When you think of drug addiction, what kind of picture do you get in your mind? Do you see a person dressed in tattered clothes sitting in a rain soaked alley with a needle in hand? Do you picture addiction in terms of a person begging on the street for money to buy just one more hit? The picture...

If you suspect a loved one of having a drug problem, where do you go to find information? Information on drug addiction can be found in a variety of places. Even if you are the one with the addiction when you have as much information as possible about this disease, you will be better equipped to...

Substance abuse occurs when a person uses a substance, which in time the body comes to rely on. When a drug, obtained either legally or illegally, is used regularly, the brain becomes used to its presence and normal functioning may occur. When the amount of the substance in the body is depleted as...

A recent study conducted by the National Institute of Health (NIH) looked into the association between teenage drinking and alcoholism. The study took into account such factors as history of alcoholism in the family, smoking, childhood antisocial behavior, and drug use. All of these factors are...

Addiction affects both the user and society, which means that both should be partners in the inpidual’s road to addiction recovery. In a lot of cases, addiction involves both periods of relapse and periods of recovery. It is during relapse that support from the people around the person...

Drug rehabilitation Centers offer a variety of programs that meet inpidual needs. The programs include: Residential (inpatient programs), Outpatient programs   and Short-stay options. Patients undergoing Long – Term Residential Treatment receives medical care 24 hours a day, usually...

When you or someone that you love is suffering from drug addiction and has considered treatment, the next step will be to choose a drug rehab center. This will be one of the most important and difficult decisions to make in your lifetime. Few of us know what to look for in a drug...

In our last entry we looked at how our addictive inner dialogs with specific absent others become repetitive such that the dynamic of our inner conversations themselves keep us trapped in our addictions. Underlying this dynamic is a closed feedback loop. It is this closed loop that keeps the addict...

Recalling that addiction is clinically defined as repeating negative behaviors despite the consequences or the risks involved and recalling also our initial categorization of our inner listeners as Absent Others we now look at addictive dialogs from within this framework. Addictive dialogs...

In our last entry we left open the question of who is doing the listening within our inner dialogues. Upon close introspection we find that there are multiple “inner listeners” that can be categorized as Absent Others; others “as if” they were present in the dialogue...