“Hey. Did you hear what I did at the party last weekend? It was crazy awesome.” In society today, teens view drinking as normal and cool. They will boast about the crazy things they do while drunk. But while they view drinking as cool, new drinkers haven’t learned to like the bitter taste of alcohol. So what do they drink instead? Alcopops. Read More →

When taking a prescription drug, addictive qualities of the drug should be considered. Some kinds of prescription drugs are more addictive than others. Prescription pain relievers can be highly addictive and include drugs such as oxycodone, or "oxy" as it is sometimes called, Xanax, Valium, and Vicodin, among others. How addictive each is depends on several factors. Warning Signs for Prescription Drug Addiction Read More →

A woman in Panama City, FL. claims that she violently attacked a monster in her living room—but the “monster” turned out to be her mother.  In Indianapolis, a 29-year-old woman leads squad cars on a wild chase before crashing and being removed from her car. She was discovered “incoherent, laughing uncontrollably and speaking nonsense.” A Florida man is subdued by police, but not before he rips a radar unit out of the squad car with his teeth. No, these stories aren’t from Stephen King novels or The Onion news network—these are real incidents. And what did they all have in common—Bath Salts.   Yes, you didn’t read that wrong—bath salts are the newest rage to hit the drug market. Read More →

Have you ever chased something—a person, a job, or an idea—only to discover that that wasn’t really what you wanted or thought it would be? Sometimes we alcoholics and addicts chase being “clean” and “dry” in the same way. We say, “If I could just get dry” or “If I could just stay clean.” But then we get dry for a few hours or days, and discover we’re miserable. If we’re honest with ourselves, just being dry and clean didn’t cut it for us—so, we easily go back to what made us happy—drinking and Read More →

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that any teenager desires to have fun. Everybody wants to have a good time, to enjoy themselves. But do you need a drug to get you there? Is it true that a party can’t be a party unless everybody there is on ecstasy? Let’s reconsider. Read More →

Innovative psychiatry studies performed between 1966 and 1970 suggested careful LSD use could be a unique way to help alcoholics sober up. According to the findings, one dose of the powerful drug could help alcoholics give up their drinking obsession for as long as six months.   The counter-intuitive method recommended 40 years ago by Krebs and Johansen, a pair of American scientists, seems suspect. But a re-examination of the study seems to view LSD as a Read More →

In general, we addicts and alcoholics pop our pills and drink our alcohol because the substance makes us feel better. Maybe we just fought with our spouse. Maybe we just had a bad day at work. Maybe we just watched our favorite TV show. Either way, we needed to escape reality, so we could feel better. So what do we do after we’ve been dry and sober? How do we re-create that good feeling without using or drinking? Read More →

If you’ve been listening to the news last Christmas, you've probably heard about Zohydro--the new proposed painkiller coming to market soon. And later this year, you might be hearing a lot more about it. Zohydro has sent little ripples of shock through addiction experts and those who care about the rise of prescription addiction.  So what’s the commotion all about? And why is there such a big protest against it? Read More →

Off the Shelves OxyContin, or Oxy, just came off the shelves—in Canada that is. So, it must be serious, right? In efforts to fight problems with increasing addiction, some provinces in Canada no longer publically fund OxyContin. Some of the provinces even chose not to fund the Read More →

We’re still waiting on the toxicology tests for the cause of Whitney Houston’s death. Many speculate that the cause will be a combination of prescription drugs and alcohol. Frank Bruni, in his February op-ed piece on Whitney, brought up an interesting point about the lack of emphasis on alcohol in Houston’s death. He points out that we like alcohol too much to notice the damage, and we often lack the Read More →