Reading Time: 5 minutes On December 23, New York Governor Kathy Hochul vetoed a bill (Senate Bill S7313A / Assembly Bill A8163) that would have expanded treatment options for secular people struggling with substance abuse and addiction. Hochul has now—finally—explained her veto of the addiction treatment bill, but it makes no sense whatsoever. The purpose of the bill was […]
Recovery
Posted inHealth
Is total abstinence the only approach to addiction recovery?
Reading Time: 3 minutes We’ve learned a thing or two about addiction since AA’s Big Blue Book was published in 1939. Giving yourself over to a ‘higher power’ and avoiding the subject of your addiction forever is not the only way toward recovery.
Posted inNews
Experts claim stigma and discrimination harmful in addiction recovery
Reading Time: 2 minutes In an editorial on July 6th for the Journal of the American Medical Association’s JAMA Psychiatry, authors McLellan, Koob and Volkow argue in favor of adopting the term ‘preaddiction’ in order to assist addiction professionals in identifying people who are likely to be in the very early stages of failing to successfully manage their maladaptive […]
Posted inCulture
Wellness is systemic: A podcast episode for mental health
Reading Time: 4 minutes When I first recorded episodes for Global Humanist Shoptalk last year, I had no idea what 2022 was going to hold. I did suspect that far-right legislation would continue to pose problems, and that pandemic wouldn’t be over so easily after all. But I certainly wouldn’t have put money on a full-on war in Ukraine […]
Posted inReligion
Episode 10: Why Smart People Believe Nonsense
Reading Time: 6 minutes Over dinner one night, I found myself explaining to someone raised outside of a devoutly religious environment that religious people are not stupid simply because they believe nonsensical things. [ iTunes | spreaker | youtube | pdf ] I’ve had this same conversation several times now, each time with a different person whose professional life has […]
Posted inParenting & Family, Psychology, Religion
Episode 9: How Faith Breaks Your Feeler
Reading Time: 11 minutes In my last post, I enumerated about a dozen ways faith normalizes bad thinking, teaching us to view what the rest of the world deems logical fallacies as simply “the way you’re supposed to think.” My contention is that growing up in church diminishes your capacity to detect and question factual inconsistencies, effectively breaking your […]
Posted inCritical thinking
How faith breaks your thinker
Reading Time: 16 minutes Someone wrote me recently to ask: What drives you to be so adamant in sharing your atheistic beliefs? What is the driving force behind you? To influence others to be nonbelievers?? I have so much to say about this it will take more than one post to get it all out, and this one won’t […]
Posted inReligion
Episode 7: How Christianity Teaches You to Hate Yourself
Reading Time: 9 minutes One of the great joys of living in the Bible Belt is that you can hear Christian music played overhead almost anywhere you go. One day not to long ago I had to make stops at a coffee shop, a gym, a doughnut place (I know, the irony), a fried chicken place, a clinic office, and […]
Posted inHealth, Psychology, Religion
Listening to the Still, Small Voice
Reading Time: 9 minutes In my youth group days, we had a skit we would perform in which someone portraying Jesus would follow the protagonist around wherever he went, silently accompanying him throughout his daily routine. Jesus would sit invisibly beside him in class, walk with him through the halls, and even go out with him on dates (creepy), […]
Posted inUncategorized
A Christ-Haunted People
Reading Time: 7 minutes “If our hope in Christ is for this life only, we should of all mankind be the most to be pitied!” (1 Cor. 15:19) This startling admission has been rolling around inside my head since I first read it nearly three decades ago, made all the more remarkable by the fact that it came straight […]