Treatment

Holding to go to treatment for support with a mental health disorder or to seek recovery from drug and alcohol addiction is life changing decision. Treatment is an opportunity to heal, regain your health, and learn about how to cope in life with your mental health issue. Treatment is different for everyone and each treatment facility is a little bit different from the next. However, there are some components of treatment which are similar across the board. Preparing for treatment won't give you control over all of your  experiences but it will help you be informed for what is coming up during this time of change in your life.

Research has found that substance abuse or recreational experimentation with drinking or drug use in adolescent years has a long lasting effect. People are more likely to become fully developed addicts or alcoholics if they experimented with substances in their early years. Additionally, it can cause an early reaction to substance abuse, creating long lasting damage in the heart, brain development, and more. Adolescence is a precious time. The body is ripe for formation. Hormones are changing, personality is developing, and memories are being made. The memories we make in adolescence are some of our strongest memories. Our early teenage years and our early twenties can feel more vivid and alive than any other time. If our memories of those nostalgic years are riddled with episodes of substance abuse, our brain has a funny way of making that association for a lifetime.

Most treatment facilities which offer programs for recovering from drug and alcohol addiction incorporate regular attendance to sober support meeting like those of Alcoholics Anonymous. Going to meetings for the first time can be strange, new, and overwhelming. Here are a few quick tips for what you need to know about going to your first meeting.

Treatment for substance use disorder and mental health disorders at Avalon follows the sanctuary model, allowing for complete healing. Fully embracing what treatment has to offer can require avoiding certain temptations and adhering to rules more strictly.

Author Tennessee Williams in his iconic work, The Glass Menagerie, eloquently and simply stated that “Time is the longest distance between two places.” Much of philosophical inquiry and scientific research of various disciplines has sought to define, manipulate, or even stop time. At once time is permanent and time is elusive. Time can be incredibly long and intolerable to endure or time can fly by without a chance of keeping up. A currency of life, time determines so much of what we do and how we do it. We are often told not to take time for granted and to make the most out of every moment.

12 months in a year. 12 steps in the 12 step program. Coincidence? In the beginning of Alcoholics Anonymous, meetings were held for newcomers to the program called “beginners meetings”. The point of the beginner’s meetings was to get the newcomers through the 12 step program as quickly and efficiently as possible. In a matter of just 5 weeks, the beginners meetings took new participants through all of the steps. After completing taking the steps, they received a card. Once upon a time there was such a thing as being a card carrying member of AA. Beginner’s meetings were helpful in helping someone have the necessary psychic change through a spiritual awakening advocated through the steps. Having had this spiritual awakening, they were ready to join other alcoholics in recovery at regular meetings. Completing the steps was critical to the development of the alcoholic in recovery.

Postpartum depression affects 11-20% of women who give birth each year according to the Centers for Disease Control. Averaging on 15%, approximately 600,000 women get postpartum depression in the United States each year.

Binge drinking and alcoholism are not one in the same, but share many similarities. Though long term binge drinking is more harmful, the effects of just one binge drinking episode can have negative effects.

Check the labels all you want, you’ll rarely see the word “sugar”. Today, sugar and its analogous compounds run under 61 different names, making their way into over 70% of all processed and packaged foods. Humans are supposed to consume, at most, just over 100 calories of sugar today. For Americans who consume a mostly packaged and processed diets, they could be consuming up to five times that amount of sugar each day without even eating a single sweet. Added sugar is a problem under great controversy in America. Many feel that it is added and processed sugar which contributes to food addiction, eating disorders, and poor physical health including problems of obesity. America has one of the worst obesity problems in the world. Simultaneously, America boasts a high rate of child starvation as well as a high rate of child obesity.

Anxiety is one of the most highly occurring mental health disorders and co-occurring disorders with substance abuse. According to the ADAA, the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, 18 percent of the population suffer from some kind of anxiety disorder. Anxiety is a misfiring of the survival system in the mind. When fight or flight takes place the body goes into a natural state of panic or anxiety. Firing adrenaline and cortisol, the brain and body are put on high alert in order to survive. For anxiety disorders, even the thought of anxiety is threatening enough to trigger off a chain of reactions which can become debilitating. Some believe that anxiety is triggered by fear alone. Fear is a complicated process in our minds which can take many forms. What we experience and how we experience it contributes to what we fear and how we fear it. Not all anxiety disorders are the same. General anxiety is different from social anxiety, for example. Different triggers create different kinds of anxiety, thusly requiring different methods for reducing anxious symptoms and returning to a state of calm.

We are born out of water. The first nine months of our lives are spent in a warm and comforting waterbed. Water is a natural part of life. Over 75% of the planet is water, as is the human body and the human brain. Connecting to water is therapeutic because it is a natural connection. Water therapy uses this connection to work with the body and the mind to create healing.

Depression is the leading mental health diagnosis worldwide. Over 300 million people suffer from depression around the globe. Though your depression may be leaving you feeling isolated and disconnected in your thoughts, you are not alone. Even people without a diagnosable depressive condition experience depression. Chronic depression and major depressive disorder is common in all walks of life. To all those thoughts telling you that you are alone and the only one feeling this way-- tell them they are not true. There are others, just like you, struggling with their emotions and working toward living their lives.