Book excerpt: Is every day a challenge as you wage your personal battle against addiction? If you've fallen into the addiction trap, you are not alone. It is estimated that one out of ten Americans is struggling with addiction. Author Timothy Wulff, M.S.W., is an addiction therapist who has spent more than a decade successfully treating individuals addicted to drugs and alcohol. To identify the source of addiction, Wulff focuses on beliefs about one's self that develop early in life and that eventually obscure the strong and positive true self, increasing susceptibility to addiction. In The Addiction Battle, Wulff will help you discover where your greatest strengths are buried and teach you how to use their hidden power to overcome addiction. Wulff will teach you how to redefine the terms anger, selfishness, and troublemaking, and make them key tools in shaping your actions from a new healthy perspective:&•&• Anger—It's a powerful emotion that can be used constructively to protect yourself.&•&• Selfishness—Healthy selfishness is good self-care. Without it, addiction continues.&•&• Troublemaking—the opposite of pleasing others, troublemaking helps you stand up for your own feelings, needs, and desires.Learning to use these tools, which are already part of you, will enable you to reclaim these inner strengths. Through the book's practical and sensitive pages, Wulff gives you a way to begin your life anew and triumph over addiction.