Recommended Reading
Addiction Nutrition
​
FROM CRAZY TO CALM: Natural Ways To Boost Your Mental Health. Shelly Jo Spinden Wahlstrom (Author). A book that can help you find answers to feel better when you're feeling stressed, anxious, or down. Through several top experts, you'll receive tips and ideas that you can use in your everyday life to improve your mental health and feel calmer and happier.
Feed Your Brain Change Your Life: Take Control Of Your Brain, Body And Emotions. Shelly Jo Spinden Wahlstrom (Author). Desperately looking for answers to help her daughter through addiction of drugs and alcohol, Shelly Jo found tools to reduce addictions; and help children, teens, and adults beat the struggles of cravings, emotions, and weight gain. Feed your brain-brain food. What you eat matters. Get rid of negative self-talk.
​
Alcohol and the Addictive Brain. Ken Blum, PhD. The Free Press, 1991. One of the first scientists who understood the genetic precedents to addiction, Blum couches his science in cloaks of common language so non-scientists can understand. He explains brain physiology in the disease of alcoholism as clearly as you would give directions to a welcome guest.
​
The Better Brain: Overcome Anxiety, Combat Depression, and Reduce ADHD and Stress With Nutrition. Bonnie J. Kaplan, PhD and Julia J. Rucklidge, PhD. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021. Both researchers (Kaplan in Canada and Rucklidge in New Zealand) are renown for contributions in using micronutrients to treat ADHD, mood disorders, addictions, and other mind-related disorders.
​
Breaking Your Rx Addiction Habit: A Guide to Coming Off Tranquilizers, Antidepressants, Pain Pills and More Using Amino Acids and Nutrients. Billie J. Sahley, PhD, Katherine M. Birkner, CRNA, PhD. Pain & Stress Publications, 1996. Sahley, a pain management specialist, and her co-author produced a variety of booklets on addiction treatment via nutrition that need proofreading but are useful for their brevity.
​
Cleansing the Body, Mind and Spirit. Carolyn Reuben. Berkley, 1998. (Available on the Internet.) On the myriad ways one can detoxify the body, beginning with free and easy methods and moving on to more involved processes. Check out Chapter 14 starting p.275 on “Addiction and Substance Abuse Detox.”
​
Depression-Free, Naturally.Joan Mathews-Larson, PhD, Random House, 2001. Originally titled Seven Weeks to Emotional Health as a hard cover, Larson's publisher chose one popular problem to highlight in the title of the paperback but it's truly encyclopedic in covering all manner of emotional disturbances, including addiction, aggression, and ADD. An excellent guidebook whther for self-care or for designing a professional treatment program, by the ‘Mother of Addiction Nutrition.’
​
The Craving Cure: Identify Your Craving Type to Activate Your Natural Appetite Control. Julia Ross. Flatiron, 2017. In all three of her self-help books Ross makes scientific research immediately comprehensible and useable. This book is a food and particularly a carb addict’s life changer. It explains, for example, how particular amino acids can eliminate a desire for bagel, donut, or Hagen Dazs almost instantly and why family in photos after the 1970s carry so much more weight on them.
​
The Mood Cure: The 4-Step Program to Take Charge of Your Emotions—Today. Julia Ross, MA. Penguin, 2003 (Dec 30). If every doctor read and learned from this book, there would be fewer patients addicted to pharmaceuticals, fewer women with undiagnosed thyroid or adrenal insufficiency, and fewer miserable insomniacs on this planet. Ross, a pioneer in the field of addiction nutrition, gently covers technical ground while sharing her experience with using food and nutrients as healing agents. Using her handy questionnaires and advice you will quickly figure out the nutrients and dietary changes that will bring back clearheaded focus and a joyful mood without drugs. An updated version is coming out in 2022 or 2023 but the original is still outstanding and has hundreds of five-star reviews.
​
The Diet Cure: The 8-Step Program to Rebalance Your Body Chemistry and End Food Cravings, Weight Gain, and Mood Swings--Naturally. Julia Ross. Penguin Life, 2012. What The Mood Cure is to using nutrition and individualized amino acids for mental health The Diet Cure is to eating disorders. It’s a clear path to self-repair, with the questions and answers the reader needs to know how to figure out what to do for herself (or himself) when treatment hasn’t worked and loved ones are worried, doctors are at wit’s end, and the individual is willing to believe it isn’t just “all in her head.”
​
End Your Addiction Now: The Proven Nutritional Supplement Program That Can Set You Free. Charles Gant, MD, PhD, and Greg Lewis, PhD. Square One, 2009. An excellent self-guide down the path of nutritional supplementation for addiction relief. It includes one of the few nutrition-oriented protocols to stop smoking.
​
Handbook of Abusable Drugs. Blum, Kenneth, PhD Gardner Press, 1984. Older editions beginning with its publication in 1997 include the original coauthor Jay Holder on the cover. A handy compendium as reference in your library.
​
The Healing Nutrients Within Eric R. Braverman, MD, with Carl C. Pfeiffer, MD, PhD, Ken Blum, PhD, & Richard Smayda, DO. Keats Publishing, 1997. An important overview of amino acids for the non-scientist. Alliance founders prefer the earliest editions with Carl Pfeiffer’s contributions but the book is unique, whatever edition you find, as a source of info on aminos.
​
How to Defeat Alcoholism: Nutritional Guidelines for Getting Sober. Joseph D. Beasley, MD. Times Books, 1989. Beasley has written so many books on the subject of successful treatment for alcoholism over so many years it's amazing he isn't better known. You can order the book online.
​
Natural Highs: Supplements, Nutrition, and Mind-Body Techniques to Help You Feel Good All the Time. Hyla Cass, MD, and Patrick Holford. Penguin Putnam Avery, 2003. A Los Angeles holistic psychiatrist, author, and frequent presenter at conferences on spirituality, holistic health, and addiction, Cass and her co-author, English nutritionist Patrick Holford, cover the terrain of feeling good from every imaginable viewpoint, with diet, nutrients, and other natural methods for optimizing brain chemistry and enhancing brain, mood, memory, and energy.
​
Potatoes Not Prozac: Simple Solutions for Sugar Addiction. Kathleen DesMaisons, PhD. Revised and Updated. Simon & Schuster, 2019. Chapter on “Brain Chemistry 101” is a treasure in explaining simply and usefully the neurotransmitter connection to addiction. Though DesMaisons doesn’t advocate individualized amino acids, she is an expert on the potent healing power of a pro-recovery diet.
​
Seven Weeks to Sobriety: The Proven Program to Fight Alcoholism Through Nutrition, Joan Mathews-Larson, PhD. Revised. Ballantine, 1997. Personal grief was transformed into public welfare after her teenage son's suicide in recovery led her to research the nutritional link to alcoholism. Her effort to connect the research dots has led to this extraordinary “bible of self-care” for alcoholics, explaining the four types of alcoholics and how to recover feeling better than ever with food choices and nutrient supplements.
​
Staying Clean & Sober: Complementary and Natural Strategies for Healing the Addicted Brain. Merlene Miller and David Miller, PhD. CreateSpace, 2017. Aminos and food, acupuncture and ear pressure, chiropractic and brainwave biofeedback, exercise and aromatics, and more. The Millers, who were among the Alliance founders, reveal what's going on in the world of drug-free drug treatment and leave the reader with a smile of relief that recovery can include what's comfortable, do-able, and fun. Our only despair is that late in life and in the later editions of this book the Millers decided to disparage using individual amino acids, which is one of the core successful innovations in addiction treatment of other Alliance founders.
​
Under the Influence: A Guide to the Myths and Realities of Alcoholism. Dr. James R. Milam and Katherine Ketcham. Bantam, 1983. One of the classics that opened many professionals' eyes to the nutrition link to addiction.
​
Acupuncture for Detoxification and Recovery
​
Fighting Drug Abuse with Acupuncture: The Treatment That Works. Ellinor R. Mitchell, Pacific View Press, 1995.Mitchell took the time to interview the key players in acudetox and tell their story.
​
Transformation & Recovery: A Guide for the Design and Development of Acupuncture-Based Chemical Dependency Treatment Programs. Alex G. Brumbaugh, Stillpoint Press, 1994. No one has improved on the late Alex Brumbaugh’s seminal work. Still the bible of acudetox, covering everything from the practicalities of opening an acupuncture treatment program to the spiritual dimensions of addiction work.
​