Often, chemical dependence presents itself as anxiety or depression, so someone having trouble with alcohol or some other drug might think that, say, anxiety is the main problem, when in reality the addiction is generating the anxiety. Sometimes anxiety and addiction can co-exist, but many times…
Spirituality in addiction recovery has been controversial at times, especially among those with a more rational, scientific bent. Spirituality in addiction recovery was controversial all the way back to the beginning of Alcoholics Anonymous. The first hundred or so AA members had a split between Christian members…
Most people in the early stages of addiction will ask “Why do I need addiction treatment”? They ask for several reasons – one being they don’t think they’re in the early stages of addiction, and another reason is they most always think that individual counseling will…
In this blog post, I’ll use “opioid” to describe all opiates, organic and synthetic. There’s confusion with all the discussion surrounding opioids, opium, heroin, morphine, opiates, etc. Below is a good description to help clarify: To understand the classification of heroin as a drug,…
No one is born a full-blown drug addict. Addiction is progressive, from early stage, to middle stage, to late stage. In early stage it’s difficult to tell addiction from misuse. Lot’s of people go through periods in which they misuse alcohol or other drugs, but they…
For someone who doesn’t understand opioid addiction, when media report an epidemic and talk about opioids leading to heroin use, without lots of context and historical, factual information, it causes fear and misinformation. Understanding addiction is important to understanding the opioid epidemic. My fear is that well-meaning…
One of the hardest parts for counselors working in the addiction treatment field is helping clients sustain motivation to continue in treatment. Motivation in addiction treatment has to eventually come from within, but in the beginning, it’s very difficult for the client to resist the…
In addiction recovery, clients are taught how to be quiet and listen. This doesn’t mean we tell clients to not talk. The “quiet” I’m talking about is all the brain-chatter that keeps a person distracted, confused or too busy thinking to really listen to themselves…
It’s difficult to make the decision to seek treatment, but the hardest part about starting addiction treatment is actually following through once the decision to seek treatment has been made. What will people think? How can I afford it? It will take too much time….
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