Articles and Resources for Recovery

This blog post, like all blog posts at this site, is about treatment for and recovery from substance use disorders and co-occurring mental health disorders. But we are going to start by talking about cars. Cars are an important part of American culture, and over the years the look of...

When things go wrong in your life—as they no doubt do from time to time—it can be all too easy to fall back on excuses. Leaning into an excuse can be an effort to shift blame to someone else or simply to avoid embarrassment. Excuses can also be employed when...

It would be wonderful if you could go through treatment for a substance use disorder and come out the other side confident that you would never have difficulties with drugs or alcohol again. The fact of the matter, however, is that many people in recovery experience a relapse at some...

Board games have been around for a long, long time—and it is likely you have played any number of them over the years. From checkers to chess, Go to Backgammon, Candy Land to Battleship, or The Settlers of Catan to Wingspan, there are all kinds of games that appeal to...

Have you ever noticed that when your brain is cycling through memories of your past, it often seems to pick negative experiences to highlight? Have you noticed that when you think about the future, it is often easier to think of reasons to be negative rather than positive? And have...

A new year is underway, and for a lot of people, that tends to lead to some serious reflection. If you are a person in recovery from a substance use disorder, maybe you have been reflecting on your journey so far and wondering what this year might bring.  Of course,...

As 2025 comes to an end, we thought it would be nice to look back over the last 12 months of blog posts and share a highlight from each month. We covered a lot of topics—more, even, than will be represented here—and we will link you to the original posts...

Not too long ago, we penned a blog entry about Taylor Swift’s project to re-record her early albums—using the project as a metaphor for reclaiming your own story from a substance use disorder. Take back your life from drugs or alcohol is a power move, just like Tay-Tay’s refusal to...

There are plenty of reasons to love the animated films that have been produced by the Walt Disney Company over the years. The art is always beautifully done, the songs will have you tapping your toes, and the voice actors really bring their characters to life. Generally speaking, these animated...

This past summer, a new entry in Tom Cruise’s long-running series of Mission: Impossible movies hit the big screen. It was the eighth entry in the series of films, which kicked off nearly 30 years ago in 1996. Go back another 30 years, to 1966, and the original Mission: Impossible...