If someone you love is suffering from a drug or alcohol addiction, you may wonder if they’ll ever be completely cured of the disease. While addiction can be effectively managed with treatment, it’s a chronic condition, and recovery is a lifelong process. Understanding the chronic nature of addiction can help you support your loved one’s ongoing...
Growing up as the famous son of George Hamilton and Alana Stewart wasn’t easy for Ashley Hamilton. The 40-year-old has survived his two failed marriages, a heroin addiction and struggles with anorexia and bulimia. Today, Ashley is eight years sober, an addiction coach, and living a different life, as seen on the new E! reality...
Four Californians aged 18 to 24 have died at music festivals in the last 15 months. The latest victims were two young women attending the two-day Hard Summer Music Festival held this past weekend at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds in Pomona, CA. The two girls, Tracy Nguyen, 18, and Katie Dix, 19, died from...
There are some addiction rehab centers that insist they can cure alcohol and drug addiction. Is this claim realistic? Can drug and/or alcohol addiction be permanently cured? Extensive research attributes addiction largely to changes in brain structure and function. Because these changes make it much harder for the addict to control substance use, health experts...
Addicts are all too aware of the difficulty involved in overcoming a serious substance abuse problem. There are withdrawal symptoms, detox, intensive therapies, triggers to manage and stress to cope with. It can be quite overwhelming. Yet there is profound joy throughout the addiction recovery process, and even its darkest moments, it can be illuminated...
Many individuals experience trauma during their lifetimes. Although many people exposed to traumatic situations demonstrate few or no lingering symptoms, those who have experienced repeated, chronic or multiple traumas are more likely to exhibit pronounced symptoms and consequences, including substance abuse, mental illness, and health problems. People of all ages, ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientations and...
The American Society of Addiction Medicine defines addiction as a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry. Dysfunction in these circuits leads to characteristic biological, psychological, social and spiritual manifestations. This dysfunction is reflected in an individual pathologically pursuing reward and/or relief by substance use and other behaviors. But what if...
