new Book by Francis lickerish
In the shadow of addiction, families often find themselves overlooked and unsupported. As the addiction treatment industry grows, its focus becomes narrower, centering almost exclusively on the individual battling substance use. But what about the families and loved ones who endure the fallout? Anxiety, shame, anger, and helplessness become daily companions as they watch someone they love spiral deeper into dependency. "Dark Sun: A New Approach to Families and Addiction" is the book that finally addresses this painful reality, offering much-needed guidance and understanding for those who suffer alongside their addicted loved ones.
Available to buy at:
Amazon, Foyles, Waterstones & others.
Review
5.0 out of 5 stars ADDICTION EXPOSED TO THE LIGHT
Dark Sun' is, quite frankly, a uniquely invaluable resource for families caught up in the unfamiliar and frightening world of addiction. The author is searingly honest, compassionate, very well-informed, insightful, with great experience as a therapist and a long history of helping and encouraging families. Sell your shirt to get a copy of this book.
Review
If you are struggling to understand the frightening world of addiction that you find yourself in, this is in invaluable resource. I have found the knowledge in this book to be deeply helpful, giving me tools to deal with the addict and giving me permission to try something different after failing time and time again to make fix an unfixable situation. To understand that in my desire to help my son I may have in fact made things worse and in the process ended up with no life of my own.
Review
5.0 out of 5 stars. A must-read for understanding family systems.
For those who have explored the work of Gabor Maté in The Myth of Normal or Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score, this book serves as a vital companion. While those authors explore the individual and the societal, Francis Lickerish provides a necessary, laser-focused lens on the family architecture itself.
I found this book so compelling that I read it in a single evening. It offers a profound level of clarity regarding the specific family dynamics that often precede and sustain addiction. Specifically, it helped me understand how family members can have a vested interest in keeping the addiction going at a subconscious level to maintain the family’s equilibrium. It shifts the perspective from looking at the individual to understanding the entire interconnected system.
Lickerish’s writing is insightful and grounded, and I really valued the various books he mentions throughout the text. I have already added several of them to my own future reading list.
If you want to understand the "why" behind family roles and the cycles of addiction from a fresh, systemic perspective, I cannot recommend this highly enough.