Finding Your Purpose is So Cliche: Why You Should Still Try to Find it Anyways Finding your purpose seems to be the cliche line of the day at the moment. Every coach and person out there seems to have a secret remedy to help people find their life purpose in 12 easy steps. If only…
Why Are Cross and Co-Occurring Addictions So Challenging? Cross-addictions occur when people with addiction switch back and forth from one addiction to another. When people with addiction are unable to use their primary addiction for self-soothing or dissociation, they switch to a secondary addiction. Co-occurring addictions may occur when people with addiction engage in multiple…
Why Stigma is Still So Challenging for People in Recovery When you look back on how you used to look and feel when addicted and know your life now, you may wonder what happened. That is the reality of recovery. It can be such a shift from who you were then to who you are…
Functional Addiction Cannot Replace Recovery Even if you think you are not struggling with addiction recovery, it may be that you are living a double life without realizing it. Functioning well while drinking or using drugs is not a replacement for recovery. You still need to look at the bigger picture of your addiction to…
What Are Tips to Get My “Happy Place” Back? A new study has been looking at how to best support people in recovery from prescription painkillers, opiates, and heroin. It is possible to restore the body’s natural reward system, which gets hijacked in addiction. Finding that baseline ‘happy place’ can be tricky but necessary to…
How Do I Choose a Sober Living House? It is safe to assume that people who struggle on the road to recovery have been waiting a long time to get to a point where they are sober. Maybe several tries to maintain sobriety have kept them from achieving what feels like a lofty goal. It…
Alcohol and Trauma Impact the Brain in Ways You May Not Realize Addiction research provides insight into the understanding of addiction. We continue to search for answers on addiction developments and the hope is to find connections between how it develops and social, experiential, or biological circumstances. Researchers have looked at many ways a person’s…
Do I Need a Recovery Contract? When a loved one completes a rehab program, they get to come home soon (unless they go to sober living). Celebrations may take time because the reality is life can be messy in sobriety and recovery is for life. That said, a person needs lots of help setting (and…
What Can I Expect from a Loved One Home from Rehab? When a loved one is on their way home from rehab, the whole family is likely excited (and a bit nervous). Maybe they have all traveled this road before but maybe they are starting to ponder what this will all be like. In spite…
Don’t Believe the Hype About “Geographical Cures” for Addiction Recovery cannot be something you just happen across, it takes planning and foresight. When you head out on vacation, you have to think about where you go and what you do so you don’t put yourself somewhere you can trigger yourself. Find out why you cannot…