Between a Rock and a Hard Place: 3 Reasons You Can’t Ignore Trauma When you face difficult times, you have two options: work through the difficulty you’ve encountered or try to avoid it. For many who have lived through a traumatic experience, going around or burying traumatic memories can feel like the only feasible […]
Yes, You Can: Four Ways to Strengthen Your Resilience Everyone knows someone who’s been through a horrifying experience, yet somehow manages to keep smiling. People like that usually come to mind when we lose it over small things, like having trouble finding a parking spot or unloading the groceries only to realize we forgot […]
Therapy and Horseplay: Four Things You Need to Know about Equine Therapy When it comes to equine therapy, I’ll be the first one to advocate for its use. I’ve been an avid rider all my life, and there were many times I walked away from the barn feeling more relaxed and rejuvenated, and emotionally healthier […]
Six Ways to Maintain Your Sobriety at a Thanksgiving Celebration I first tried to quit drinking on November 11, 1995. By Thanksgiving of that year, I was clean, but I was scared to death of facing a holiday dinner without a drink. I remember standing by the bar in my grandmother’s house, downing Diet Coke […]
High school seniors have a lot of expectations about what life will be like once they move on from their parents’ homes. When I prepared to leave for college, I hunkered down in my room to make a list of all the things I’d “need” for my new life, including a fully furnished student apartment. […]
Intervention for binge drinking in college has shown to be successful, but only for a limited time according to research published in the APA Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. A total 1,040 college students participated in a twelve-month study by James Henson, PhD, a psychology professor at Old Dominion University. He concluded that “brief […]
Alcohol and marijuana are among the drugs most commonly used by adolescents and young adults. Use is associated with substantial morbidity and mortality for young people, especially motor vehicle crash fatality, which is a leading cause of death among those 18 to 25 in the US. Half of young drivers in fatal crashes in nine […]
Someone who has had a blackout while drinking cannot remember part of their drinking episode. Unfortunately, most people do not understand how dangerous blackouts are, yet up to 50% of drinkers may have an alcohol-related blackout (ARB). A new study identifying different trajectories of ARBs of drinkers between the ages of 15 and 19, along […]
An alarming number of young people are consuming alcohol nowadays, often binging on the weekends and combining drinking with drug experimentation. These risky behaviors are causing health problems with consequences that will have to be dealt with throughout their adult lives. I should know. I was once that teenage drinker turned alcoholic. As such, these […]