We Are the Patient Experience
The decision to seek treatment often comes at a time when an individual is facing alarming truths about themselves for the first time. With a leap of faith, they entrust their care to our professionals, who strive to guide them toward relief and recovery. Once treatment begins, patients are asked to allow themselves to become vulnerable and do hard work to change life patterns. Each day is filled with individual, group and family therapy, and the topic of conversation can become very uncomfortable. Simply put, entering a treatment program can be scary, anxiety-provoking and extremely hard work. High Focus Centers [...]
Establishing a Routine During Recovery
Recovery is part of the healing process and often times requires individuals to adjust their schedules and establish a routine in order to have success during this stage. The structure that a routine provides helps those in recovery to maintain normalcy and make a smooth transition back to their work, family, and home life. A routine during this time can include everything from personal care such as sleep, exercise, and diet, to establishing a work and social schedule. Here are some tips to follow during recovery. Create a Structure at Home: While in recovery it is important to designate times [...]
Finding Drug or Alcohol Treatment in New Jersey
It is a crucial moment in your life. After ignoring or denying it for such a long time, you have accepted that there is potential to be significantly better off than you are right now. Relationships with friends or loved ones are damaged, and they’ve been begging you to get help for a long time. You don’t feel as well as you used to – physically or emotionally. Your mind is consumed with getting high – not because you are getting that same euphoria you used to get, but only because it makes your withdrawal symptoms go away. You have [...]
The Top 13 Tips to Responsibly Care for Your Prescription Medications
Like most people, you have a mini pharmacy of outdated prescription drugs in your medicine cabinet in the bathroom. If you use painkillers and/or other prescription drugs, they could be life threatening should they accidentally be ingested or misused. So, how do you keep yourself and others safe from developing or feeding a drug addiction? It’s all in how you use, store, and dispose of your prescriptions, and these 13 tips make living with prescription medications in your home much safer. Using Your Prescription Pills Take as Directed No more, no less. If instructed to take with food, never take [...]
Getting Mental Health Care for Your Teen: Part I
Worried About Your Child? Start Here! Sometimes parents must ask questions or reach out for help in order to ensure the health of their child. Your close relationship and proximity to your child gives you a unique insight into their mental health and, as a parent, it’s important to trust your instincts when they tell you that changes in your child's mood or behavior are more than just a phase. If you have realized that your teen may be suffering from depression, anxiety, or other mental health issues, you need to know where to turn. The mental health system can [...]
Five Ways to Beat the Holiday Blues
The holidays bring opportunities for a host of feelings, from grief to joy, sorrow to elation. For someone who struggles with depression or another mood disorder, the holidays can exacerbate negative feelings. Teens who face mental health challenges may especially struggle over the holiday break and feel isolated or unsafe at home. The holiday season can be emotionally distressing and individuals may struggle with increased triggers to substance use, self-harm, suicidal ideation and other harmful behaviors. The holiday blues and mental health aren't just a passing season and require professional intervention. If you're feeling hopeless this time of year, here's [...]
Reinventing Date Night: 4 Tips for Partners of those in Early Recovery
So the cat is out of the bag - your significant other is in recovery from an alcohol or drug addiction. You begin to tell close friends and family hoping to get support for yourself and your partner while traversing a potentially new and unfamiliar road. Perhaps a few hours, days, or weeks later someone ultimately asks you the question. You might have been pondering the answer yourself, or perhaps you haven’t even given it an ounce of thought. Either way, it eventually arrives: "So does this mean YOU can't drink anymore, either?" After being asked this question, a plague [...]
Yoga for Recovery: Why Spend Treatment Time on the Floor?
Let me start by being completely honest. I was skeptical about yoga for a very long time. The thought of being surrounded by flexible hipsters wearing tight pants in a hot room seemed, well, awful. Don’t you have to be able to touch your toes, stand on your head, and not pass out in a 100 degree room? Don’t you have to utter “Namaste” daily while walking around with a Starbucks frap in one hand and a yoga mat in the other? Fine. I’ll also be honest and admit that I’ve never tried yoga but just thought this to be [...]
