Addiction Cartoon
One of the simplest, best explained animations/cartoons I have seen on the subject of addiction and recovery. Recommended.
The Stories They Tell in AA – Transformation through AA Narratives.
The following (1) is another excellent academic article on how the sharing of stories, or “experience, strength and hope” in AA parlance, is fundamental in shifting an alcoholic’s self schema from a schema that did not accept one’s own alcoholism, to a self schema that did, a schema […]
Social Anxiety and Peer Helping in Adolescent Addiction Treatment
In treatment, youths with social anxiety disorder (SAD) may avoid participating in therapeutic activities with risk of negative peer appraisal. Peer-helping is a low-intensity, social activity in the 12-step program associated with greater abstinence among treatment-seeking adults. This study (1), hot off the press as published May 2015, examined the […]
Looking Inside 12 Step Recovery
Most of today’s treatment of substance abuse takes the form of an emergency, intermittent and temporary effort in a start stop fashion. However, to achieve continuity in the treatment of addiction disorders we need more emphasis on models that take a long-term perspective, and where there is adequate overlap between the ongoing and the […]
Filling In The “Hole in the Sole” Debate?
Today we conclude our fascinating article on the role of oxytocin in addiction. I am quite excited by these recent discoveries in oxytocin because they appear to offer some explanation for one question that has been with me for nearly ten years, why do alcoholics especially feel like they […]
Can Oxytocin be what’s missing in the Alcoholic “Hole in the Soul”?
PART 2 The endogenous oxytocin system changes and matures over time as part of normal development. This paper postulates that individual factors and early external influences (i.e. parenting, stress and illness) affect the developing endogenous oxytocin system and its connectivity with other systems affecting oxytocin levels and […]
Is the Alcoholic “Hole in the Soul” Oxytocin Shaped?
PART 1 In a previous blog we have suggested that addiction may partly be the consequence of insecure attachment to our caregivers in early childhood and that as a result addicts often learn to attach instead to consuming substances, or behaving in certain “rewarding” ways such as […]
How Religious are 12 Step Groups?
A criticism often laid against 12 step recovery is that it is too God-centred or religious-based in their program orientation? Something I personally have not experienced in the years I have attended AA, NA and Al Anon. Are there any studies on this either way, to shed so light […]
Just to Confuse You!!?
Inside the Alcoholic Brain has moved “theme” to the old theme of The Alcoholics Guide to Alcoholism! Just to really confuse you!? As if I had confused you enough already!!? This is it, no more changes. Hopefully. The Alcoholics Guide to Alcoholism has moved to a new blog theme […]
The Benefits of Helping Others
Part 2 The helper therapy principle (HTP) observes the helper’s health benefits derived from helping another with a shared malady. The HTP is embodied by the program of Alcoholics Anonymous as a method to diminish egocentrism as a root cause of addiction. This article reviews recent evidence of the HTP in […]
Inside The Alcoholic Brain 
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