Alcohol rehab numbers outstrip hard drugs
While alcohol was the major sole factor, Mr Pitts said 70 per cent of admissions also listed it as “among their reasons for seeking treatment” and this demonstrated how pervasive alcohol dependence had become across society. It was also viewed as an “easily accessible, socially acceptable and relatively inexpensive [...]

Photo of United States Representative Patrick J. Kennedy (son of Senator Ted Kennedy) at the ADA rally at the Capitol, 17 September 2008.
Rep. Kennedy returns to Congress after month in rehab
After a four-week course of addiction treatment, Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy returned to Congress Wednesday with what he called “excellent” prospects for long-term sobriety – [...]

New research on the brain and behavior clarifies the mysteries of addiction by Craig Lambert, Harvard Magazine, March 2000.
Early experiences with drugs, whether in the womb or as an adult, have ineradicable effects. Drug users often describe a wish to recapture the bliss of their first high. But this goal proves elusive because once the [...]

New combination of treatments is effective for alcohol dependence
McLean Hospital researchers, along with colleagues from 11 other study sites nationwide, report that the medication naltrexone and up to 20 sessions of alcohol counseling delivered by a behavioral specialist are equally effective treatments for alcohol dependence when delivered with structured medical management in the Journal of [...]

Alcohol major cause of drug rehab admissions, again
Alcohol has again topped harder drugs like ice and heroin as the addiction which drives the most Australians into crisis rehab. Seventy per cent of people admitted to the major not-for-profit rehab centre Odyssey House, based in Sydney, in the past financial year listed alcohol as among [...]

It’s the Holidays. How About Just One? by Jim Atkinson
I had my last drink nearly 16 years ago, so you’d think I would have assimilated pretty much every bit of unpleasantness associated with clean and sober life in a society that remains thoroughly sodden with alcohol. But I still can’t quite handle the holidays.
It’s not [...]

The Discovering Alcoholic is the blog of a “recovering alcoholic clean and sober without relapse since the fall of 94″

September is National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month. Voices of recovery…

Quitters: U.S. alcohol consumption declining
Overall alcohol use—particularly consumption of beer—is declining in the US, according to a new study published in the August 2008 issue of The American Journal of Medicine. Researchers examined 50 years of data and found several changes in alcohol intake but no change in alcohol use disorders. Americans are drinking significantly [...]

Meg Mathews’s life after rehab
a radical lifestyle change in the wake of a bout of depression and a spell in rehab, about which 42-year-old Mathews is talking for the first time now. “I was drinking too much and it wasn’t having a good effect on me,” she says haltingly. “I was screwing up the whole [...]