Acid/LSD: Click here for information on Acid/LSD
Addiction: a physiological dependency upon an unhealthy amount of a habit-forming substance or activity
Aftercare: Continuation of the recovery process begun in treatment through outpatient treatment, AA, NA, Al-Anon and other self-help growth groups
Alcohol: Click here for information on Alcohol
Alcoholics Anonymous: A fellowship for chemically dependent individuals (AA), their spouses (Al-Anon), and their children (Alateen) that recognize their need for support in achieving and maintaining sobriety
Bipolar Disorder: Manic depression; a psychiatric condition characterized by alternating cycles of mania and depression
Black Out: A chemical-induced amnesia; temporary memory loss that is caused by the use of chemicals (e.g. alcohol)
Chemical Dependency: See Addiction
Club Drugs: Click here for information on Club Drugs
Cocaine: Click here for information on Cocaine
Codependent: Being focused on another’s needs and wants until it is unhealthy for an individual; often associated with an addict’s significant others
Communication: The way people work out to create mutual understanding with one another; five ways of communicating are blaming, placating, computing, distracting and leveling
Concerned Person: individual of some importance in one’s life
Confronting: Telling another person how we see his/her behavior, but using the format – “I feel ___________ (emotion). When you do ____________(behavior). We do not judge or use name calling.”
Congruence: Expression and behavior match inner feelings
Controlling: Being responsible for others instead of self; needing others to act and feel in certain ways to avoid facing reality and feeling pain
Defenses: Specific behaviors used to protect and to keep others away are silence, denial, justifying, blaming, humor, bullying, fear, intellectualizing; may be unconscious
Delusion: Defense system of denial, rationalization, and projection that keeps one from seeing reality
Didactic Lectures: education or instruction, especially in a lecture format
Dry-Drunk: Behavior exhibited by a chemically dependent person who is not using chemicals but is refusing to cope with life without them; characterized often by grandiosity, judgmental, inclement and intolerant attitudes, defensive lifestyle and tunnel vision, which is sometimes called BUD (Building up to drink or drug. Relapse)
Ecstasy/MDMA: Click here for information on Ecstasy/MDMA
Enabling: Allowing irresponsible and destructive behavior patterns to continue by accepting responsibility for others, not allowing them to face the consequences of their own behavior, (helping, fixing, placating, ignoring can fall into this category)
Family Disease: Chemical dependency is a family disease because the family is unable to become separate from the chemicals; feeling pain, family members react and form defenses to the chemical use and dependent person, leaving no one unaffected; family members become deluded, as deluded as the chemically dependent person whose life revolves around protecting his use of a chemical
Feeling: A sensation or a perception, bodily consciousness, a physical or emotional response: hurt, anger, sadness, loneliness, rejection, joy, intoxication with a natural high; clients in treatment must learn to communicate on a feeling level, e.g. “I’m feeling happy, sad, or guilty.”
Group Therapy: People with common needs getting together to discover themselves as feeling persons, and to identify the defenses that prevent this discovery
Halfway House: A sober residence for recovering addicts/alcoholics providing daily support as they restructure their lives
Harmful Dependency: Continuing to use a chemical despite evidence that its use causes further disruption in an individual’s personal, social, spiritual, or economic life
Heroin: Click here for information on Heroin
Inhalants: Click here for information on Inhalants
Intensive Relapse Program: Targets thoughts, feeling and behaviors addicts/alcoholics exhibit before returning to drugs or alcohol; specific prevention methods are taught at Unity Recovery Center
Intervention: A carefully planned meeting in which those closest to the chemically dependent person, having recognized signs of the disease, present data about the person’s behavior to him/her and encourage the person to seek help
Letting Go: Realizing that a situation or another person’s behavior is out of control; giving up the fight to gain or regain control
Marijuana: Click here for information on Marijuana
Meditation Group: A technique for gaining and keeping inner peace and serenity. A person who remains in constant inner turmoil is at high risk for relapse. Meditation often involves reading recovery-oriented reading material. A person may find listening to quiet music, hearing “meditation tapes”, or contemplating nature may bring inner peace.
Methamphetamine: Click here for information on Methamphetamine
Nurturing Family: Members have a healthy self-worth, communicate feelings openly and honestly, share excitement in spontaneous interaction with one another and the world around them
PCP/Phencyclidine: Click here for information on PCP/Phencyclidine
Prescription Medications: Click here for information on Prescription Medications
Primary Disease: Main illness, rather than a symptom of some underlying disorder; chemical dependency is a primary disease
Recovery Program: Changes in attitude and behavior that becomes a new lifestyle practiced one day at a time; normally associated with 12 step groups
Smoking/Nicotine: Click here for more information on Smoking/Nicotine
Spirituality: An inner peace feeling of serenity, a process by which calm is restored after chaos, highly individualistic; does not mean formal religion
Treatment Plan or Program: Process by which the disease of chemical dependency and relapse can be arrested: Obtaining information about the disease; Recognition, Intervention, Treatment – Physical and Emotional Inventory with physician, treatment plan, admittance, acceptance, learning and applying the principals of AA / NA philosophy, learning high-risk situations and mapping them out; Aftercare: TFUAR (thoughts, feelings, urges, actions, reactions)
Troubled, Dysfunctional Family (Chemically Dependent Family): Communicates defensively within itself, reacting to one another in predictable, unhealthy ways, each member being locked into a survival role which perpetuates the system; One or more members must risk breaking out of his / her role for needed change to take place
Tunnel Vision: Taking a narrow one-sided attitude, being unable or unwilling to broaden one’s perspective
Wholeness: Feeling free to be own self, having healthy self-worth, taking responsibility for oneself and letting others do the same; a process, which begins inside and involves recognizing and developing one’s physical, mental, social, emotional, spiritual, and volitional power
