Chronic Sorrow
When people talk about grief, they usually mean the loss they feel when someone dies. But other losses bring a type of grief with them too…
Concealed Stigmas and What Science Tells Us About Our Need for Support
Some things we choose to share with our family/whanau, friends, and acquaintances. Such things may include: our successes, family members’ successes, holiday plans and even just small everyday matters. Some things we cannot easily share, because there may be a stigma attached to them.
Effects of methamphetamine on the brain and body, and implications for responding
Families Matter
Families need support to build coping and resilience – a recent interview discusses why Families Matter with Chris Lynch from Newstalk ZB – Click here to view
Love Has No Labels: The Rise and (hopeful) Fall of Tough Love
By Dee-Dee Stout
Dee-Dee Stout is Family Drug Support Aotearoa New Zealand’s Guest Contributor. She is a pioneering harm reduction therapist, educator, advocate and author.
Harm Reduction Principles for Effective Parenting
By our Guest Contributor Barry Lessin
Barry Lessin is an addiction psychologist and public health advocate in Philadelphia, USA.
Reinventing Recovery
By Dee-Dee Stout
Dee-Dee Stout is Family Drug Support Aotearoa New Zealand’s Guest Contributor. She is a pioneering harm reduction therapist, educator, advocate and author.
The importance of families, whanau and friends
Health Check: what makes it so hard to quit drugs?
Most people who use alcohol and other drugs do so infrequently and never become dependent (or “addicted” as it’s sometimes called). On average about 10% of people who use alcohol or other drugs are dependent. The rate is around 6% for alcohol, around 10% for cannabis and around 15% for methamphetamine.
How to support families and friends with a loved one using methamphetamine
Stepping Forward
Tuhaitara’s Story
I have recently celebrated my 18 years of complete abstinence from all mind altering chemicals along with taku hoa rakatira.
Vicky’s Story
There was nothing I wouldn’t have done for him…but I couldn’t follow him down a path of destruction and harm, the direct result of his drug addiction.
Nicholas’s Story
I have been at war with myself for fifteen years now. Oh, the sorrow of war!
Anna’s Story
Our son’s addiction has had a significant affect on other family/whānau members.
Please Hear What I’m Not Saying
Don’t be fooled by me.
Don’t be fooled by the face I wear
for I wear a mask, a thousand masks,
masks that I’m afraid to take off,
and none of them is me.
Dancing on a Razor’s Edge
A New Zealander – If Mandy Whyte had listened to the experts her son Hemi would probably be dead now or incarcerated. After years of trying to convince him to get to rehab and after being told by various agencies to back off and wait for ...
Where There’s Life There Really is Hope
Have you just discovered that someone you know is a drug addict? Are you heartbroken? Do you feel overwhelmed? If so, you are not alone. That is what happened to me. I thought I would have to bury my daughter by Christmas 2014. You can read the...
Rehabilitated
Rehabilitated is Valeria Tokoar’s raw account of growing up with insecurity and anxiety and with a personality that found it hard to resist temptation. Always looking for the easy way out, Valeria made one wrong decision after another unt...
Get Your Loved One Sober
Coauthor Dr. Robert Meyers spent ten years developing a treatment program that helps Concerned Significant Others (CSOs) both improve the quality of their lives and to learn how to make treatment an attractive option for their partners who are ...
Mrs D is Going Without
A New Zealander – Lotta Dann was in trouble – her fun drinking habit had slowly morphed into an obsessive hunger for wine. One bottle a night was never quite enough. When she tried to cut down, she found it nearly impossible to have...
Coping and Conflict
Support for families faced with problematic alcohol and other drug use
An informative resource called A Guide To Coping is a valuable resource for families faced with problematic alcohol and other drug misuse in family/whānau ...
Beautiful Boy
What had happened to my beautiful boy? To our family? What did I do wrong?’ Those are the wrenching questions that haunted every moment of David Sheff’s journey through his son Nic’s addiction to drugs and tentative steps towa...
Don’t Let Your Kids Kill You: A Guide for Parents of Drug and Alcohol Addicted Children
This is a self-help recovery guide for parents in the devastating situation of realizing that they are powerless to stop their children from self-destruction through drug and/or alcohol abuse. It is dedicated to letting parents know when it is ...
Supernormal: The Untold Story of Adversity and Resilience
Clinical psychologist and author of The Defining Decade, Dr. Meg Jay reveals the world of the -supernormal-: those who soar to unexpected heights after childhood adversity. Whether it is bullying, the loss of a parent to divorce, drug misuse or...
Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines
This New York Times bestselling memoir of a young man’s addiction to methamphetamine tells a raw, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful tale of the road from relapse to recovery. Nic Sheff was drunk for the first time at age eleven. In the ye...
Not My Family, Never My Child
A practical handbook for anyone who suspects (or knows) someone they care about is a drug user. Drawing on the tragic loss of his own son to a heroin overdose and over 20 years working as a counsellor, Tony Trimingham cuts through the media hyp...
Supernormal : Childhood Adversity and the Untold Story of Resilience
In this seminal new study of resilience, Meg Jay tells the stories of a diverse group of people who have overcome trauma in their childhoods to go on and live successful lives as adults. These are the ‘supernormal’, who having shoul...
Mum, Can You Lend Me Twenty Quid? : What drugs did to my family
Elizabeth Burton Phillips is a teacher, an ordinary middle-class mother who had always tried to do the best for her children; she never imagined that her identical twin sons, who had been doing so well at school, would become involved in drugs....