Addiction doesn’t just affect one person—it impacts everyone around them. Families often bear the weight of confusion, resentment, and heartache, even as they want to help their loved ones recover. Family counseling bridges the gap between pain and healing, offering tools to rebuild relationships, foster understanding, and create a stronger foundation for lasting recovery. By…
Seeing someone you love struggle with meth addiction can be heartbreaking and overwhelming. You might feel unsure about how to help or where to even begin. Methamphetamine, or meth, is a powerful and addictive stimulant that can cause serious damage, but your support can play a key role in their recovery. Meth addiction treatment from…
For those of you who are not yet familiar with it, I would like to introduce the Columbia Suicide Severity Risk Scale (C-SSRS). The C-SSRS is comprised of a series of simple questions used to assess the severity and immediacy of a suicide risk. One of the many benefits of the scale are that the…
Addiction takes a heavy toll on relationships. Finding ways to heal these relationships is an important part of the recovery process since staying sober requires a strong support system. Having people you can trust and who will keep you accountable is important for staying on the right track. If you are seeking affordable substance use…
Despite the fact that the specific issues and the physiological effects of substance use disorders impact women differently than men, behavioral health services, have rarely taken sex and gender differences into account. In order to address this and improve treatment services for women, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMHSA) developed a treatment…
Research indicates that addiction occurs at an approximate rate of 30% in the Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender-Queer/Questioning (LGBTQ) community. This is primarily due to social stigma that still exists for LGBTQ people in society. Traditionally, gender is defined as either “male” or “female” and is referred to as the binary gender system. There are numerous nonbinary identities that…
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has identified, what they call, eight dimensions of wellness. The thought is that, if individuals focus on these eight dimensions, they can optimize their health. Every aspect of wellness can affect a person’s life so it is important to focus on all eight of them.…
On May 7, 2020, the National Institute of Health issued a press release highlighting the findings of a new data analysis, which they had funded, and which had been published in the American Jour-nal of Preventative Medicine. The striking discovery found that patients who visited the emergency department for an opioid overdose are 100 times…
The Washington Post has reported that suspected overdoses ,not all of them fatal, nationally jumped 18% in March 2020, 29% in April 2020, and 42% in May 2020. These numbers were collected from data gathered from ambulance teams, hospitals, and police. The theory is that the culprit behind the spikes is the Coronavirus pandemic. The…
It is always hard to confront someone when you suspect they may be abusing alcohol. How can you be sure? The signs of alcohol use disorder can be difficult to identify. And approaching someone you suspect has a problem can be complicated, especially when you care about that person. If you have been asking yourself,…