Our Elastic Standards of Drinking

This is a guest post from The Discovering Alcoholic, who writes a top rated recovery blog, www.discoveringalcoholic.com, covering alcoholism, substance abuse, treatment and recovery issues. Just one couldn’t hurt… but I’ve only had two… maybe one more please, to cap the night off. As an alcoholic, I always found a reason to have one more…

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Dual Diagnosis – Explanation & Treatment

Dual Diagnosis – what is it and how is it treated? or can it be treated? One of the repeated concerns I hear when giving my presentations is the lack of satisfactory treatment for a dual diagnosis, which occurs when a person is diagnosed with both a mental illness (PTSD, Anxiety, Bipolar, ADHD, schizophrenia) and…

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SPECT Scans Showing Impact of Alcohol Abuse on the Brain

This post was originally published in 2009. A lot has changed since then, so I’m sharing the link to the Amen Clinics’ (the providers of the SPECT Scans I originally used in this post) website section, “Drugs and Alcohol Addictions.” There you will find examples of their scans and information on how/why they do them…

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Mrs. Marty Mann – First Woman to Join AA

A biography of Marty Mann – one of the first woman to join AA and a heroine in the fight to de-stigmatize the disease of alcoholism. I’m reading a great book by Sally Brown and David R. Brown – A Biography of Mrs. Marty Mann, The First Lady of Alcoholics Anonymous. Not only is it…

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Powerless Over Alcohol

Powerless over alcohol … For those who are not familiar with 12-step programs (such as AA or AlAnon), the first step is to admit you are powerless over alcohol. I recall reading and hearing this and thinking “they” were nuts. How could anyone be powerless over alcohol? And, how could a person who is not…

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Rethinking Drinking

Rethinking drinking is an important concept to talk about. Why? Because we often think of drinking as either normal or alcoholic, yet there is a middle stage stage not fully understand, and it’s alcohol abuse. Alcohol abuse is what causes the chemical and structural changes in the brain that in turn make a person more…

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