Topic: barriers to recovery

Treatment generally includes identifying high risk situations and making a plan for dealing with them. Benny knew his sales meetings were high-risk; he just wasn’t willing to give them up without a trial. Three slips later, he acknowledged reality.

If you notice any of these signs, it’s a good idea to make an appointment right away, talk to your group leader before/after a group session, or bring them up in your support or step group.

They’re common to many forms of mental illness, and they can afflict most of us at one time or another during our lives, even if we don’t suffer from any disease at all.

Scott McMillin, Recovery Systems Institute Principal, discusses the barriers that keep an addict or alcoholic from seeking help. Learning new ways to communicate can allow a caring family member, friend, or professional to motivate them to get the help they need.

Instead of ‘how do we get someone else to change?’ we ask: ‘why hasn’t he or she changed already?”

Relapse doesn’t mean failure, but it does mean a great deal of pain and effort.

Suffering victim and destructive asshole, all wound up in the same person. That’s the “alcoholic/addictive” personality. But who is the “real person” underneath the disease?

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.

When we think of denial, we picture someone angrily insisting he doesn’t have a problem. But denial is more subtle than that.

The first step in knowing how to deal with husband, wife, or other person we love who has alcoholism is understanding the facts about alcohol abuse and the reasons alcoholic people resist help.