What Is The Best Recipe For Successful Addiction Recovery?

Not all alcoholism rehab stories are success stories. For most people, it means having to deal with a lot of emotional turmoil within the family, having a stranger pull out a loved one you can no longer control, and having your hopes up once that loved one is released back into your care, only to get disappointed again because of relapses. Many blame the methodology of some alcohol rehab and detox centers. While this may be true to some degree, there are other factors too that determine how successful a program can be; for example, if the treatment program is gender specific, i.e., women’s or men’s addiction treatment.

Willingness to receive help

Alcohol is an addictive substance. To some degree, the alcohol content in a person’s body will make him/her crave more. However, it is not the only factor that comes into play. Many addicted individuals are also triggered by alcohol abuse because of psychological problems. If s/he still sees alcohol as a way to escape from these problems, no type of treatment would work.

Since alcoholism is also a psychological condition, rehab for alcoholism is only successful if the patient recognizes that she or she needs help. The strongest enemy of any rehab program is the resistance of the addicted patient. This wall of resistance needs to be broken down first before the patient’s recovery can progress.

Support from the family

Patients who have just completed their inpatient rehab for alcoholism will be released back to their old environment. They may receive outpatient support (in the form of group counseling sessions), but the ones who will be affecting recovering patients the most once they are back in the real world are their families. Some rehabilitation programs forget to factor in the role of the family in this entire process. Because of this, recovering alcoholics suffer from relapses.

This roots in the misconception that patients who have been released from rehabilitation centers are already strong enough to resist addiction on their own. This is not true. The environment inside the rehabilitation is controlled and ideal for recovery. Once the patients are released to their old environments, they are exposed to the old addiction triggers. Unless the family understands and supports the recovering patient’s needs for recovery, there is always the danger that the patient will regress.

How can families support recovering alcoholics? During the first few days of the release, patients should not be exposed to alcoholic beverages. This means that the house needs to be free from any alcoholic drinks, which may tempt the patient back into addiction. The family should also protect the recovering patient from possible peer pressure. If any stressors in the home or at work are triggering the addiction, family members should help patients cope with them better.

The family should heal too

Effective alcoholism rehab programs also consider how addiction has affected other family members. They offer to counsel those who may need help after a harrowing experience. Before the patient is released back into the family’s care, it is important that all the family members know his/her needs. They cannot be wholly supportive if they are wounded from experiencing themselves.

If they hold any grudges against the recovering patient for failing to live a normal life, this has to be dealt with before the patient goes out of the rehabilitation center. During the outpatient treatments, sober family members will have to be emotionally strong because the recovering patient will be drawing from this collective strength to get better.

Importance of Overcoming Eating Disorders for a Happy Life

Eating disorders are mental disorders with a serious debilitating impact on health, productivity, and relationships. Almost 20 million women and 10 million men in the United States suffer from a clinical eating disorder at one point in their life, including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, or an Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (EDNOS).

A major contributor to the development of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa is body dissatisfaction, where people tend to judge their bodies according to certain parameters. They are more concerned about flaunting a flawless look and could go to any extent to achieve this. An eating disorder is categorized as a mental illness because of the following reasons:

  • Restricting food intake, binging, and purging are associated with changes in the brain structure, metabolism, and neurochemistry, and these factors make it exceedingly difficult to change the behavioral patterns of individuals with eating disorders.
  • Eating disorders are linked to cognitive and emotional impairment that can affect the ability to carry out day-to-day activities.
  • Such disorders are life-threatening illnesses that pave the way for numerous medical complications to take root.

Important Facts About Eating Disorders

  • Eating disorders are serious mental health conditions. Such disorders are bio-psychosocial diseases that can seriously impact one’s health, productivity, and relationship. They are real, complex mental conditions that can pose a significant threat to life if it gets out of hand.
  • They are not women-specific disorders. Men and women both have insecurities about the way they look, which can contribute to the development of an eating disorder, although more women than men are afflicted with eating disorders.
  • They can affect all aspects of life. An eating disorder can ruin one’s life. It can impact the relationships with family members, friends, and coworkers. It can also lower one’s performance in education and at work. Individuals with eating disorders can experience their thoughts, emotions, attitudes, and behaviors to be revolving only around their weight and food.
  • Individuals with such disorders cannot just get over it. One cannot simply choose to eat right to cure an eating disorder. Such disorders affect people’s perceptions regarding their body image that tend to dictate their habits and behavior, and these aspects cannot change overnight. Even the treatment for eating disorders concentrates on altering one’s thoughts and behaviors over the course of time.
  • Eating is more sophisticated for individuals with eating disorders. Such individuals tend to scrutinize the type of food they eat and how they consume it. Eating less portion of food can take even longer than those without any eating disorders because they introspect how the food will affect their figure. Sometimes, such thoughts can be overwhelming.
  • They are life-threatening problems. Mortality rates for anorexia nervosa are the highest among any psychiatric disorder. It is 12 times higher than all the causes of death for females aged between 15 and 24 years.

The line of treatment for eating disorders depends on the patient’s bio-psychosocial assessment. Care can be provided in specialized health care facilities under the supervision of experts like therapists, dieticians, psychiatrists, and primary care physicians. Eating disorders can impact various aspects of one’s life and can make people susceptible to other physical health conditions, so you should not delay the treatment, or things can worsen with time.

Does The Second Round Of Parenthood Raise Mental Health Issues?

Due to a number of factors, the job of raising children is increasingly being passed onto grandparents. Reasons like long working hours, distant commutes across multiple locations, becoming a parent at a young age, incarceration, and death of a parent are making it difficult for parents to devote enough time to their children. Then there are those children whose parents suffer from substance use disorders (SUDs) and mental illnesses and are undergoing recovery. All these reasons contribute to grandparents actively taking up the responsibility of looking after their grandchildren.

This is what is going on in hundreds of households in the US. The grandparents have no problem raising their grandchildren. However, this has led to the emergence of a new problem – mental health disorders. It has been noted that while a grandparent makes the transition from the grandparent to becoming a parent again, they face challenging situations which may make them susceptible to developing mental health problems.

Taking care of grandchildren can cause depression. Oftentimes, grandparents report getting stressed out because of the financial stress and inaccessibility to support services. A majority of these grandparents are nearing retirement or are already retired and are thus, living on limited incomes. In such a scenario, when a grandchild enters the household, the cost of living escalates, especially if the grandchild has special needs.

Grandparents taking care of grandchildren have to choose between their families and jobs. Sometimes, the retired ones have to return to work to make ends meet. On the other hand, some of them working outside the home have to quit their jobs because the cost of child care is too high. Such shifts can cause stress leading to depression.

A positive development in such a scenario is the establishment and availability of free programs exclusively for grandparents dealing with mental health disorders. A mental health worker from one such program center said that it becomes disturbing and demanding for a grandparent to raise a child and go through the process of parenthood again. He shared a story of a woman in her late 50s who was raising her grandson single-handedly. While anger fits in children are common, it reminded her of her abusive husband and the trauma she had to suffer when she was in the relationship. However, timely counseling and guidance helped her overcome the trauma and also helped her deal with the anger fits in her grandson.

The golden years of life sometimes become quite lonely. Experts urge grandparents to use this as an opportunity to connect with their grandchildren and children. Nothing sounds more melodious than the laughter of children. They also advise older people to seek help for any mental health problem they are facing, adding that there is nothing to be embarrassed about.

If you or your loved one is experiencing any symptoms of an underlying mental disorder, you can seek help from a professional facility and speak to an expert who can guide you with information on a wide range of mental health treatment centers offering evidence-based treatment programs customized to suit the patient’s requirements. You can also have a chat online with a representative to seek advice on the best residential mental health treatment options.

What Should You Never Order at a Steakhouse

You would think that no order can’t be served at a steakhouse. Like any restaurant, a steakhouse endeavours to deliver a great dining experience for its patrons. However, you can bet there are certain steakhouse mores you may be breaking without realising it.

It can stem from something as simple as the nature of your order.

See what you should never order at a steakhouse, so you know how to conduct yourself the next time you wish to grab a steak meal!

A Steak Well-Done

What if somebody wants theirs well-done? Unlike Hank Hill, a steakhouse can’t ask patrons politely yet firmly to leave. After all, they need to make money at the end of the day! However, several steakhouse cooks find well-done steak orders to be borderline offensive. Why is that? Well, when you cook a steak until it’s well-done, you can expect it to ruin the quality of the cut. High-end steakhouses typically will carry expensive cuts of meat. So, seeing a well-done steak order from a patron is like seeing money thrown out the window, wasted, from a cook’s perspective since they’re the ones who typically conduct inventory orders. It’s not necessarily bad to order steak well-done if that’s your preference, but you can expect the order to be frowned upon at a steakhouse.

Asking for Dipping Sauce

You may get away with dipping your steak into steak sauce. After all, it’s a sauce specially made for steaks! However, a condiment like ketchup is a definite no-no.

You certainly will be allowed to ask for and receive ketchup to dip your steak. But, like ordering a steak well-done, it’s like a cardinal sin against enjoying a steak properly. Do you know why folks are not recommended to pair white and rose wines for wines? There is a reason for that: they’re too sweet. For example, you will end up overpowering the subtle flavours of your steak if it has a sweet glaze over it with a glass of rose wine.

The same can be said of having ketchup as a dipping sauce for your steak. Ketchup is a rather overpowering condiment since it’s pretty sweet, with sugar making up 25% of a single ketchup bottle. In which case, you’re mainly tasting the ketchup more than the steak since you won’t be able to pick up on nuanced notes of your steak. It essentially feels wasteful to cheapen a luxurious steak made with care and using the best of cuts.

Depending on the cook, dipping your steak in ketchup can seem rather offensive. It might seem small, but from a cook’s perspective, it indirectly questions their cooking skills. How so? Well, it gives cooks the impression that the steak isn’t cooked well, and you need to add ketchup to cover up the bad taste. Naturally, if this is your preference, that’s okay. However, you need to be aware of why it’s typically not thought of kindly at steakhouses.

Ordering the Wrong Cut

Ordering the wrong cut can affect how you enjoy a steak. Steak cuts come from various areas of a cow that can dictate how much flavour and natural tenderness it has. If you know what each cut entails, you may end up with one you don’t enjoy. For instance, you may prefer a more tender steak but unwittingly order a tougher steak like sirloin, which wouldn’t be as satisfying. So, it’s important to at least come into a steakhouse with knowledge of what each cut offers. You want to avoid an embarrassing scenario of you complaining to staff about the texture being wrong when it’s how it’s meant to be cooked.

Demanding Off-Menu Food

A steakhouse is a rather niche place to go to eat. If you love to eat steak, you naturally want to find the best by going to a place specialising in it, like a steakhouse. So, what’s the point of ordering anything other than that? Well, people still try to order off-menu stuff regardless.

When this occurs, it can be a bit of a headache for those working there. Subtly, it signals to the staff at a steakhouse that you may be a picky eater that will be high maintenance. Essentially, assuming you might be an entitled diner if you don’t get your way.

However, not everyone is like that. People working there would understand if you had dietary restrictions and would gladly cater to them. The issue is more for those who choose to go off-menu for no real rhyme or reason since it creates unnecessary work for the cooking staff. It leaves them in a frenzy, trying their best to make an off-menu dish they aren’t accustomed to making. It’s just being mindful and respectful of the cook’s specialty. What not to order at a steakhouse stems mainly from being conscious of the work cooks put into high-quality steaks. They’re not a means to complain about patrons but rather as insight into what makes an optimal steakhouse experience for you.