Book excerpt: There's a Better Way to Work the 12 Steps, Drugs, food, money, sex, relationships, work... Any addiction darkens and potentially threatens our lives. We want to change, but we can't. "Relapse is part of recovery," we're told. Really? In Addiction Is the Symptom, Dr. Rosemary Ellsworth Brown offers a deeper approach to the steps that prevents relapse by digging beyond our addictions-our symptoms-to heal the real problem: emotional dependency It worked for Dr. Brown herself, and it's been working for her clients and sponsees for 30 years. Do you have 20 minutes a day to change your life? At the heart of this new approach is Step Four, recast to heal the cause. Precise instructions eliminate the usual trial and error-and the usual self-judgment. There's nothing wrong with you. What's wrong is all the garbage piled on top of you. Here is a way to get your authentic self out from under the lifetime of conditioning that is fueling your addictive behaviors. We're all addicted. It's about more than substance abuse. It's about near-universal control issues that profoundly affect our everyday lives and relationships. Think you're not addicted? Think again. Transformation is possible. Wherever you live on the addiction spectrum, healing emotional dependency means becoming powerful in your own right and reaching your full potential as a human being. Book jacket.