Last year I dedicated a post to the work of Dr. Bruce Alexander, a psychologist from Canada who wrote a great book about The Globalization of Addiction. I am now extremely excited that my good friend Jari Chevalier, from Living Hero, recently completed an interview with Dr. Alexander. There are so many wonderful things in this podcast that I… [Continue Reading]
Mark Girard Working with Altered States
For the past few years I have taught a foundations course on addiction treatment to graduate students. An important aspect of the course is helping students understand that longterm successful outcomes necessitate resolving underlying drivers of addictive behavior, namely, adverse childhood experiences. In an effort to illustrate concretely how this may be done, I enlisted… [Continue Reading]
Calm Energy an Antidote to Addiction
I’ve mentioned Dr. Robert Thayer before on this site, but have not dedicated a blog entry to his ideas until now. When I first read his book, Calm Energy: How People Regulate Mood with Food and Exercise, I was immediately impressed by the implications of his work for those struggling with addiction. In a nutshell, he provides a… [Continue Reading]
Social Isolation in America
As a young boy, I remember venturing out on summer evenings to play hide-and-seek with the other neighborhood kids. We made up teams, sought out secret hiding places, and took full advantage of the local woods that surrounded our corner of the world. Our parents all knew each other, and while we were expending our… [Continue Reading]
Root Causes of Addiction: Part 2
In my previous post on the roots of addiction, I discussed how adverse childhood experiences (ACE’s) to a large extent play an important role in development of addictive behavior. Given that over 80% of those who develop addictions begin adaptive behaviors to cope with ACE’s prior to the age of 15, we as a society need to place a greater… [Continue Reading]