The Aviary Recovery Center Blog

This post is the second entry in our series about the importance of healthy eating for a person who is in recovery from a substance use disorder. You can read the first entry here {LINK not yet published} to see our suggestions about hydration and your morning meal. This time...

Knowing the signs of addiction is the first step to determining whether or not your loved one has a problem with drugs or alcohol. Since addiction is a disease, early treatment increases the chance for a successful recovery. General Signs of Addiction Sometimes addiction begins in social settings or with...

How healthy is your diet? It is a good question for anyone, but it is an especially good question for a person in recovery from a substance use disorder. That is because a healthy diet supports your sobriety. And an unhealthy diet? Well, it can undermine your efforts to stay...

Much research has been about the disease of addiction and its effects. Dr. Mark Gold suggests there are 6 stages of change in recovery and explains how each change directly affects behaviors and characteristics associated with addiction. In his article titled "Stages of Change," Gold explains how the psyche is...

Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood? If you are a Sesame Street fan, you probably remember a song called “The People in Your Neighborhood.” Each segment featuring the catchy tune introduces viewers to the various kinds of people they might encounter in their neighborhood. A fireman, for example, or...

We Admit This Post is Making Us Hungry One of the great joys of what might be called “the big food holidays”—especially Thanksgiving and Christmas—is that there are often delicious leftovers to enjoy in the days that follow. Often, that includes turkey, which when combined with some other scrumptious ingredients,...

When you are in recovery from a substance use disorder, there is a reasonable chance that you will experience some embarrassment or guilt or shame related to the way you behaved before you got sober. Those are the sorts of the feelings that can cause you to isolate yourself from...

Here’s a question for you: When you think about the next few days or the next few weeks or the next few months or even the next few years, what are you looking forward to? Maybe something immediately springs to mind. An upcoming wedding (yours or someone else’s). A vacation...

Before we go any further, here is an essential reminder: Your most important goal or resolution for the New Year should be to reclaim and/or maintain your sobriety. That is the goal that makes all your other goals possible. With that said, we want to reflect on the tradition of...

It is always tricky to put people into categories. After all, each and every one of us is unique and complex and inconsistent and changing all of the time. Still and all, it can sometimes be useful to think about differences among people by considering characteristics that seem to provide...