How Important Is Nutrition During Drug and Alcohol Recovery? Renowned …
In a new article published on AmericanAddictionCenters.com, Dr. Carson discusses how the right food plan can enhance brain function and thus increase the chance for successful recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. Share on Twitter Share on …
Read more on PR Web (press release)

Schubart: The future of Vermont health care
We'll need to invest preemptively in wellness education from preschool through secondary, specifically as it relates to addictions, sexuality, nutrition and personal safety. We will need foresight to understand and address the interplay among our legal …
Read more on vtdigger.org

Stanford humanities course empowers recovering addicts
Taught by Stanford humanities scholars, courses about philosophy, the arts and history have become an integral part of the addiction recovery process for the women of Hope House. By Corrie Goldman The Humanities at … Francone, who initiated the Hope …
Read more on Stanford Report

Life Change Announces New Addiction Recovery App
"Our goal at Life Change Recovery is to continually guide clients and their loved ones through the process of finding the right addiction treatment program to meet their individual needs. Our new app will make this process easier and more fluid. The …
Read more on PR Web (press release)

Recovering addict has big hopes for The Next Step
Glasgow's dry bar – which Ms Campbell is thinking of calling The Next Step after the well known 12-step addiction recovery programme – will follow in the footsteps of The Brink in Liverpool. That dry bar opened two years ago and has attracted top acts …
Read more on Herald Scotland

Stanford humanities course empowers recovering addicts
Stanford humanities course empowers recovering addicts and alcoholics. Taught by Stanford humanities scholars, courses about philosophy, the arts and history have become an integral part of the addiction recovery process for the women of Hope House.
Read more on Stanford Report

Addiction Recovery Documentary: “The Anonymous People,” Airs Wednesday In …
Just like women with breast cancer, or people with HIV/AIDS, courageous addiction recovery advocates are starting to come out of the shadows to tell their true stories. The moving story of The Anonymous People will be told through the faces and voices …
Read more on Baristanet

People often find their way to recovery in the midst of a crisis. Someone standing at the crossroads of recovery, may have been arrested for DUI, may have been fired, or may have received a scary report from the doctor. He may have heard the bottom line demand from his spouse– “Get help or we are getting a divorce.” Or, the alcoholic/addict may in fact, have a moment of clarity and really be able to see that he does have a problem and that help and abstinence are called for. The alcoholic/addict feels afraid. He feels ashamed.  He feels angry at others or at himself for being in this position in the first place.   

Fear, coercion or crisis helps him find his way into recovery. Fear is a fairly good short term motivator, but not so good in the long run. Once the fear subsides and the crisis is over, it is very easy to lose your motivation and momentum. At the point where the cycle of addiction is interrupted by failing to take the next drink, dose, or joint, there is a lot of tension, anxiety, and mindfulness of where you are in the process. Detox or withdrawal may occur, with physical and/or emotional symptoms being very consciously experienced.

When you get to feeling better physically and emotionally after detoxing, it is easy to lose your momentum. Your focus on recovery can dissolve. Some of the problems that once motivated your recovery might be resolved now. Because you have quit drinking or using, your spouse and kids are once again speaking to you and are in the process of forgiving you. You may have even won back some trust. Everything seems to be going well.  

Under these circumstances it is quite easy for you to take your eyes off the target and lose your focus on recovery. Erroneously, you may believe that your abstinence is not so fragile now.  Feeling better, you may think you have it “whipped”. 

Without actively focusing on your continuing abstinence and recovery, your behavior can begin to drift away from the newly instituted behavioral changes that you have made. You run the risk of returning to old thinking, old feelings, and then ultimately old behavior.  The reason why this would happen is that you are not consciously taking steps to continue on a path of recovery. This path involves many changes in your behavior and in your life style. Without making conscious choices in regard to how each decision affects your new recovery life or your old addiction life, you are unconsciously choosing your old life. Choosing recovery is not like jump starting your damaged car battery where once you get it started, it recharges itself as run it. You have to continuously work a program of recovery. Without doing so, your efforts will be short-lived. 

You will quit going to counseling. You will quit going to meetings. You will have stopped calling your recovery support people. Your defenses will go back up and you may take exception to the feedback of significant others who tell you that you are acting like you used to before recovery.

You won’t be able to see that you are on the road to relapse. You won’t be able to understand why they are concerned. You won’t be able to identify the behavioral changes that scare them because you will be back in denial. Being around old drinking/using environments and friends don’t scare you. You can’t understand why it would scare your significant others. After all, you told them that you are not going to relapse. You have learned your lesson. What more do they want? 

After awhile, you will begin to think that you have your drinking or using under control now.  When you think of addiction as a thing of the past, that you now have it under control, you will begin to entertain the notion that you can now drink or use without negative consequences. If any of this sounds like your recent experience, you are in big trouble. You are in the relapse process and unless you do something now, you will relapse–and soon.

Many support groups are ready to help
CADUCEUS: Abingdon, Va., Fridays, 7:30 p.m.; Addiction Recovery Resources for Professionals; Dr. Lewis Weber & Associates, 540-815-4214 for directions. CANCER: For anyone whose life has been touched by cancer. Free, family, friends welcome … and …
Read more on TriCities.com

Organizations team up to combat prescription drug abuse in Utah
Pharmacy personnel in Smith's Food and Drug stores are working to make people aware of the dangers involved with prescription drugs, particularly narcotics. Lt. Michael Ross of the Salt Lake City Police … “You take an opiate drug for so long, no …
Read more on fox13now.com

Bikers rev up for baptisms at church, on a roll in Surrey
Much of their work has become about helping others. Pearce, and people involved with the church, work with addiction recovery houses in Surrey and gather donations for people in need. On Dec. 19 and 20, they gathered 480 boxes of donated food that they …
Read more on Surrey Now

Alcoholics and addicts are called upon to learn new living skills to replace the roles that chemicals played in their lives. Some of the most important skills to be acquired in early recovery are effective communication and relationship skills. 

Assertiveness is necessary for communication and relationship skills. This self-assured style not only involves being able to stand up for one’s own rights without trampling on the rights of others, it also involves being able to say “no” without feeling guilty. It encompasses taking responsibility for one’s own feelings, behaviors, decisions, actions, and reactions, while giving up responsibility for those same things in others. It includes being able to appropriately express a full range of emotions to others.

Self-confident, firm behavior involves being able to openly, honestly, and directly communicate one’s wants and needs. Firm boundary setting does not involve building impenetrable walls. It tells others where you stand, and outlines a range of appropriate behavior in regard to you. 

Passivity denotes an absence of self-confidence and firmness. It generally involves abandoning one’s own rights, wants, needs, to the wants or needs of others. An absence of appropriate boundaries allows others to pretty much treat you as they want, regardless of what you want. 

Aggression involves trespassing others’ boundaries to get your own wants or needs met. It can involve verbal, emotional, sexual, spiritual, or intellectual abuse. This could involve manipulation and dirty fight tactics. People can also be passive-aggressive, which is about being aggressive in sneaky, covert way. More often than not, it is about acting out anger in a hidden way. A classic example is typical backbiting, talking behind one’s back kind of behavior that you see in the world of work every day. Most people exhibit this behavior from time to time. The following are examples of passive aggressive responses to a request that you don’t want to do:

1. Saying “ok”, but not having any intention of doing it.
2. Saying “ok”, intending to do it, but putting it off until eventually they do it themselves.
3. Saying “ok”, doing it, but doing a lousy job at it, thinking “they will never ask me to do that again.”
4. Saying “ok”, doing it and doing a good job at it, but going around to everyone complaining about their imposition in the first place.
5. Instead of saying “no”, giving 15 excuses why you can’t do it and the real reason is that you don’t want to.

An appropriately firm way to deal with an undesirable request, is to say, “No, I don’t want to do that”, or “No thanks”, or “No.” When you are not accustomed to being assertive, a simple “No” can feel aggressive. 

Most people have some area of their lives where they feel pretty confident about being standing up for themselves. Even the least self-assured person has some area where they can be assertive and the most self-confident person has some area where they just can’t seem to get it together.

The skills that you use to be firm in one area are transferable to other areas where it seems like you will always give in. All it takes to transfer these skills is “risk”. The risk is usually fear of loss when you avoid trying to be assertive. This fear of loss is often about loss of esteem, self-esteem, loss of goods and services, or loss of the relationship. Most of the time, the fear is way out of proportion to the likelihood of actual loss.

In order to find out which areas you have the least confidence in your ability to be assertive, ask yourself whether you typically behave in a confident, firm manner when you engage in the following circumstances:

1. Getting off the phone from the telemarketers without listening to their sales pitch?
2. Taking something defective back to Walmart?
3. Sending a steak back that is not cooked the way you ordered it?
4. Telling your neighbor “no” when s/he wants to borrow something.
5. Setting boundaries with someone at work who tries to take advantage of your good nature either by trying to get you to do their work, or asking you to cover up for them.
6. Negotiating for changes at work, either for more money or a change in working conditions. 
7. Saying “no” to one of your siblings who wants something that you don’t want to give — time, energy, or other resources.
8. Saying “no” (and staying at “no”) to one of the kids who wants something you don’t want to give, do, or buy.
9. Setting boundaries with the previous generation (your parents or spouse’s parents) when they want to meddle in your business where they don’t belong (e.g. money or marriage).
10. Conveying your feelings assertively to your significant other who has done something that involved your feelings being hurt.

Can you see patterns in the areas where you want to be confidently firm, and where you have more trouble? What are they?

In which areas of difficulty can you accomplish being assertive by practicing the skills you already have? If you took the risk, what would happen?

Look at the areas that lack confident firmness and ask yourself “What is it that I haven’t been willing to risk?”
Much of the time, the fear is not reality-based. If you find that you cannot be confidently firm in close personal relationships, the risk is probably fear of abandonment. You may be afraid that those significant people won’t love you if you are honest with them or if you take care of yourself. 

Assertiveness is a worthwhile endeavor. It builds and reinforces self-esteem. Passivity, aggression, and passive-aggression undermines self-esteem. Learning to be confident and competent in your relationships with others is an important recovery task. Confident, firm communication is a component of acquiring these relationship skills.