Brain In Balance: Understanding the Genetics and Neurochemistry Behind Addiction and Sobriety

by Fredrick Von Stieff, Katie Schuh Juarez (Editor)

Brain in Balance gives insight into how your balance of neurotransmitters influences personality, memory, mood, depression, anxiety, and certain psychological disorders. It also clarifies why people suffer from drug addiction and alcoholism and explains how they can gain permanent relief. Dr. Von Stieff’s methods of establishing balance in individuals’ neurochemicals have provided record-breaking lasting results for patients throughout the San Francisco Bay Area that have left people wondering — How does he do it? His answer, “It’s all in the neurotransmitters.” With this book, his goal is to help medical staff and counselors everywhere provide the best treatment possible, and encourage individuals to seek a higher quality of life.

Genres: Psychology

278 pages, Paperback

First published December 22, 2011

About the author

With his new book, Brain in Balance: Understanding the Genetics and Neurochemistry behind Addiction and Sobriety, Dr. Von Stieff offers a fresh new approach to methods in detoxification and addiction recovery by shedding light on the understanding of how alcohol, drugs, and medications affect the brain and its neurotransmitters.

He also offers deeper understanding on the root causes behind chemical dependency and certain psychological disorders. He gives a scientific explanation for why you and your loved ones feel the way you do, but in terms you can understand!

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the hardest things for me to come to terms with, in recovery, is the idea that alcoholism is a legitimate disease rather than a simple moral failing, weakness of character, or spiritual insufficiency. Until I read this book, I really did dismiss the disease model. But having read this book and armed myself with really stupendously basic models of normal and abnormal neurochemistry, I can see exactly why its a disease. Von Stieff writes with aplomb about the GABA and glutamate connection, receptor sites, the dangers of benzos (my BFFs besides booze) and all manner of other issues (opiate abuse, mental illness and others, etc.). This book is mostly explanation. Certainly you can't read it and go out and start dosing yourself with synthetic neurotransmitters. But it does aid understanding in the why's and wherefor's of addiction and why it is so very, very difficult to get sober and stay that way. When your own genetics is working against you things get very, very difficult. But understanding that difficulty helps greatly.

[Luke Muller · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you have an interest in psychology this book explains addiction and our approach to it in an easy-to-digest way. The main drawback is that the brain is incredibly complex and it is easy to oversimplify the topic of addiction at times.

[Morgan Blackledge · Rating 4 out of 5]

The world needs more books like this. The author synthesizes the ridiculously complex domain of human neurochemistry down to a very workable "toy" model, that lay people can use to understand and normalize addiction, and addiction professionals and educators can use to communicate the fundamentals of physiological dependence to our clients and students.

If you like this book, and you want to continue learning about neurochemistry, try "Meet Your Happy Chemicals" by Loretta Graziano Breuning PhD. She doesn't specifically address addiction. But she does provide a similar kind of "toy" model of affective neurochemistry that is remarkable in its explanatory power.

I like the two books together, because one normalizes addiction and the other normalizes life's ups and downs in general. Recovering from addiction is all about learning to live life on life's terms. Learning to accept the inevitable presence of difficult feelings, and the equally inevitable impermanence of pleasurable feelings is a major part of that process.

I'm a huge fan of behavioral interventions. For instance, if one identifies the deficiency of endorphins as a contributor to ongoing opiate use, I tend to vote for exercise as a method for modulating endorphins, either in combination with or instead of psychopharmacology. I am not a big fan of psychopharmacology without behavioral adjustment.

Both of these books give important clues to the individual who wants to a) recover from addiction, b) manage related, likely co-occurring issues such as depression and anxiety and c) break away from the confines of medical and psychiatric interventions (either self or professionally administered) and live a life of self agency, greater health, behavioral and psychological flexibility and well being.