Category Archives: Health

Recovery Zone ReCheck – New in The Recovery Book

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The Recovery Zone ReCheck is a simple relapse prevention plan.

In every Recovery Zone, at all times, you will be at some risk of relapse, often when you least expect it. The Recovery Zone ReCheck helps you avoid relapses by regularly taking stock of your life.

Once a month or so, use the three Recovery Zone ReCheck questions to assess your life. They will help you see when changes are coming up—relationships, work, health, medication and so on—that could trigger a relapse. These changes can be almost anything: dental procedure, divorce, getting a raise, having a baby, moving to a new town.

When you spot such road blocks, you move back a Zone or two, brush up on the guidelines of that Zone, re-commit to sobriety, and re-focus on recovery. See pages 18-21 in The Recovery Book for all the details.

The Recovery Book

Heal Your Brain with TAMERS

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We know so much more these days about the brain and how addiction affects it—and about how we can help it to heal.

Addiction doesn’t happen because someone is lazy or is a “bad person.” It’s a brain disease, pure and simple. In some people, repeated use of alcohol or other drugs causes profound structural and functional changes to the brain. The need for drugs becomes a compulsion that can’t be ignored; it is as ingrained in the brain as breathing or looking for food. Plus, the frontal lobe, the executive brain, is damaged and is no longer able to override those impulses with rational thoughts.

We used to think that the brain was set in stone once a person was grown. We now know that’s not true. In fact, the brain can grow and change at all ages, a concept known as neuroplasticity. When the brain changes for the … Read more...

Recovery Resources Lists Now Online

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For the past two years, as we’ve been updating The Recovery Book, we’ve been collecting online resources related to addiction and recovery. Many of them will be listed in the book, but we had far too many to include. So we are posting them here as well, in Resources.

We have links to all kinds of resources: treatment directories, health effects of addiction, sober living directories, drug testing, legal and employment issues, drug courts, sober social networks, online meetings, medication safety and disposal, recovery activism, campus recovery associations, mutual help fellowships, resources for teens, resources for family and friends, help to quit smoking, and much more.

We also have links to recovery support groups for many diverse communities: bikers, pilots, nurses, Buddhists, Jews, Native Americans, doctors, lawyers, and more.

Please explore our lists. Share them with others. And please let us know if you have anything to add. … Read more...