Help for Families | Secondhand Drinking | Codependency
For Family Members of a Loved One in Recovery
I’ve worked a lot with the family members of a loved one in recovery over the years. I’ve also worked a lot with family members whose loved one is still active in their addiction. As someone with similar experiences, I know their heartache, anguish, anger, pain, frustration, resentment, fear, love, desperation and never-ending belief that…
Read MoreMaster of Manipulation – the Disease of Addiction
If you live with and/or love a person with the brain disease of addiction, you can probably relate to this poem I wrote several years ago. I know that until I finally understood addiction for what it is – a chronic, often relapsing brain disease, I never saw the real puppeteer pulling all of our strings…
Read MoreStress at the Turn of the Century
I’ve written a lot about stress, especially stress related to addiction and secondhand drinking | drugging. And I’ve also emphasized that it’s “life” stressors that often trigger the use of alcohol or drugs or unhealthy coping skills to dampen the triggering emotions. Which brings me to the point to this post… Stress at the Turn…
Read MoreChronic Pain and Opioid Addiction
Many people can’t understand how someone becomes physically dependent or develops an addiction to an opioid pain medication, such as Vicodin, Dilaudid, OxyContin, Duragesic and Norco, prescribed by their doctor. Understanding the following key concepts can help: The brain controls everything we think, feel, say and do through neural networks and brain maps. Pain is in the…
Read MoreHarm Reduction – Can It Work?
There are various takes on harm reduction – both on what it means and on what success looks like. For the purposes of this post, I am referring to harm reduction in terms of changing one’s drinking pattern and/or stopping drinking all together before they develop the chronic, often relapsing brain disease of addiction (in…
Read MoreTalking to Children About a Parent’s Recovery
Talking to children about a parent’s recovery – yes? no? sort of? But how? Your spouse is about two-thirds the way through a 28-day rehab. You see great progress, but s/he still doesn’t want to tell the children. S/he says your younger ones are too young to understand and the older ones are so engrossed in their own…
Read MoreHow to Spot Manipulation – Darlene Lancer
How to spot manipulation can be a key to one’s recovery from the affects of growing up or living with untreated alcoholism or addiction. Author of Codependency for Dummies and Conquering Shame and Codependency: 8 Steps to Freeing the True You, Darlene Lancer explains how to spot manipulation in today’s guest post…always a pleasure to share Darlene’s work! How to Spot…
Read MoreSlogans to Help with Long Term Recovery
Slogans helping with long term recovery? In my case, it’s a resounding, “YES!” So you can imagine the smile that spread across my face this morning when today – of all days – I randomly opened one of my daily Al-Anon “readers,” titled: Hope for Today, and landed on May 5. Why the smile? Today is the sixth anniversary of this…
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