Experience Recovery Blog

Alcoholics Anonymous has been a fundamental partner to our Orange County rehab and detox. While our detox specialists can provide therapy, guidance, and a safe recovery environment for patients, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is the perfect place to help you stay sober after recovery. When combined with rehab and detox, AA is a critical part of the recovery journey and has helped countless people.

Methadone is a double-edged sword in medicine that’s been around since World War II. Because of its ability to relieve pain without a powerful high, like other opioids, it’s been prized both as a traditional pain medication and as a means of recovery from addiction to more severe opioids, like fentanyl, heroin, and morphine. Even without the aggressive high, however, methadone can still be an addictive medication, especially when it’s used in lieu of other substances rather than going sober altogether.

Many of us dive head-first into relationships, losing contact with friends, family, and yearning to spend every moment with our new partner. Because we often start relationships wearing rose-colored goggles we may be missing something critical about how this new relationship can consume our quality of life. Too often, we become dependent on a partner, even one who is bad for us or downright abusive. If a partner is encouraging some detrimental behaviors, from experimenting with drugs and alcohol to taking time off work, to isolating ourselves, it might be an unhealthily codependent relationship.

Addiction is such a devastating disease because it disguises itself as a cure. Alcohol can numb the pain, hide anxieties and depression, and fast-forward the most traumatic parts of life. Many people don’t see a way out of addiction because they don’t fully understand how and why they became addicted in the first place. A prevailing theory is that drugs and alcohol are just such powerful chemicals that one taste will hijack our minds and bodies forever but this doesn’t address a lot of the obvious discrepancies.

California was founded by the bravest, the most explorative the pioneers. We weren’t called the Wild West for nothing. Orange County and the South Bay especially are known for passionate arts movements, a demand for equality and social rights, and light-speed progress to new technology and innovations. This exciting, open, and innovative lifestyle also comes with consequences. We’re more dependent on technology than ever before and as a reflection, we’re also less connected to real tangible people in our lives. We often aren’t equipped to handle real human problems, like trauma, stress, and addiction, and we live rapid-pace, stressful lives in some of the densest and most complex cities in the world.