Tag Archives: recovery tips

Is Your Addict Child Making You Crazy? 5 Ways Al-Anon Can Help

Shame and isolation are two unwelcome companions in the daily lives of parents of young addicts. There’s the shame of having a child who is heading for “jail, not Yale.” There’s the shame of having intensely negative feelings about the child you love. And there’s the shame of descending into dysfunctional parenting: enabling, screaming, lecturing, […]

5 Tips for Sober Travel

For anyone in recovery, some of the most perilous times are when you’re on the road and away from your usual routine. It may be tempting to forego meetings, especially since you don’t know anyone at this new location and rationalize that it’s OK to skip it just this time. But that’s not the best […]

Cassava℠ Free Addiction Recovery App Now Available for Android Devices

The CassavaSM addiction recovery app, launched in April for iPhone, is now available for Android devices. The app features daily affirmations and recovery tips, a personal journal, and a comprehensive database with more than 140,000 12-step and non-12-step listings to help app users locate support group meetings, whether at home or on the road.

A Recovering Addict’s Guide to Finding Balance

For a recovering alcoholic or addict, learning to find balance can be particularly challenging. Leading a balanced life means avoiding extreme highs or lows. It also means paying attention to tendencies that many addicts have to focus or obsess too much on one activity, such as exercise or work. When the scales are tipped too […]

Destination Addiction

Is your mind overactive with “the grass is greener” thinking? Do you sigh in frustration that you aren’t living the life you imagined? Are you immersed in thoughts such as: “What if I hadn’t married my spouse and there’s someone better for me?” “If only I were thinner, prettier, better educated, healthier, or wealthier, I […]

Helping Vs. Enabling an Addict

When you love someone, it’s natural to want to help. Parents help their children with everything from finances to relationship advice. Siblings offer love and support to each other whenever it’s needed.

How to Stay Sober While Traveling

Many recovering alcoholics and addicts do a lot of traveling during the holiday season, and traveling can be challenging when you’re trying to stay sober. You’re away from everything and everyone that’s familiar, and it may seem like alcohol is everywhere. Vacations are supposed to be a time for relaxing and having fun, but instead […]

Exercise, Mindfulness and Meditation: In Through the Side Door

The physical benefits of regular exercise are easy to understand, well-documented and obvious to almost everyone. Lift weights and you get stronger muscles. Do aerobic exercise and you get a more efficient cardiovascular system. Do sports, or take dance or martial arts classes, and you become more coordinated and physically aware.

How to Beat the Post-Thanksgiving Blues

Thanksgiving is a holiday to spend with family, a time to be thankful for all that we have, and a joyous time of celebration. When the table has been cleared, the dishes have been washed and all the guests have left, you might be feeling down or even depressed. The day was full of laughter, […]

Getting Through Veterans Day Sober

For many people, Veterans Day brings to mind celebratory traditions such as parades and family gatherings. It’s a day that marks the service of all U.S. military veterans, so if you or other members of your family are veterans, celebrations may be even more wild or intense.

Clarity Way ‘Steps Up to the Plate’ to Support Recovery Day

Under a beautiful blue sky in the crisp pre-autumn air, people in jeans and T-shirts with messages such as, “One day at a time,” “A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step,” or the name of the local baseball team, the York Revolution, blended in with the more formally dressed. Young folks sporting […]

What It Means to Be an Addiction Survivor

Every year, millions of people gather for awareness events and charity walks for cancer, heart disease and other illnesses. These inspiring events make a difference on a national level. They help raise funds for research, education and treatment and spread a message of hope. While similar events occur for addiction, mostly on a local level, […]

Where Two or More Are Gathered: A First Person Look at Recovery

For many in recovery, 12-step meetings provide stability and sanity in the face of the whirlwind of addiction that threatens to toss them into the air and dash them against rocky cliffs. Just like the adage, “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere,” is used as an excuse to drink, so too is there a meeting happening somewhere […]

Study Finds Shaming an Alcoholic Is the Worst Thing You Can Do

Feeling shame about past alcoholism may increase the likelihood of relapse, according to a new study in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Assn. for Psychological Science. Conducted by researchers at the University of British Columbia, the study finds that behavioral displays of shame strongly predicted whether recovering alcoholics would relapse.

Struggling With Compulsive Eating? How Overeaters Anonymous Can Help Your Recovery

When someone suffers from compulsive eating disorder or binge eating disorder, it can be a nightmare that seemingly has no end in sight. Getting treatment in a professionally managed program to combat compulsive eating is just the first part of learning how to manage this process addiction.

September Marks Celebration of Prevention, Treatment and Recovery in Mental Health

September is National Recovery Month. Once called National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month, the celebration has trimmed its title while expanding its scope. The month of September is devoted to campaigns which share the message that, when it comes to mental health, prevention works, treatment is effective and people can recover.

Elements Behavioral Health Announces Recovery-related Mobile Application Series

LOS ANGELES, CA (September 15, 2010) – BusinessWire – Fresh on the heels of their successful iPromises Recovery Companion launch, Elements Behavioral Health, parent company to Promises Treatment Centers and The Ranch, will create a series of addiction recovery-related mobile apps.