For many people, sharing personal issues in the presence of others can be overwhelming. However, challenging yourself to open up, embrace vulnerability and share your struggles with supportive others can be extremely rewarding. In that same way, group therapy sessions can have huge impacts on the way that you learn to express yourself to others, and can be a key training ground for your relationships with important others in your life.

Change: the all-elusive substance required for growth. We certainly want others to do it, and many times we even want it ourselves, although we may find it just out of our reach. What we do know is this: change is absolutely essential for growth and development as a person. Without it, we run the risk of repeating the same maladaptive patterns and getting caught in one of life’s vicious cycles.

As you very well may know, there is a fine line in recovery between confidence in yourself that you will no longer make the same mistakes that you made when in active addiction and a sense of overconfidence in your abilities that are not necessarily grounded in reality. You may have heard this phenomenon called the “Pink Cloud Syndrome,” where individuals may leave detox feeling "high on life," or believe that they have entered into the final stages of their recovery before doing any of the work it requires. Someone may experience this phenomenon as the fog finally lifts after years of substance abuse, where they can finally take part in a life that is free from the struggle of addiction.

When you have a loved one who continues to fall prey to the trap of addictive substances and behaviors, you may have made the rounds of the treatment center blogs, only to hear of terms like “codependency” and the idea of a “family addiction” and may find yourself wondering if these terms apply to you.

It is well known that the disease of addiction can be extremely isolating in its ability to drive a wedge between partners and families alike. However, many recovery programs count on the involvement of these very same members to participate in family sessions and help promote healing in their loved ones. These sessions often bring up past hurts and provocative subject material that is difficult to hear.  However, unless you refuse to play the same old games- old and worn out ways of communicating with one another- change is not likely to be found.

It is well known at this point that when individuals become addicted to opiates, like the prescription drugs oxycontin, percocet, and hydrocodone, or illicit substances like heroin and it’s synthetic counterpart, fentanyl, that their bodies begin to physically change and adapt to the presence of the substance in their system. In what’s known as withdrawal, without the substance in their body, they experience physical and psychological cravings to return to their previous state of intoxication. Withdrawal symptoms from opiates can be understood as the opposite of the effects of the drug’s “high”. As opiates typically operate as depressants, their absence kicks many bodily systems into high gear:  physically through increased sweating, tearing, runny nose, muscle aches and cramps, nausea and diarrhea; and mentally through an overactive brain, agitation, anxiety, and an inability to sleep. 

Stress is a signaling beacon of sorts. Understood neurologically, it is a signal from the Amygdala (the fight or flight part of the brain) to our Prefrontal Cortex (the problem solving part of the brain). It's our brain’s way of saying, “Hey, something is off, you need to pay attention.”

However, there is a large difference between someone saying, “Hey, something is off that you may want to look into” and “HEY SOMETHING’S OFF!” Or better yet… ”EVERYTHING IS FALLING APART!” This is the difference between “healthy stress” and stress that can become dysfunctional.

When we talk about the effects of addiction on individuals and their larger community, it’s not long after the conversation shifts to include a discussion of the role of the criminal justice system in the lives of those who struggle with addiction. It seems these two go hand in hand, but as with any two correlated concepts it is important to ask, which comes first? Is it one’s addiction that paves the way for their involvement with the system, whether through earning themselves DUI’s, arrests, or incarceration? Or is it generational and systemic oppression keeping individuals trapped in this cycle, set before the near-impossible task of climbing out of social, emotional, educational and financial poverty?

Recently, and for good reason, terms like “trauma-informed” and “dual diagnosis” began bouncing around popular culture and appearing on the websites of counseling and treatment centers alike, but why does this matter? Why is it important? The research completed through institutions like the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and the work of pioneers in the field like Bessel Van der kolk have allowed us to learn of the vast and nearly ubiquitous experience of trauma in the lives of individuals around the world. While only 6.8% of the population may experience the cluster of symptoms required for a diagnosis of PTSD, an estimated 70% of adults in the US have experienced a traumatic event at least once in their lives, the majority of whom before their 18th birthday.

Oftentimes, the negative ways of describing drug addiction can drive individuals away from getting the help they need. We as a nation are still recovering from an era that viewed addiction as a defect in moral character, and while science has advanced and improved our understanding of the disease, changes are still required to update the national conversation.

From the time we are young, many of us pick up on the messages often directly sent from our parents, “don’t cry” (It’s not okay to feel that way) or “there’s nothing to be sad about” (your feelings are not valid). To conform with their parents’ expectations of them, children learn survival strategies of avoiding, dismissing, or distracting themselves from their feelings, and model themselves after parents who have often adopted more extreme methods for coping with their emotions through alcohol, drugs, compulsive eating or sexual behaviors, or even perhaps remaining in the seemingly harmless state of extreme busyness.

Addiction does not just impact your life but also the lives of those around you. One of the hardest but also the most rewarding parts of addiction recovery is rebuilding and re-connecting to your family. This task may initially feel overwhelming, especially when there are children involved, but is perhaps the most important for long-term recovery.

Take a moment to recognize the things in your life that are causing you stress; those things that are contributing to a number of difficulties across numerous areas of life. Consider what it might be like to be proactive, to feel in control of those things rather than always existing in a reactive state, and letting them control you. While stress is not necessarily always a bad thing, chronic stress impacts your health and can get in the way of creating the life you want for yourself.

When addiction is a part of your life, it can be tempting to seek to “numb out” rather than learn positive alternatives to coping with your stress. However, addressing your stress in positive ways can serve two purposes: if you can decrease your emotional distress, the desire and need for substance use will also decrease, and you will have learned better ways to handle the difficulty of whatever you may be facing.

Why is every day so hard? Why do I always feel stressed out? Will it ever change? We all have bad days. We have times in our lives where we may feel more anxious or depressed than normal. This is not a sign that we are broken, or that there is something wrong with us. As humans we are meant to experience all the emotions, as this is part of living: we experience the good, the bad, the heartbreaking, and the frustrating. There is no joy without pain.

The holidays can be a very difficult time, especially for those struggling with substances and who are in early recovery. Entering the holidays can bring on a lot of anxiety and fear around having to survive these events sober and having opportunities to still have a good time.

Truly, you do not need substances to enjoy the holiday season but you do need to be mentally and emotionally prepared.

Harm reduction treatment is a set of strategies that are aimed at reducing the negative consequences associated with the use of drugs. Harm reduction strategies were implemented in opposition to the hundred-year “war on drugs”, where the pervasive idea about treatment for addiction centered on the idea that in order to create incentives for change, we need to make individuals in recovery suffer. In a compelling Ted talk called “Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong”, Johann Hari spells out his understanding of current American society regarding our treatment of individuals in recovery: “We punish them, we shame them, we put barriers between them reconnecting… if you wanted to design a system that would make addiction worse, you would design that system.” Later in the talk he goes on to add, “the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection”.

Perhaps one of the most relevant national conversations to tap into these days is the one centered on discovering the effects, positive and negative, of allowing technology to assume such a vital place in our homes and lives. The advances of technology are vast and undeniable in their ability to allow us to stay in constant contact, and participate in day to day life with others that we’ve never met, or even with those who live across the globe. Information is readily available in the palm of our hands, as are the tools we’ve come to rely on to complete our day to day tasks.

In today’s society that is often driven by avoidance and shame, it is easy to fall into the trap of passing judgment on one’s self and others as a replacement for true connection and honest evaluation. Just as much as judgment is a way to put walls up to avoid the necessity of understanding others, to regard them as irreconcilably different, and incapable of similarity, when directed at the self, it is a way to disengage from our growth potential, and convince ourselves that we offer nothing of value.

Seeking treatment in the case of addiction can be intimidating. There is much conflicting information regarding treatment outcomes, and often disparity exists between what insurance companies believe is effective treatment for problems as serious as opioid use disorders, and what these individuals may actually need.