Whether you're a recovering alcoholic or a member of Alanon, it's pretty common that the holidays bring up stressful memories of family members drinking way to much to douse their X-mas expectations.
I had been working for the last few years as a therapist at BHS Hollywood Family Recovery, treating "dual-diagnosis" clients in an outpatient drug pro...
Whether your loved one is in their addiction or new to recovery, sometimes a well meaning, simple discussion can turn futile. Too often you can't help but get sucked into a conversation that turns heated.
The persistence of habits can be a blessing or a curse. By knowing more about where habits come from and how they develop, we can learn to manage their impact in our daily lives.
Many know Bill Wilson as the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, but few realize his brilliance as it relates to healing the human condition, alcoholic or not.
Denial is a dangerous thing, it can leave families shattered and broken, make perfectly good lives sail off track and in the case of Dianne Schuler, it can be the direct cause of eight deaths.
An enormous part of your loved one's recovery process and progress is built around them starting to pull themselves up by their own boot straps.
Humor has a way of sliding through the cracks, of reminding us that whatever is going on just isn't that important. It keeps things in perspective, provides relief, gets us to see things in new lights and yes, has tons of health benefits.
Detroiter Tim Burke calls himself an artist, a scavenger, and a non-practicing alcoholic. Devoted to the reuse of refuse, the 40-something sculptor us...
It has long been clear to me that being an ACoA needs aggressive and long term treatment. Ignoring the damage only allows it to leak out in intimate relationships.
I have compiled what I call The Pyramid of Change; 6 phases of the alcoholic/addict from the beginnings of irresponsible behavior to full blown wreckage.
This past week Bryan celebrated six years of sobriety and returned to Maine to begin the amends process with Paul.
With person after person I met on my book tour, I came to see that our memories aren't really patchy; they're patchworks, randomly retrieved bits and scraps that we weave together into something different.
Maybe the MTV stage show will put some more attention on the ugliness of drinking too much and the healing aspects of good emotional and mental health.
Why don't you pick up a book by Stephanie Meyer or Anne Rice, so you can read about vampires instead of having a relationship with one?
I chase the adrenaline rush, the dopamine high, that is akin to the buzz I get from smoking an entire cigarette in three puffs after staying away from lung rockets for a year or more.
After battling addiction for years, young DJ AM (aka Adam Goldstein) was found dead last week with OxyContin in his stomach and throat. He was working...
If low self-esteem has been part of a teenager's upbringing, they may see themselves as less than everyone else, deficient in one way or another.
This false self is also sometimes seen as the "idealized self" or the self through which we operate because our true self just somewhere along the line (usually quite young) felt too weak, inadequate or overwhelmed to function and gain approval in the situation in which it finds itself.
Internet addiction is upon us... how big is the problem?
We basically ask to speak to a certain voice and the participant puts on that hat. Some voices used typically have been The Controller, The Skeptic, The Protector, The Victim.
The recession's jobless toll is draining unemployment-compensation
Obama: "The Senate and the House bills are 95 percent...
