Browse Drug and Substance Abuse

Relapse is a process that occurs over time, in the context of significant decisions. Many people who relapse say that drinking or using was the furthest thing from their mind just before they consumed the chemical. In reality, most of the time, relapse was in process some time before the chemical was ingested. The relapse process involves a return to old thinking, old feelings, and old behavior. When someone is addicted, consumption of their mood altering drug of choice is almost automatic. It is a deeply ingrained and somewhat unconscious action. It has become "first nature".

If you are not aware that the topic of non-consensual sex has yet again found its way onto the front page of Pittsburgh’s local news, then perhaps you should stop re-watching the Stanley cup finals on your DVR and check out a newspaper or two. The topic is again, as always, drenched in controversy and contorted by the gender biases of male verses female sexual stereotypes. The current conversations, from barrooms to boardrooms, continue to demonstrate the lack of understanding so many people have regarding non-consensual sex, sexual assault and rape.

According to Goswami (1995) "whenever we ask if there is some other kind of reality beyond the material reality, we are putting material realism on the spot. Similarly, a genuine discontinuity points to a transcendent order of reality and thus a breakdown of material realism" (p. 138). What ...

Whether you plan to abstain from alcohol for a day, a week, a month, or a lifetime, the use cognitive behavioral strategies has been proven to greatly increase your chances of success. Dr. Jeffrey Brandsma's (1980) classic study showed that people who learned cognitive behavioral strategies were significantly more successful in dealing with their alcohol problems than a control group. How do these cognitive behavioral strategies work?

Your significant other finally went to rehab. With all the events leading up to his agreeing to go to treatment, it may feel like a let-down. You may have breathed a big sigh of relief as you drove away from the airport or the treatment center after dropping him or her off. You may feel hope. You may still be waiting for the other shoe to drop.

You are ultimately responsible for your own addiction recovery. When you know that you have to have surgery, it is important to keep everyone treating you informed about your recovery and addiction history, including the names of the drugs, the amounts, the lengths of time that you took them, ...

What role do your beliefs play in your ability to completely recover? Do your beliefs disempower you? A belief is a perception, conviction, or opinion that you hold about yourself, a situation, event, or others. Beliefs are not necessarily true or fact-based, however, they are something we hold internally within your soul and spirit as a truth. Beliefs can be extremely complex, but when it comes to defining our behavior, our beliefs can drive us to make assumptions, react quickly, and make precise decisions at both a conscious and subconscious level.

Do you or someone you know suffer from C-PTSD? Complex Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, or C-PTSD, commonly co-occurs with addiction. C-PTSD is a complicated trauma reaction caused by enduring extreme stress over a prolonged period of time. Its frequent companion, addiction, typically evolves as repeated attempts are made to find respite in substance use from painful symptoms of a trauma disorder. Chronic Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Exposure

Family members, in their attempts to solve the problem of a loved one's addiction, try every thing they can think of, to turn the addict's life back around. They usually identify the problem incorrectly for a long time before it becomes obvious to them that addiction is the real problem. ...

A truly holistic approach to addiction recovery addresses the complete person in a concurrent way. This means that the body, mind, soul and spirit of an individual are simultaneously involved in the healing process. The Sanctuary at Sedona is such a program. To the best of our knowledge, we are unique in the field, providing comprehensive services to address each level of an individual’s need. The result is that we equip our clients with the experiences and tools they need to maintain a sustainable and full recovery from addiction.

People who don't know much about alcohol and other drug addiction, often buy into common myths and stereotypes about addiction and addicts. It is important to replace mistaken assumptions and judgments about addiction, so that you can approach those afflicted with the illness, with compassion and understanding. Many people mistakenly believe that if you call addiction a "disease" that somehow it exempts the alcoholic or addict from responsibility of their behavior. Below are some myths in italics. The truth is in regular print. 1. Addicts are losers and skid-row bums.

Part I Addictive behavior in parents often begets addictive behavior in their offspring. According to Nakken (1988), if a child grows up in a family in which one parent is an addict, the child is likely to develop an addiction. If both parents are addicts, the child's chances of addiction ...

I just watched Oprah interview Geneen Roth about her new book, Women, Food, and God (written for men as well as women). Oprah experienced many breakthroughs reading the book and is recommending it to anyone who has ever struggled with weight. It seems that however Oprah goes, so goes the country! Now that the spotlight is healing eating issues and Geneen Roth’s philosophy, I would like to take this opportunity to share with you and to compare and contrast Skinny Thinking with the principles in Women, Food, and God.

When facing the loss of most of one’s structure in situations like vacation or business trips, relapsive thinking can return, even in established, stable recovery. The relapse thoughts can include some of the below, but this is not an all inclusive lists. When planning a vacation or business trip that takes you out of your established routine and structure, listen to your own “self-talk”. Pay close attention to those ideas that may place you in slippery places, around slippery people, or in slippery activities.

Building a solid foundation for the development of good communication skills involves learning how to listen effectively. There are several elements of effective listening. These elements include attention, reflection, ability to tolerate tension, and ability to challenge the assumptions that are usually made. When teaching couples how to change how they talk to each other, active listening is stressed. Much of the time, poor listening skills are at the heart of couple communication problems. You can't have effective communication without good listening skills.

Challenging the Expectation of Failure History is helpful to us in many ways. We can learn from what hasn’t worked as we continue to pursue solutions, for example. Our ‘failures’ can point us in new directions if we use them as ‘research’ rather than reasons to stagnate or give up. Like Edison said before finding his famous solution: I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. That’s a good lesson for addiction treatment and recovery. That we need to keep looking has been clear for a very long time. The Concept of Failure in Recovery

Most people want to have a loving, committed, happy marriage. And they think they know what will make for that happy marriage. Some of the characteristics often identified as making up a stable and loving relationship include: trust, love, respect, honesty, and faithfulness, among other attributes. Many people have the oversimplified desire to “just be happy” in their marriage, like happiness in a relationship is some simple, ordinary thing that each person is “naturally” entitled to.

You have just discovered or been informed of your partner's infidelity. You are in shock. You are confused, angry, immobilized, depressed, and thinking you will absolutely go crazy. In the midst of all this, you keep hearing about "sexual addiction" in the media and you wonder if it is sexual ...

The first time I encountered a teen who used the term “farming parties” I thought she was referring to a collection of teenagers, in the middle of nowhere, setting a pile of old wood ablaze and gossiping while consuming a lukewarm keg of cheap beer. I was shocked to learn that what she was ...The first time I encountered a teen who used the term “farming parties” I thought she was referring to a collection of teenagers, in the middle of nowhere, setting a pile of old wood ablaze and gossiping while consuming a lukewarm keg of cheap beer.

Although definitions of "Addiction" seem to be continuing to evolve, addiction is still "a primary, chronic, progressive, and relapsing disease". The last decade of research has led to a refined definition of addiction as a "brain disease which is manifested by compulsive behavior". Cross addiction means that an addict can be addicted to any mood altering drug which s/he ingests. Cross addiction can be an example of relapse and/or a trigger to returning to one's previous drug of choice.

HeartMath at The Sanctuary HeartMath is a therapeutic modality founded in well-documented research from the field of neurocardiology. Informed by the heart’s critical role in our overall health, HeartMath sessions are conducted with simple, user-friendly technology through which our clients can access, monitor and take control of their internal states. They learn to recognize chaotic internal states and to shift quickly into greater internal coherence, or more optimal overall functioning, with full access to higher brain functions, and an increased sense of well-being (2).

Although forgiveness is an important part of working through feelings, and thus, a tool of recovery and the healing process, it is an often neglected topic. People often erroneously equate forgiveness with forgetting. The best definition that I ever heard for forgiveness is simply "giving up the need to punish". This definition doesn't say anything about the actual act of punishing, or forgetting--for that matter. It speaks only of letting go of the compulsion, or fantasy of punishing.

We used to believe that we are controlled by our genes and that DNA programs us like software does a computer. We thought that DNA communicated with us—as if we were downloading our fates—and that we had nothing to say about it. This was an incredibly disempowering view of how human life works. It put us at the mercy of what happened even before we were born.

I often hear couples complain that they cannot talk about anything. Does that really happen? Think about what would happen in your relationship if you really, literally could not talk to your spouse--about anything. How would you exchange information about work, daily routines, groceries and other products needed, bills to be paid, etc., if you literally could not communicate. Living in a house with another person takes a certain amount of cooperation and teamwork.

5 Tips for Intestinal Health to Help Improve Brain Function

A child living at a meth lab is exposed to many dangers and to the ongoing effects of chemical contamination. The chemicals used to cook meth produce toxic fumes, vapors, and spills. A child living at a meth lab may inhale or swallow toxic substances or inhale the secondhand smoke of adults who are using meth, absorb methamphetamine and other toxic substances through the skin following contact with contaminated surfaces, clothing, or food; or become ill after directly ingesting chemicals or an intermediate product.

Approximately a month before I was released from the netherworld of the prison yard, I weighed more than I ever had in my life. Not knowing anything about fat, carbohydrates, or heart rate and exercise, I started fast-walking around the prison yard per diem, every day. While I managed not to ...

How do you maintain a healthy life for sustainable recovery?

Most non-addicted people have routines and organizing structures inrntheir lives that help provide stability. An addict's lifestyle is often one of chaotic instability and disorganization. A general lack of structure and routine contributes to this disorganization and chaos. An addicted lifestyle is often missing daily routines of fulfilling personal and family responsibilities, engaging in predictable and consistent eating and sleeping habits, and appropriate self care. These missing elements are self-reinforcing in addiction.

"Enabling" can be described as a behavior pattern of the significant people in the life on an addict or alcoholic. "Enabling" involves rescuing the alcoholic/addict from the negative consequences of his or her behavior. When the addict has those negative consequences of his/her addiction removed, the significant other is, in effect, "enabling" the addict to continue drinking/drugging. The significant other enablers the addict to stay in active addiction. This effect is usually not the intention of the worried and caring family member or friend.

In the course of a week approximately 15 million Americans will attend some kind of self-help group. Why is this happening? Because people have discovered that talking and listening to their fellow sufferers has a soothing effect on the psyche, sometimes more so than doing the same thing in the ...

What if you were called into your boss's office and told that s/he was thinking about letting you go, that you were not fulfilling your job responsibilities, and that you were holding the company back rather than helping the company grow and prosper? Yes, you might be shocked or stunned. You might also already realize that you have not been working any where near your potential, that you have been somewhat disengaged from the company and just "putting in time" until retirement.

Can the spouse of a sex addict find help individually for the effects of the sexual addiction on their lives? Sure. Much of the time, however, it is the crisis of discovery of the acting out, or some other related crisis that brings the sex addict and spouse into treatment. They usually seek ...

Many non-addicted spouses complain about how their addicted significant other is driving them crazy, making them depressed, or leading them toward suicide or homicide. These comments only illustrate the destructive nature of the family dynamics of addiction. The addicted and non-addicted spouses get locked into mortal combat over the addiction, even when they have not identified the problem as "addiction". Of course the non-addicted spouse is angry. S/he is picking up all the slack caused by the addict's abdication of responsibility.

Recovery from sexual addiction is slightly different than recovery from alcohol and other (AOD) addiction. With chemical dependency recovery, the goal is to abstain from all mood altering drugs. The primary goal from sexual addiction is not abstinence from sex, but the development of the ability ...

Why Childhood Trauma Can Lead to Codependency

We Have Living Proof that You Can Re-write, Re-experience and Re-create Your Life

One of the most frequent questions that I hear from family members is, “Why do I need to be in counseling, when she is the alcoholic/addict? The family members that do come into treatment willingly and eagerly at the beginning are most often motivated to “help” the addict. The idea that spouses and other kin need help for their own issues often feels like an insult initially. Non-addicted loved ones need their own help because they are negatively affected by the disease in several ways. Addiction runs through generations in families.

Use the following ten steps to replace old, ineffective arguments with an effective fair fighting session: 1. Fight to resolve an issue or solve a problem. 2. Identify the problem to be solved. 3. Take turns stating your case, using I messages. 4. Practice active listening. 5. Generate ...

Addicts are known for their clichés like “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired” or “one is too many and 100 is not enough.” But how often do health professionals get to the bottom of the “feeling crappy syndrome” and the seemingly insatiable physical cravings that addicts and chronic substance abusers experience? And can the “normal” people in our population learn anything from their as yet unresolved pain?

The Deep Attachment of Psychological Dependence with Prescription Drug Use

3 Tips to Balance Addiction Recovery and Human Electrical Body to Achieve Physical Healing. Even if you don’t consciously realize it, there are electrical forces within your body that impact the functions that are keeping you alive. Nerve impulses are small electrical energy signals, and these signals create magnetic energy waves. Human electrical energy is created within nerve cells, and these chemical processes send waves of electrical energy from one cell to the next, throughout the entire body. How Electrical Impulses Impact Physical Healing

For many individuals contemplating treatment for substance abuse, ninety or more days of residential treatment can be a daunting thought; even difficult for some to consider beyond the once-mainstay “30 day” inpatient treatment program. While many programs still use this “30 day” model, this ...

Communication is not only the life's blood of a marriage, it is the cornerstone that the foundation of relationship skills rest on. You have to have good communication skills to be able to convey your love, affection, and commitment to your loved ones. You can not effectively problem solve without good communication. Inadequate communication creates or worsens the struggle to maintain the positive emotions in the relationship. All people want to feel loved, appreciated, and a sense of belonging.

"My spouse went to recovery. Now they tell me that he needs to go on to additional counseling. What is that all about?" "Recovery" and "treatment" are not the same thing. Inpatient treatment, detox, or outpatient treatment, in and of itself, is not "recovery". Recovery is generally a return of good health, and a restoration (or acquisition) of effective functioning in one's life, in all areas including relationships, work, and community. Treatment for addiction is not a pill, a therapy, a place, or even a slice of time.

The majority of patients who successfully complete inpatient and have the desire to stay clean and sober relapse in the first year after acute care treatment. Anyone who has been to inpatient treatment has noticed that the among the other patients around them, that there is a large percentage who have been through inpatient treatment before. This is largely because addiction is still being treated as an acute illness rather than the chronic disease that it is.

The fourth of July is significant for alcoholics and addicts in several ways. The Declaration of Independence was a statement of separation from a tyrannical ruler. With separating from the past they embarked on a new way of life. Many people come into treatment just after the Fourth of July, after having had a "close call", a DUI, a wife who left, or after totally embarrassing or humiliating themselves in drunken or drugged stupor.

Early addiction recovery is a fragile thing. One of the most frequent contributing factors in relapse is something we call "cross-addiction". Essentially what cross-addiction means, is that if you are alcoholic or addicted to other mood altering drugs, you a potentially addicted to all mood altering drugs. To truly understand cross-addiction, you must appreciate the character of addiction and the nature of mood/mind altering drugs. Addiction is a disease. It is frequently described as a primary, chronic, progressive, and relapsing disease.

Heal the Underlying Trauma for Full Recovery

Marital infidelity can be revealed in a whole host of different ways. Regardless of how the infidelity is revealed, the revelation of the infidelity creates a crisis within the marital relationship and within the faithful spouse. The shock of discovering the infidelity leads to compulsive ...