Addiction, clinically referred to as substance use disorder (SUD), is a disease in your body. When reward pathways are triggered in your brain, the neurotransmitter known as dopamine increases. This plays a central role in how the human mind reacts to pleasure. Anything that feels...
Recovering from addiction can be extremely difficult if done alone, especially as mental health conditions can interfere with treatment. Therefore, support from professionals and loved ones is imperative for reaching success in recovery. Human connection is a powerful holistic bond that can provide great benefits...
It is that time again. Your apartment kitchen cupboards are empty, and your family cannot stop at the store to help you with groceries. Exhausted, you drag yourself out of bed and head out to the grocery store. It's a Saturday, and you know the...
Yoga is often seen as something that women do or perhaps an activity that men do to meet women. In recovery, yoga is a powerful tool for healing that can reconnect the mind, body, and spirit and help to prevent relapse in recovery. Yoga, along...
Trauma is common among individuals who have struggled with substance use disorder (SUD). Society often stigmatizes trauma as a female-based problem that men do not have to deal with. These stigmas are far from true, as men are just as likely to experience trauma as...
Fear is a common emotion that individuals experience throughout their lives. It is so common that it often becomes normalized or even goes unnoticed. As people work their way through life, many will experience fear of the past in the forms of regret, fear of...
After initial treatment for addiction, there is still plenty of healing that needs to happen. Family relationships can be particularly difficult to navigate because not all family members are on the same recovery journey together, and everyone requires different types of healing. While some families...
Depression is often portrayed as someone who is sad, lethargic, and lonely. This may be true for many people, even many people at certain points in their depression. However, depression often looks very different for men. Since it looks so different, men have difficulty identifying...
Some people see being diagnosed with a mental health diagnosis on top of having a substance use disorder (SUD) as a disability, while others see it as a challenge. Certainly, from a clinical point of view, co-occurring disorders can make treatment more difficult to manage....
If the shame does not get you, the guilt will. Guilt and shame are like a two-headed beast of negative thought processes that seem to be ever-threatening and nearly impossible to conquer if you've dealt with substance abuse. Given the way the world views drug...