By
Mitch Earleywine, PhD
Health professionals in a range of settings are bound to meet clients with troubles related to drugs. The literature on their diagnosis and treatment is filled with successful, empirically based approaches, but also with controversy and hearsay. Separating the myths from the facts can be difficult. This text does so, providing trainees and professionals with a handy, concise guide for helping problem drug users build enjoyable, multifaceted lives using approaches based on decades of research. Readers will be able to improve their intuitions and clinical skills by adding an overarching understanding of drug use and the development of problems that translates into appropriate techniques for encouraging clients to change behavior themselves. Each strategy and process rests on maintaining a genuine, empathic, therapeutic relationship. The highly readable text explains not only what to do, but when and how to do it. Seasoned experts and those new to the field will welcome the chance to review the latest developments in guiding self-change for this intriguing, prevalent set of problems.
Mitch Earleywine, PhD, is Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University at Albany, State University of New York, where he teaches drugs and human behavior, substance abuse treatment and clinical research methods. He has received 10 teaching commendations, including the coveted General Education Teaching Award from the University of Southern California. His research funding has come from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the Alcoholic Beverage Medical Research Foundation, and the Marijuana Policy Project. He serves on the editorial boards of four psychology journals, reviews for over a dozen, and has more than 80 publications on drug use and abuse, including “Understanding Marijuana” (Oxford University Press, 2002). He serves on the advisory board for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, and is a member of the Research Society on Alcoholism, the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy, and the Drug Policy Alliance.
“I really liked this book, but struggled with writing an endorsement that really captured my enthusiasm for what Mitch Earleywine has achieved. Every aspect of the book echoes the best in theory, research and practice that I have learned over my 30-year career in the addiction field. I could not recommend it more highly.”- George A. Parks, PhD, Associate Director, Addictive Behaviors Research Center, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
“Dr. Earleywine has produced a wonderful introductory volume for practitioners and others who want to learn the current state of the art in empirically validated assessment and treatment of substance use disorders. In a refreshing departure from ideologically driven views of substance use and substance users, he has followed the science to produce a readable, informative volume.” - Frederick Rotgers, PsyD, ABPP, Program Director of Clinical Psychology PhD, Walden University, Minneapolis, MN
“Mitch Earleywine's ‘Substance Use Problems’ is the ideal volume for teaching students the issues involved in contemporary treatment of substance abuse problems. This is unsurprising – since Dr. Earleywine has been teaching this subject for the last 17 years while regularly winning awards in the process – along with accolades from his students. The qualities that produce these reactions to his teaching are everywhere evident in this volume – clear writing and explanation, strong knowledge of the important research in the field, respect for readers, students, treatment clients, and counselors, and a cutting edge familiarity with modern therapy techniques (like motivational interviewing) and emerging trends in the treatment field (like harm reduction), along with respectful attention to established treatment approaches and groups like the twelve steps and AA. In the same pithy and hard-hitting volume, Dr. Earleywine manages both to convey empathic hints and subtly nuanced techniques to counselors in training, while describing diagnostic systems and epidemiological data on who is susceptible to substance abuse and how they are likely to fare -- with and without treatment. Mitch Earleywine's volume is a beacon of light, good judgment, and balance in this rapidly changing and contentious field.” - Stanton Peele, PhD; Author, 7 Tools to Beat Addiction; Creator, Life Process Program