Part Two of an Ongoing Series Last month, we brought you part one of an ongoing series featuring our clinical director, Brian Dunphey, and the way Brian uses movies to connect with clients and to elucidate key concepts of recovery. In the first entry, we discussed The Lion King, a history of trauma, and the…
Living Sober and Radically Free Alcoholism and drug addiction do not spring from nothingness. They are a product of behavioral, psychological, biological, and social factors. For example, the families of addicts and alcoholics often have a history of substance abuse. Similarly, many who suffer from substance abuse disorder are also survivors of some type of…
Making Sense of the World Around Us Myths were an attempt by early humans to make sense of the world around them. Because they had no idea why the sun traveled across the sky, they attributed it to Apollo and his chariot or to Amaterasu. Earthquakes were the result of a cobra shifting or giants…
Together, We Can Save Lives We’re currently in the middle of National Suicide Prevention Week, which began on September 8th and runs until the 14th. As you all know, Ocean Recovery specializes in treating substance abuse and eating disorders. What you may not know is that suicide is that tenth leading cause of death in…
Widening the Circle I’ve gone over the importance of a sober support network time and again in these blogs. And because it’s absolutely essential to a successful recovery program, I’m going to mention it one more time (at least for now.) The value of a close group of people who have been through some of…
Recap: Emotional, Mental, Physical Last week, I shared part one of a post on relapse prevention, based on Relapse Prevention and the Five Rules of Recovery by Steven M. Melemis. That blog focused on the three stages of relapse: emotional, mental, and physical. To quickly recap, emotional relapse is the stage in which a person…
An Ounce of Prevention A couple of months back I shared a blog called Dealing With Relapse in which I attempted to offer some hope to those coming off of a slip. It’s so important to right the ship quickly after a setback to keep things moving forward and prevent a slip from turning into…
A Warning…and a Sign of Hope Many of us who work in the recovery industry have first-hand experience with addiction and I am no different. In a number of my blogs, I’ve alluded to some of the things I went through as an active alcoholic. I generally try to keep the focus of these posts…
Essential to Long Term Success Looking over old blogs, I noticed that I’ve mentioned sober support networks in quite a few of them (Dealing with Relapse and the Benefits of a Routine in Early Recovery are two recent entries that spring to mind.) However, I also realized that I’ve never written an entire blog on…
Maladaptive Behaviors If you’ve spent any time at all reading these blogs, you know that I love to work out. It’s been an essential component of my recovery ever since I decided to get sober and I preach its virtues whenever I can. However, it’s very easy to start using the gym maladaptively. For those…