Is Sugar Addictive?
Sugar’s Shadow: Is Sugar Addictive? By Thaddeus Camlin, Psy.D. Cultural conditioning (aka brainwashing) will produce a recoiling, dismissive reaction in many to the idea that sugar not only deserves a seat at the table in the discussion of addiction, but that sugar’s rightful place at the table of addiction is on the throne of rule […]
SobrieTea Party: An Interview with a Recovery Blogger
To continue our interview series with top recovery bloggers, we have Tawny Lara, from SobrieTea Party. Tawny has been blogging since she quit drinking in 2015 and believes “hitting rock bottom is not a prerequisite to recovery. You can begin your recovery journey at anytime.” Tawny lives in New York City, is a journalist and […]
Beware of Online Drug and Alcohol Assessments
by Thaddeus Camlin, Psy.D. Online Drug and Alcohol Assessments: The Experiment I did a little experiment this week. To indulge my amateur investigative spirit, I went to multiple rehab websites and took some so-called online drug and alcohol assessments that claim to determine through a brief series of questions whether or not someone is an […]
Understanding Addiction: An Interview w/ Dr. Marc Lewis
This month’s featured top-blogger of 2018 is Marc Lewis, Ph.D., who has published two books on addiction and hosts a blog called Understanding Addiction. His unique angle on writing about addiction comes from his experience as a neuroscientist and professor, which allows him to write about the journey of addiction and recovery with a scientific […]
Addiction Treatment Under the Gaslight
by Thaddeus Camlin, Psy.D. Some of the most powerful groups I’ve been a part of have been on the topic of the ‘Gaslight.’ Derived from the title of a 1944 Ingrid Bergman film in which Bergman’s character leads his wife to believe she is going mad, the term gaslight grew into a potent psychological concept. […]
Infantilizing Addiction
“Go to your room and calm down… Wake up, breakfast is ready… Are you gonna’ sleep all day?… You can’t have candy in your room… It’s 10 o’clock, lights out, it’s bedtime…” The Practice of Infantilizing Addiction The statements above are just a few of the endless parade of childish remarks that are hurled at […]
Sober Senorita: Interview with a Recovery Blogger
Next up in our top-blogger interview series is Kelly Fitzgerald, of Sober Senorita. We’ve been following Kelly’s blog for a while now, maybe 2-3 years. Her personal and professional growth, as well as that of her blog, have been nothing short of inspiring. What started out in 2014 as a blog about Kelly’s personal recovery […]
Avoidance is Addiction’s Best Friend
by Thaddeus Camlin, Psy.D. Avoidance and Fear Nothing feeds fear like avoidance. Substance use itself often becomes problematic because it is such an effective method of short-term avoidance. Eventually, the repetition compulsion of avoidance builds up so much unaddressed residual byproduct that the costs of continued avoidance outweigh the potential costs of facing what we […]
Recovering from Recovery: An Interview with a Recovery Blogger
The online recovery community has exploded in the last decade with several resources, from apps to forums to blogs. These resources have become integral to the recovery process for millions of people affected by addiction. Over the next few months, we will be interviewing some of the top-rated recovery bloggers of 2018. These bloggers play […]
Dirty Talk in Addiction
by Thaddeus Camlin, Psy.D. Here at Practical Recovery we’ve done a number of pieces on the language of addiction. I personally consider the article It’s Time to Clean Up The Language of Addiction, by Anne Fletcher, MS, RD, to be a foundational cornerstone to quality addiction treatment. In recent weeks a particularly common term in […]