Alcohol is both a legal and an intoxicating substance that is often intertwined in socially work-related settings. Needing to impress a potential client? Take them out for drinks. Happy Hour with co-workers meant to build comradery and good will? Show up after work ready for conversation and drinking. The Christmas party at work? Wear your “ugly sweater” and expect an assortment of drinks available at the makeshift bar. For many, these incidental potential interactions with alcoholic beverages hold no emotional weight.

Teens and drugs go together like soap and suds.  Nearly 80% of kids try alcohol before aging out of the teen years.  Last month about a third of high school seniors in the US drank.  Over 80% of teens are offered illegal substances, and over half accept.  Teens experiment with drugs.  Rather than entertain fantasy that somehow we can eliminate all teenage substance experimentation, it is important to look honestly into the most effective ways to prevent teenage substance abuse.

Learn about the benefits of substance abuse group treatment programs.
Benefits of Group Substance Abuse Treatment Programs

The process of recovering from substance abuse is not a simple one. Honestly, true recovery typically requires many diverse steps, services, and treatments to achieve comprehensive healing. However, detoxification (the process of safely withdrawing from drugs or alcohol) is not sufficient alone to combat the psychological, social, and behavioral problems associated with addiction.

The definition of surrender is to cease resistance to someone or something and submit to its authority. For someone who’s experienced drug or alcohol addiction, the idea of surrendering to something isn’t a foreign concept. As someone in active addiction, you may have surrendered time and time again to drugs and alcohol, relinquishing the control you didn’t think you’d ever regain. But what does it mean to surrender in recovery? Today we’re going to talk about surrender in addiction recovery and ways you can do this in your own journey.

After a successfully completing an addiction treatment program, a strong support network of friends who understand the struggles that someone working through recovery faces is crucial to ensuring long-term sobriety. Good friends are not only important as a way for a former drug user to voice his or her frustrations about life in recovery, but they are also integral during that person’s journey in recreating a new life for him or herself.

Much is being said about changing the nomenclature in the treatment of problematic substance use.  The latest diagnostic manual (DSM-5) no longer uses the term ‘addiction.’  Anne Fletcher wrote about the value of cleaning up the language of addiction using powerful comparisons to other avenues of treatment.  She astutely pointed out that no therapist would tell people trying to lose weight that no progress would be made until they labeled themselves in a pejorative way.  Can you imagine a therapist telling someone who is overweight that before work can begin she or he must identify as a fat pig?  To do so would be unconscionable.