Blog | Oceanside Malibu

The Recovery Journey

The Recovery Journey Sobriety gives us the ability and skills to deal with the “normal” issues we face in life: loss of loved ones, loss of relationships, empty nesting, career changes, physical impairment, and grieving. Recovery is a process not an event. Life is a continuum of ever-deepening circles. Put those two ideas together and we begin to understand what growing old sober might look like. In life, discovery often precedes recovery. You wake up one morning and realize, “Oh, that’s what that’s all about. We live life forward and understand it backwards. Recovery goes through stages, even as life does. In the beginning, we have an early awareness and more »

EMDR in Addiction Treatment

EMDR in Addiction Treatment We know for sure that trauma occurs in well over 90% of people who seek mental health or addiction treatment. When a trauma occurs, it is outside of the normal range of human experience. When the experience happens and it enters into the brain, the brain doesn’t know how to process it, metabolize it for lack of a better word. Consequently, it gets frozen and isn’t processed like every other experience. If it’s frozen in time, the person consciously or unconsciously is still hanging on to the remnants of that experience and that can last for many, many years. We certainly don’t want blame any person more »

Ketamine to Treat Depression?

Ketamine to Treat Depression? There’s a new drug called Esketamine for treatment-resistant depression. This is a type of depression where people basically do not respond to any of the conventional treatments. In the United States alone, there’s just over sixteen million people with depression. That’s just over 6 percent of the entire population of the country, and a third of those people do not respond to any of the treatments offered to them. These individuals are classified as having treatment resistant depression and it’s one of the most horrible things to comprehend. To know that you are depressed, you have a diagnosis of depression, but your psychiatrist just turns around more »

Medication-Assisted Treatment

The medications traditionally used in harm reduction or medication-assisted treatment programs for opiod addiction are Suboxone, Subutex & Sublocade. Suboxone is really made up of two medications with the main med being Buprenorphine. It is a long-lasting opiate. Now why would you take someone off of opiates and put them on more opiates? Well, Buprenorphine attaches to those opioid receptor sites in such a way that makes it very difficult to overdose. Consequently, it increases safety for anyone addicted to opioids or heroin. Another thing is, since suboxone has a tiny bit of naloxone, which is an opioid blocker, it adds a bit more of a safety net. Thus, adding more »

How Outpatient Treatment Helps The Chronic Relapser

How Outpatient Treatment Helps The Chronic Relapser Treatment facility professionals will usually discuss with patients and their families, the need for outpatient treatment. You may have heard the terms extended treatment or sober living after completing the initial detox portion of a program. The reason for this is results. It has been shown that completing a full continuum of care helps patients remain clean after treatment. Outpatient treatment is especially helpful for people who have been to many treatment centers for addiction and have repeatedly relapsed. There is benefit for everyone to participate in an extended care treatment program. It may however, be particularly helpful for young adults and more »

Why A Relationship May Be Difficult For An Addict

Why A Relationship May Be Difficult For An Addict An addiction is a relationship. When someone is addicted to a substance and/or a behavior, that person is in a relationship with their substance or behavior of choice, the same as if they were involved with a person. Further, the relationship with the object of their addiction is the most important relationship in his/her life. He or she will do anything to protect that relationship and keep it alive, i.e. deny it, lie about it, cover it up, minimize it, blame others, etc. When a person with an addiction enters into a significant relationship, he or she is not entering more »