Trigger warnings: We are all different. What might be a trigger for one person might be an "AHA" moment for another, or provide a comforting sense of connection. Before watching, listening or reading any of the links below, please take a scan of the emotional space you currently inhabit: what can I absorb right now and what might be too much? What might be difficult but enlightening? Can I handle what I might learn or should I wait til later? For example, early in my son's journey I read the book (now movie) My Beautiful Boy & wished I had waited until the emotion it evoked was not fear but connection. And if you start something & find you have misjudged, stop & ground yourself. Find something more appropriate for today. There is always tomorrow.
VIDEOS & MOVIES
"Everything You Think You know about addiction is wrong"
Johann Hari
"Four Good Days"
The movie is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning story of Amanda in the Washington Post.
"Feel Good"
"The comic’s series about addiction and relationships is both a tender exploration of trauma, and extraordinarily funny. This is TV that gives you a crash course in empathy"
"I May Destroy You"
Michaela Coel
"The Polyvagal Theory: The New Science of Safety and Trauma"
Seth Porges (son of Dr. Stephan Porges, whose proposed theory)
Dr. Daniel Siegel’s hand model of the brain allows us to picture our brain structure and understand why it’s difficult to control our reactions when we’re overwhelmed with strong emotions, especially stress.
"Addiction Neuroscience 101"
HMA Institute on Addiction
"Dax Shepard: Rock Bottom Isn't Always What Makes You Change Your Life"
Dr. Nzinga Harris: "Do We All Have Addictions?"
Dr. Nzinga is CME & Co-Founder of Eleanor Health, outpatient treatment provider. Eleanor Health treats those affected by substance abuse through a value-based model of compassionate, whole-person care to help you achieve long-term recovery.
"How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime" | Nadine Burke Harris
Childhood trauma isn’t something you just get over as you grow up. Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris explains that the repeated stress of abuse, neglect and parents struggling with mental health or substance abuse issues has real, tangible effects on the development of the brain. This unfolds across a lifetime ...
How I overcame alcoholism | Claudia Christian | TEDxLondonBusinessSchool
A hugely successful actress who saw her personal life and career tested by addiction, Claudia shares her journey of overcoming alcoholism and offers fresh perspectives on alcohol use disorder treatments.
John Oliver discusses why overdoses in the U.S. have been on the rise and what we should, and shouldn’t, be doing to prevent them. Highlights fentanyl myths and dangers.
books
How Science and Kindness Help People Change
By: Jeffrey Foote, Carrie Wilkens, and Nichole Kosank
Beyond Addiction goes beyond the theatrics of interventions and tough love to show family and friends how they can use kindness, positive reinforcement, and motivational and behavioral strategies to help someone change. Drawing on forty collective years of research and decades of clinical experience, the authors present the best practical advice science has to offer.
By: Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey
Have you ever wondered "Why did I do that?" or "Why can't I just control my behavior?" Others may judge our reactions and think, "What's wrong with that person?" When questioning our emotions, it's easy to place the blame on ourselves; holding ourselves and those around us to an impossible standard. It's time we started asking a different question
By: Tony Trimingham
A highly practical guide to helping, supporting, and, coping with a family member or loved one's struggle with addiction, this handbook is for anyone who suspects or knows someone they care about is a drug user. Drawing on the tragic loss of his own son to a heroin overdose and over 20 years working as a counselor, Tony Trimingham cuts through the media hype and politicking to address the real issues facing the families and friends of someone struggling with addiction.
By: Jane Ellen Smith and Robert J. Meyers
Packed with practical tools, this authoritative manual offers a complete guide to implementing the evidence-based Community Reinforcement and Family Training (CRAFT) program. Jane Ellen Smith and Robert J. Meyers have spent decades developing and refining their approach for helping concerned significant others (CSOs) of treatment-refusing individuals with substance use problems. Structured yet flexible, CRAFT teaches loved ones to change their behavior with the identified patient to encourage treatment entry and enhance their own well-being
By: Bessel Van Der Kolk
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts on trauma, has spent over three decades working with survivors. In The Body Keeps the Score, he uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity
By: Beverly Conyers
A compassionate, user-friendly handbook for family and friends navigating the many challenges that come with a loved one's new-found sobriety.
By: Stanton Peele and Zach Rhoads
Drug overdoses continue to rise at an alarming rate throughout the U.S., resulting in 72,000 deaths last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The response, tragically, has been to charge full-speed ahead with “solutions” that have already, and consistently, failed. In Overcoming Addiction, Stanton Peele, a prominent addiction expert, and Zach Rhoads, a child behavior interventionist and counselor, show that defining addiction as a “disease” makes recovery much more difficult and that twelve-step programs fail for most participants
By: Maia Szalavitz
Challenging both the idea of the addict's “broken brain” and the notion of a simple “addictive personality,” Unbroken Brain offers a radical and groundbreaking new perspective, arguing that addictions are learning disorders and shows how seeing the condition this way can untangle our current debates over treatment, prevention, and policy.
By: Tiffany Jenkins
When word got out that Tiffany Jenkins was withdrawing from opiates on the floor of a jail cell, people in her town were shocked. Not because of the twenty felonies she’d committed, or the nature of her crimes, or even that she’d been captain of the high school cheerleading squad just a few years earlier, but because her boyfriend was a Deputy Sherriff, and his friends—their friends—were the ones who’d arrested her
By: Gabor Maté
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts traces the root causes of addiction to childhood trauma and examines the pervasiveness of addiction in society. Dr. Maté presents addiction not as a discrete phenomenon confined to an unfortunate or weak-willed few, but as a continuum that runs throughout—and perhaps underpins—our society. It is not a medical “condition” distinct from the lives it affects but rather the result of a complex interplay among personal history, emotional and neurological development, brain chemistry, and the drugs and behaviors of addiction.
social media, podcasts & websites
Join Dr. Nzinga Harrison, a physician board-certified in psychiatry and addiction medicine, who believes in a comprehensive, compassionate approach to treating addiction. Whether it’s heroin, pain pills, alcohol, meth, food, sex, or anything under the sun–it’s time to shift our thinking away from 28 days and onto recovery for life.
This is a group for moms who have or have children who are experiencing issues due to alcohol or drug use. We also have advocates, harm reductionists, and experts in the field of addiction in our camp.