Combining new information alongside clinical observation with her personal exerience and knowledge of the diseases of alcohol and drug addiction, author Addie Lee offers hope to all whose families suffer from these terrible maladies. Critically informative, it steps outside the norm by focusing not on the addict but on the co-addict, and crafts a compelling and positive blueprint for successful change in their life dynamic. By using her own life story as a learning tool, she clearly defines and demonstrates the progression of the diseases and the stages co-addicts will have to go through in their recovery, pulling back the curtain on the mysteries of addiction and removing the scariness, fear, and reluctance to seek assistance. Unknowingly as a co-addict, Lee was juggling her life as mother, wife, and professional without the tools to understand or improve her situation. After meeting with an enabler support group and receiving guidance from a proficient chemical dependency counselor, however, she began to reclaim her life. All things came together when her husband finally admitted he had a problem and began to honestly pursue recovery, thus beginning the five phases of the process: Admission, Compliance, Acceptance, Surrender, and Reconstruction. Today Addie and Geoff's life is a twenty-eight success story of continuing sobriety. A powerful reminder that the human will is the strongest force in the world, Addie Lee's journey through the deeper recesses of alcohol and drug-addiction to a life of familial sobriety and happiness is a beacon of hope for anyone lost in a similar circumstance. She provides a path that empowers, the information needed to save yourself, and the advice that will guide you and your loved ones toward health. From insight into the psyche of the co-addict/addict coupled with identifying the necessary experts for treatment of each addiction to outlining the five stages of recovery, IT'S OKAY TO BE DUMBFOUNDED, JUST DON'T STAY THAT WAY! is the ultlimate source for inspiration and direction through the dark days of addiction and the bright light of recovery.
About the Author: Addie's parents always placed a high value on a good education and promoted their four children's learning from elementary school through college, socking away funds to financially support this goal. Thus, early on, Addie absorbed the importance of learning, seeking out information, and improving herself and her environment. When she entered college, she found her passion in speech pathology. It was in this profession that she shared her gift of patience, instructive skills and care when she helped her students correct their speech disorders. She experienced the thrill of their accomplishments as she saw the positive changes in their personal social interactions because of her assistance. Both Addie and her husband promoted and supported their children's education, following their parents' lead. Addie considers learning and "self-actualization" (Maslow) as a life-long quest and has branched out into many area of intellectual pursuit and creativity through the years. Those areas include writing, line-dancing, golfing, choir singing, beading, knitting, rock painting, and reading for information and pleasure with members of her book club. Addie Lee received a BA degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder in Speech with a minor in Education, an MA in Education from USIU, and her Professional Administrative Credential from CSU Hayward. Working as a speech pathologist for 35 years, she wrote and had published multiple speech therapy workbooks, practice stories, and sentence cards for children with speech problems. She has a daughter, a son and three grandchildren and currently lives in the east bay of San Francisco with her husband, entering their twenty-eighth year of sobriety together.