Are you an “almost alcoholic?” Do you even have any idea what that is? It may sound a little strange, but it isn’t as far off as you might think. With all the media attention of the consequences of drunk driving, the national rates of alcoholism and continued teen experimentation with alcohol, you might wonder…
Ninety percent of lung cancer cases in America can be directly attributed to smoking. It’s one of the country’s foremost legal addictions—you can head down to the store and load up on dangerous and addictive substances without attracting attention from the law. Tobacco addiction causes more deaths than HIV, illicit drug use, alcohol use, suicides,…
Religion can be a very positive thing for a teenager. By practicing the family religion, or even an alternative religion, a teen can develop high self-esteem, focus on schoolwork, and develop a positive social life. Being devout is also associated with avoiding negative things like drugs, alcohol and crime. Most parents, in fact, would be…
Smartphones are everywhere. Those of us who use them wonder how we ever lived without them only a couple of years ago. For teens, the phenomenon of the smartphone may be even more important. New research is suggesting that not only are more teens becoming addicted to using their smartphones, but they are at risk…
It is tough to start over, that much is true. For those in recovery, especially early recovery, starting over tends to take on the magnitude of the nearly impossible. There are just so many different areas of life that need changing, so much to do, and so much to learn before anything can be done.…
Billy Joel was in a dark place after Sept. 11, 2001, and he says he used booze in a failed effort to find his way out of it. The 64-year-old Piano Man, who made headlines in the early 2000s not for his music but rather for a spate of automobile crashes, has been through two…
At first glance, youth suicide statistics would not appear to be as alarming as one might suspect given the amount of publicity the problem receives. As of 2011, the suicide rate for individuals between the ages of 10 and 24 was at 7.8 per 100,000 people, which in raw numbers means that 4,000 to 5,000…
A lack of scientific literature describing designer drug substances easily leads to unpredictable effects upon human use and no real guidelines on how to treat overdose cases in the medical environment. Of course, this means no safety evaluation or regulation in the course of manufacturing, even in the cases where the drug is still legal.…
Appearing in the media more often than not recently, designer drugs are rapidly cultivating a reputation for being dangerous and spreading as fast as a pandemic. There’s a reason for users’ preference for designer drugs over their illegal counterparts—until as recently as last year, most designer drugs were legal, which has changed with the 2012…
New designer drugs seem to be hitting the United States market and the media with a frequency that is unsurpassed in other countries. President Barack Obama signed the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act in 2012, effectively banning a number of compounds commonly used to create synthetic marijuana and other designer drugs. Before…