Addiction, Trauma, and the Compartments in Your Head
Trauma and addiction allows people to create a psychic architecture that requires a lot of walls, closets, compartments, and closed doors. read more
View ArticleAcute Care for Addiction
The difficulties encountered by both the patient and practitioners related to early recovery and detoxification needs.read more
View ArticleYour Lizard Brain
Understanding automatic behavior allows us to surrender to what we cannot control. It frees us to do the next right thing by staying in the present rather than worrying about the future or being shamed...
View ArticleThe Revolving Door of Relapse
Relapse is a fact of addiction. Sobriety is something of a miracle when you think of all the forces that operate against being clean and sober. Yet sobriety happens.read more
View ArticleBuprenorphine, Methadone and Opiate Replacement Therapy
One of the more controversial issues in addiction medicine is the practice of opiate replacement therapy, or ORT. It is important to understand the history of ORT if we are to begin to understand how...
View ArticleBuprenorphine, Methadone and Opiate Replacement Therapy - 2
After The Harrison Act was ratified, it was the beginning of the DEA and the “Controlled Substances” legislations. Again, although well meaning, this effectively drove addicted patients underground,...
View ArticleBuprenorphine, Methadone and Opiate Replacement Therapy
So the opiate problem is not solved. There is no perfect drug or therapy, but it is still a certainty that the use of street heroin or synthetic opiates is extremely lethal... So the opiate problem is...
View ArticleAddiction and Projective Identification
I like to think of it, projective identification, as an attempt by the person one is working with to inject you with a hypodermic and give you some of their soul whether you want it or not. read more
View ArticleOnce a Pickle, Never a Cucumber
I argue that if someone can use an addictive substance without compulsive use then they are not an addict.read more
View ArticleDeconstructing Your Triggers
The problem with the mood alteration is that it doesn’t solve the problem. It just buys some time until the next stress, fear, craving or symptom occurs.read more
View ArticleThe Family and Addiction
Untangling the triangles of addicted families can be a full-time job. Since one grows up in a family with a history and a present reality, as a child, one’s major frame of reference is the family...
View ArticleMarijuana Revisited
The more you use and the younger you start, the more the effect of the drug. And the effect of the drug is very simply to make you unmotivated and emotionally flat.read more
View ArticleAnxiety and Addiction
What is happening in the brain is the building of receptors that have to be filled with alcohol or drugs to achieve a calm state. So tolerance develops and one needs more and more alcohol or...
View ArticlePain Management in Recovery
The answer is not whether to provide adequate pain relief. That is a given. There is no reason that anyone with addiction should be made to suffer needlessly. If we know that someone is going to suffer...
View ArticleBorderline Personality Disorder and Addiction
These people are demanding, hard on themselves and others, constant life crises. The chaos leads to shame and lack of self-worth even though the person may be very intelligent or accomplished. They...
View ArticleMore About Marijuana
If, however, you are having a problem with your use like the other people that I see every day, we are here to help you. read more
View ArticleCross Addiction and What It Means
The dopamine dysregulation in the limbic system of the brain seen in addiction is not able to tell the difference between addictive drugs. read more
View ArticleThe Lion King
If through therapy, AA, life experiences or a kind word, the addicted person comes to a place of self-validation and acceptance of their feelings, sobriety and a full life.read more
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