Posted under Celebrity Addiction

Brett Butler’s Spectacular Fall from Grace

Brett Butler spent most of the 1990s starring in a hit television series and enjoying the perks that fame can provide. She also spent those years abusing drugs until her addiction ended up costing her just about everything her fame had won for her. This month, the comedian/actress came clean about her past and what it has been like for her to hit rock bottom and to begin a climb back up toward the top. Continue Reading

Posted under Celebrity Addiction

“Glee” Actress Jane Lynch Says Alcoholism Began as Young Teen

Actress Jane Lynch recently surprised fans with a story from Oprah Magazine and in a forthcoming memoir revealing her struggle with alcoholism, a battle that began in her early teen years and spanned into her early 30s. Continue Reading

Posted under Sex Addiction

Treatment for Sexual Addiction Can Be Similar to Drug and Alcohol Addiction Treatments

Sex addiction affects an estimated 3-5 percent of the population, destroying families, careers and lives with a force that has been compared to alcohol or drug addiction. New sexual addiction treatment centers and treatment approaches continue to emerge for this complex condition, including treatments involving combinations of counseling, psychotherapy and even hypnosis. Continue Reading

Posted under Celebrity Addiction

Actor Johathan Rhys Meyers’ Repeats Struggles With Alcohol Abuse

Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who gained fame on the popular television series The Tudors, is reported to have checked into a treatment center for alcohol addiction for a second time during spring 2011. Continue Reading

Posted under Recovery

How Open Can You Be About Your Addiction?

The decision of if, when, and how you should tell someone else about your addiction is a personal matter – and it’s not one to be taken lightly. Naturally, you wouldn’t dream of just blabbing to the stranger in the coffee shop that you once were a heroin or meth addict, or that you had a compulsive sexual addiction. They’d likely be put off by information of such a personal nature. But you also don’t want to get too far along in a new relationship – however intimate – before you reveal some of your past. The question, then, is how open can you be about your addiction?

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Posted under Recovery

Importance of Aftercare in Addiction Treatment

Successful completion of a treatment program for addiction is a huge step on the road to recovery. But for most addicts, regardless of their type of addiction (drugs, alcohol, combination of drugs and alcohol, co-occurring disorder, gambling, eating, spending or sexual disorder), they’re not completely ready to function independently. They have fulfilled an important and essential part of their goal to overcome their addiction, namely the treatment program, but they still require ongoing support for some period of time. This critical phase is called aftercare, and participation in an aftercare program often makes the difference between abstinence and relapse. Continue Reading

Posted under Recovery

When Friends Bring Up Your Past in Recovery

Just when you thought you left all those memories behind, one of your friends, if you can call them that, decides to bring up the subject. Whether in casual conversation or something else, you have to wonder about their reasons for doing so. More important for you at this stage of your recovery, however, is what you should do about it.

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Posted under Sex Addiction

Should You Stay or Should You Go When Your Sexually Addicted Partner Refuses to Change

Everyone knows that marriages or partnerships have their ups and downs. Even the language in traditional wedding vows includes the phrases “for better or for worse,” and “’til death do us part.” Most people don’t expect the worse to include things like addiction, especially sexual addiction. Once you discover, or suspect, that your partner is a sexual addict or has a sexual compulsion – including having extramarital affairs, that’s a gut-wrenching feeling. You may think you can never recover from it fully. Naturally, you want things to go back to the way they were before the addiction. But what if your partner refuses to change? Should you stay or should you go? Continue Reading

Posted under Sex Addiction

Coping with Sexual Addiction Urges

No one has to tell you what a sexual addiction urge is. If you have a sexual addiction, you probably experience it all too frequently. But it may be helpful to know that an urge (or craving) is a state of tension and anticipation that you experience as a desire for the specific activity. It’s also, as sexual addicts well know, uncomfortable – sometimes almost unbearably so. The longer the urge lasts, the worse it gets. Due to the immediate relief you feel once you act upon the urge, the likelihood increases that you’ll act on the urge again. In other words, the urge to engage in a sexually compulsive or addictive behavior, once acted upon, satisfies the urge – but only for a while before the scenario is repeated. Sometimes urges are acted on out of habit. Although these may be unconscious reactions, once you try to stop the behavior, the urges return with a vengeance. Continue Reading

Posted under Recovery

How and When to Tell a Love Interest You’re an Alcoholic

You’ve started seeing someone, first just for companionship, not looking for any long-term entanglement. But now it feels like there could be something there and you want more. What you’re experiencing is a need to share and interact with another human being on a more intimate level. That’s all fine and good, healthy, in fact. But you harbor a secret: you’re an alcoholic. You really don’t want to tell this person your whole story. Maybe if you keep it hidden things will work out okay. Don’t delude yourself. You have to be truthful. If you don’t, somewhere down the line it will come out anyway, and you’ll likely lose the relationship. But how and when should you come clean? How do you tell someone you care about that you’re an alcoholic?

Where Are You in Recovery?

If you are new to recovery, this may be the first time in a long time that you’ve been in a frame of mind to even have a relationship on a deeper level with another individual. This may not be something you want to hear, but now may not be the time to actively pursue a romantic involvement. You may need to give yourself more time to work on your coping skills, give and receive support from your 12-step friends, and work on charting your short-term and long-term goals. Why? The answer is simple. You want to be in a position to freely give and receive love and affection, and not have things clouded by your ongoing work to remain clean and sober. In other words, your focus right now should be on your recovery, as well as envisioning a future that encompasses everything you want – including sharing your life with another. Continue Reading