Posts Tagged ‘anti-anxiety’

Addiction at Home and in the Workplace

Friday, December 11th, 2009

Dr. A. Thomas McLellan, one of the leading researchers on addiction and a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, recently shared his story with the New York Times. Dr. McLellan recently accepted a position with the U.S. government, at the invitation of Vice President Joe Biden, to be the nation’s number two drug control officer. This gave him an interesting choice- to stay a professor, or to go work for the new administration. However, some experiences in his home life led him to move to work with the administration.

Last year, Dr. McLellan’s 30-year-old son passed away from an overdose of anti-anxiety medication and alcohol, at the same time as his other, older son was in residential treatment working on his own addiction issues. This, McLellan said, is what led directly to him making the post. With the help of Gil Kerlikowski, the nation’s drug czar, he hopes to turn addiction from a punitive crime into one where we can see more people get help instead of jail time. From the article: “Dr. McLellan said that of the 25 million substance abusers he estimated were in this country, only about 2 million were receiving treatment. He and Mr. Kerlikowske want to triple that number, partly by spending more money and partly through other tactics, like integrating addiction treatment into the primary health care system.”

An interesting quote from Dr. McLellan: “If it has to happen, better it happens to me, I’m an expert, right? I didn’t know what to do and none of my buddies knew what to do, and let me tell you they were experts. So I said, “˜What the hell are we doing?’ ”

So what happens when the experts don’t know what to do? Well, that’s why we’re here. At Assistance in Recovery, we’re available to coach you through all those difficult questions, whether you’ve been researching addiction for 30 years or you know absolutely nothing about it, and everywhere in between. In the struggle with chemical dependency, it can happen to ANYONE- and is always better having an outside perspective on what to do.We can assist on all of those difficult questions and help put a solution in place.

Call us at 877-320-0247 or visit us on the web at www.a-i-r.com.

Tags: addiction, addiction genes, addiction intervention, AiR Assistance in recovery, anti-anxiety, assistance in recovery, chemical dependency, drug addiction, drug deaths, methamphetamine, overdose, pain addiction, pain killers, pain medication, prescription drug abuse, substance abuse, Treatment
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