This week's tribe is Millati Islami: Millati Islami is a fellowship of men and women, joined together on the "Path of Peace". We share our experiences, strengths, and hopes while recovering from our active addiction to mind and mood altering substances. We have sought to integrate the treatment requirements of both Al-Islam and the Twelve Step … Continue reading Tribes of the Recovering Community
Tag: addiction
Precovery
Bill White introduces a new concept, precovery: Precovery involves several simultaneous processes: physical depletion of the drug's once esteemed value, cognitive disillusionment with the using lifestyle (a "crystallization of discontent" resulting from a pro/con analysis of "the life"), growing emotional distress and self-repugnance, spiritual hunger for greater meaning and purpose in life, breakthroughs in perception … Continue reading Precovery
Recovery capital and capital
From the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs second report of the recovery committee [emphasis mine]: ...our optimism about recovery should be tempered. Evidence suggests that different groups are more or less likely to achieve recovery outcomes. For some people, with high levels of recovery capital (e.g. good education, secure positive relationships, a job), recovery … Continue reading Recovery capital and capital
Gratitude
Happy Thanksgiving! Here are a few things I'm grateful for: Recovery - 23 years ago I was 4 weeks abstinent (not in recovery) and 1 week away from being coerced into a psych unit because my therapist was convinced I was going to kill myself in the coming weeks. He was right. The patients (not … Continue reading Gratitude
a spectrum of apples, oranges, lemons, plums?
Howard Wetsman picks apart the spectrum approach of the DSM5 Making a spectrum out of the illnesses that have been put in the substance use category of DSM IV is like making a spectrum out of an apple, an orange, a lemon, a lime, a blue fruit (if there was one) and a plum. You’d … Continue reading a spectrum of apples, oranges, lemons, plums?
Living on the bottom
Debra Jay addresses the belief that families should let an addicted family member hit bottom: Hitting bottom is an old idea, still imposed upon families as if it were an absolute. Many families sadly believe that they must wait for alcoholics to hit bottom before there is any hope for recovery. They rarely stop to … Continue reading Living on the bottom
Tribes of the Recovering Community
Bill White recently had a great post on recovery advocacy around the world. A flourishing recovery advocacy movement continues to spread across the United States that is spawning new recovery support structures and transforming addiction treatment in its wake. Even more unimaginable would have been a prediction that a recovery advocacy movement in the U.S. would … Continue reading Tribes of the Recovering Community
A drug to treat cocaine addiction?
A recent study on the use of topiramate for cocaine addiction has been getting a lot of attention. Most of the coverage draws only from the researchers press release. “Using an intent-to-treat analysis, the researchers found that topiramate was more efficacious than placebo at increasing the participants’ weekly proportion of cocaine nonuse days and in … Continue reading A drug to treat cocaine addiction?
Recovery and Harm Reduction
Bill White has a new paper on Recovery and Harm Reduction in Philadelphia. Here's a quote he offered in a blog post introducing the paper: Traditional harm reduction programs have pioneered low threshold services, but they have often also been characterized by low expectations. Our vision is to expand low threshold services that at the same … Continue reading Recovery and Harm Reduction
Sentences to ponder
If your loved one is suffering from addiction or mental health issues, it means you’re suffering right along with them. You don’t have to struggle alone. ... We can make it together. We Made It Together | Love First - Intervention for alcoholism and addiction
Recovery Review 