Psychotherapy of Cocaine Addiction

This text is about conducting effective psychotherapy with people who are addicted to cocaine. While its emphasis is on the people themselves rather than on the drug or the phenomenon of addiction, the discussion centres around the fact that these people are addicted to cocaine as it threads its way through every aspect of their lives. The meanings and subjective effects of the cocaine experience, including getting high, coming down, searching for the drug, slipping or lapsing back into drug use, all become integrated into the particular personality of each individual user. To understand someone - anyone - it is critical to understand their relationships. With addicts, these relationships include not only other people, but also their drugs which are inevitably personified. This book shows how to use the therapeutic relationship to understand the drug relationship, and in so doing help addicts free themselves to have more satisfying and productive lives.