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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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
The importance of stress reduction cannot be overstated when addressing the management of these disorders. Stress results from a number of sources, and is a bio-psycho-social phenomenon. It can be treated by a number of interventions, including medications, psychotherapy, exercise, meditation, hypnosis, and other nonpharmacologic strategies. A critical stress reduction strategy is sleep. Sleep is […]
In June of 2014, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control reported that excessive drinking accounted for 1 in 10 preventable deaths of working-age Americans from 2006 to 2010: 88,000 deaths each year, the third leading cause of preventable deaths. These deaths arise from liver damage, alcohol poisoning, car accidents, falls, and murders. Most heavy drinkers binge […]
The important role of exercise in helping to maintain optimal physical health is well known. Like the popular auto insurance commercial points out, “Everybody knows that.” But did you know exercise plays an important role in mental health as well? Numerous studies have demonstrated the benefits of exercise in treating virtually all forms of mental […]
The first article in this series introduced Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT). In this second part of this series, we will discuss SBIRT as a response to a need and the evidence for SBIRT effectiveness and support. SBIRT: Response to a Need Substance abuse (alcohol, tobacco, illicit drugs) is a major public […]
