If you are in treatment for an alcohol or drug addiction, exercise can be an amazing tool for your recovery. Working out can improve your mental health by providing you with an outlet for negative emotions, such as anger, stress, and anxiety. Also, having a new fitness routine can reduce cravings because it gives you
By the time I was 15, my mother’s alcohol problem had become severe. My parents’ marriage ended. Divorced, no career skills, she was only able to find a low-paying job. She kept sliding downward financially. My dad wasn’t great about child support. Evictions, loss of a car, and domestic violence in her new relationship (and
Let’s take judgment about opioids out of the picture and name it for what it really is: a public health crises. People struggling with opioid addiction (or any addiction) are people who need compassion and help, not judgment. “Most people who become addicted [to opioids), like me, do so after a prescription for a painkiller
Americans are addicted to legal drugs and by drugs I mean pharmaceutical drugs. Pharmaceutical companies are the most profitable industry in the world. Marcia Angell, M.D. first woman editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine reports that in 2002 the $35.9 billion the top drug companies earned were greater than the profits of the other
Pills for problems – can’t take just one. Pills, pills, pills. By pills I mean Vicodin, Lortab, OxyContin. So many pills for so many problems. Got pain? Feeling sad or blue? Not happy enough? Or, do you just want to get high? Take a few pills. As an addiction counselor I’ve seen the number of
The Blessing of Relapse? Really. Yes, really. Let’s say Joe has been using alcohol and pot since he was 13. At 29 he’s tired of being exhausted, broke, fighting with his girlfriend, having his parents upset with him. He’s done. Joe starts attending AA/NA 12 step meetings. But, he doesn’t do the 90 meetings in
My cousin Kim was up in July for my sister Lane’s memorial. My smart, sweet, difficult sister who died at 56 from alcoholism. Kim and I were lamenting about Lane’s death and Cory Monteith’s. Sad, very sad. Cory’s death touched a national chord and Lane’s our personal one because we have a family riddled with addiction.
As I talk to people in the business community, at my networking groups and certainly among my clients about my sister Lane’s passing I hear story after story of loss: “My brother died at 41 from heroin, my sister at 38, my daughter at 30 from an overdose.” The truth is addiction kills the body
Losing my sister Lane to addiction – there isn’t a tougher subject I could write about. Both as a sister and as an addiction counselor for nearly 30 years. Addiction is a a killer. It’s a disease that touches nearly every family so I write this for myself, but also for those of you that
Americans are addicted to legal and illegal drugs and by drugs I mean pharmaceutical drugs. Pharmaceutical companies are the most profitable industry in the world. Marcia Angell, M.D. first woman editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine reports that in 2002 the $35.9 billion the top drug companies earned were greater than the profits of