Beyond the Twelve: Overcoming Addiction Without the Script

What if recovery came with a menu instead of a script?

For generations, twelve-step programs have shaped how Americans understand addiction and recovery. Their influence extends far beyond the rooms, reaching into treatment centers, courtrooms, professional practice, and even the language we use to describe people seeking recovery.

But what happens when the script doesn’t fit?

Beyond the Twelve: Overcoming Addiction Without the Script explores that question through the stories of thirteen Nebraska addiction professionals whose personal and professional experiences led them to reconsider, modify, or move beyond traditional twelve-step approaches to recovery.

Blending deeply personal stories, interviews, research, history, and the author’s own experience with addiction and recovery, Ryan Carruthers examines some of the assumptions that have become deeply embedded in American recovery culture: abstinence, the disease model, meetings, sponsorship, powerlessness, spirituality, court mandates, and the belief that there is one right way to recover.

The book doesn’t argue that twelve-step programs do not work. They clearly work for many people. It asks a different question: Why have we so often confused one pathway to recovery with recovery itself?

Beyond the Twelve makes the case for something both simple and consequential: people seeking recovery should be informed about the full diversity of pathways available and empowered to choose amongst them.

Recovery Month Presale

$24.95, including U.S. shipping

Only 250 signed and individually numbered first-edition copies will be produced.

Each presale copy will be personally signed and numbered by the author and shipped following publication.

This is a presale. Payment will be processed at the time of purchase. Books are expected to ship October 20, 2026.