1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Father Martin - A Recovery Icon lives on in his works, February 11, 2010
This review is from: Chalk Talks on Alcohol (Quicksilver Book) (Paperback)
Father Martin says, "If recovery doesn't come first, nothing comes second'. How true! We have the complete film library of Father Martin films here at A Home Away Retreat. He is consistently loved by our guests for his sense of humour, dynamic way of speaking, and undying passion for recovery. We were fortunate enough to have Father Martin sign a large photograph of himself "To All at A Home Away, my best. Father Martin". Father Martin passed away shortly after we received the photograph, which makes it all the more special to us. His photograph hangs in our common room, beside the films that have touched so many at AHA.
Jane Derry,
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
an icon of recovery, February 25, 2008
This review is from: Chalk Talks on Alcohol (Quicksilver Book) (Paperback)
Father Martin has been in the recovery field for 30+ years; as such, he has a deep well of wisdom on the subject from every possible angle (social, legal, mental, emotional, religious). For the suffering alcohol or drug abuser, reading this book will provide immediate relief and stimulate the abuser to make long-term lifestyle changes toward sobriety. I encourage everyone also to check out the website:
kellyproductionsdotcom
this website offers all of Father Martin's products (including his famous "Chalk Talk" videos/dvds) for those that want a deeper study of recovery.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great little handbook despite its flaws, July 8, 2009
This review is from: Chalk Talks on Alcohol (Quicksilver Book) (Paperback)
Fr. Martin's book evolved from a series of lectures developed and delivered in the 1970s for business and government, particularly the armed services. He credited Austin Ripley and Dr. Walter Green of Guest House, a Lake Orion, Michigan treatment facility for the clergy founded and operated by Ripley, for teaching him everything he knew about alcoholism. He began studying the subject in 1958, several years after he had been forced into a program of sobriety by the Archdiocese, as a result of excessive drinking and increasingly erratic behaviors. Note the implication that alcoholism isn't a subject about which even addicts in early recovery understand: Martin spent several years apparently learning little or nothing of value and then over a dozen years learning enough to allow him to create a lecture series, and another decade before his book was published. Perhaps it's an indication of how few people had an inkling about alcoholism decades ago.
Fr. Martin's magnificent little book was an essential component in helping me to grasp the idea of alcoholism. His definition of an alcoholic, someone whose drinking causes serious life problems, was the half-way point between the commonly accepted definition, "loss of control over use" (which is a late-stage symptom) and the definition I used in my first book,
Drunks, Drugs & Debits: How to Recognize Addicts and Avoid Financial Abuse, requiring repeated negative consequences to oneself or others and which the user is incapable of seeing or grasping due to the user's biochemistry. Although Fr. Martin's definition described a symptom, it's an earlier one and as such was a crucial stepping-stone to creating my own. His oft-quoted, "What causes trouble is trouble, and if your alcohol causes trouble, then alcohol is a problem for you," is one of the keys to identifying alcoholism. This key is in the middle of a paragraph in which he describes a prisoner serving a twenty-to-life sentence who began attending AA meetings in prison only because his cell-mate invited him and he had nothing else to do. The man "had been drunk only three times in his life. The first time he lost his arm in an accident with a machine. The second time he lost his family. And the third time he committed the crime that lost him his freedom. He concluded, correctly, that he is an alcoholic." Alcohol caused trouble, so the trouble was alcohol.
Fr. Martin asked the reader to compare this with one's experience. Maybe the reader has commented about a friend, "Well, yes, he (or she) drinks, a lot, but it's not that bad yet." Martin suggested that waiting until tragedy happens before concluding that maybe there is a bit of a problem with the drinking is insane. This idea was probably instrumental in helping me to understand the need to identify early-stage alcoholics, the main topic of my first three books:
Drunks, Drugs & Debits: How to Recognize Addicts and Avoid Financial Abuse;
How to Spot Hidden Alcoholics: Using Behavioral Clues to Recognize Addiction in Its Early Stages; and
Get Out of the Way!: How to Identify and Avoid a Driver Under the Influence.
Fr. Martin explained in everyday language many basic precepts about alcoholism: sobriety must come before any psychiatric counseling; treat alcoholism as the primary disorder; we don't need to wait for the patient to say he is ready for sobriety; drinking is the number one drug problem; heavy drinking is in many cases a euphemism for alcoholism; we can recognize alcoholism based on its symptoms; one of the great misconceptions about alcoholism is that a person functioning adequately can't possibly be an alcoholic; and, a crucial impetus for me to begin writing, no fancy degrees are needed to recognize the disease.
Even some of the defects in Chalk Talks were crucial in inspiring me. At one point Fr. Martin wrote, "There are many additional symptoms of alcoholism, and much of the available literature treats them in great detail." I wrote "Where?" in the margin. I never found them, which is one of the main reasons I began writing my books. He discussed what he calls the early symptoms: gulping, sneaking, drinking in the mornings, an attempt to control one's drinking (as he pointed out, normal drinkers have nothing to control!), and lying about one's drinking. This error, too, was instrumental in getting me to write: he thought that plenty of others described the symptoms and proceeded to write about what he thought were early-stage symptoms, seemingly unaware that he described middle-stage clues. This was one of my wake-up calls for the need to write about real early-stage symptoms, which involve misbehaviors.
While Chalk Talks is a great book, these are not Fr. Martin's only errors. He wrote that families, friends and co-workers "know" there is a "drinking problem." He contradicted his own words in describing the best secretary in an office who has more good days than bad, functions well and about whom nothing is done "because we feel that good performance and alcoholism just can't go hand in hand." He also erred in suggesting that the rate of alcoholism is sky high among drinking members belonging to religious groups that forbid the use of alcohol because they "drink with guilt, and are therefore very prone to alcoholism." No, a genetic predisposition to alcoholism is essential if the disease is to be triggered. He discussed the idea that emotions rule intellect and since the resulting actions and decisions make no sense, we conclude the person is insane or unbalanced and send the person to a psychiatrist, while everyone "knows" there is a drinking problem. No, most people think the likes of Octomom is just nuts.
Martin highlighted the crucial importance of identifying and treating alcoholics early. From stories of alcoholics like the one who rarely got drunk until his family was asleep, after which he'd "drink himself into oblivion," he correctly got the idea that behavioral clues are needed. While he didn't completely develop the idea, he began to address it. He also emphasized that alcoholics don't go into a program of sobriety willingly and devoted much of the last half of his book to the idea of pain as a positive force in the alcoholic's life, making the addict responsible for his behavior and intervening with love.
Despite its flaws, Fr. Martin's book is one of my top ten ever in the field of alcoholism and I strongly recommend it.
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