Choosing to Forgive an Alcoholic

Choosing to forgive an alcoholic… Depending on how long you’ve been living and/or coping with a loved one’s alcoholism, this can be one of the most difficult concepts to grasp, let alone embrace – choosing to forgive your alcoholic. I’d repeatedly been told that alcoholism was like any other disease, and I wanted to (and…

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Secondhand Drinking Prevention

Secondhand Drinking Prevention occurs when we understand what secondhand drinking is, what it does to a person’s physical and emotional health, and how it contributes to a person’s risk factors for developing a drinking problem. [Please note that the concepts in this post apply equally to Secondhand Drugging Prevention, as drug misuse works similarly in…

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5 Reasons People Relapse After Years of Sobriety

Addiction relapse explained by Lisa Frederiksen

This post was first written in 2014, but the 5 reasons people relapse after years of sobriety are still important to understand. So I updated with current information in 2020. I was driven to write this post after receiving phone calls and emails following the news of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death and an outpouring of…

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Brain Development and Substance Use

Science and brain centered resources for parents struggling

Brain development – the growth of the brain from the time we are in utero until we mature (early-to-mid 20s) – is one of the lesser-known factors that has a dramatic influence on how our brains wire and map. And this influence and the resulting brain wiring and mapping have a dramatic influence on how…

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Why Treating ACEs Helps With Addiction Recovery

Underage Drinking - How Teens Can Become alcoholics before 21

Treating ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) can go a long, long way to helping a person with addiction (aka, with a substance use disorder) succeed in long-term recovery. Why? Because of the role ACEs play in changing a child’s brain wiring and mapping, making that child’s brain more susceptible to the key risk factors for developing a…

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