Articles and Resources for Recovery

For decades and decades (and even more decades), the magazine Reader’s Digest has featured a segment called “Laughter, the Best Medicine.” Arguably, whether or not the jokes on those pages of the magazine actually make you laugh says a lot about what kind of humor you enjoy. In any case,...

Are you in the habit of staying up late at night—maybe way too late? Are you regularly staying up late even though you know you will regret it when your alarm goes off in the morning? Are you pitting nighttime you against morning you? Does morning you kind of hate...

If you are a person in recovery from a substance use disorder, you likely feel quite grateful that you have been able to set aside drugs or alcohol and work toward rebuilding your life. Keeping hold of that feeling of gratefulness is a great way to support your ongoing recovery...

Think about your habits. Not just the bad habits. Consider your neutral habits. And the good ones, too. The fact of the matter is that we all have a range of habits. Brushing your teeth first thing in the morning is a habit, for example (that’s a good habit). The...

Throughout this blog, we have written about the ways in which a substance use disorder centered on alcohol can upend your life (examples here, here, and here). The problems associated with alcohol use—damage to your relationships, your finances, your ability to think clearly, and more—are all serious and good reasons...

Habits can be good or bad, healthy or unhealthy. If you are in recovery from a substance use disorder (which some people might refer to as a drug habit), you know this is true. What is also true—and perhaps a little less obvious—is that good and bad habits can be...

Have you ever had someone try to pull a fast one on you with a coin flip? Just before flipping the coin up into the air, they might announce, “Heads I win, tails you lose!”  With those “rules” in play, you can’t win the flip. That’s why it is much,...

In this series about healthy eating in recovery, we have written a lot about the kinds of foods that best support your well-being and your efforts to stay away from drugs or alcohol. In this entry, we want to shift the focus from what you should eat to a couple...

The notion of a dinner bell—often a triangle struck with a metal rod which produced a loud ringing sound that would call people from their work to come together to eat—is not terribly common anymore. Its closest analog might be a parent shouting out the front door to bring the...

This is the third entry in our ongoing series of posts about how healthy eating supports your ongoing recovery from a substance use disorder. The first entry was an overview of ways you can make your diet healthier. The second entry focused on breakfast and hydration. In this blog post,...