Blog

There is a forthcoming article in the July issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research that confirms something that those of us who work here at the New York Center for Living already know: going to 12-step meetings helps keep young addicts and alcoholic sober.

The study included 127 substance abusers, age 14 to 19, who were interviewed four times, beginning when they entered outpatient treatment and then at intervals of three, six and twelve months thereafter. The co-author...

If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not learning.

The above sentence is one of a list of thirty or so kept on a smart phone belonging to one of the young addicts and alcoholics we have helped recover here at the New York Center for Living. He has collected them over the two years he has remained clean and sober. Such sentences—or sayings, or slogans, if you will—are a long-time tradition within Alcoholics Anonymous that has spread out into the recovery community in general.

Sometimes...

Those who don’t matter judge and those who matter don’t judge.

If you don’t have a home group in AA you’re homeless in AA.

My bottom is when I decided to stop digging.

There are no strangers in AA, just friends we haven’t met yet.

Depression is thinking about myself too much.

I suffer through so many things in my life that never happened.

The miracle of AA is that we’re not all screwed up on the same day.

Now I don’t wake up and decided to drink, I...

Probably the most long-standing debate in the field of addiction medicine is the question about how a person should determine whether or not they have a drinking problem.  As anyone in the field knows, this can be a lengthy argument, which at the end of the day, often results in more questions than answers, and frequently a good deal of frustration!  This needn’t be the case.  Over the years, I have reduced this issue down to a few key points which, if addressed, can make the answer a bit less cloudy. 

...

Over the past several years, there has been increased concern about kids using “synthetic” drugs – substances that are developed in a laboratory and intended to mimic more “familiar” drugs such as marijuana and amphetamines.  Two factors make these compounds particularly frightening: 1) They are packaged as “legal” substances in order to avoid DEA scrutiny, and 2) They are quite difficult to test for using routine drug screens. 

...

The article “Listening To Xanax” by Lisa Miller (New York Magazine March 26, 2012, http://nymag.com/news/features/xanax-2012-3/), stirred up more than a bit of controversy in the medical community in general, as well as among those of us in the recovery community who specialize in the treatment of addictive disorders.  Although quite Informative, the article in some ways glamorizes the use not only of Xanax, but the entire class...

I met this kid who everybody in high school really loved. He smoked a lot of weed and I put two and two together: popular, plus weed, equals awesomeness. So I tried to get friendly with this kid and his friends.

The above words are from an interview with a young man who got sober here at the New York Center for Living—part of a larger interview process, of which more in a later blog post. But I wanted to quote a few sentences of what he has to say because his words point out how important...

We at the New York Center for Living know that addiction is a disease of the family, not just the individual. The parents of young people, especially, are hard hit by the idea that their children are addicts. It’s my experience that the beginning of treatment is the best time to get parents engaged. They crave information and they want to be given tools that will allow them to help their children. Parents often need basic background on addiction. Sometimes they don’t realize that they need to hide their prescription drugs, that Adderall can be abused, that whipped cream containers hidden in their child’s room can mean he or she is addicted not to sugar, but to nitrous oxide. At the New York Center for Living, Scott Bienenfeld, M.D., our Addiction Psychiatrist; Dr. Jill Backfield, Ph.D., our new Clinical Services Supervisor; and family therapists Jason Andrews, Chris Mooney, Stephanie Sterling and myself discuss concepts like the addicted brain, the disease concept of addiction, the power struggles in addicted families, and the need for parents to consistently set and maintain boundaries for their children. ...

Kate Bowden, LCSW, CASAC, CEAP Executive Director February 2012 The recent news of the Whitney Houston’s untimely death due to a possible prescription drug overdose has brought public warnings about the dangers of potent drugs like Xanax, Percocet, Vicodin and Oxycontin. However, Whitney Houston’s death highlights a lesser-known problem: the very serious issues facing the children of addicted parents. Houston’s eighteen-year-old daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown has been hospitalized twice for...

As the word “Center” connotes, The New York Center for Living is a safe place where a young person suffering from substance abuse can come with family to receive care...