Drugs do not grab people and draw them into addiction. The person with a particular personality structure will go and find their drug of choice and then an addiction will ensue.
Gateway theory of drug use
Statistics of Australian drug use This comes from the Australian Psychological Society “The use of licit substances is the most prevalent type of substance use, and an accepted part of Australian and most other western societies. The vast majority of Australians use caffeine, through the consumption of tea, coffee, cola drinks and chocolate. The regular …
Curing alcoholism – switch the addiction
Where mother’s injunction says “Don’t leave me!” Synanon says “Stay here instead.” (p.185-186). He also says elsewhere, “Curing an addict is the easiest thing in the world – if.
Comfort eating
Hence the infantile pattern of seeking relief from emotional discomfort through eating food.
Some therapeutic observations of the AA approach
In most counselling situations this can not occur. It may get too expensive and most often the person has to make appointments with the counsellor such that they have to wait days if not weeks to meet. Even if it is free or they can afford it most counsellors don’t really see the same client …
Stroke deprivation
As Eric Berne said, “A stroke is a unit of attention” and one can have positive strokes and negative strokes. As a therapist it is easy to forget the importance of strokes and the important therapeutic role they can play. The importance of them is no better demonstrated than by looking at a whole discipline …
Gambling addiction vs drug addiction
The DSM-5 includes gambling addiction in the substance-related and addictive disorders along with the drug and alcohol addictions. Whilst this could be seen as a widely held belief that gambling should be included in such a category along with drugs and alcohol it does have some difficulties. Firstly, in my book I see the dependent …