Drug and Alcohol Addiction Recovery Glossary
Vocabulary Used in Recovery and Substance Abuse Treatment
Acid/LSD: Click here for information on Acid/LSD.
Addiction: Refer to both a physical craving and to the psychological learning behavior in which the person develops a primary relationship. A committed love relationship with the chemical(s).
Aftercare: Continuation of the recovery process begun in treatment through involvement with Recovery Room groups, AA, NA, Al-Anon and self-help growth groups.
Alcohol: Click here for information on Alcohol.
Alcoholics Anonymous: An anonymous fellowship that provides gathering places for chemically dependant person (AA), their spouses (Al-Anon), and their children (Alateen) that recognize their need for support in maintaining individual recovery programs.
Black Out: A chemical induced amnesia. Temporary memory loss that is caused by prolonged use of chemicals (e.g. alcohol).
Chemical Dependency: Alcoholism and drug dependency is a medical disease recognized by AMA (American Medical Association). This is a continued use of a substance in spite of negative consequences.
Club Drugs: Click here for information on Club Drugs.
Cocaine: Click here for information on Cocaine.
Co-Dependent: Someone who lives with and /or is close to a chemical dependent person. Also known as a Co-Addict person and who enables them.
Communication: The way people work out to create understanding with on another. On of the most difficult tasks in treatment is to move from a defensive posture to a feeling level of communication. Five ways of communicating are blaming, placating, computing, distracting and leveling.
Concerned Person: Someone of your acquaintance or family who is willing to share in the knowledge of your treatment and recovery program who will hopefully attend Concerned Person’s group not only for your support and care, but for an opportunity to acquire knowledge and skills for their own personal growth.
Confronting: Telling another person how we see his/her behavior, but using the format – “I feel ___________ (emotion). When you do ____________(behavior). We do not judge or use name calling.”
Congruence: Allowing outside expression and behavior to match inside feelings.
Controlling: Being responsible for others instead of one’s self. Needing to control other’s behavior in order to feel better about one’s reactions to that person. Needing others to act and feel in certain ways to avoid facing reality and feeling pain about it for one’s self.
Defenses: Specific behaviors used to protect and to keep others away are silence, denial, justifying, blaming, humor, bullying, fear, intellectualizing.
Delusion: Defense system of denial, rationalization, and projection that keeps one from seeing reality. It is experienced by the chemically dependent person and his /her family. Confrontation is necessary to break through the defensive system before delusion is recognized and recovery can begin.
Didactic Lectures: The learning of all these terms where a counselor is teaching in a lecturing format.
Dry-Drunk: Behavior exhibited by a chemically dependent person who is not using chemicals but is refusing to cope with life without them. Characterized often by grandiosity, judgmental, inclement and intolerant attitudes, defensive lifestyle and tunnel vision, which is sometimes called BUD (Building up to drink or drug. Relapse).
Ecstasy/MDMA: Click here for information on Ecstasy/MDMA.
Enabling: Allowing irresponsible and destructive behavior patterns to continue by taking responsibility for others, not allowing them to face the consequences of their own behavior, (helping, fixing, placating, ignoring fall into this category).
Family Disease: Chemical dependency is a family disease because the family is unable to become separate from the chemicals; feeling pain, family members react and form defenses to the chemical use and dependent person, leaving no one unaffected. All family members become deluded, as deluded as the chemically dependent person whose life revolves around protecting his use of a chemical.
Feeling: A sensation or a perception, bodily consciousness, a physical or emotional response: hurt, anger, sadness, loneliness, rejection, joy, intoxication with a natural high. Clients in treatment must learn to communicate on a feeling level, e.g. “I’m feeling happy, sad, guilty.” (See opposite “Head Tripping”).
Fentanyl: Click here for information on Fentanyl.
Group Therapy: People with common needs getting together to discover themselves as feeling persons, and to identify the defenses that prevent this discovery.
Halfway House: A residence for those who need daily support and confrontation as they restructure their lives as chemically free members of society.
Harmful Dependency: Continuing to use a chemical despite evidence that its use is causing continued disruption in an individual’s personal, social, spiritual, or economic life.
Heroin: Click here for information on Heroin.
Inhalants: Click here for information on Inhalants.
Intensive Relapse Program: Targets thoughts, feeling and behaviors we exhibit before picking up a drink or a drug by learning specific methods taught at Unity Recovery Center, Inc.
Intervention: Carefully planned meeting in which those closest to the chemically dependent person, having recognized signs of the disease, present data about the person’s behavior to him/her and encourage the person to seek help.
Letting Go: Realizing that a situation or another person’s behavior is out of control, giving up the fight to gain control.
Marijuana: Click here for information on Marijuana.
Meditation Group: A technique for gaining and keeping inner peace and serenity. A person who remains in constant inner turmoil is at high risk for relapse. Meditation often involves reading recovery oriented material literature. Sometimes, it involves repeating the Serenity Prayer or other simple program words alone or with others. A person may find listening to quiet music, hearing “meditation tapes”, or contemplating nature may bring inner peace.
Methamphetamine: Click here for information on Methamphetamine.
Nurturing Family: A family shoes members have a high self-worth, who communicate feelings openly and honestly, share excitement in spontaneous interaction with one another and the world around them.
PCP/Phencyclidine: Click here for information on PCP/Phencyclidine.
Prescription Medications: Click here for information on Prescription Medications.
Primary Disease: Chemical dependency is a primary illness, it is not just a symptom of some underlying disorder.
Recovery Program: Changes in attitude and behavior that becomes a new lifestyle practiced one day at a time.
Smoking/Nicotine: Click here for more information on Smoking/Nicotine.
Spirituality: An inner peace feeling of serenity, a process by which a calm is restored after chaos, highly individualistic. Does not mean the same as formalized religion.
Treatment Plan or Program: Process by which the disease of chemical dependency and relapse can be arrested: Obtaining information about the disease. Recognition. Intervention. Treatment – Physical and Emotional Inventory with physician, treatment plan, admittance, acceptance, learning and applying the principals of AA / NA philosophy, learning high-risk situations and mapping them out. Aftercare: TFUAR(thoughts, feelings, urges, actions, reactions).
Troubled, Dysfunctional Family (Chemically Dependent Family): A family that communicates defensively within itself, reacting to one another in predictable ways, each member being locked into a survival role which perpetuates the system. On or more members must risk breaking out of his / her role and break the rules of the system for change to take place.
Tunnel Vision: Taking a narrow one-sided attitude, being unable or unwilling to broaden one’s perspective.
Wholeness: Feeling free to be oneself, having high self-worth, taking responsibility for oneself and letting others do the same. A process, which begins inside and involves recognizing and developing one’s physical, mental, social, emotional, spiritual, and volitional (free-will) power.