Collateral Damage of Addiction | Family and Friends

When it comes to addiction treatment, recovery, prevention, intervention… it’s common to focus on the drinker or the drug user. It’s estimated there are more than 23 million Americans who struggle with the brain disease of addiction, of which only 10% are getting the help they need. What’s little understood is that more than 100…

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Let It Go – Nice Saying, But How?

“Let It Go.”  For years I couldn’t relate to this phrase. It seemed so overused, and frankly one that got my blood boiling because it sounded so overly simplistic. Yet, it’s now one of my favorite phrases. In fact on heavy stress days, I’m practically chanting, “Let it go….” So how does it work for…

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Recovery Tools as Close as Your iPhone

Recovery tools on an iPhone app? I was so taken with Holly Hess’s story of her codependency recovery journey and her husband’s addiction recovery journey and how she took their experiences and merged them with her professional IT talents to recreate a tool box of recovery in an iPhone app, that I invited her to…

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Codependent Children – What Can Parents Do?

Codependent children — one of the tragic outcomes in families with untreated, undiagnosed, unhealthily discussed substance abuse and/ addiction. Darlene Lancer shares valuable information to help parents help their children avoid growing up to be codependent. But first, a bit about Darlene… Darlene Lancer is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and author of Codependency…

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Recovery Resentment

Recovery resentment – the reason you still feel angry, lonely, hurt, and raw when your loved one is finally in recovery. Author Carolyn Hughes explains. The following is a guest post by Carolyn Hughes, a freelance writer with special interest in alcohol issues. Carolyn is currently writing The Hurt Healer, a novel based on her own…

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So What is Codependency?

Codependency – so what is it? This was a very difficult concept for me to grasp. And for the longest time (like almost 4 decades as of 2003), I didn’t even try because I didn’t think it had anything to do with me. But for those of you who’ve read my latest book, 10th Anniversary…

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Coping With Addiction in Your Family? Hang on…

Are you coping with addiction in your family? One of the more difficult things to do in families with addiction, in my opinion, is to “hang on” when things seem to be spiraling out of control. For so long, I never knew there was even a possibility of a different way — it just happened —…

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Families Need Recovery From Addiction, Too

Families need recovery from addiction, too. Addiction is a family disease. The following is a guest post by Ian Koch, MS, LADC, CAS and Operations Manager of North East Addiction Consultants, established to help families of drug addicts and alcoholics guide their loved one into recovery. Though they specialize in the northeast, their network spreads…

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