Addiction Archives | Oceanside Malibu

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 »

The Importance Of Addressing Your Core Issues

The Importance Of Addressing Your Core Issues The average approach to substance abuse treatment for the past several decades has been a crash course on the 12 steps. There is no doubt that the 12 steps provided a much needed solution to issues related to alcoholism, however AA’s stated intention was not to discount or deny the importance of treating core issues as an adjunct to the 12 steps. Moreover, Alcoholics Anonymous was to be forever non-professional, with the stated primary purpose “ to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.” The vast majority of the treatment industry has been teaching the 12 steps as the primary more »

Untreated Mood Disorders & Addiction

Untreated Mood Disorders & Addiction There is a strong and proven correlation between addicts, alcoholics and untreated mood disorders. These disorders are have traditionally been referred to in clinical treatment environments as Axis I & II diagnosis or dual diagnosis, very generally meaning substance use disorder plus a mood disorder. Here are some of the more common forms of mood disorders and the terms used to describe them… Clinical or Major Depression, to be distinguished from feeling down or sad, to the extent that biochemistry may be altered, there is no situational precedent and impairment in cognition may be significant enough to affect daily functioning to include degradation of more »

Internet Addiction

Excessive time spent on the internet or the computer can be as bad for you as any other type of addiction. Symptoms of internet addiction can include depression, weight loss or gain, diminishing interest in work or school, carpal tunnel syndrome, decreased fitness level (which has its own dangers), and dry eyes, to name a few. Insomnia may also develop as a result of the light that interferes with the pineal gland. Over time, web addicts may get much less sleep which begins to affect melatonin production and cortisol levels. These factors can affect the ability to think clearly, cause increased weight gain and irritability. People who are lonely more »

Giving Yourself Time To Recover

Lives that were cluttered with destruction and chaos, when actively using, are not necessarily quick to sort out. Oceanside Malibu Treatment Center can guide you to make demonstrable changes necessary in order to both embrace and maintain recovery. Before making outside changes, we must first go inward. Memories and feelings may be overwhelming during the detox phase of treatment. Therefore, it may be helpful to visualize reasonable expectations of what sober feelings and behaviors might begin to look like. Addicts want what they want when they want it. A need for instant gratification defines drug addiction, so the tendency to apply the same idea to one’s recovery wouldn’t be uncommon more »