Addiction | Substance Use Disorders | Treatment
How the Zero Left Campaign is Fighting the Opioid Crisis
There is no doubt America is in the midst of an opioid crisis. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), “Opioids (including prescription opioids, heroin, and fentanyl) killed more than 33,000 people in 2015, more than any year on record. Nearly half of all opioid overdose deaths involve a prescription opioid.” According to Facing Addiction, in the last…
Read MoreWorking the 12 Steps With a Little Help From Brain Science
Millions struggling with addiction* have found their pathway to recovery through the 12 Steps — AA and NA, as examples. Millions of their loved ones have found their recovery from secondhand drinking | secondhand drugging (SHD)** through 12 Steps, as well — Al-Anon and Nar-Anon, as examples. But there are many more who report having a problem with the…
Read More7 Things to Know When Looking for Addiction Treatment
Are you looking for addiction treatment for a loved one or friend? You’re not alone. Every week I receive calls and emails from family members and friends trying to find treatment for their loved one’s addiction,* aka substance use disorder. These kinds of phone calls and emails are heartbreaking. Their panic, anger, fear, frustration, sadness, desperation and anguish…
Read MoreWe Can’t Treat Cancer in 30 Days. Why Do We Think Treating Addiction is Any Different?
I’ve tried to verify who came up with the idea that addiction* could be treated in 30 days. One version was reported by Shari Roan in her November 10, 2008 Los-Angeles Times article, “The 30-day Myth,” in which she wrote, Dr. David Lewis…who in the 1970s helped establish the first addiction treatment program in the U.S. Air…
Read MoreWhen Your Child Struggles With Addiction | Author Linda Dahl’s New Novel Offers Help and Hope
When your child struggles with addiction, which is now understood to be a chronic, often relapsing brain disease, the world flips and turns in unimaginable ways. Days and nights become excruciating as a parent’s every attempt to help, stop, hold onto, and do anything and everything to save their child seems to slam into another wall,…
Read MoreExcessive Alcohol Use Kills 88,000 Americans Annually | What Can WE Do to Stop This?
Excessive alcohol use, either in the form of binge drinking or heavy drinking, was responsible for an average of 88,000 deaths annually in the United States from 2006 – 2010. (Source: CDC>Excessive Drinking, accessed 8/11/17) This is equal to 241 deaths per day. In view of these statistics, which I find staggering, as is the fact…
Read MoreOvercoming Addiction | Linda Dahl
Overcoming addiction, which is now understood to be a chronic, often relapsing brain disease, can be gut-wrenchingly hard. And that’s so often because of the secrecy, misinformation and shame that surrounds this particular disease as a result of common beliefs that it’s a choice or moral failing or as simple as “just stop.” It’s not.…
Read More15 Minutes Can Change Your Life
Change [including how one deals with a loved one’s addiction or with a loved one deeply affected by secondhand drinking (aka codependency)] begins in the mind. As such, a person can use their mind to change their lives. To help readers better understand this concept, Darlene Lancer, JD, MFT, shares the following post. To read her…
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