A Connected Life
It is our hope that “A Connected Life” will engage you in fresh, inspiring ways with what a life empowered by recovery can look like. It’s also our way of staying in touch with you in a conversation that’s alive with practical, new insights and meaningful resources for community and support.
Addiction: Shattering Six Common Myths
Addiction is a rapidly expanding universe filled with misconceptions and seldom understood by those outside its gravitational pull. Friends and family of people addicted to various substances are often mystified by the irrational extremes their loved ones go to in order to sustain their destructive habit, while society stigmatizes and criminalizes addictive behaviors to the…
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Effectively Handling Transference and Countertransference
Few dynamics in life are as subtle and nuanced as the therapist-client relationship, which involves a complex system of boundaries designed to protect both while providing a safe, healing environment. Unlike other relationships, however, boundaries within the context of a therapeutic relationship can be difficult to navigate. Intense feelings and unprocessed emotions can easily arise…
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The Importance of Spirituality in Recovery
Most people beginning their journey into recovery enter through the gateway of a 12-step program. Especially in early recovery, the religious connotation of the language in the Big Book can be challenging for those who have not yet developed a spiritual belief system or, in some cases, have suffered as a result of previous religious…
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Taking a Good Look at Yourself, While Staying Positive
“We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” –The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, Step 4 “Making a searching and fearless moral inventory of yourself” is often thought to mean simply owning up to your faults and mistakes. Actually, that’s only part of it. We’re all multifaceted creatures, and if your self-inventory stops…
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Establishing Appropriate Boundaries
Therapeutic relationships are intricate, dynamic systems of healing and trust, defined by boundaries. Similar to state lines on a map or borders between countries, however, many boundaries are invisible and, in certain cases, imperceptible to those engaged in a therapeutic relationship. Although many people find maintaining healthy boundaries in a therapeutic relationship relatively easy, certain…
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The Art of Asking for Help
“We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.” –The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, Step 3 Besides turning yourself over to the care of God (or whatever name you call your Higher Power as you understand it), effective recovery from addiction requires…
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How a New Scientific Discovery Is Leading to New Treatments for Addiction and Other Mental Health Problems
Last month researchers at Rutgers University cracked a code in their effort to demystify how addiction affects the brain, and their discovery may lead to more new medications for cocaine and other addictions and co-occurring mental health problems. The researchers were studying cocaine-addicted rats when they made the following groundbreaking observation: that cocaine use caused…
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What Does “Higher Power” Mean to You?
“We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” –The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, Step 2 When Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in 1935, few Westerners had seriously considered any concept of “God” besides the traditional Judeo-Christian version: a single masculine supreme deity, in ultimate control of the universe,…
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The Difference Between Giving Up and Admitting an Uncontrollable Weakness
“We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.” –The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, Step 1 The idea of admitting you’re powerless over an addiction sounds to many people like a cop-out, akin to the infamous “Twinkie defense” which amounts to, “If you can’t help yourself, you can’t be held the…
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Breaking Free From Codependent Relationships
A strong, positive network of support from family, friends, and the community at large is critical to recovery. Without a sufficient support network, someone struggling with isolation—a defining characteristic of addiction—will resort to the same self-destructive behaviors that created their addiction in the first place. Although many relationships are balanced, healthy and positive influences, some…
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“Opioid Crisis Response Act” Passes, Including Key Recommendations from Executive Chairman Chris Christie
Last week, the U.S. Senate successfully passed the “Opioid Crisis Response Act”— a wide-ranging set of bills that contains many of the same recommendations of the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, which Beach House Center for Recovery Executive Chairman Chris Christie chaired in 2017. The new legislation, authored largely by…
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How Recovery Is About Who You Know
Recovery is a lot about who you know. Let me explain…. In a month devoted to the topic of social pressure and its relation to substance abuse, there is great utility in revisiting the following key tenet of recovery: that the company you surround yourself with is as critical as the medications I (or any…
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