200 and the 4×100 meter relays at the Olympics in Rome in 1960.
Dieden ties these experiences into principles of recovery like sponsorship, ridding ourselves of resentments and our relationship with a higher power.
In sum, this fast-paced entertaining guide cuts through the cryptic language of recovery and psychology—what he calls “alcobonics”—and offers readers the straight facts on how alcoholism robs one’s life of accomplishment and joy.
Barely 100 pages long, Dieden’s book is a quick read—maybe the equivalent of a roundtrip plane ride from Little Rock to Dallas—and provides all of us in recovery with an encouraging pep talk.
