Los Angeles Criminal Lawyer Mary Masi has been a friend of the recovery community for more than 25 years. On April 11, 2011, she published an article in support of substance abuse recovery alternatives and crime in California’s leading law journal. The article is distributed to judges throughout the state of California: The measure of [...]

One of the most fascinating things about addiction is that, although it has biological antecedents, it revolves around choice. A lot of people don’t know that. But AA knows that. AA almost never says, “You must stop drinking, and you must follow our program”, as if AA had some kind of external leverage to make [...]

Consider the epidemiological data and the clinical challenges of treating patients who evidence concurrent comorbid psychiatric diagnoses of PTSD and Substance Abuse Disorders (SUDs). As summarized by Brady et al. (2009), Mueser et al. (2003) and Ouimette and Brown (2003): A majority of patients (80%) seeking treatment for SUDs report having experienced intense trauma. Approximately [...]

The mind of an addict is like an untamed horse, running wild and full of emotion; it cannot be controlled. DBT and 12-Step work tames that wild horse, bringing the mind into focus and regulating emotions. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) has found its way into addiction treatment. Originally developed as a therapeutic tool for women [...]

Co-authored by:  Terrence T. Gorski, M.A. & Wayne Blampied We live in a time when the need for addiction treatment has never been greater and in an era where technology has the potential to improve the human condition as never before. Unfortunately, this potential is not being fully used in the treatment of addiction and [...]

Wilhelm Reich was a student of Freud, who departed from psychoanalysis and proposed a different treatment approach called “Psychiatric Orgone Therapy.” Many of Freud’s disciples departed in different ways from Freud. Most moved away from certain aspect of Freudian theories, while elaborating on other aspects. Jung, for example, elaborated on the theory of unconscious and [...]

Thirty years ago, when I first started working in addiction treatment, the average patient was middle age, white, male, employed, with intact family and alcoholic.  At the time, about 15-20% were women, usually alcohol and/or Valium addiction.  The patient population was usually late-middle to late stage alcoholic, often had prolonged and medically challenging detox and [...]