Living with Addiction

When Crisis in Early Recovery Strikes… Life happens. Deaths in the family, loss of job, car accidents that have nothing to do with drinking and driving, even the basement flooding – all are dangers of human existence. When a...

Your bags are packed, you’ve gotten your aftercare plan, and you’re ready to blow this joint.  I mean, leave rehab.  It’s exciting to be free from the constraints of rehab and starting a new life, but it can be...

“Tough Love” = Terror Parents of teens and young adults who use substances problematically can get pretty desperate.  It’s easy to understand: they see real physical danger to their child, the potential life-long consequences of drug use (such as...

Families and friends are often confused about how to act when a loved one comes home from treatment.  Should family and friends avoid drinking around them?  Should parents restrict a teenager’s activities, effectively grounding him or her? I would...

Have you ever looked back and realized that you got yourself into a really bad situation with drinking or using at just the moment when you wanted to get out of a situation, but you couldn’t figure out how?...

Trauma during our formative years can leave a lasting impact—one that stretches beyond adulthood and shapes virtually every aspect of our future: How we think, feel, act. Who or what we seek out or avoid. But especially our physical...

Families Get a Bad Rap Parents get a really bad rap in our society.  They are pointed to as the cause of a child’s substance problem, accused of enabling if they so much as give the kid a meal,...

Media depictions of trauma often show clients coached to dig deep into their memories, cry, scream, or otherwise somehow “get it out.”  The experience looks horribly painful, but is supposed to be cathartic, meaning it lets you have a...

“Trauma” is a word thrown around so much these days that it’s lost most of its meaning. According to Dr. Peter Levine,1 one of the world’s foremost experts, trauma is, “the often debilitating symptoms that many people suffer from...

So you’re not an “alcoholic”  So you haven’t been labeled an “alcoholic,” but you drink a lot.  You haven’t gotten a DUI, gone to jail after a drunken bar fight, or even missed a day of work (though you’ve...