How do you help someone stay the course in recovery, either by staying in rehab or following through on their recovery plan? Sometimes you can’t. That’s just the way it is. Furthermore, being engaged in someone else’s recovery is very tricky. You need strong boundaries, clear expectations and lots of time for trust to return.
Meanwhile, […]
Men and women face very similar battles when recovering from addictions, but there are critical differences, as well. In this blog, we’ll look at some men-specific issues. While men and woman both turn to addictive substances to relieve a variety of traumatic experiences, by the time men get to rehab, they face some gender-specific issues.
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Addicts in early recovery face a seemingly endless list of triggers because the memories of drug and alcohol use are recent and familiar. As time goes by, the list of triggers that could send an addict into relapse begins to recede.
Still, some of those triggers are extremely persistent. I recall back when I was a […]
Addictions, it could be said, are all about finding something pleasurable and seeking to continue with that sense of pleasure even when it becomes self-destructive physically, financially, emotionally, mentally, socially, even spiritually.
In years past, when little was known about brain chemistry and genetics, it was thought that people with addictions were simply making bad choices […]
The 12-Step addiction recovery process is one that millions of people with addiction issues over the years have credited with helping them recover from an addiction. The program has such an impact on recovering addicts that it has developed its own cult-like reputation, especially among those who don’t know it first hand. It is safe […]
What substance or behavior springs to mind when you think of the word “addiction?”
Is it heroin? Tobacco? Cocaine? Gambling?
What about Internet Gaming?
Internet gaming is the type of addiction that tests your definition of addictions. Does addiction have to cause symptoms of physical withdrawal when you stop using or abusing the substance or behavior? Or is […]
Nobody can avoid stress forever. As human beings, anxiety comes with the territory. That’s a fact of life. We can react to stress in various ways. Our bodies invoke a “fight or flight” response that harkens back to our earliest years on the planet. Animals also exhibit “fight or flight” responses when provoked.
Some clinicians call […]
Few people ever say recovering from an addiction is easy. On the other hand, if often feels that just as things are turning around, just when a loved one is finally getting somewhere in recovery, everything unravels. These sudden lapses into bad decisions seem to come out of nowhere. Things were going so great! What […]
Codependency is a term used to describe a relationship that has become entangled and dysfunctional due to the presence of an addiction. There are many manifestations of codependency, but it is generally considered a condition associated with the non-addicted person in the relationship.
First Things First
This is not technically true. If one person in a relationship […]