Family members play a crucial role in helping a loved one with an alcohol or substance use disorder get on the road to recovery. But where do you begin? How can you really help? When do you back-off? How do you prevent enabling? What tools are effective in keeping your loved one focused and positive during…
When a child in your household is struggling with an addiction, it’s imperative that everyone in the home is on board with their recovery plan. Think about it like a team. If everyone is working towards the same goal, you will succeed. It takes one person to break the objective, and if that person isn’t…
You have been looking forward to the summer coming for the last few months. Kids are out of school, vacations will be taken, and the weather conditions yield tons of sunshine during the summer. However, by day three of summer break, your kids are already bored. You fear that you may be stuck at home…
The origins of the international ‘marijuana holiday’ are vague, but may have started somewhere in northern california in the 1970s. For the past few decades the use of the term “420” has evolved and become a thematic part of marijuana counter culture. Every year on April 20th, marijuana users around the world gather together to…
Addiction changes the brain. We can read that sentence with an air of simplicity and imagine drugs and alcohol changing the way our boys think and behave. The brevity of the reality is a bit more impactful. Addiction changes the brain. Addiction changes the way our boys think, the way our boys behave, the way…
Teenagers aren’t known for taking wild and crazy trips to Mexico on their spring break. However, if teens are going on international trips to areas where the drinking age is 18, they might be faced with a temptation. Temptation isn’t exclusive to international spring break trips. At home where your teen developed their problematic relationship…
We think the best of our children. We hope, in the hours they are at school, at practice, at friends’ houses, or alone in their own space, they are making good decisions. Most parents never dream that they will find their child with alcohol at a young age. Children should have no interest in consuming…
Mindfulness is a term we come to hear often when our adolescent or teenage male is in treatment for drug and alcohol addiction. In the last few years, mindfulness has become a sweeping trend in the United States and around the world. Popular smartphone apps like Headspace have made the practice of mindfulness and mindful…
Addiction can bring out the worst in our children. Drugs and alcohol are mind altering substances which change the structure of the brain. If our children already have a tendency toward emotional hysterics, their abuse of drugs and alcohol, as well as the habits they develop, can exacerbate those emotional episodes. Emotional manipulation is a…
Parents worry. If parenting had a job advertisement with a job description, worrying should be listed as a required skill. Be able to worry all hours of the day and night about the past, present, and future wellbeing of your child. We love our children. We want our children to experience the best in life,…