My father had Alzheimer’s, so whenever I hear about anything to do with degenerative brain function, I tend to listen. This morning I spent an enjoyable half hour listening to an archived radio broadcast a friend had sent me the link to. The show was an edition of the CBC’s Quirks and Quarks, and featured [...]

They say that infrants grow at the same rate as the strength of our arm muscles, enabling us to carry them as they age, but only to a point. There reaches a time when the size and weight of our child force us to let them go, so they can walk and run and begin [...]

My fourteen year old son sometimes reminds me more of a five year old.  Despite being at an age where normally, teenage children are stretching boundaries in order to gain independence, he’s becoming even more dependent on me.  In the short term, this isn’t a bad thing, and it’s quite understandable in the circumstances.  He [...]

There is considerable opinion within both the medical and alcoholic treatment communities that alcoholism may be genetically inherited.  I’m not sure if I believe that, but I am open enough to the possibility, I know that I want to teach my children how to avoid behaviours that might lead to or encourage alcoholism.  And whether or not [...]

Have you ever caught yourself saying or doing something that has made you both ashamed and wonder how you could possibly be acting that way?  Don’t worry, we all have.  Social psychologist Philip Zimbardo conducted a controversial experience at Stanford in 1971 called “The Lucifer Effect” during which men were recruited to create a prison [...]

Everything happens for a reason, even the bad stuff.  Especially the bad stuff.  I used to believe that life was pretty random, and perhaps in those days, it was for me.  But now that I’ve decided to live my life awake and purposefully, I see that the people and events that come into my life [...]

If you’ve ever tried to stay on a diet during Easter or Halloween, or had to suffer through a Valentine’s Day when there was no romance in your life, you know how hard it can be to go going against the flow of a holiday.   Consider how your alcoholic feels at this time of the [...]

One can imagine that life with an alcoholic can be different for children, dependent upon their age.  But regardless of how old the kids are, all human beings know when they are loved, or neglected in some way.  My children were between the ages of six and thirteen during the worst times of living with [...]

There are, indeed, three C’s in the word “acceptance”, but those aren’t the C’s I’m referring to. We who love or have loved an alcoholic want so much for their health and happiness that when bad behavior occurs, we almost forget that they are sick.  If your child had a temperature of 101, would you [...]

Alcoholism is often called “The Family Disease” because of its affect on everyone in the family.  Don’t kid yourself: the children of an alcoholic do not come off unscathed despite how careful you think you have been around them.  Children are incredibly intuitive, and they don’t always let you know their true feelings.  Regardless, a [...]