For those in recovery from drug or alcohol addiction, learning how to manage day-to-day life while maintaining sobriety can be difficult. Finding fun sober activities is another hard part of recovery, especially when you are new to sobriety and abstinence. However, engaging in sober activities is important for your sobriety and your mental health. Sober …
Today, we are going to discuss how exercise help depression and addiction. But before we get into all of that, did you ever participate in a talent show as a kid? Maybe you danced. Maybe you performed magic tricks. Maybe—like me—you wowed the crowd with your lip-sync skills. (If only everyone could be so cool). …
Get Moving! Does Physical Exercise Help Depression and Addiction? Read More »
Addiction recovery comes with all sorts of losses and gains. Including weight gain after addiction recovery. You may drop unhealthy habits and create rewarding routines, part ways with old friends and make new ones, and trade substance-induced confidence for true self-confidence that only comes from within. And, yeah, you might unburden yourself from the weight of …
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My husband and I joke—but in that partially-truthful way—that we’ll watch Breaking Bad with our boys before they become teenagers in hopes of warding off any interest in drugs. Jesse Pinkman’s character arc alone is enough to do the job. But what about sobriety? Do movies, books and TV shows offer an honest portrayal of …
There are a lot of moving parts to addiction relapse prevention. It would be nice to just put yourself on autopilot and cruise through the process, but unfortunately, that’s not the way it works. It does get easier over time as you develop healthy habits, but there are always addiction recovery goals to focus on. …
The importance of nutrition is often overlooked in the recovery process. If you’re eating enough to maintain your weight, you may assume you’re getting everything you need, but that may not be true. “Recovery” means gaining back what you’ve lost, and in addiction, one of the things that people have often lost is nutritional balance. …
In Recovery for Alcohol and Substance Abuse, Nutrition Matters Read More »
One of the standard therapies used for addiction recovery and mental health treatment is cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). There are many versions and forms of CBT, but they share the principle that thoughts and core beliefs affect feelings and actions and that paying attention to our thoughts can help us change unwanted feelings and behaviors. The …
Why Does Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Help Addiction Recovery? Read More »
Treating all co-occurring mental health conditions simultaneously in a coordinated way makes addiction treatment most effective. When someone has both obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and addiction, addressing both leads to lasting healing. Understanding OCD A study reported in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders found that 27% of people with OCD had a substance use disorder …
Alcohol abuse is a pervasive issue, affecting people from all walks of life. It’s easy to think you would know for sure if you or a loved one had crossed the line and become addicted, but it isn’t always obvious. If you’re keeping up your daily responsibilities, it’s easy to make the argument that your …
Words have power. What we say about addiction impacts the stigma around it. Saying words like “addicts,” “alcoholic” or even “drug-fueled” can cause problems. Stigma can lead a person to keep their addiction a secret. They may also avoid seeking help. You may not even be aware that you are promoting stigma, but a …