Just as drug and alcohol use harms your body and brain, it can also have a devastating impact on unborn children. In pregnancy, your baby receives all of its nutrients from you. As both food and oxygen travel through the umbilical cord and to the placenta without dilution or filtration, it’s important to remember that…
Addiction in and of itself is a sick, debilitating, invasive disease that affects all manner of people. It has no definitive characteristics, nor does it have a particular type of individual that it seems to prefer. The truth of the matter is that it is one of the very few diseases that science simply cannot…
It’s no secret: millions of Americans fight the chronic struggle of drug dependency every day. While addiction recovery centers nationwide are working effortlessly to provide resources for these victims, the simple fact of the matter is that while some are getting better, many others are regressing rapidly. In fact, studies indicate that the volume of…
For many, rehab is an experience like no other. They enter a treatment facility broken, battered shells of themselves, ravaged by the disease that is addiction, and with very little hope for a bright future. A few months later, they emerge afresh, with a new lease on life and a new attitude, ready to conquer…
According to the National Institute of Health, addiction recovery centers are starting to embrace models of service that closely resemble service models used to address chronic conditions. Researchers indicate that this change is due in part to the fact that drug use, recently characterized as a chronic condition as well, has been found to drastically…
Individuals that have not entered addiction recovery before may have questions about what the process is like. There are always many ideas about what addiction recovery entails. Though every addiction recovery process is different, there are many similarities. Taking a look at these will give you a good idea to expect through treatment. An early,…
Most addiction recovery plans and treatment options focus on one thing: preventing a victim of addiction from ever touching the substance they were addicted to again. Actually, if the plan works well enough, the ultimate goal is to dissuade the victim from having any inclination to touch any illegal substance, and to have no interest…
The hardest part of any addiction recovery effort is often not the treatment itself. Rather, it is the mindset of the individual receiving the treatment. Because addiction is essentially a hijacking of the mind, individuals will often face their biggest battles in recovery when their will comes to a crossroads with the disease and what…
Drugs themselves can be neither good nor bad. In fact, research indicates that drugs are actually more involved in the preservation of lives than they are in death, although some may argue that culture seems to suggest otherwise. When prescribed by a physician, (or taken over the counter in the prescribed doses), drugs can be…
The short answer, of course, is no. Unfortunately, however, if you let it, your body will tell you otherwise. When consuming substances, the brain begins to depend on these substances for stimulation and the euphoric feeling we know as a “high.” Over time, the natural hormones and endorphins that your brain used to create begin…