All Posts

Family systems matter. Not as a slogan. Not as nostalgia. As a measurable force that shapes mental health, coping, addiction risk, and whether a person can navigate adult life without collapsing. This isn’t a new discovery. People have been talking about family breakdown for decades. What’s changed is the speed and scale of it—and how much our culture now normalizes instability as if it’s a personality type instead of a problem to solve. Over the past decade, we’ve watched th

Over the years, the most honest way to describe what we are watching up close is this: our crisis systems are starting to function like a lifestyle. Not because people want it that way—because when the outside world is unstable, the “institution” becomes the only predictable structure left. And once that happens, addiction doesn’t just collide with treatment—it collides with jails, emergency rooms, psych holds, and probation rules in a loop that quietly trains people to live

When you step back and look at the main drivers of addiction, one factor keeps getting louder: environment. Steve Harvey uses an analogy called the “two-foot pot”: if you plant an oak seed in a pot that’s too small, it will never become what it was built to become—not because there’s anything wrong with the seed, but because the environment stunts it. That’s the simplest way to explain the nature vs. nurture argument without turning it into a debate: people don’t grow in a

One of the most common—and most destructive—patterns in substance abuse treatment is what I call the “Tag & Bag.” It’s the rushed admission. The pressured commitment. The frantic push to get someone “somewhere safe,” often before anyone has established whether the patient is actually willing to participate in recovery. And that’s the problem: safety is not the same thing as change. When patients are not committed—and when no one sets clear expectations on the front end—admiss

Over the years, procedures and priorities within substance abuse treatment centers across the United States have shifted in a noticeable way. Several forces appear to be driving this change: expanded access to subsidized ACA coverage, increased competition in the treatment marketplace, and growing operational pressure to maintain admissions volume. The result, in too many settings, is a system that can look busy, well-funded, and “clinical”—while quietly drifting away from pa