If you haven’t heard of Mindfulness, it’s a form of meditation designed to bring greater awareness to your mind and body, allowing you to separate your thoughts from your emotions. For years, Mindfulness has been used to help manage cravings; more recently, mindfulness-based interventions have been used to specifically target

Your recovery should come first. Don’t make room for people who cause you pain or make you feel small. It’s one thing if a person owns up to their behavior and makes an effort to change. But if a person disregards your feelings, ignores your boundaries, and continues to treat

What’s a Boundary Anyway? Boundaries are limits we set in relationships to take care of ourselves. They are guidelines we establish for people in our lives that teach them how to treat us. Boundaries are ours and ours alone, no one can set them for us, nor can we set

Codependent is a word that is thrown around rather loosely, but what does it really mean to be codependent? By definition a codependent person is one who has let another person’s behavior affect him or her and who is obsessed with controlling that person’s behavior. As you might imagine most

There are many benefits to consistently attending meetings throughout your recovery.  Here are a few reasons to encourage you to stay the course: Make new friends It’s not unusual to outgrow some of the relationships you had when you were using.  You may find that most of the people around

Oftentimes, when we talk about addiction, we discuss the addict themselves. Certainly, much of treatment program centers around substance abuse, mental health, and emotional and physical recovery of the addict, but there is another important element to observe and consider. The role of the family in the addict’s life is

The words treatment, rehab, addiction, and addict pack a powerful punch. Sometimes so powerful we are crippled into never saying them. Whether we are the ones seeking, or in, treatment, or are family of someone needing treatment, the notion of sharing and discussing the topic of addiction is often silenced.

Enabling and caregiving both involve a strong desire to love, help and nurture another person. These desires are amplified, often with a sense urgency and desperation, for those with loved ones in active addiction.  The reality, however, is that many of the behaviors that seem “helpful” are actually quite the

Addiction to alcohol and drugs affects one’s body, mind and soul.  But the damage doesn’t end there. Families and friends also suffer as their loved one’s dependency progresses, stress builds, and communication starts to break down. Families need to recovery from addiction, too. Family members and loved ones find ways

Alcoholism and drug addiction is a disease, not a lack of willpower, not a moral weakness, not a sign of a weak character, not a result of life’s pressures, and not a symptom of another disease or disorder. Alcoholics and addicts drink/use because they have a disease. The bio-chemical changes