Understanding Addiction: A Guide for Families

(Paperback)

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In "Understanding Addiction: A Guide for Families," Jessica Hulsey shares her own family's struggles with addiction to help dispel myths and misinformation about addiction. Based on decades of research and experience, she offers pragmatic suggestions for dealing with substance use disorders, from understanding levels of severity and diagnosis, evidence-based treatment options, relapse prevention strategies, and resources for family members. This is more than just a guidebook, it's a bridge to understanding addiction through a health lens, a clear explanation of the science, and offers concrete resources on how to approach difficult conversations with a loved one about their substance use disorder. The guide includes tools to tackle damaging misinformation, from "tough love" strategies to waiting for someone to hit rock bottom. This compassionate guide will show you how to support someone with a substance use disorder.

Author Bio

Jessica Hulsey is the founder of the Addiction Policy Forum, a national nonprofit organization that helps patients, families, and communities affected by the disease. She is a national expert with more than 25 years in the field and has worked with America's top scientists to translate the science of addiction into digestible information for patients, families, and other key audiences. Jessica has conducted numerous CME trainings for medical professionals and other key stakeholder groups, including judicial leaders, corrections officials and staff, prosecutors, law enforcement, families impacted by addiction and nurses and other health care professionals. Jessica's career focusing on addiction comes from personal experience. Both her parents struggled with heroin addiction, which led to homelessness, foster care, and eventually her mother's incarceration, after which she was raised by her grandparents. Jessica began working in the field at 15 years old through a community anti-drug coalition in southern California, then continued through national boards, speaking engagements, and moving to Washington, DC after graduating from Princeton in 1998.
She has hosted forums and drug policy events with Presidents, spoken at the Presidents' Summit for America's Future with former presidents, and was profiled in a book by Governor John Kasich (R-Ohio) called "Courage Is Contagious: Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things to Change the Face of America". Jessica has been featured in a Lifetime Network series, Discovery Health Channel profile, Cosmopolitan, LA Times, NY Times, MSNBC, and USA Today. She has also testified before the House Ways and Means Committee and The President's Commission on the Opioid Crisis, as well as the U.S. Senate's Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Energy and Commerce. Prior to that, Jessica worked on the passage of the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, the Second Chance Act, and the Drug-Free Communities Act. Jessica serves on the HEAL Community Partner Committee, the DEA Educational Foundation Board of Directors, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine's Recovery Ohio Advisory Council, and OneFifteen's Advisory Council. She also previously served on the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse (NACDA) for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).