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"It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace."

Andre Gide








 




 
Featured Addictions Articles

Alcohol and Drug Abuse in Mental Health
Alcohol abuse is overrated, while drug abuse is underrated. The DSM manual suggests that substance abuse there are differences in the definition of drug and alcohol use. To confuse matters worse the law has its own version of who is an alcoholic or drug ...

Crystal Meth Addiction - How Serious Is It?
The images in my last month local newspaper was enough to make anyone stop for a moment and see the devastating effect of crystal meth (Crystal methamphetamine) now becoming more mainstream and reaching epidemic proportion. The newspaper featured stories ...

Live Online Poker Games: Guide To Having Responsible Fun
Live Online poker has truly exploded lately. There is an increasing number of websites everywhere where you can take a dive into the world of online poker. However, with playing comes the common and unavoidable world of addiction. That is when the world ...




Which drug addiction treatment is the best?
 
The answer is simple: there is no such thing as the best drug addiction treatment. Depending on the kind of the addiction, your age and social situation different treatments may be chosen for your benefit.

Here are a few most common drug addiction treatments (from www.nida.nih.gov website):
(1) Relapse Prevention - this treatment helps you control your behavior, learn to identify dangerous situations and avoid them. It concentrates on augmenting your learning processes and developing your own defense skills.
(2) Matrix model - strict and personal, with therapist acting as your friend and as your coach at the same time. This drug addiction treatment seems to be intensive and deep. It works as much on your consciousness as on forcing into you a kind of drill which prevents you from using drugs.
(3) Supportive-Expressive Psychotherapy - it works mostly through interpersonal links, creating your sphere of comfort and teaches you to trust in other people support. Good and comfortable, used mostly for cocaine and heroin addicts.
(4) Individualized drug counseling is a drug addiction treatment that concentrates not only on a drug addiction, but works also on other related subject - employment status, family problems etc. It's a short-term therapy, but when it helps, it helps in a big way.
(5) Motivational Enhancement Therapy - this one concentrates on the addicts will - its aim is to incite the will to fight the addiction. It changes people, but in a good way. It makes them stronger and more focused.
(6) Behavioral Therapy for Adolescents - the treatment is based on assumption that by showing desired behavior and rewarding any steps addicts take toward achieving it, this drug addiction treatment will change patients behavior to drug-free one.
(7) Multidimensional Family Therapy (MDFT) for Adolescents takes a different approach and tries to help addicts by their families. It offers interesting and fruitful approach as many addictions have their roots in dysfunctional families, but it doesn't need only the addict's cooperation, but also the help from the family, which may be sometimes difficult.
Jeff Lakie is the founder of Rehab Resources a website providing information on drug and alcohol rehabilitaiton treatments



Addictions News


HLN's Jane Velez-Mitchell Is Still an Addict and Has "Issues" With John Edwards
Huffington Post
According to Webster to be addicted is: to devote or surrender (oneself) to something habitually or obsessively addicted to something. Admittedly, she was a high-functioning alcoholic, who was "spiritually bankrupt." Yet, she experienced "a miracle" on ...

and more »

Judy Collins: Singer and book addict
Boston Globe
I'm an addict, a complete addict. Some of the most exciting reading I do I have to do in the morning. I have to do it just a couple of pages at a time so I can really concentrate and I underline as I go. That's one reason why I prefer a book.


New York Times

Addiction Diagnoses May Rise Under Guideline Changes
New York Times
WASHINGTON — In what could prove to be one of their most far-reaching decisions, psychiatrists and other specialists who are rewriting the manual that serves as the nation's arbiter of mental illness have agreed to revise the definition of addiction, ...
Revised definition of 'addiction' may spur hike in number of addictsMiamiHerald.com
Revised guidelines might sharply increase addiction diagnosesAustin American-Statesman
You could be addicted but not know itOmaha World-Herald

all 40 news articles »

Are We Addicted to Facebook? It's Complicated.
New York Times (blog)
But does the research suggest that we are addicted to it? Is our obsession with the social network bordering on unhealthy? Can we resist the siren call of the glowing blue icon? Dr. Rosen said the average person was not addicted to Facebook.

and more »

Definition of addiction changing
Herald and News
That — in its simplest terms — is at the heart of a change in a psychiatric manual that could have a major effect on diagnosis and treatment of alcoholism and other addictions. An online service is needed to view this article in its entirety.