Topic: addiction

Isn’t that a bit like the drinker who insists he’s fine except that he just drinks a whole lot more than other people?

There’s no shortage of stories among nurses and doctors about a friend or family member who went through treatment and relapsed, perhaps many times.

That’s the mystery: Not why some people become addicted to certain substances, but why others do not.

Newcomers had a tendency to focus their attention on the drug that brought them to treatment, ignoring others they happened to have been using.

There’s a lag between the onset of an addictive disorder and arrival in treatment.

Clinicians… feel as if they’re always missing at least one extremely important tool that would make all the difference.

Rehab isn’t intended to effect a cure for someone’s addiction. We don’t have a cure for anybody’s addiction.

We develop habits and routines that seem to have a life of their own– and you’re never more aware of that than when you go to change them.

By the time the family gets around to taking action, conditions in the addict’s life have already reached the point where there’s a certain incentive to change.

It’s the stigma that creates the distinction, not the distinction that creates the stigma.