Weird and Wacky Workbook for Recovery

“For many of us, learning to laugh keeps us from dying. If we succumb to the doom, tragedy, and sorrow lurking behind each dark memory, we’ll eventually drown in them, self-obsessively blaming ourselves as the sole agents of our self-destruction. Life is more complicated than that.” – Rachael Brownwell

Coming soon, or eventually:

Weird and Wacky
Workbook for Recovery

 by Kim Rosenthal, MD

Are you in recovery from drugs and alcohol?  Do you something that balances a need for change with strengths, creativity, and a few chuckles?  What about something with moving parts and a super soundtrack?  If you’re looking for a light-hearted but paradoxically demanding workbook chock full of traditional substance abuse treatment handouts and outside-the-box stuff…well, you’ve reached the right place.

Except for the moving parts.  We’re still working on that.

And despite the super soundtrack playing in the background, the book won’t be available until 2020.  (The author requests you play a super soundtrack now.)

Substance abuse counselor, creativity guru, brain coach, and humor in one, Dr. Kim Rosenthal’s WEIRD AND WACKY WORKBOOK FOR RECOVERY (WW) balances evidence-based medicine with that right-brained energy needed to survive addiction and create a life worth living.

Think Picasso, Monty Python, Gary Larson’s Far Side, a coloring book, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) pulled together into one space.  Ask them to process their childhood, solve world hunger, and establish a treatment program for addiction, and there you have it.

Perhaps that’s aiming too high.  Picasso was amazing.  Nobody can top Monty Python, and Far Side is oh-so-cool.  But you know what the author’s hoping for, anyway: something inspiring, joyful, and totally recovery-oriented.

People in recovery are working to stay clean and sober, a priority.  “Clean and sober” needs support and a challenge to change.  Life ain’t easy.  But sobriety is so much more than that: you’re starting something new, and new needs silliness and exploration.  It needs creativity.  It needs joy.  It means learning to love life without drugs and alcohol. The workbook takes the reader on a 16-week journey through a world where sobriety and passion walk hand-in-hand.  It’s about seizing the moment.  It’s also about creating a positive tomorrow, where a delightful future awaits you, if only you reach for it.

Overview

WW features 220 pages of illustrated handouts:

• 55+ clinically-oriented recovery and coping skill worksheets.
• 40+ creativity sheets and right-brained projects
• A hefty slew of left-brainers: puzzles and brain-teasers, an alternative way to access the brain
• Strange Stuff (not addiction-related).  A pinch of distraction and joy. Examples include cow-drawing personality tests, bizarrely humored quizzes, and grammar correction.

Sample worksheets

• • Getting to know yourself after recovery

• • Coloring Handout

• • Coloring Handout 2 (to be posted soon)

• • A puzzle: finding the mask that matches

• • The QUIT plan

• Writing a screen play (to be posted soon)

Want to learn more about the workbook?  Visit the Weird and Wacky Workbook Specifics page.

Want something a little more light-hearted?  Check out the (Useless) information About Weird and Wacky page.

“His sobriety was like that new, brilliant, colorful hat on his head, the one with all the bells and whistles: it measured blood pressure, played Beethoven and ACDC at the same time, came with a round of government-quality artillery, and gave him the right answers when he played Trivial Pursuit.  It would have been superb — if he hadn’t felt like he just got broadsided by a box of crayons.” 

—From the Weird and Wacky Workbook for Recovery.