Help for Families | Secondhand Drinking | Codependency
Sober Living Homes | a Soft Place to Land or??
Taking advantage of sober living homes (also known as SLEs or Recovery Residences or Transition Homes or Halfway Houses) as a transitional step after rehab can be a huge help to a person in early recovery. The concept behind them is to provide an alcohol and drug-free housing environment in which a person can live…
Read MoreReframing Codependency as Secondhand Drinking
Reframing codependency as secondhand drinking (or drugging) – for heavens sake, why? and why would it even matter? In the world of addiction treatment and recovery, we often refer to family members and friends of addicts | alcoholics as “enablers” or “co-dependents.” Their “condition” is called codependency, and they’re encouraged to get help. But to…
Read MoreDo You Have to Call Yourself an Alcoholic
Do you have to call yourself an alcoholic to get sober? One of the biggest stumbling blocks for people wanting to stop or cut down on their drinking is the belief that doing so makes them an “alcoholic.” [It’s a similar stumbling block for their family members, who are experiencing secondhand drinking (the impacts on…
Read MoreEffective Dual Diagnosis Treatment | Relapse Prevention
What does it mean to have a co-occurring disorder (a dual diagnosis)? What constitutes effective dual diagnosis treatment? What does effective dual diagnosis treatment have to do with preventing addiction relapse? In simple terms, a dual diagnosis means to be diagnosed as having two brain diseases (aka disorders): an addiction and a mental illness. This…
Read MoreHelp For Recovery – Give Lists a Try
I am a died-in-the-wool list maker. They have been my “Hansel and Gretel, crumb-dropping pathway” through my secondhand drinking recovery and, well…, I’d have to add – managing my life overall. And when it comes to secondhand drinking or addiction recovery, it’s the managing of one’s life that’s so important in the prevention of relapse.…
Read MoreAcceptance is… well, Acceptance | Recovery from Addiction | SHD
Are you in recovery from addiction or SHD (secondhand drinking | drugging)? Likely, then, you have heard these sorts of phrases: “Live and Let Live,” “Let It Go,” “…to accept the things I cannot change.” Don’t you hate when people try to make something that is darn near impossible to define, let alone do, seem…
Read MoreTalking About Addiction | Let’s Make the Day Come When We Have These Sorts of Conversations
Recently I gave a talk to a group of parents of children with the chronic, often relapsing – but treatable – brain disease of addiction. I shared a bit about my own experiences with loved ones with this brain disease and about the emotional and physical health consequences I’d suffered as a result of the…
Read MoreAddiction Treatment Medications | Are They Cheating?
I was speaking at a forum recently and this question came up (it actually comes up quite often), “Aren’t these addiction treatment medications sort of like cheating?” And then the person asking the question went on to say, “I mean, in AA they say you can’t take other medications because that’s being addicted to something…
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