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Mindfulness therapies are a way of stepping outside your everyday attitudes and beliefs — those automatic to your thinking — in order to consider alternatives that might improve your life.

It’s as if the addict is so accustomed to just acting on impulse that he/she has lost touch with the source of the impulse — ordinarily a negative emotional state such as anxiety, anger, sadness, etc.

Much of the anxiety the addicted person feels is anticipatory, based not on actual withdrawal symptoms but on the fear of not being able to find an adequate supply of the drug when they arrive.

Seeking evidence, and applying practices based on evidence to your clinical interventions, can help making decisions that increase the chances of a desired outcome

Kids like to bring up the fact that alcohol kills many times more Americans than marijuana (or heroin, or cocaine). So why are those drugs illegal, their use subject to harsh punishment, when alcohol isn’t?

If your inpatient provider determines eligibility using ASAM patient placement criteria, don’t forget to describe the patient’s need in those terms. Makes your case a little stronger by making their job a little easier.

Motivation springs from external as well as internal sources. Our internal desire for change is rarely enough to get us all the way through to our stated goals.

Medication may help, and we shouldn’t automatically rule it out because it’s “taking pills.” Some pills are okay, if we take them under supervision and according to directions.

Current research suggests that an optimal treatment episode is in the neighborhood of three months. That doesn’t mean it must be all in residence.

Put yourself in the reader’s place. Most big awards come after review committees of five to ten folks have sorted through a pile of proposals using a rather elaborate ratings tool.