Charlotte S. Kasl

Many Roads One Journey: Moving Beyond the Twelve Steps

From the author of Women, Sex, and Addiction, a timely and controversial second look at 12-Step programs, helping all readers to draw on the steps' underlying wisdom, adapting them to their own experiences, beliefs, and sources of strength. In this compassionate, groundbreaking book, Charlotte Kasl, Ph.D., an internationally recognized expert on addiction, confronts the enormous mystique that has built up around twelve-step programs and the concepts of addiction and codependency. She offers a timely, in-depth examination of the impact recovery groups and treatment programs have on individual lives. According to her extensive research, interviews, surveys, and personal experience as a therapist, while many people find twelve-step programs invaluable, countless others find that the traditional focus on conformity, humility, and personal failings is counter to their tremendous need for self-affirmation and community support in overcoming issues of child abuse, sexism, racism, poverty, and homophobia. Kasl paves the way for a new and broader understanding of recovery that involves both personal and social awareness. She examines codependency in the context of internalized oppression and explores the issues of boundaries and sexual exploitation in groups. Rather than encouraging reliance on any one program, belief system, or mode of therapy for all the answers, Many Roads, One Journey empowers individuals to find their own voice and their own sources of strength and spirituality to guide their healing. Combing careful analysis, moving stories, and the author's own flexible sixteen-step alternative, Many Roads, One Journey offers a profound and culturally responsible approach to healing ourselves and our world.