Nurses play a vital role at Bluff’s drug and alcohol addiction rehab center. From day one at our residential addiction treatment center outside Augusta, Georgia, nurses are there to ensure patients are safe, comfortable and supported. “We are the first people patients meet when they come into the building,” said Katherine Harris, a registered nurse […]

You made it through detox and a substance abuse treatment program. Now you’re ready to say goodbye to addiction and jump back into normal life, right? Not so fast. Men and women who have successfully completed addiction treatment benefit from a continuing care program, also called aftercare. Continuing care is the phase of treatment that […]

With the holidays rapidly approaching, people struggling with addiction often decide to wait to start treatment until January. We urge anyone with a drug or alcohol problem not to delay. There are so many deadly drugs in circulation today – and those drugs don’t care what day of the year it is. Overdoses happen just […]

A high school English teacher and mother of two, Joy Clubb had a great job and a loving family. But alcohol, and later opioid addiction, robbed her of her career – and threatened to destroy her relationship with her husband and children. After two stays in residential addiction treatment, Clubb was living in a halfway […]

At summer camps and resorts, ropes courses are built high off the ground, designed for an adrenalin rush as participants test their physical limits. The ropes course at Bluff, a form of experiential therapy for patients in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, encourages pushing boundaries of a different sort. Rather than focusing on showing courage […]

The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) Policy Meeting on Treating Substance Use Disorders addressed access, recovery, and the Affordable Care Act, focusing on the entry of previously uninsured substance abusers into the medical system. It is estimated that approximately 10 million new patients have been added to the healthcare rolls in 2014; about […]

Relapse in the treatment of alcoholism is common—but not inevitable—for several reasons, including post-acute withdrawal symptoms, stress, and the fact that recovery programs are voluntary, and most importantly because it is easy to forget that addiction is a fatal disease. Post-Acute Withdrawal When we stop using drugs or alcohol, we enter an acute withdrawal phase of withdrawal, the […]

In an effort to respond to this ongoing rise in abuse of opioids, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) recently published a guide for physicians on medication-assisted treatment for opioid dependence in the outpatient office setting. Many addicted patients are very reluctant to seek inpatient treatment. It is estimated that 80% of patients suffering […]

Certain circumstances, including sights, sounds, tastes, and smells, can trigger our senses and our memory banks to tap into the files in our past and recall those incidences where drugs were used to make us feel a certain way. Enormous happiness, elation, celebration, devastating sadness, isolation and loneliness, anger, and exhaustion—these can trigger our memories […]