Reality, Recovery, TV—The Truth Behind The Media Show

Released on: April 4, 2008, 6:04 pm

Press Release Author: Arbor Books

Industry: Entertainment

Press Release Summary: REALITY, RECOVERY, TV—THE TRUTH BEHIND THE MEDIA SHOW

Press Release Body: For celebrities today, drug and alcohol addictions are par for the course, and going to rehab is a calculated career move. But for the millions of regular Americans who enter detox programs every year, recovery—and the things they did to get there—is not quite so glamorous.

Stephen Della Valle, president of the board Turning Point, rehabilitation center in Verona, New Jersey, is concerned that the media has underplayed an issue that is becoming a nationwide epidemic. According to the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependency (NCADD), alcohol and drug problems cost our nation $200 billion annually.

“The media has turned celebrity alcohol and drug problems into entertainment and a spectacle rather than focus on the life and death aspects of this serious disease,” says Stephen. “Just look at what happened to Anna Nicole Smith and her son, and Kevin Dubrow from Twisted Sister, and countless others.”

Stephen is one of the lucky ones. After twenty-plus years of drug use and alcoholism, he finally made his way into a recovery program that succeeded in helping him overcome his addiction issues—but it took losing his job, his family and himself to get him there.

“Everyone has their ‘bottom’,” says Stephen who is the author of Rising Above the Influence, “their own point where they look at their life and think, Things just can’t get any worse. It took me almost two decades to get to that point and seek help.”

A divorce, alienation from his children, constant problems with the law and even a prison term didn’t deter Della Valle from habitually abusing drugs and alcohol.

In Rising Above the Influence, he candidly recounts his difficult childhood in a family ravaged by illness and a city plagued by racial violence; his indoctrination into the world of substance abuse as a young teenager; and the desperate, sometimes morbidly comical situations he endured to support his heavy addictions to heroin, prescription drugs, cocaine and alcohol.

From botched robberies to corporate embezzlement, there wasn’t much he wouldn’t do to keep his partying lifestyle afloat.

“I did a lot of things I’m not proud of,” says Stephen. “There is nothing cool or admirable about being an addict, no matter how much the media tries to make it look that way.”

Rising Above the Influence is his honest and inspiring account of the depths one man can fall to—and the heights he can achieve if only he reaches out a hand for help.

(Rising Above the Influence by Stephen Della Valle; ISBN: 0-9801776-0-X; $21.95; paperback; 5½ x 8½; 221 pages; OAK RIDGE PRESS)

Web Site: http://www.risingabovetheinfluence.net

Contact Details: Olga Vladi
Marketing Director
Arbor Books, Inc. (ABI)
244 Madison Avenue, #254
New York, NY 10016-2819
877-822-2500
www.arborbooks.com
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