Are women stigmatized by addiction? When we think about the person who works a full time job, travels, enjoys a beer with sports, or finishes a long day in the office by going out to dinner and cocktails with a friend, which may turn into a late night of drinking, what type of person comes to mind? Is it a man or a woman? Are they single or married?  If we place a female in that scenario vs. a man, does it change the expectation of that person?  You see, although we’ve come a long way as a society when dealing with gender expectations and inequality, there are still deeply engrained prejudices that exist when we’re thinking about addiction. The behavior in the above scenario tends to be more widely accepted for men because “this is what hard working men do,” some might say. For some...

Just how do Prince and the opioid epidemic come together? The death of Prince has left many wondering what really happened and whether circumstances could have been different.  Prince’s use of pain killers came as a surprise and many found it hard to believe he had been struggling with prescription drugs for quite some time. On April 20, two of Prince’s representatives, in hopes to intervene and find treatment for the artist, contacted Dr. Howard Kornfeld, a California based doctor who specializes in pain management and opioid addiction. According to CNN, Dr. Kornfeld sent his son, Andrew, a consultant from the pain management practice, to Prince’s estate, purportedly to take buprenorphine to the performer. It was Andrew Kornfeld and two of Prince’s representatives who found the sing...

By Tom Horvath, Ph.D. How often have you heard the following statements? "Using buprenorphine (Suboxone, Bunavail, Zubsolv, etc.) or methadone is not real recovery." "Harm reduction is not real recovery." "Using psychiatric medications is not real recovery." "Moderation is not real recovery." “Real recovery” is widely viewed as abstinence from all intoxicating substances. You can still be in real recovery if you use (or over-use) caffeine, nicotine, and food, or engage or over-engage in potentially addictive activities (also termed processes or behaviors, including gambling, video games, pornography, sex, etc.). The real recovery perspective is that any use of intoxicating substances is very likely to, or will inevitably lead to returning to the previous level of (seve...

Overcoming the Stigma of Addiction Stigmatization in our society is largely connected to the behaviors and concepts of our society, in part by the people that make up our community.  Many of us who struggle with addiction of any sort find it is often difficult to seek treatment out of fear of judgment, shame, or guilt.  There is an underlying fear of being given a stigmatized label.  Without this fear, individuals might feel more accepted and open to being vulnerable and asking family, friends or professionals for the help they need. Where does this stigma of addiction come from? The stigma is produced in the media, movies, television, books, and ultimately created characters that fit a description of an otherwise made up criteria.  The government continues to be active in creating ...

In addiction recovery, if your life is filled with non-pleasurable activities, you are more likely to relapse. The relapse will provide an intense, but only temporary, satisfaction. Perhaps the greatest risk for imbalance comes when we are too focused on what we “should” do and not enough on what we want to do. Of course, we need to do what we should do, but with balance! Lifestyle balance can be considered from a number of perspectives. Below is a list (taken from Dr. Horvath's book, Sex, Drugs, Gambling & Chocolate, page 191) that you might use to consider how balanced you are: Work and relaxation Activity and contemplation (self-assessment) Duties and fun Long-term projects and momentary pleasure Alone time and social time Routine household chores and ne...

Does acupuncture help in the treatment of addiction? Chinese medicine, such as acupuncture, has long been used to treat an array of illness. More recently, Eastern methods have become increasingly popular within many addiction treatment approaches, as a supplement to other therapies.  Acupuncture is said to help alleviate withdrawal symptoms and physical pain, cure insomnia, and even help soothe emotional problems. So what is acupuncture? Basically stated, it is Chinese therapy involving pricking the skin with small/thin needles. It is used to treat a variety of physical symptoms, improve mental health, balance emotional conditions and alleviate pain. Acupuncture is based on a theory of energy. As the theory goes, “chi,” also known as energy, flows through our body along pathways...

Too Much of a Good Thing: How Four Key Survival Traits Are Now Killing Us by Lee Goldman, MD A review by Tom Horvath, PhD Too Much of a Good Thing is packed with well-referenced scientific information to support the author’s suggestion that hunger, thirst and desire for salt, fear and anxiety, and ease of blood clotting, all originally crucial to human survival, have in the modern era turned against us and become significant causes of illness and death. Of course he is not proposing we give up any of these abilities and behaviors. However, unless we take more control of how they operate, or ameliorate their effects, we will increasingly suffer from them. The author is dean of the faculties of health sciences and medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, the author of 450 sci...

Forgiving yourself in recovery is essential. Learning to forgive yourself is essential as you begin to do more self-healing in your recovery.  We often have a tendency to hold ourselves to such strict standards that we find no reason or justification to forgive ourselves.  Maybe you’ve found yourself in a certain situation, able to forgive someone else for even the harshest of pains yet you may be torturing yourself over a lesser offense. It is common to hold on to past mistakes that we feel are not forgivable out of fear of forgetting the hurt and repeating the behavior. So, we torture ourselves by replaying the feelings, punishment or guilt over and over again.  Staying in this cycle keeps us stuck. It is nearly impossible to truly move through the stages of healing while holding ont...

Changing self-defeating behavior plays a major role in recovery and improved mental health. In life we find there are unavoidable difficulties we are bound grapple with.  It is absolutely normal to find yourself challenged in difficult situations, even making less-than-stellar decisions or find yourself in regret.  So what does self-defeating behavior mean? When we find ourselves repeating the same maladaptive behaviors over and over again we may describe the circumstance as being “stuck.” Any behavior you engage in that is self-sabotaging, that takes you away from what you want, or that distracts you from your goals is self-defeating behavior. These behaviors zap your vitality, leaving you exhausted and without access to the powerful energy you need to create your best life. You ...

In a unique move toward reducing opioid overuse, the emergency room of New Jersey’s St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center, the busiest in the state, has decided to eliminate the use of opioids as the first defense against mild to moderate cases of pain. In an effort that has spanned a period of two months, the hospital’s Alternative to Opioids, or “ALTO,” program has managed to control the pain of 300 patients (that’s 75%) without the use of opioids. Through use of acetaminophen, ibuprofen and non-opioid pain blocking medications such as lidocaine injections, doctors and nurses have successfully been able to treat a number of different ailments such as kidney stones, chronic pain and other mild to moderate ailments. While the staff at St. Joseph’s still value the power of opioid...