What Are Behavioral Addictions and How Do You Recognize Them?
What Are Behavioral Addictions? Behavioral addictions are, in short, addictions to certain behaviors. Instead of alcohol or other substances, it’s a compulsive behavior that a person struggles with. Accordingly, the same “reward” chemicals are released in the brain, but a behavioral addiction doesn’t involve outside substances. There are other terms to describe behavioral addictions, including: […]
What Are the First Steps to Treating Cocaine Addiction?
What is Cocaine? The first step to treating cocaine addiction is to understand what cocaine abuse and addiction are. But first, what is cocaine and how is it made? Cocaine is an illegal, stimulant drug that has a high potential for abuse and addiction. As a stimulant, cocaine artificially activates dopamine and increases the speed […]
How Can I Learn Stress-Management and Keep Growing in Recovery?
What is Stress-Management? Stress in an inevitable part of life. Therefore, learning stress-management skills is essential to living a healthy life. If you’re in recovery from addiction or substance abuse, it’s important to build a stress-management strategy that can help you maintain sobriety and keep growing into a lifestyle of wholeness. Throughout our day-to-day lives, […]
How Useful is Sound Bowl Therapy for Preventing Relapse?
How Does Sound Bowl Therapy Fit into Addiction Recovery? Integrative therapies are an important aspect of sustainable addiction recovery. One such benefit of these therapies is learning skills that help you to live in the moment and practice mindfulness. While these terms may feel outside of the clinical mode of addiction therapy, they are not […]
What is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy?
Why is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Needed? Addictive cycles and substance abuse disorders don’t just appear out of thin air. Oftentimes, there are many other factors that contribute to a person’s addiction. Abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and co-occurring mental health conditions are some of the most common. But before attempting to treat the substance […]
5 Reasons to Exercise While in Addiction Recovery
Why is Exercise Important? Exercise is important for much more than just the health of your body. Substance use and abuse changes your natural chemistry, especially over long periods of time. When abuse turns into addiction and becomes a dependency, it changes the neurotransmitters in your brain. These determine how you experience positive feelings like […]
Seeking Help During a Breakdown: How to Handle a Mental Health Crisis
What is a Mental Health Crisis? A mental health crisis is when you or a loved one is unable to care for themselves because of emotional distress. This crisis may inhibit your ability to function properly or may even put you at risk of hurting yourself or someone else. The onset of such a crisis […]
How to Grieve, Heal, and Stay Sober
Grief, Addiction, and Early Recovery Grief and substance abuse are often linked. If left unresolved, the grief that a person experiences from loss can fuel their addiction whether it’s known to them or not. Being in the early stages of recovery makes a person especially vulnerable to the dangers of unresolved grief. In an article […]
The First Year of Recovery: 4 Ways to Stay on the Path
What is “Early Recovery?” There are many things that contribute to a successful first year of sobriety. This first year is often referred to as “early recovery.” General “recovery” usually refers to as the entirety of someone’s life in which sobriety is one of the central focuses. Early recovery has its own designation because it’s a […]
Neuroplasticity: What It Is and What It Has to Do With Addiction
What is Neuroplasticity? The brain is one the most complex organs in the human body. It is composed of synapses, or small structures that neurons use to communicate with each another. Over time, some synapse connections can grow stronger, while others weaken as we get older. Because our brains are so adaptable, they change according […]