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DBT: An Effective Addiction Treatment?
The debate over what causes addiction never seems to end. Is it nature or nurture? Is it a disease, or is it a choice? What makes it worse: drug availability or social isolation? While determining the cause of an addiction can be helpful, in truth it is an incredibly complex syndrome that arises from a…
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Naltrexone works for Alcohol Problems – Why Is It So Poorly Adopted?
Last month a client reached out to me because he wanted a prescription for Naltrexone, an FDA-approved medication for addiction to alcohol and opiates, but his doctor wouldn’t give it to him. Was it because his alcoholism wasn’t severe enough for medication, that he had health problems that made him a bad fit for it,…
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Mental Health Labels – Rebranding Our Shame
I recently gave a talk at the TEDxUCLA conference. The point of the talk was to point out just how impactful, often negatively so, mental health labels can be. In case you are not aware, mental health labels typically come with expectations. As I point out in my talk, these expectations can actually alter individual…
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Breaking Bad, Race, and Meth Addiction
by Emma Haylett As Breaking Bad ends a wildly successful season—don’t worry, you won’t find spoilers here— the show is on many of our minds for many different reasons. While the idea certainly wasn’t groundbreaking (there are so many that deal with drug and alcohol addictions and various forms of recovery, to varying degrees of accuracy…
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Managing Opiate Addiction During Pregnancy
By Lisa Simpson According to figures from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 5% of pregnant women in the US use illicit drugs, which rises to just over 20% in the under 18 age group. While heroin is used by only around 0.1% of women during pregnancy, a further 1% admit to using opiate…
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Adderall use and college students
All About Addiction has profiled stories of college addiction in the past, but most have centered on illegal drugs and the rampant problem of alcohol abuse. Education blogger Valerie Harris joins the community today to talk about a very disturbing new trend: the rise of “study aid” dependencies, usually in the form of prescription ADHD…
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About Addiction: Alcohol, Legalization, Internet-Addiction, the Drug war, and Teen Drug Use
a couple weeks away, A3 Link posts are back with a brand-new set of addiction article straight off the press! With election season gearing up we have some news regarding new laws on the ballot for legalization in some states, as well as internet-addiciton being deemed an official diagnosis in the new DSM, and everything…
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Quitting smoking without help is hard: Effects of motivation and other personality factors
Quitting smoking is hard, but that suggestion probably isn’t terribly exciting all on its own since most of our readers probably knew it already. Still, while we’ve talked about quitting smoking using nicotine replacement and medication, we haven’t really touched the subject of all those people out there who just decide to give quitting smoking…
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Time to Act: Helping parents deal with teens and drugs
Parents are always looking for help on how to parent when it comes to teens and drugs. Well, the new tool from drugfree.org, called Time To Act, may provide just the help parents want. The tool has separate sections for parents who fear their kids may be trying drugs or for those who know for sure. Check…
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How I stopped drinking, again – Entry 2
Okay, I’m not in as good a mood about the whole “Psychology Board-quitting drinking alcohol” experience this time… The not drinking alcohol part has not proven to be an issue until now although it has certainly come up a few times, especially around my upcoming anniversary and the question of whether I can sip champagne…