One Halloween when I was a kid, I came home from trick-or-treating with a plastic pumpkin full of chocolate. My mouth had been watering ever since the second doorbell, but my costume prohibited taking an early snack. As soon as I got home, the mask came off, and I had my first piece of chocolate.Continue reading “Feed the Person, Starve the Problem”
Category Archives: Addiction
What my Tennis Coach Taught Me about Change
How can reading a blog help you change? It can’t. You can’t learn to play tennis by reading, either. You’ve got to play. I took tennis lessons once. The coach asked me to show him my serve. I hit a few. I looked over and saw him shake his head. “We have a lot ofContinue reading “What my Tennis Coach Taught Me about Change”
What Keeps You Addicted?
There are the four factors that contribute to an addiction. Chemistry, habit, emotion, and idolatry. Any response to addiction that does not take all four into account is going to fail.
The Opioid Crisis
Bringing you the best of mental health Considering how serious the opioid epidemic has become, and how many people have needlessly died, wouldn’t it be nice if there was a medication that people could take that could control their addiction to the substances? Funny, but there is. Federal law limits its availability.
Today is a Special Day
Bringing you the best of mental health every week. June 12, 2017. What is so special about today? I’ll tell you. Today is Superman Day, a great day to stand for what the Man of Steel stood for. It’s Red Rose Day, so visit a garden. It’s Loving Day, commemorating the day in 1967 whenContinue reading “Today is a Special Day”
Buzzed
Bringing you the best of mental health every week. The best book I know about how drugs of abuse work and their effects is Buzzed: The Straight Facts About the Most Used and Abused Drugs from Alcohol to Ecstasy, now in its fourth edition. No one is frying eggs and exaggerating or diminishing the effectsContinue reading “Buzzed”
Unbroken Brain
Bringing you the best of mental health every week. People have often asked me to recommend a book about addiction. For thirty years, the only one I ever urged people to read has been the Big Book of AA, written eighty years ago, when we knew next to nothing about addiction. I’ll get into theContinue reading “Unbroken Brain”
Getting Help
We’ve been seeing what happens when addiction takes over a relationship. The people in the relationship disappear and the needs of the addiction consume everything. If you’re the person with the addiction, your job is to recover. If you’re the other person, your job is to recognize the diseased portion of the relationship, stay connectedContinue reading “Getting Help”
Calibrating your Compass
Take a perfectly functional compass and put it in a room with an electromagnet and it will forget which way is north. It’ll point to the magnet because the magnet is exerting a force that it cannot ignore, far more powerful than that exercised by the distant, measly north pole. When addiction enters a relationshipContinue reading “Calibrating your Compass”
Create Addiction Free Zones
If addiction has taken over your relationship, there’s plenty that you can do other than succumb to its evil yourself. Just because your boyfriend wants to get piss-drunk every time you go out, doesn’t mean you have to clean him up. Even if your girlfriend picks fights with everyone, doesn’t mean you have to makeContinue reading “Create Addiction Free Zones”
