Addiction, Attachment, Trauma and Recovery

A new model of addiction that incorporates neurobiology, social relationships, and ecological systems.

Understanding addiction is no longer just about understanding neurons or genes, broken brain functioning, learning, or faulty choices. Oliver J. Morgan provides a fresh take on addiction and recovery by presenting a more inclusive framework than traditional understanding. Cutting- edge work in attachment, interpersonal neurobiology, and trauma is integrated with ecological- systems thinking to provide a consilient and comprehensive picture of addiction.

Humans are born into connection and require nourishing relationships for healthy living. Adversities, however, bring fragmentation and create the conditions for ill health. They create vulnerabilities. In order to cope, individuals can turn to alternatives, “substitute relationships” that ease the pain of disconnection. These can become addictions.

Addiction, Attachment, Trauma, and Recovery presents a model, a method, and a mandate. This new focus calls for change in the established ways we think and behave about addiction and recovery. It reorients understanding and clinical practice for mental health and addiction counselors, psychologists, and social workers, as well as for addicts and those who love them.

“"[The book] fills comprehensively a substantial gap in addiction literature... [Morgan's] approach provides an opportunity for building community and enhancing connection. While many mental health professionals seek to align with a clear model of conceptualizing addiction, Morgan challenges readers to not only question those models but then to also integrate them into a contemporary understanding how to help one of society's most vulnerable populations...This book engages the reader in a journey of challenging conventional approaches to addiction in favor of a trauma-informed approach. It is comprehensive enough to be used as a supplemental text in an Addictions course and digestible enough for the counselor seeking to enhance their understanding of addiction treatment. Through this book, Morgan helps to move the profession forward to a place of compassion. No longer will those suffering from addiction need to do so alone. With the assistance of the approaches and strategies outlined in this book, a traditionally isolating experience can become forged in community and hope."”

The author's dedication to including the human face of addiction throughout the book ensures that science and therapeutics are consistently married in an effort to meet the interwoven efforts of individuals, healthcare professionals, communities and society as a whole to ensure effective treatment and ongoing recovery for all involved in the struggle with addiction...This book is a testimony and a tribute to the lifetime work of Oliver Morgan as a dedicated teacher, outstanding therapist and insightful writer who understands addiction as involving the total person and their essential relationships.
-- "Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly"
A solid work of scholarship based upon years of experience, expertise and research, Addiction, Attachment, Trauma, and Recovery: The Power of Connection is an extraordinary and unreservedly recommended addition to professional and academic library Health/Medicine collections in general, and addiction treatment supplemental studies lists in particular. It should be noted for the personal reading lists of students, academia, mental health workers, doctors, counselors, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject.-- "Midwest Book Review"
If I could teach a course in addiction counseling now, this would be the text. It conveys both the deepest compassion and the most encompassing and rigorous analysis that I have seen. Addiction, Attachment, Trauma, and Recovery pulls the massive, fragmented addiction literature together at last. This is a work of amazing scope.--Bruce K. Alexander, Professor Emeritus, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, author of The Globalization of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit, Oxford University Press

Oliver J Morgan, PhD, is Professor of Counseling & Human Services at the University of Scranton. He has spent thirty years researching, teaching, and writing about mental health and addiction. He is the 2020 Award Winner for the Independent Press Awards in the category of Addiction & Recovery.

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