Restoring Hope: The Gift of Detox
It doesn’t happen like this all the time. But it did happen yesterday. Room to room, patient to patient, over and over—I heard one success story after another. Mack, off fentanyl since mid-April. Sleeping well, doing home renovation projects he’d put off for...
My Pain Doctor Cut Me Off, What Do I Do?
This has become a very common scenario and patients from all around the country are calling the Coleman Institute for Addiction Medicine for help. It’s important to understand the difference between addiction and physical dependence. Addiction, at its simplest, can be...
Triggers as Reminders
Recovery is a lifelong process, fraught with many twists and turns. A friend who has been sober from alcohol for two and a half years told me a story yesterday that brought this point home. She had just renewed her Costco membership and went there for the first time...
Addiction, Family, and Recovery
As a clinician, when first meeting a patient I am very interested to learn about their family and relationships. For some, sadly, they may have exhausted all ties to family and their relationships may be slim to non-existent. In other scenarios, the person in active...
