The holiday decorations have come down, everyone is back to busy work and school schedules, and we have all settled in for a few dark months before spring. This time of year can be incredibly challenging: The days are short, sunlight can be rare, and many parts of the country can be frigid. Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is recognized in the fifth edition of … Read More
New Year’s Resolutions get a lot of love and hate this time of year. The diet and other “self-improvement” industries know they can make a lot of money off of people’s insecurities and cash-in, offering promises for dramatic changes (often to one’s external appearance) that disappoint and leave customers feeling like it wasn’t the diet … Read More
The holidays can be the most dreaded time of year for people in recovery. The hustle and bustle of family parties, gift exchanges and the inability to isolate from others. Here are some ways to make the holiday season less stressful and more enjoyable: Make a Schedule Create an hour-by-hour schedule to keep yourself on … Read More
Your loved one has finally agreed to get treatment. After years of watching them struggle and possibly deny the presence of an eating, substance abuse or mood-disorder, they are now embarking on the journey to hope and healing. Of course, this feels like a relief and is cause to celebrate, but in some ways, it … Read More
Cigarette smoking was a commonplace activity midway through the previous century. Smoking was cool, sexy, made additionally enticing by its presence in blockbuster movies and popular television shows. It took decades for science to catch up with culture. Not until 1966 did the federal government place a label on cigarette packages, warning of their danger. … Read More
The illusion of perfectibility is hard to escape. The message “be better,” “do more,” “you’re not good enough,” is littered across the advertising landscape, and in our fast-paced modern world, the competition to be busy and never content with who you are and what you have is ubiquitous. The idea that one must keep pursuing … Read More
Life is full of good gifts: things to be enjoyed, experiences to be had, pleasures to be tasted, sense to be stimulated. But, our desire for and experience of good things can be twisted, distorted, perverted by a combination of genetic predispositions and external triggers. Enjoyment can become obsession, indulgence can become addiction, stimulation can … Read More
Amazon deals with millions of products. That is no excuse to not have a strong commitment to quality control, to say nothing of a powerful dedication to moral and social responsibility. In other words, Amazon should know better than to offer a product for sale that openly espouses, even jokes about, a severe psychiatric disease … Read More
There are certain realities in our world today. Here are two of them: people, especially females, love chocolate and many young people are looking for a new way to get high. So, the obvious thing for an aspiring entrepreneur to do is conflate the two. Coco Loko is a caffeine-laced inhalable chocolate product that promises … Read More
Everyone knows the drill: within seconds of entering a doctor’s office for a routine check-up, someone sticks a thermometer in your ear, pumps up a blood pressure cuff, records your respiratory rate and takes note of your heart rate. These are your vital signs; if any one of your vitals is abnormal it serves as an … Read More
