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Alcohol Recovery

Put Recovery to the Test? No Thanks!
03/11/2021

Some people ask me - "how did you manage to cope and be a success in your career?" or "how did you manage to carry on with your work while your drinking was out of control and a cause of suffering in your life?" [...]

Alcohol Recovery

Practical Wisdom – The Path to Recovery
04/10/2021

When I stepped into semi-retirement, I wanted to do something useful and with purpose. I said to somebody that I wanted to stop being an academic. I’ve been a (semi-) academic all of my life. [...]

Alcohol Recovery Drug Addiction Mental Health

Meditation and Addiction Recovery
03/09/2021

In an earlier blog from last year, called Be Still – Mindfulness in Lockdown, we talked about how lockdown was an opportunity to stop racing around and burdening ourselves with often self-imposed pressure to stay busy. Alcoholics and others suffering from addiction are not very comfortable sitting still. [...]

Alcohol Recovery

You Can’t Do It On Your Own
03/08/2021

Addiction is a contentious area. The causes and the treatments are subject to much debate. But there are two basic truths about recovery to which I subscribe. Others may choose to agree or disagree. The first is that there needs to be proper self-acknowledgement of a problem and a desire [...]

Alcohol Recovery

When Were You Really Happy?
01/07/2021

Is an alcoholic ever really happy? When I went into psychotherapy, I was asked at some stage, "When you were younger, when were you really happy?" Interestingly, at least to me, I answered quick as a flash. I didn't even need to give it much consideration. I replied "When I [...]

Alcohol Recovery Drug Addiction

Motivation, Discipline and Reward
02/06/2021

Alcoholics and drug users find it tough to stick to a treatment programme. Motivation comes and goes. Discipline is something different. It’s a planned, concentrated effort, sustained over time. It involves practise and the build-up of good habits. Staying sober requires discipline. [...]

Alcohol Recovery

Giving and Receiving in Recovery
04/05/2021

Alcoholics and other sufferers from addictive disorders have a hard time accepting help let alone reaching out to others in a similar situation. In the early stages, this is part of self-denial. If you will not acknowledge to yourself that you have a problem, then you are hardly likely to [...]

Alcohol Recovery

Confession and Memory – Write it Down
06/04/2021

I’m an alcoholic in recovery. There, I’ve just said it. It wasn’t that difficult. But I’ve been saying it for many years, so I’ve got used to it. Taking the first step in self-acknowledgement of a problem and confessing it to others is not easy. It’s a major hurdle to [...]

Alcohol Recovery

What Does “Rock Bottom” Mean?
01/03/2021

Alcoholics in recovery often talk about the need to hit “rock bottom” before a commitment to treatment will have any possibility of success. Some treatment practitioners don’t really like this idea because they believe, understandably, that intervention should be possible before reaching this stage. What this dispute might show, however, [...]

Alcohol Recovery

Some People Just Don’t Get It
02/02/2021

Paul Merson is a famous ex-football player who still features as a popular TV pundit on Saturday afternoons. He is equally famous for his struggles with addictions. In his book titled ‘How Not To Be a Professional Footballer’, he recounts one story of what happened when he returned from rehab. [...]

Alcohol Recovery

The Inspiration of Skid Row Marathon
28/01/2021

Running helps to keep me sober. That is because it helps both my physical and spiritual health. If I go several days without running then I start to feel sluggish and less able to cope. I’ve long known this to be the case but watching Skid Row Marathon inspired me [...]

Alcohol Recovery

Why Do You Do It? – The Divided Mind
01/12/2020

I'd been dry for five years. It had taken intensive psychotherapy and three years to overcome excruciating panic attacks. I'd gone through a lot of suffering. But then I’d started all over again and repeated the entire cycle. Here I was, sat back in front of my GP hoping for [...]

Alcohol Recovery

The Courage To Be
02/11/2020

The title of this blog is taken from a book published by Paul Tillich in 1952. At its broadest level, it's saying that we need courage to become. This immediately poses the question - the courage to become what? The implication is that we need courage to become someone or [...]

Alcohol Recovery

It Takes One to Know One
05/10/2020

One of the ancient Greek sayings much beloved by philosophers is “know thyself”. With this in mind, I recall being asked at an addiction conference, “who told you that you're an alcoholic”? The question partly betrayed the fact that many addiction specialists don't like the term “alcoholic”. Instead, the terminology [...]

Alcohol Recovery

Living Between Now and Not Yet
04/10/2020

Sometimes you press the send button and instantly regret it. You’ve reacted to something said about you. Or maybe you’re upset about work. Electronic communication is now at our fingertips. We don’t need to wait until we meet somebody face-to-face. This has its advantages but it also means that we [...]

Alcohol Recovery

The Long and the Short of Alcoholism in Financial Markets
03/08/2020

When I was young, I used to spend hours looking at all of the football results and the league tables. I would analyse them endlessly. Actually, I still do. I look at current form, home and away performance, goal scorers, attendances – the whole thing. In fact, I do it [...]

Alcohol Recovery

Alcohol and Spirituality – The Family
20/07/2020

Attention to spiritual health on the path to recovery in alcohol treatment is about encouraging openness. It’s about letting go of inward obsession with a false sense of self-identity and turning outward. Spiritual health is about finding our place in the world. It’s about finding meaning, purpose and truth in [...]

Drug Addiction

The Brain and Addiction – Part III
06/07/2020

Do we have three brains? Now we know that in the early century XX neuroscientists were able to understand the roots of some of Jon’s symptoms, mostly those related to very basic primitive behaviours, hiding deep inside the human brain because they were one of the first brain structures to develop [...]

Alcohol Recovery

Be Still – Mindfulness in Lockdown Recovery
22/06/2020

Being still is difficult. Being in isolation is even more difficult - for everybody, but especially for alcoholics in recovery. Lockdown still presents a severe challenge, although we are slowly re-emerging. [...]

Alcohol Recovery

Alcohol and Spirituality – The Human Person
08/06/2020

Spiritual well-being has an important role to play in recovery from alcoholism. That is because spirituality, when properly understood in its broadest sense, is integral to self-identity and self-worth. Spiritual awareness is part of what it means to be a human person. The role of spirituality in recovery is increasingly [...]

Drug Addiction

The Brain and Addiction – Part II
01/06/2020

Reptilians Among Us.. Late in the morning in April 1899 Christfried was crossing the cobbled central square of Erlangen, in Bayern. His pace was fast, firm and resolute. He had finally made his decision and like a man on a mission, he knew exactly where he was going. He will [...]

Drug Addiction

The Brain and Addiction – Part I
25/05/2020

I want to vs I have to.. You know what you have to do, but you can’t help doing the opposite. How many times have you been there? Don’t worry, we all have. It is a very human thing. It is probably what makes you a real human. Internal conflict. The “have [...]

Mental Health

Understanding Co-Occurring Mental Health Disorders and Developing a Coherent Treatment Plan
06/12/2019

Introduction.. In 2014, SAMHSA revealed that approximately 7.9 million people experienced concurrent addiction and a mental health disorder. That’s nearly 40% of the entire population who experienced addiction through that year. NIDA statistics on co-occurring disorders reveal people with mood-related mental health disorders or anxiety are twice as likely to [...]

Mental Health

Connecting Anxiety, Depression and PTSD through Neural Phenotypes
26/11/2019

Introduction.. Deep research into the grounds of psychopathology has extensively focused on two chief etiologic categories: genetic vulnerability and environmental factors. A crucial role for heritable/familial factors in the aetiology of a broad range of psychiatric disorders was established well before the modern era of genomic research. In this article, [...]

Drug Addiction

Exploring the Mechanism of Maintenance Therapy
08/11/2019

Understanding Opioids. Over the past few decades, much has been revealed about opioid dependence that has shaped our comprehension of addiction as a chronic disease. Opioid drugs activate specific opioid receptors (mu, kappa, and delta in the spinal cord and GIT system. Initially, when heroin or other opioids derivatives are [...]