Here are three resources to help you better understand alcohol abuse, what you can do to prevent or change it, and why it is not alcoholism.

To anonymously assess your drinking pattern and find suggestions for how to cut down, please visit NIAAA’s website, Rethinking Drinking.  And for an easy, quick read that explains how a person can loose control of their drinking and move beyond “low-risk” drinking limits, check out this eBook, Crossing The Line From Alcohol Use to Abuse to Dependence.

The following is a guest post by Cathy Taughinbaugh
of TreatmentTalk.org. Cathy is the author of the book, “

How to Find Your Joy When Your Loved One Has an Addiction  by Cathy Taughinbaugh

National Prevention Week starts today, May 20, and continues through May 26, 2012, and this year’s theme is We are the ones. How are you taking action? Here’s the week’s celebrations at a glance:

Everyone can play a role in prevention. Small actions can make a big difference! You can help prevent substance abuse and promote mental health in your own life and the lives of those in your community by participating in the “Prevention Pledge” and taking one or more of the following actions:

• Talk to others about the prevention of substance use and the promotion of mental, emotional and behavioral well-being.
• Attend a National Prevention Week 2012 event.
• Host a drug- and alcohol-free party or event.
• Learn about and support suicide prevention programs such as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-TALK [8255]) and the Trevor Project .
• Encourage your children, friends and/or family members to improve their mental, emotional, and behavioral health by promoting rest, a healthy diet, physical exercise, and time outdoors.
• Point loved ones in the direction of resources that can help them improve their mental, emotional and behavioral well-being.
• Talk with a friend or loved one who has been having a difficult time and discuss things that are bothering him/her.
• Be a role model in your community by abstaining from alcohol abuse and illicit drug use.
• Volunteer with a community program or organization that provides support for at-risk populations such as youth, Tribal communities, and military families.
• Encourage your local school district to implement an alcohol and substance use prevention program and provide programs to promote students’ mental health.
• Spread the prevention message online by posting about and linking to National Prevention Week 2012 on your Facebook and Twitter pages, and on your blog or Web site.
• Encourage friends, family, neighbors, and loved ones to sign the Prevention Pledge!

Visit SAMHSA’s Facebook page to take the “Prevention Pledge,” and make a difference in your community!

One approach is share information with your teens from the perspective of your teen keeping themselves safe when around friends who are drinking. Here are four informational conversation starters:

1. Did you know alcohol is not processed like other foods and liquids, which is why a person acts the way they do when drunk? Alcohol enters the bloodstream through the walls of the small intestine. Because alcohol dissolves in water, the bloodstream carries it throughout the body (which is 60-70% water) where it is absorbed into body tissue high in water content, such as the brain. The liver metabolizes alcohol – meaning that’s how it leaves the body – we can’t vomit, sweat or urinate it out. That’s because alcohol is not digested like other foods or liquids. It takes the liver about one hour (often up to two) to metabolize the alcohol in one standard drink.  Four drinks will take four hours. There are many variables that influence how quickly alcohol is metabolized, including weight, gender, stress, medications, and stage of brain development. Notice that last one — stage of brain development. The teen brain goes through some key developmental processes, especially through one’s early 20s. Because the teen brain is not fully developed, young drinkers are more vulnerable than adults to many of the effects of alcohol in some areas of the brain — areas that control and modulate emotion, memory, learning, motivation and judgment, for example, AND less vulnerable in other areas — areas that control drowsiness or lack of coordination. The latter is partly what gives the perception that a young drinker can “handle” their drinking.

Because the brain is mostly water and highly vascularized (meaning lots of blood vessels) and it controls everything we think, feel, say and do, the excess alcohol (waiting its turn out the liver) stays in the bloodstream and suppresses certain brain functions, such as the ability to “think” straight and act normally. This is why a person can find him/herself engaging in the drinking behaviors listed in #3.

2.  Did you know alcohol works differently in the teen brain than it does in the adult brain? Check out this link, the science in a nutshell, at The Partnership at DrugFree.org for all kinds of information as to what this means for underage drinking.

 3. Did you know there’s actually a “number of drinks” definition for binge drinking, which is often how people get into trouble – too much alcohol sitting in the brain suppresses brain function. Binge drinking is defined as having 4 or more standard drinks on an occasion for women and 5 or more for men. Binge drinking can cause a person to engage in drinking behaviors – even if the drinking pattern occurs only once, like those listed below:

• Fighting with friends or family about the drinking; saying or doing things you don’t remember or regret.
• Experiencing blackouts – fragmentary or complete; vomiting; passing out.
• Driving while under the influence; riding in a car with someone who is.
• Having unplanned or unprotected sex.
• Being admitted to the emergency room with a high BAC
• Doing poorly at work or school because of recovering from the drinking.

And by the way: “normal” or “low-risk” drinking limits are defined as: no more than 3 standard drinks on any one day or 7 in a week for women and no more than 4 standard drinks on any day or 14 in a week for men.

4. Did you know there’s such a thing as a “standard drink?”  Often people get into trouble with drinking because they aren’t aware of concepts, such as a standard drink, which is defined as 5 ounces of table wine, 12 ounces of regular beer, 8-9 ounces of malt liquor (think ale or lager beers), or 1.5 ounces of “hard liquor,” such as 80-proof vodka, gin, bourbon or scotch.

Not only are people unaware of the sizes of a standard drink of various alcoholic beverages, but they are also not fully aware of how many standard drinks are in common cocktails or drink containers. This confusion is what makes it so easy for a person to engage in binge drinking (defined in #3 above), which in turn changes brain function (and therefore behaviors) because of the way alcohol is processed by the body (see #1).

One approach for this conversation is to visit NIAAA’s website, Rethinking Drinking, together. They have some great calculator tools for conversations, such as: “If your friends are drinking, one way to keep yourself safe and to do what you can to keep them safe is to understand how many drinks are in a glass or container.  For example, did you know a tall beer contains 2 drinks? Using this drink size calculator, let’s see how many standard drinks are in a red cup of wine.”

BOTTOM LINE, sharing this kind of information with your teen empowers them. If a teen fully understands the concepts of a standard drink and a ‘standard drinks count’ for binge drinking, as examples, they can be prepared to:

• count their friend’s drinks and better understand why their friend is behaving the way they are (because of alcohol’s impact on the brain while waiting to be metabolized by the liver)
• know not to take to heart anything their friend says while under the influence (because alcohol’s impact on the brain changes a person’s behaviors)
• know never to accept a ride, even if their friend has only had “a couple.”

The most important thing is to keep talking!

For additional conversation starters, check out my new eBook, Crossing The Line From Alcohol Use to Abuse to Dependence – just $3.99. [Link to  free apps to read Kindle on Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad...]

For many family members and friends who are repeatedly faced with a loved one’s drinking or drug use behaviors (arguments, blackouts, broken promises, inconsistent actions, sneaking, hiding, lying, driving under the influence), this system instinctively engages as they try to cope, control, minimize, deny, protect self and others when faced with a loved one’s chronic substance misuse with little or no understanding of the condition/disease. When repeatedly activated, the neural networks become embedded brain maps around the triggering emotion (anger, fear, frustration, dashed hope, insecurity, anxiety), eventually causing a person to react to all emotions as if they were facts. To better understand this concept, check out Coping With Secondhand Drinking/Drugging as a Young Person Can Cause a Young Person to Wire Unhealthy Coping Skills.

BUT, the key point of this post is to share the wise words of Dr. John J. Ratey, “Is it a Stick or a Snake?” written in his book,  SPARK, The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain.

Look at the image above more closely. On the left is a stick and on the right is a snake. Dr. Ratey’s expression is a metaphor for what happens to a person when they get stuck in the fight-or-flight stress response system (like that which happens to family members and friends trying to stay safe from or cope with a loved one’s drinking or drug use behaviors). They start to see all sticks as snakes. And they quit responding — meaning to engage in a reasoned, thought-out response (which occurs in the Cerebral Cortex neural networks) vs a reactionary reaction (which occurs in the Limbic System’s fight-or-flight neural networks).  Thus, immediately recalling this expression, “Is it a Stick or a Snake?” when you sense that anxious, angry, fearful, sad feeling starting to rise, can buy you the seconds it takes to STOP yourself from giving in and reacting to the emotion as if it were a fact. For more on how, check out, Step Away From the Conflict – Change Where You Think.

Related Posts:
The Health Consequences of Secondhand Drinking
Families Need Recovery From Addiction, Too

Lisa & Her Daughters, Summer 2011

As my daughters took charge of making dinner last night, I sat on the tall white stool in our kitchen and beamed. This Mother’s Day was a testament to the power of breaking the cycles of the family disease of addiction, whether it’s to drugs or alcohol. In our case, it was a testament to what can happen when you heal the family or friend’s “side” of the disease.

By a fluke of timing and schedules, both of my daughters were able to come home for Mother’s Day this year — one on break between law school and her summer job in D.C. and the other en-route from training in Oregon to her home base in southern CA. It felt wonderful to be the three of us, again, driving home from the airport, catching up on each other’s lives, laughing and oh so very happy, which is not what it used to be like.

Back in the day, when we did not understand the brain disease of addiction, nor what happens to the brains of the family members or friends who love someone with the disease when it’s not treated, understood or healthily discussed, time together was a minefield. One of us was usually on edge, I was usually wallowing in self-pity or ranting about the latest transgression, and the tension and fear were something you could cut with a knife. There was always the pall of impending doom because doom was usually pending. Mind space and conversations were generally consumed with shares or tirades about what someone else was or was not doing or the good times we’d have when so and so or such and such got fixed or did this or that.

Not anymore. For those who don’t know my story, in 2003 I finally started to unravel what happens to a family member or friend when they are chronically faced with a loved one’s untreated, unhealthily discussed, misunderstood brain disease. It took many years and involved a great deal of research, intensive therapy with an addiction’s specialist, participation in a 12-step program for family members, and a lot of lot of work to RE-WIRE my brain from its grooved reactions to all emotions as if they were facts. Individually and together, my daughters and I worked to understand the science of the brain disease of addiction – that the drinking/drug use behaviors weren’t them, they were a symptom of their brain disease. We learned the science of what happens in the brains of family members and friends, as a result of their chronically coping with the drinking/drug use behaviors and believing those behaviors were something within their control to control. Yikes! Talk about crazy making!!

Over the years, all three of us have done a great deal of work to break the cycle. We’ve learned the power to change rests within each of us; it rests within our power to control our own brains and what we let into our lives. Others have brains and we have brains, but the only brains we can control and heal (re-wire) are our own. With this awareness and understanding (and work), my daughters and I now spend our time together doing things we like to do (like scuba diving!) and talking about things we like to talk about.

I’m sharing these reflections to give hope to family members and friends that it really can and does get better, but the journey starts with learning about the brain disease of addiction. This website, created by NIAAA, NIDA, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and HBO, hosts a great deal of the new research on the brain disease of addiction, http://www.hbo.com/addiction/

Related links:
Need Help? Wondering What to Do About a Loved One’s Substance Abuse?

First Things First – When Recovery Feels Overwhelmingly Difficult, Keep It Simple

The following is a guest post by Tim Cheney who has been in long-term recovery for over 30 years. He is the co-founder and managing partner of Chooper’s Guide, a web-based treatment and information resource for addiction, and owns and operates an apple orchard in Maine. He is active in the recovery movement in Florida and nationally and has been active for 28 years as a volunteer and advocate for substance abuse and child abuse.

The Fifth Step – Don’t Chase the Garbage Truck  by Tim Cheney

“Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”

I am relatively certain that if one was to rent an auditorium, stand at the podium and offer anyone in the audience $500 dollars to stand up and admit their deepest, darkest and most shameful secrets that there would not be a stampede to the podium. What amazes me is the human tendency to cloak our true persona and attempt to project an image of perfection. The need to be accepted and to be perfect in the eyes of others denies our humanity, insults God and ensures a state of perpetual inner desperation as well as human and spiritual isolation. For addicts and alcoholics, (to me the same) the prospect of sharing one’s life story and cataloging the behaviors, thoughts and past actions that we had so desperately tried to conceal is comparable to being asked to walk on a steel i-beam twenty stories above the street.

I was deathly afraid of heights. The fourth step was intimidating and anxiety producing and certainly the results of my thorough and fearless moral inventory did not enhance my self-image or sense of worth. Instead, this humbling exercise left me with a foreboding sense of terminal malignancy and isolation. The magnitude of my disease and its devastation of my soul was overwhelming. How could I with what I had done ever become a normal human being? How could I ever be forgiven? I believed I would always be judged and always be viewed and treated as a junkie, an, alcoholic, a human waste product. I had assembled my garbage (and, as directed, noted my positive traits also). I had put the garbage in the containers and hauled it to the curb.

The origins of the fifth step, as well as the third, ninth and eleventh steps can be traced to the Oxford Group which was an international Christian movement popular in the twenties and thirties. Both Bill W. and Bob S. were members and the fundamental spiritual guidelines found in the twelve steps were derived from the group’s Four Spiritual Practices. However sharing one’s wrong doings, the act of confession, the Sacrament of Penance has been associated with cleansing and healing of the spirit since 33 BC and is practiced in Christian, Buddhist, Islamic, Judaic and other religions. Why? It works. And for this addict and alcoholic, it helped save my life.

As my addictions progressed my behavior and my actions became more desperate, more antisocial and more destructive. This downward spiral is especially true for addicts as to be an addict in society’s eyes is not only to be immoral but also to be a criminal. All street addicts live in a subculture governed by different social norms and values thereby making the conversion to sobriety seemingly impossible and the act of trying, in the beginning, futile.

Years ago, I had a sponsee who was an inner city, high volume heroin dealer. I had met him when we were both teenagers and both addicts. Years later, I was running the Substance Abuse program in the New Haven Correctional Center. He had started coming to meetings in jail to get off the block and do business with other inmates housed in different blocks. Over the next several months he came to and became very excited about his recovery. He attended meetings regularly and got active when his sentence was over. He finally landed a job stocking shelves in a supermarket at $8.00 per hour. His meeting attendance decreased and suddenly he was gone. One morning at 6:30, I was awakened by the phone. He was in the hospital, angry, delusional and dope sick. He had a blood infection from injecting in his femoral. When I visited him at lunchtime, he told me that he just couldn’t work for $8.00 an hour.

“Mr. C., I just couldn’t do it. I was miserable and I was broke. I never have been broke. I was making in a day on the street what I would‘ve earned in a year at that job. I thought I could just sell and I wouldn’t use.” He had never taken his fourth and fifth step and therefore had never taken a look at who he was which made it impossible for him to cross that bridge and leave his past behind him. Ronnie’s addiction picked up where he had left it and it slowly ravaged his body and soul. He died of AIDS several years later. He died because he couldn’t reconcile who he was or what he had done. He died because he thought he was different. He never understood that he was not alone or different and that others before him had been like him but had found relief, hope and strength in taking their fifth step and had discovered that they were not alone nor were they bad people; they were merely suffering from the disease of addiction.

The old adage, heard frequently in twelve step meetings, – “you are only as sick as your secrets” – is an easy way for many to understand why taking the fifth step is critical. Secrets imprison and gradually poison the soul. Our natural reaction is to escape the pain. I was told years ago that if I wanted to stay clean and sober that it was strongly suggested that I do the fourth and fifth step . I had watched people come into the rooms and quickly become ninety day wonders. They would burn through the first three steps and then come to a screeching halt. A predictable progression would follow. They would first stop sharing, then sit in the back, come late and leave early, then start missing meetings, then stop going to meetings and then quite frequently end up in prison or dead. For me, until I completed the fifth step, I was an outsider. I had no skin in the game. Nobody knew me or my real story, only fragments. Once I followed the suggestion, which I emotionally interpreted as a death threat, I felt a sense of relief and realized that although I had gotten off the elevator in the sub-basement there were many others who had also been there. I was not unique; I was not alone. I had no more alibis only choices. I was suddenly a member of the human race. For the first time in my life I felt like I belonged and knew that I had a shot if I continued to go to meetings and follow the suggestions.

Today in retrospect, I look back over the almost 31 years of meetings I’ve attended and understand that

I could never have stayed sober and most likely would not be alive if I had not followed and stayed the course. Today I understand that sharing who I am keeps me sober and alive. Today I understand that I have a chronic brain disease and that my behavior when I was active was a product of my disease. Today I know that I was not a bad person but a person afflicted by the disease of addiction who out of necessity developed numerous maladaptive coping mechanisms and behaviors to protect and feed my addiction. Today I know that I am not only accountable but also responsible for my actions and behavior and that my life and my sobriety is a direct result of my choices. Today I know that God doesn’t make junk. Knowing this, I understand that when the garbage truck comes to collect my trash, I need not chase the truck and take it back. It is best to leave it on the truck for it is not me it is taking but merely my garbage.

To read Tim’s thoughts on the first four steps, please select from below:

The First Step – The First Truth

The Second Step – The Fork in My Road and My Final Wager

The Third Step – Abandon Ship

The Fourth Step – Taking Out the Trash

Families Need Recovery From Addiction, Too by Ian Koch, MS, LADC, CAS

The alcoholic and addict often think that the only person they have harmed is themselves. This is far from the truth. The illness of addiction and alcoholism plays a devastating part in the lives of everyone affected. Families become torn apart in numerous ways, and it is always caused by the addiction. This is why families need recovery from addiction, too.

It is important that families, providers, and the abusers themselves wake up to this notion. An addicted family falls victim to the actions of the substance user. It causes tremendous problems and can harm many people involved.

The addict bases all of their decisions on the substance, regardless of the circumstances, their thoughts always reflect back to alcohol or drugs. There are varying degrees to this dependence. In other words, some are particularly obsessed over the substance, using daily, and others only use on the weekends. However, the one who only uses on the weekends often finds they are ruminating over their drug of choice through the week. Regardless of the amount they use or the time they spend thinking of the drug or alcohol, they continuously go back to the substance which, in turn, continuously causes problems in some shape or form.

The addicted family is the same. It is broken into three distinct parts of behavior, or it could be said that the illness of addiction on the family has three distinct parts.

The first part is a compulsion. As the addict is trying to move through life, the addicted family member is compelled to control or try to control them. It becomes uncontrollable. When they start or engage in a conversation or another action, they cannot seem to put it down, leave it alone, or stop. This action leads to more confusion and tension. A good example is if a parent finds their son or daughter intoxicated. Sometimes they yell. The addict, undoubtedly, yells back and the parent gets louder. When they start yelling and lecturing, they find it difficult to stop. The insanity of all this is that the yelling is not actually going to do anything except make the situation worse, causing the tension to build.

The second part is the fascination or fixation on the addict. It is a constant thought or obsession on them. (What are they doing, where are they going, when will they come home, do they still have a job?) These are just a few of the questions that run deep in the mind of the addicted parent. I would like to mention that these feelings are deeper and more persistent than for the normal parent.

The above two are usually driven by an underlying emotional need or disturbance. These reactions do not mean that the addicted family member is mentally ill or unstable. This emotional need is deep with in a person. It usually presents itself in the “grass is greener” ideal. This notion occurs when we as humans convince ourselves that the grass is greener on the other side or in other terms things would return to normal if only: they would get sober, they would stop yelling, they would not steal, they would get a job, they would get married, they would settle down, they would get a job with an insurance benefit.  It is thought that if any one of these things would just take place, things would return to normal.

It is this deep emotional need that triggers the fascination, fixation, or obsession. When the fixation becomes so overwhelming, the addicted parent only has one option, to try and control the situation. Then, when they try to gain control, they, themselves, become addicted and cannot stop.

The good news is not every family member will be affected by the addiction. Similarly speaking, not every person who drinks alcohol becomes alcoholic. Looking at your own behavior compared to these signs and symptoms is a good place to start. The bad news is that if someone becomes affected, it is not going to go away when their family member gets sober. In fact with periods of abstinence it could actually get worse.Help is available from different support groups, consultants, and other providers throughout the northeast. Northeast Addiction Consultants has licensed counselors and addiction specialists trained to support you. You do not need to live in fear. You do not need to lose sleep at night. You do not need to give them your money. It is time that the family takes their life back. Assuming the addict or alcoholic is the only one who needs to participate in recovery is not fair. Recovery is available for the family, too and not only is it available, it is crucial in supporting the addict. Being in recovery yourselves will help you understand what they will need to do for lasting recovery. Get help before there is a crisis or the next tragic event happens.

The following is a guest post from Patrick Meninga, an Intake Specialist at a Drug Rehab in Michigan with over 5 years experience working directly with recovering addicts and alcoholics. He has been clean and sober for over a decade now and has also conquered nicotine addiction as well. In addition to full time work in a treatment center, Patrick actively writes on the web about addiction, and has contributed over one million words to try and help others to find a path of recovery. He has published several ebooks which are all available for free download in the sidebar of his website, spiritualriver.com.  

What If I Relapse After Treatment and How Can I Prevent This? by Patrick Meninga

One of the biggest fears that keeps people from taking the steps to achieve sobriety is the fear of relapse.

What will happen if I relapse after leaving treatment? What will people think of me? Won’t they think less of me if I fail to stay clean and sober?

And so on. The threat of relapse is always going to be out there, hanging over your recovery. But this does not mean that you should not try to get clean and sober or seek to change your life for the better. Relapse does happen, and it can happen to the what appears to be the strongest of people in recovery, but this is no excuse for continued use in addiction.

You still have a responsibility to embrace recovery and seek to make positive changes in your life. The existence of relapse does not change this responsibility. It is still up to you to seek out a positive new life in recovery, and try to maintain abstinence.

Relapse can be part of the learning process

What do we really learn by relapse?

We learn exactly what it takes in order to stay clean and sober. Or rather, we learn how tough the goal actually is and that we were not trying hard enough.

If someone relapses in their recovery, it is because they had not dedicated their life enough to the goal of recovery. They had not committed fully enough to the sole purpose of maintaining abstinence from drugs and alcohol.

This happens all the time, especially when someone is brand new to the recovery process and has never attempted to get clean and sober in the past. This is not uncommon. What happens is that the person approaches recovery with a certain mindset, a certain attitude, and they fully expect that they will be successful in staying clean and sober.

People do this because they have life experience, and so they know how most things work in life: you make a modest effort at something, and then you get modest results. They assume that–based on their other life experiences–that they can do the same thing in addiction recovery. They believe that they can make a modest effort with recovery and probably manage to stay clean and sober without too much difficulty.

Now the trick here is that staying clean and sober is an all or nothing proposition. You either maintain sobriety, or you experience a full relapse. There is no in-between.

People who are basing their efforts on previous life experience are used to having an in-between result. They are used to being able to try a little and get a little, try a lot and get a lot. Recovery does NOT work that way. With addiction, if you try a little, you fail. If you try a little harder, you will still relapse. Recovery is all or nothing. Therefore, the only way to succeed is to try harder than you have ever tried anything in your life before. You have to actually give recovery a 100 percent effort. You have to actually dedicate your entire life to the mission of staying clean and sober.

Most people do NOT get that the first time that they try to sober up. Most people have to try and fail a few times before they realize that recovery is all or nothing, and that they really have to make a supreme effort at it.

So this is the learning process that involves relapse. This is what people learn when they fail to stay clean and sober. What they are really learning on a deep level is that they did not try hard enough, they did not commit strongly enough to recovery, they did not dedicate their entire life to recovery. That is the lesson that relapse teaches, though not everyone is ready to learn that lesson. That is why some people have to try and fail multiple times before they finally “get it” and learn how to stay clean and sober for good.

Better to try and fail than not to try at all

Given this learning process that can result from relapse, it is definitely better to try and fail than to not try at all.

My own experience confirms this, as I tried twice to get clean and sober and failed both times before I was finally successful on my third attempt.

I had to do what I had to do, though, and those two failures were part of my journey to success. If I had not experienced those first two relapses, I do not believe that I could have taken the action that I did on my third time around.

For example, when I finally got clean and sober “for good” over eleven years ago, I did so by attending a long term treatment center and living there for several months. This was an important step that I had never been willing to take in the past.

The second time I went to treatment, the counselors and therapists got to know me a bit and they realized that I was in a dire situation, that I was just going to leave rehab and end up relapsing very quickly. They could see this coming just as sure as anything, and so they made recommendations to try to prevent it. They tried to get me to go live in long term treatment.

Now this was my second rehab attempt, and I was not willing to commit to this. I was not ready to take that much action. I was not ready to truly dedicate my life to recovery. I was still hanging on to something personal, I was still hanging on to some sort of pride within me, and I could not bear the idea of actually living in rehab in order to try to stay clean and sober. In my mind, this was too great a sacrifice. So at the time, I rejected the idea of long term rehab, even though it would have been the best thing for me. The therapists and counselors at treatment centers are not stupid, and they watch recovering addicts all the time, seeing some who make it and some who do not. They knew that I was headed for relapse if I did not seek additional treatment.

So I stubbornly left rehab that time and promptly relapsed. I relapsed right away, in fact. But this was still an important failure, it was still an important lesson, and it taught me something that I would later apply directly to my life and to my recovery:

That I needed long term treatment.

This was a tough lesson to learn, and it was relapse that taught it to me.

I had to experience this first hand, not be told. Professionals were trying to tell me, they were screaming at me that I needed long term rehab. But I would not hear of it, and so I ended up relapsing. Surprise surprise, addicts tend to learn the hard way! I was certainly no exception to this. So I relapsed after my second treatment because I refused to attend long term treatment.

It took me about a full year of pain and misery and trying to self medicate before I finally came to grips with the idea that those professional counselors and therapists may have been right. Maybe I really did need the level of help and care that they were suggesting.

So the idea of relapse is not something that you should be comfortable with or expect to happen to you, but realize that it can be one of the best teachers. This is not an excuse to plan on relapse, or to justify relapse, or to count on it happening in your recovery. Some people die from relapse, learning the ultimate lesson just a little too late. The idea is to maintain abstinence, forever, one day at a time. That is still your ultimate goal. My journey involved relapse because I tend to learn things the hard way. Hopefully you can learn from my experience and not have to bang your head into the wall as much as I did.

If you are terrified of relapse then there are a few things that you can do to help prevent it. I would outline this approach as follows:

1) Find massive support in your recovery.
2) Use a holistic approach to personal growth.
3) Dedicate your life to recovery.

Finding massive support in your recovery

In early recovery, social support is especially critical in my opinion. There are a number of reasons for this, the first of which is that we cannot recovery alone.

No man is an island in recovery, and the thing that you need most is information. You need new information in order to recover because the old information that you have about how to live a successful and happy life is all wrong.

This means that your way was not working. Drinking and drugging yourself to death turned out to be a dead end, and resulted in misery. These were your best ideas about how to live a successful life. So you need some new ideas. You need a better way to live your new life in recovery.

There are books and there are websites that you can read and you can sit and read for days about recovery. But there is something to be said for real life social interaction when it comes to learning how to stay clean and sober. The problem is that the books and the literature cannot help you with the idea of “relating” to others.

We need this social element in early recovery so that we can relate to other people. Why is this important?

It’s important because early recovery is a roller coaster of emotions. We are bound to have moments, hours, and days when we feel like we are going absolutely crazy in our recovery. Are we the only ones who have felt this way, ever? Are we the only one in the world who truly loves drugs and alcohol and really needs them in order to function? Are we the only person in recovery who has intense feelings and is just dying to medicate them and make them go away? Are we the only person in recovery who has ever felt pain or anger or fear or frustration? Does anyone else feel these feelings? Does anyone else care?

At some point every newcomer in recovery is going to be screaming these sorts of questions to the world, they are going to be in a bad place, and they are going to need some form of social reassurance. They will be emotionally upset and their mind will be racing and they will be on the verge of relapse. A book will not help them. Literature will not save them. What they need at this moment is for another human being to tell them that it is OK, that they have been there too, that they have felt those emotions and that they got through it sober, and that you can get through it sober too if you just hold on, if you talk it out, if you pray, if you exercise, if you take action, if you share your problem, if you reach out and ask for help, or whatever.

We need PEOPLE to get us through these rough moments in our recovery process. We cannot do it alone. Every person is going to have ups and downs in their recovery journey, and if they do not have some strong social support surrounding them then they are going to be in danger of relapsing.

We need help in order to recover. We could not do it ourselves, or we certainly would have. Instead, we had to ask for help, and reach out to other people in order to recover.

Where can you find social support in your recovery? I have 3 strong suggestions. Use them all if you are truly terrified of relapse:

1) Treatment centers. Get phone numbers while there. Stay connected, help each other. Stay strong. Encourage each other.
2) 12 step meetings. Go to AA or NA or both, and get heavily involved. Attend lots of meetings. Get “plugged in” to the groups. Find a sponsor.
3) Religious communities. Do you attend church? Did you do so in the past? Go back, get involved in that community, seek to help others.

Grow strong in your recovery with a holistic approach to relapse prevention

If you are truly scared of possible relapse then you will want to get active about pursuing personal growth.

What does this have to do with recovery?

Everything.

Preventing relapse is all about personal growth. They have a saying in recovery programs: “You are either working on recovery, or you are working on a relapse.”

The opposite of relapse is personal growth.

When you are making great strides in your personal growth, there is virtually no chance of relapse. When you are truly pushing yourself to make positive changes and to grow in your recovery, there is no real chance of relapse at that time.

It is only when you STOP pushing yourself to make positive changes that you end up getting into trouble.

Why is this?

Because life is awesome when you are making progress, reaching goals, and creating positive change. When you have all of that stuff going on, the idea of relapse is foreign and remote. You would not think to even take your drug of choice when things are going well because it would too great a sacrifice, too big of a step backwards.

Now if you happen to be slacking off for months on end and you have not made any real growth or progress or positive changes for months at a time, then you are in a much more likely position to relapse. What have you got to lose? Not much! You aren’t going anywhere, you are not doing anything positive, you are not making positive changes in your life, so why not relapse?

This idea is even more pronounced when it comes to helping others in recovery. This is what makes 12 step work so powerful (the idea of helping others in recovery). If you are actively working to really help others to recover, your chances of relapse will plummet. You are not likely to relapse if you are genuinely helping other people to recover on a regular basis.

So how does one pursue personal growth in recovery?

How does one seek to make these positive changes? What do the do exactly, and how do they decide on what changes to make?

You simply prioritize based on the goals that you want to achieve.

I believe that everyone in recovery should at least explore the following areas:

1) Have an exercise or fitness goal. Push themselves to be healthier physically.
2) Eliminate bad habits – if they smoke cigarettes, push hard to quit.
3) Working with others in recovery – find a way to “give back” and help or teach others about recovery. Do this on a regular basis, make it automatic, make it a part of their lives.
4) Education/career – seek to move forward in one or both of these areas.

It is not unreasonable in my opinion for a person to be working on two of those goal at the same time, so long as their main focus in life remains their sobriety.

Dedicate your life to recovery if you are serious about avoiding relapse

So there are two ideas so far in preventing relapse:

1) Find a huge amount of social support in your recovery.
2) Push yourself hard to make personal growth in your recovery.

The third idea is really only about intensity. The third idea is that you must dedicate your entire life to recovery.

In my opinion this means that your highest truth has to be your need for physical abstinence.

The most important thing in your life, by far, is that you never put a drink or a drug into your body.

Period.

It is amazing to me how many people screw that up or lose sight of it.

Your most important truth in life is complete abstinence.

How easy it can be for us to complicate it beyond that!

So keep it simple with these 3 ideas for relapse prevention:

1) Never put a drink or a drug into your body. Period.
2) Find a social support system, such as the 12 step program or a religious community. “Plug in” to that support system and get involved with it.
3) Push yourself hard to keep making personal growth and positive changes in your life. Do not expect the other two ideas to keep you clean and sober without ALSO including this push for personal growth.

This is relapse prevention in a nutshell. One absolute mandate not to use drugs or booze and two concepts that can help you to better deal with life.

My opinion is that if you are a struggling drug or alcoholic, you cannot simply take these three ideas and implement them directly into your life one day, without any sort of learning process to build up to this.

It takes time and effort to make these changes, to transition to this new life in recovery.

For me, that meant attending treatment. I had to get serious enough to become willing to attend treatment before I could even think about making any of these changes. I could not consider the idea of “making personal growth” until I found some sort of stability from being at inpatient treatment for a while.

Attending rehab allowed me to transition to this new life of positive changes. But it did not happen overnight. I had to surrender, I had to be willing to attend treatment, I had to be willing to listen to others for a while and take some advice and direction in my life.

Are you ready to take the next step towards your new life, and decide if addiction treatment is right for you?

Recommended Reading

• Overcoming Addiction
• Holistic Addiction Treatment Center

Patrick invites you to call him at 866-577-0165.

• physical, emotional and sexual abuse;
• emotional and physical neglect;
• a parent who’s an alcoholic or addicted to other drugs;
• a mother who’s been battered;
• a family member in prison or diagnosed with mental illness; and
• a loss of a parent through divorce or abandonment.

And the reason I’m so taken with childhood trauma is its impacts on a child’s own susceptibility to mental illness (anxiety or depression, for example, which is one of the five Key Risk factors for developing an addiction) and to a child’s decision to use and abuse a substance (to self-medicate the pain of the brain changes caused by the toxic stress of the trauma). Now that was a mouthful, to be sure, but it’s important. And to help explain why its so important, I’m sharing the following information provided on the website of the organization called ACES Too High:

Over the last 15 years, research has shown that childhood trauma injures a child’s brain. It impairs the brain’s physical development and function. You can see the effects of trauma on a brain scan. The result: These adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) cause kids to have a hard time learning, making friends and trusting adults. They can’t keep up in school, so they shut down or get in fights. They’re the “problem” kids. Schools suspend them. There’s lots of ways for kids to cope with their trauma.  Alcohol. Drugs. Smoking. Food. Kids become daredevils and break their bones. Sleep around and get STDs. Grow up too fast and become workaholics.

All this helps numb painful memories: Years of beatings by dad, who also walloped a kid’s siblings and mom. Enduring forced sex by an uncle who visited regularly. Being rousted out of bed at 2 a.m. by a drunk mother to be yelled at for hours. These kids’ coping “drug of choice” – smoking, drinking, food, sex, work – helps them escape from the misery of feeling like failures or that, somehow, they were responsible for the trauma they experienced. It also helps them take the edge off their feelings of isolation and abandonment when our institutions further traumatize them by suspending them from school, by putting them in dysfunctional foster homes, by restraining them or putting them in isolation. Asking them: “What’s wrong with you?” instead of “What happened to you?”

The double whammy of the toxic effects of severe stress on a developing brain and years of coping behaviors — which kids regard as solutions, not problems, even into adulthood — have long-term effects. When they’re adults, the trauma they experienced as a child reaches from the past to deal another cruel blow —  chronic diseases that appear when they’re adults. Diabetes. Heart disease.  Depression. Lung cancer. The list goes on. The diseases that cost our country billions of dollars economically, and an incalculable cost emotionally.

The more types of childhood trauma a person has, the more likely she or he will have a chronic disease. In other words, the higher your ACE score, the more problems you’ll have as an adult. The ACE Study, which began as a joint research project of Kaiser Permanente in San Diego and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, looked at 10 different types of childhood trauma. These are the five usual suspects: physical, sexual, and emotional abuse; physical and emotional neglect. And five types of family dysfunction: a parent who’s an alcoholic or diagnosed mentally ill, a battered mother, a family member in prison, and a parent who disappears through abandonment or divorce.

The picture’s a bit grim:

• Only 30 percent of us have no ACEs.
• They rarely appear alone — if there’s one type of childhood trauma, there’s a 95 percent likelihood that there are others.
• They’re very common, even in predominately white, middle- to upper-middle class college-educated Americans.

To continue reading about ACEs Too High, review their sources for the information cited above, and to learn what you can do to help, click here>>>

And to read a wonderful story about a school principal who embraced this concept and chose to do something about it, read this article, “Walla Walla, WA, Tries New Approach to School Discipline – Suspensions Drop 85%”  (long but so very, very hopeful and good).

Please share this post with your readers and help spread the word about Mental Illness Awareness Month and childhood trauma.