Substance Abuse

Six months ago, Hanna Lottritz planned on having a fun day out with friends at a music festival. She blacked out before midnight, and woke up in the hospital—to find that she had been in an alcohol-induced coma for two days. Lottritz, who turned 21 earlier this month, wrote a poignant blog  sharing her story.

The term “Chemical Dependency” is often used in conjunction with and at times interchangeably with the terms: chemically dependent, chemical dependence, alcoholism, addiction, substance abuse, substance dependence, drug habit, and drug addiction.  For our purposes, the term chemical dependency refers to a primary illness or disease which is characterized by addiction to a mood-altering chemical.

So many of us have been there. Rather than looking forward to family gatherings, we start to dread them, knowing that things might get awkward (at best) and downright traumatic (if things escalate) around family members who drink too much.

When your relatives are engaging in behaviors that negatively affect those around them, it can be paralyzing.