Binge Eating in Teens
Binge Eating in TeensBy Tom Horvath, PhD. Last month the federal government released data about binge eating in teens, based on a nationally representative sample of 10,710 teens. 6,898 of these teens answered the item on the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) about binge eating (eating a very large amount of food and feeling out […]
How Cannabis Receptors Work in Your Brain
How Cannabis Receptors Work in Your BrainBy Kenneth Anderson, MA The reason that humans can get high from cannabis is that there are receptors in the brain that the chemical components of cannabis, such as THC, can bind to. Why does the brain have such receptors? Because the brain naturally produces neurotransmitters which are similar […]
Halloween: A Spooky Time
Halloween: A Spooky Time By Tom Horvath, PhD We do not get spooked just at Halloween. It happens all day long. We often do not even notice. Much of the time our anxiety management system keeps the spooky experience largely or mostly out of our awareness. On Halloween we play-act feeling startled and scared, but […]
SMART Recovery Compared to AA
More evidence supports SMART Recovery’s Comparable Effectiveness with AA By Tom Horvath, PhD The evidence for SMART’s effectiveness keeps growing. There are now five studies that have found that individuals who have chosen SMART do as well as those who have chosen AA. No studies have found that SMART participants do worse. Studies have illustrated […]
Connection & Addiction
“The opposite of addiction is connection,” but what kind of connection? By Tom Horvath, PhD Isolation is both a cause and effect of addictive problems, often in a vicious cycle: As we become more isolated, we may turn to our addictive behavior more, and as we do, we may become more isolated. Growing out of […]
Addiction and Mitochondria
Addiction and Mitochondriaby Kenneth Anderson, M.A. A recent paper by Jun Gao and colleagues found that methamphetamine, morphine, and heroin result in high energy demands of the neurons which release dopamine into the nucleus accumbens. These high energy demands force the mitochondria of these cells to kick into overdrive to produce enough energy to keep […]
Emerging Treatments for Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD)
Emerging Treatments for Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) Social and other media platforms are buzzing with words like the “microbiome”, “peptides”, and “fibermaxxing” lately. Should we pay attention to the hype? It turns out, these concepts are relevant to the field of treatment and recovery. Interventions that address gut health, whether through oral supplementation, enema, or […]
Addiction as Disease vs. Choice: A False Dichotomy
Disease vs. Choice: A False DichotomyBy Kenneth Anderson, MA NOTE FROM PRACTICAL RECOVERY: How to understand addiction (or addictive problems) is a long-standing question, and that question is addressed by several blogs on this website. Practical Recovery is pleased to publish the most recent thoughts of esteemed author, historian, advocate, and founder of the HAMS […]
Remembering 9/11/2001
Remembering 9/11/2001By Tom Horvath, Ph.D. Today is too important an anniversary to pass over. Thousands died, tens of thousands were directly harmed, and all Americans and the world were indirectly harmed. There were and continue to be tens of thousands of stories of struggle and heroism as individuals, families, and communities coped with and continue […]
Psilocybin To Treat Addiction?
Psilocybin to Treat Addiction? Psilocybin, Brain Entropy, Brain Modularity, and Social Reward, by Kenneth Anderson, MA What is Brain Entropy? Brain entropy is defined by the complexity of the signals produced by the brain. Simpler signals are defined as having lower entropy, and more complex signals are defined as having higher entropy. A sine wave […]