There are many tools available to assist alcohol and drug addicts with their recovery once they make the decision to be sober. Physicians, rehabilitation facilities, licensed therapists, support groups, and 12-step recovery systems such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous are available to individuals hoping to kick a troublesome habit. Recently, a company called the…
If some women had a secret food camera, it might be surprising to see how much they eat. It might also be surprising how few women are talking about their emotional eating or binge-eating habits that happen behind closed doors.
It took 50 years for my mother to finally admit that she had a mental health issue – longer still for her to accept out loud that she fit all nine of the criteria for borderline personality disorder. Now that she has, I feel emotionally validated by her for the first time, and because she…
Acknowledge your role as an enabler. Staying on the path you are on now will only perpetuate the problem and reduce the likeliness that your loved one will ever get the help he or she needs. Find help. Living with an addicted spouse causes tremendous stress. You may be dealing with a loved one who…
So much is known and widely discussed when it comes to co-dependency in popular culture, but very little light gets shed on its evil twin, counter-dependency. While co-dependents are weak, needy, and clingy, centering their behavior on what others do, think, and want, counter-dependents are on the flipside of this. Counter-dependency is when someone projects…
For alcoholics, drug addicts, and their families, treatment, and rehabilitation offer the hope of redemption and healing. But substance abusers and the people who love them are often unsure what exactly to expect from the treatment, and their tentative sense of optimism is often tempered by uncertainty and trepidation. Complicating things further, misconceptions about the…
In a tight economy, it is worth examining what makes a person more, or less, employable. The question of how alcohol and drug use impact a person’s job has been looked at from several directions. But each study comes up with the same conclusion – that there is a definite link between a person’s use…
If you suspect or know that your spouse is struggling with drug addiction or alcoholism, you may be at a loss as to how to help him or her. What can you do? How do you confront the issue? The answers don’t come easily; after all, it’s not as though you were taught in school…
If it seems as though many days are a tough struggle just to get through, and you’re in early recovery, the good news is that you are not alone. Many other newcomers to sobriety are feeling the same. But that doesn’t help you much when you have to figure out a way to not only…
Essentially all adults in the modern world are intimately familiar with stress, a reaction in the mind and body that produces effects such as increases in normal blood pressure and heart rate, as well as an increased susceptibility to the distorting influence of anxiety and fear. For several reasons, alcoholics typically have unusually elevated stress…
