The marijuana, psychosis connection
Increasingly, we are contacted by parents desperate to learn more about the strong association between adolescent marijuana use and psychosis. Their typical and tragic messages go something like this: “We never knew. We thought marijuana wasn’t even...
Is marijuana the answer to the opioid epidemic?
What we know for sure is that the United States is in the midst of an opioid epidemic that is killing tens of thousands of Americans each year. In 2016, 42,000 Americans died from heroin or opiate overdose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention....
Record-breaking level of 12th graders say they’re more likely to use legal marijuana
Marijuana use is up in the last year among American middle-school and high-school students, and legalizing the drug likely would mean many more underage marijuana users, according to Monitoring the Future, one of the United States’ largest studies of...
Introducing ImpACT for adolescents: A training manual for mental health professionals
I am pleased to share this treatment manual, impACT: Motivational Interviewing/Acceptance Commitment Training for Adolescents with Substance Use and Co-occurring Problems. It is yours, free for the download. Though this is a guide for therapists, impACT could help a...
Vaping linked to increased risk of tobacco use
If there’s anything we should know by now, it’s that sellers of addictive substances are continually and intently focused on the development of new products that create lifelong customers. So, there is very good reason to be skeptical of claims that...Read the book
Clearing the Haze is a guide designed to help parents determine whether their child may have a substance problem and, if so, how to begin to address it. This book includes the voices and insight of experts in substance abuse counseling, young people in recovery, and parents who have lived the nightmare of adolescent addiction.