What's baseball got to do with getting over your alcohol abuse? Early last Sunday morning, coming down stairs to put on coffee and collect the NY Times, I missed the last step, dislocated my left knee, and ruptured the quadriceps tendon and tore some ligaments. Ouch. That did earn me my first ever ambulance ride, [...]

For us it began several years ago with an e-mail to Mary Ellen and then a phone call. A woman by the name of  Gabrielle Glaser called and talked to Mary Ellen to discuss the book she was writing for Simon & Schuster about women and alcohol abuse. That phone call turned into interviews, dinner [...]

We are a team who can work with couples, whether you're both clients or not. A recent client commented that two really helpful parts of the work we did with him were the assertiveness training and the fact that we worked with him as a team. In the latter regard he was especially fortunate in [...]

Recovered or "In Recovery?" The choice, as always, is yours. For 75 years AA has perpetrated the myth that one needs to be "in recovery" for the rest of their lives. As with most of the 12 Step hocus-pokus nothing could be farther from the truth. One consideration -what does "in recovery" really mean - [...]

Sabotage! One of the most common problems people run into when giving up drinking, and many other debilitating habits, is a sabotaging spouse, partner, girl/boy friend, or other significant person. Even, or especially, when this person has been after you for years to break the habit! How can this be? While it doesn't seem to [...]

The New DSM-5, and what it can mean for you... Alcohol Abuse & Alcohol Dependency Why Treatment Differentiation is Long Overdue Since its inception, virtually all treatment approaches for the varying degrees of alcohol misuse have assumed that all clients are alcohol dependent "alcoholics" despite over fifty years of research to the contrary. Now the [...]

Mary Ellen and I both enjoy reading Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache mystery novels. In the first of the series, Still Life, Myrna, a psychologist turned book dealer, explains why she stopped taking clients and began selling books. "I lost sympathy with many of my patients...I woke up one morning bent out of shape with this [...]

Follow-up? For the 90+% of programs based on AA and the 12 Steps, follow-up consists of the admonition, "Don't drink. Go to AA." That's a "follow-up" recommendation that is just about guaranteed to have you drinking again in very short order, just like 97% of the people who try attending AA do. The non 12 [...]

Happy Mothers' Day? Awhile ago I was sitting in the doctor's office, leafing through a months old Time magazine when I stumbled upon an article entitled "Mother's Liquid Helper. Raising children? Raise a glass!" which you can read in full by clicking on the title. Essentially, the article, by staff writer Joel Stein, recounts the [...]

Yes, Staffing Matters Among the problems you would encounter in any traditional, and most "non traditional," alcohol treatment programs is the age range of the staff as well as the clients. If you're in your late 30s through your 60s, as most of our clients are, you're probably not going to relate to professional staff, [...]