If you’re an addict in recovery, you may have already noticed this. Those who are closest to you are the last to believe you’re changing. Your wife, your husband, mother, father, children, close friends, don’t get as excited as you do when you celebrate one week clean, one month clean, or one year clean. They’veContinue reading “Those Who Care the Most About You Will Be the Last to Believe in Your Recovery”
Tag Archives: Substance Abuse
Staying Clean is Not Enough. We Must Also Develop a Personally Meaningful Life
Some Things You May Not Know About Substance Abuse, Part 7 When you are thoroughly caught up in addiction, your priorities are clear; the drug comes first. Everything is done or not done in service of the drug. It’s the first thing you think about in the morning, the last thing you think about atContinue reading “Staying Clean is Not Enough. We Must Also Develop a Personally Meaningful Life”
Addiction Takes Hostages
Some Things You May Not Know About Substance Abuse, Part 5 The further people go into addiction, the more their lives center around it. They discard all forms of recreation in favor of activities that include the addiction. All of their friends become using friends. Non-using friends drift away and the addict is drawn toContinue reading “Addiction Takes Hostages”
A Reflective Eclectic Treatment of Addiction
A Reading of The Urge: Our History of Addiction, Part V When I was growing up, some people in my life drank, but there was only one instance when someone’s drinking resulted in scary behavior. I grew up in the sixties and early seventies and considered myself a hippie, but drug culture passed me andContinue reading “A Reflective Eclectic Treatment of Addiction”
Zero Tolerance or Harm Reduction?
A Reading of The Urge: Our History of Addiction, Part IV My very first client when I began my career as an intern at a VA Medical Center’s Chemical Dependency Unit, confessed to me that he couldn’t stop thinking about having sex with little girls. He explained that heroin was the only thing that helpedContinue reading “Zero Tolerance or Harm Reduction?”
Is Addiction a Disease?
A Reading of The Urge: Our History of Addiction, Part III People have debated whether addiction is a disease for as long as I know and have never settled the matter for me, so that I cannot say for certain whether it is or isn’t. It depends on what you mean by disease. The wordContinue reading “Is Addiction a Disease?”
The Origin of “Addiction”
A Reading of The Urge: Our History of Addiction, Part II The first time someone used the word addict in English, he was criticizing the Pope. Since then, the word has been used millions of times about all kinds of people. The meaning has changed. Yet, in a sense, the original meaning remains the same.
The Spectrum of Addiction
A Reading of The Urge: Our History of Addiction, Part I I’d like to devote a few posts to chew over Carl Erik Fisher’s book, The Urge: Our History of Addiction. Fisher is an addiction psychiatrist, bioethicist, and assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University.
Wreckage on the Road to Reconciliation:
The Helpless I’m glad I didn’t decide to be an experimental psychologist. If I had, I might’ve had to lock dogs up in cages and shock them for the sake of science. As it is, others can do it and we can benefit from the things they learned by doing so. Continue reading →
Wreckage on the Road to Reconciliation
Meaningful Suffering Versus Becoming an Impossible Martyr Is the hurt you are experiencing from your loved one providing the meaning and purpose to your life? Continue reading →
Keith Wilson - Counseling 