Recovery's First Year: Trauma or Paradise?
After years of suffering, of enduring horrible consequences and personal decline the family finally gets their wish and their loved one enters treatment. Thirty, sixty, ninety days later . . . presto ....
View ArticleAddiction and Recovery: Trick or Treat?
Happy Halloween One and All~In honor of this day, I began thinking about how addiction and recovery relate to this theme. Addiction: Trick or Treat? Well, at first we might see the drinking and...
View ArticleAddiction Treatment Interview with CeDAR's Diane Sanders
Alice Tanner of Addiction Recovery Consulting Services interviews Diane Sanders of University of Colorado's CeDAR treatment program. This program offers in-patient treatment for chemical dependency, a...
View ArticleEarly Recovery from Addiction: Why Do We Expect it Not to Feel Bad?
Why do addicts, alcoholics and their families have this delusional idea that the early stages of recovery should be anything different than the early stages of recovery from most other diseases?...
View ArticleAddiction: How Can We Be So Blind???
Did you hear about the 22 year-old guy in Sumter, S.C. who gunned down three trick-or-treaters who came knocking at his door Halloween night, killing one and injuring the other two? He used an assault...
View ArticleCan You Find the Bottle (Addiction) in This Picture?
In yesterday's post about the newspaper article on the tragic shooting in South Carolina I said "there is a bottle in this picture." What this means is that when I read an article or hear a news story,...
View ArticleElection Day: The Power of Choice
Today is election day! Regardless of the outcome, today will be an historic one in our country. The right to vote, in essence the right to choose, is a powerful privilege. Not everyone has this...
View ArticleReaching Out: Friend From Past Reconnects
How important is our youth? Are there certain times in our life that are just "special" in ways that perhaps we don't realize until many years later? Are there people we have lost touch with that we...
View ArticleIntervention Fears: How Realistic Are They?
Every call I receive contains many spoken and unspoken negative feelings and emotions . . . anger, doubt, sadness, despair, anxiety. The biggest one is fear, the underlying taproot of all the others....
View ArticleFear: Paralyzer or Motivator
In FDR's fist inaugural speech in 1933 he spoke these famous words, " . . . the only thing we have to fear is fear itself . . ." This country was in the depths of the Great Depression, a time that...
View ArticleAntidotes to Fear
I've been on a "fear" kick for the past few days, so I will wrap it up tonight with antidotes. Fear is a God-given emotion and will strike all of us at some time or another; that is a given. Big fears,...
View ArticleControlling Destiny or Destiny Controlling?
There are a few favorite sayings that I like because they put in a nutshell a truism. For example, "What isn't measured isn't managed"; "Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional." Some sayings sound...
View ArticleIntervention: Crisis is a Terrible Thing to Waste
Intervention usually happens as the result of some crisis. Think about it . . . arrest, divorce, fired from job, accident, injuries. It is never done when people are having a good day. But, people do...
View ArticleIntervention: Changing Directions Before It's Too Late
If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed~ Chinese ProverbMakes sense, doesn't it? Addiction intervention is all about changing direction. It is about changing...
View ArticleIntervention for Impaired Professionals
When it comes to intervening on a licensed professional or conducting an intervention for a family member or friend of a licensed professional are all interventions and interventionists the same? Or,...
View ArticleIntervention is Only a Start
I was having coffee with a friend of mine from Southern California this afternoon and we got to talking about intervention, treatment and recovery. We both are in the field of addiction recovery; he...
View ArticleHappy Holiday From Addiction
Happy Holidays to all of our friends and family from Bay Area Intervention and Addiction Consulting - Alice Tanner & Loki my 3 year old Chow
View ArticleIntervention: Gift of a Lifetime
Another year is rapidly coming to a close, the holidays are fast approaching. The "problem" is still here . . . addiction. It comes in various forms, no two families are the same. For some it is...
View ArticleIntervention Knows No Season
Fall . . . a time of year when we think of holidays, of family, of giving thanks, of being together, of joy and love, good friends and good food. For families suffering with addiction, the holidays are...
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