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...
How Do I Know It’s Safe to Stop Drinking Alcohol?
People in true recovery — beyond the physical act of not drinking or using, and in true emotional recovery — are easy people to be around. In the greatest of paradoxes, they, the wounded healers, have found strength through their weakness. They have learned wisdom not...
Alcohol: One Superman’s Kryptonite
Abraham is a soft-spoken man in his mid 40’s. He is a born listener, discerning when he speaks, and reminds me of the old adage to use words only when it improves upon the silence. Abraham found the Coleman Institute for Addiction Medicine online when he was trying to...
Why Opioids Can Make Pain Worse
A patient shared this story and this question with me a few weeks ago: “For the past two years, I have been working with a pain management doctor to find a remedy for my back pain. I tried every treatment in the book from physical therapy, to ibuprofen, to cortisone...
