Topics

Diabetics and heart patients are asked to make changes in lifestyle to reduce the risk of future crisis. Therapy is sometimes used to support those changes.

Imagine a student sitting in the school auditorium listening to a teacher or police officer insist that cannabis makes you less intelligent. Meanwhile, he knows that the kid in front of him, an honor student, smokes pot every weekend.

Our longstanding practice of branding anyone who drank again a ‘failure’ kept us from recognizing very real success right under our noses.

One large survey of alcoholics found that some 14% had actually become dependent within a year of the first drink. The percentage almost doubled when the time period was extended to two years.

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?

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.

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.

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.