Lindsey is a compulsive overeater, but he never knew it. Looking back, he can honestly say he’s been a compulsive overeater his whole life. Lindsey remembers, as a child, being sent to the grocery store to fetch food for family brunches and snacking wh...

Dave didn’t drink today, and because of that he says “he never had it so good.” He grew up in a steel mill town, with a family of non-alcoholics. He never drank as a child. Dave’s first use of alcohol came when he was away at college,

Jason says his drinking life was “awful” and that he now knows he was born with a disease of alcoholism. He says it was inside him, just waiting to be activated by his life’s first drink. Jason grew up in a nearly alcohol-free home in Ohio,

Eileen came a family of non-drinkers. She says her childhood was perfect up until age 13, when her parents announced to her they were divorcing. Because of her family’s breakup, she was relocated from a quiet,

Angel grew up with alcohol all around him. His family drank as part of their social scene, and their father had a bar in the house. He can remember at age five, sneaking drinks with his cousins as the adults were too drunk to notice. As a teenager,

Tia’s father was a cocaine addict and her mother an alcoholic. Her parents were abusing drugs and alcohol as far back as she can remember.  She can’t remember her parents being sober. She remembers, from her childhood,

Christopher has vivid memories from early childhood of his parents drinking together up until the time they divorced.  His father left when he was eight years old. Christopher thinks their alcoholism prevented his parents from loving him as a child; Fr...

Chris Herren’s meteoric rise in college and professional basketball was only overshadowed by his quick fall into the world of addiction and recovery. His substance abuse began while playing in college, and continued during his NBA career,

Psychiatrist and activist Samuel Shem has now added “novelist” and “playwright” to his list of accomplishments. But the Rhodes Scholar and Harvard Medical School graduate is also an addict in recovery. Both he and his wife, Janet Surrey,

During his fifteen years in professional baseball, “Sudden Sam” McDowell threw hard and partied harder. When he wasn’t scheduled to be on the mound the following day, his nights usually ended at 3:00 a.m. or later,