Get Connected Toolkit

The Get Connected Toolkit results from a public-private partnership between the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the National Council on Aging (NCOA). The organizations met with older adult consumers and health and aging services providers to gather information on how best to engage the aging services network in addressing older adults' alcohol and medication misuse and mental health needs. Read More

Parental Addiction: Children are the First Responders

By Tian Dayton, Senior Fellow at The Meadows Children experience a great deal of emotional pain when they watch the parents they love, look up to, and need to feel safe and secure exhibit the kind of behavior that is part of addiction. Children experience deep anxiety. Read More

Seniors and Addiction

Baby boomers are growing older. They are now entering the aging population and for the first time, a population associated with high rates of drug and alcohol use during the 1960s and '70s is entering the Medicare rolls, bringing high rates of drug and alcohol use along with them. The need for addiction treatment in older adults has never been more present. Read More

Facing A National Emergency with the Opioid Crisis

You may have recently heard the news that on Thursday, President Trump said he was preparing to officially declare the United States’ worsening epidemic of opioid overdoses as a national emergency. “The opioid crisis is an emergency, and I’m saying officially right now it is an emergency,” Mr. Trump told reporters before a security briefing in Bedminster, N.J. “It’s a national emergency.” Read More

Cannabis Use on Cognitive Functioning

During the past few decades, there have been a lot of changes in the way people perceive cannabis in the United States. Decriminalization, medical dispensaries, and even legalization of marijuana in several states have resulted in a more relaxed view toward cannabis use. However, it’s very important to note that cannabis use has been shown to impair cognitive functions on a number of levels, leaving users with both acute and long-term effects. Read More

Find Your Way Through the Pain of Depression

Lori was in a deep, dark depression after her marriage of 27 years ended. She was filled with fear and was experiencing suicidal tendencies. The Meadows helped her learn to sit with her pain, process it, and find hope for the next chapter of her life. Learning how to accept… Read More

The Cycle of Trauma and Addiction

By: Claudia Black, Ph. D. Clinical Architect of the Claudia Black Young Adult Center at The Meadows Addiction encourages trauma and trauma can encourage addiction. This process becomes a vicious circle or negative feedback loop, with trauma contributing to addiction, which in turn fuels more trauma, which encourages still more addiction, and so on and so on. The Claudia Black Young Adult Center treats substance and process addictions, recognizing them to be primary disorders that reinforce each other and are often fueled by traumatic experiences. Here are some examples of how this process plays out: Read More

Sober Dating Tips: Find Romance Without Compromising Your Recovery

By Aimee Runyon For those recovering from a drug or alcohol addiction, dating can be a complicated and confusing world. When you finally decide to start dating again, it is important to seek the advice of those in your support group to make sure the time is right. Read More

Gaming: The Addiction for a New Generation

Video games are great escapes from the world. If as a young adult you struggle with real-life relationships, feel pressure from unrealistic expectations, feel powerless, or defeated and inadequate, games are hypnotizing, allowing you to dissociate from real-life stresses at home, school, and work. Gaming offers many rewards, from escape from… Read More

Growing Up with an Addicted Parent

I remember as a twelve-year-old, sitting alone in our living room after one of our by then typical family meltdowns …….trying to make sense of the pain and general devastation of our once happy family……trying to understand how kind, decent and loving people could cause each other such unrelenting pain, how we could say the things we were saying, hurl insults, act out in anger and rage……I recall saying to myself “wars do these things to people, separate loved ones, wound hearts, tear families apart. But somehow, we’re doing this to ourselves.” Read More