Years ago when I lived in another state and before I enrolled in law school I began dating a man who lived downstairs from me in my quadraplex. He was a very successful computer engineer. One day he was unexpectedly fired from his job. He downplayed the incident and obtained another job of equal stature […]
Drugs tap into the brain’s communication system and disrupt the way nerve cells normally send, receive, and process information. There are at least two ways that drugs are able to do this: (1) by imitating the brain’s natural chemical messengers, and/or (2) by overstimulating the “reward circuit” of the brain. Some drugs, such as marijuana […]
The heart is the literal and metaphorical center of our lives. We have either an open heart toward life or we may be closed hearted. Our response toward life may be one full of heartache or heartfelt joy. All of us have issues and challenges from time to time. How we respond will tell us […]
Alcoholism is the primary chemical causing addictive disease in our country. It is responsible for thousands of fatalities each year, but there is another drug that is having a profound effect both on how we think about chemical dependency and on addictions medicine. In the 1980’s and early 1990’s it became the “in thing” in […]
One of the most difficult aspects of helping a person struggling with alcoholism or depression is to be able to bring hope. We don’t derive hope from taking tests for alcoholism or depression, or from hearing a lecture about these subjects. Mainly we get hope from hearing the experience of a recovering person, and identifying […]
We all struggle with denial. Denial is part of being human. It affects everything we do, the way we think, what we believe, and how we perceive our world. Denial is our ego’s way of dealing with realities that are painful or unpleasant. Denial shades our memories, prejudices our perception and manipulates our future. We […]
Alcoholism is a brain disease. Brain research in the past several years has taught us much more than we have ever known before about the mechanics of how alcoholism affects us. At the same time, it has reaffirmed older wisdom about alcoholism that has too often been neglected. Seneca, the Roman poet, observed that some […]