Monthly Archives: December 2017

Drug Addiction, Holistic Health, Mental Health, Women's Health

Alcohol Dangers as a Drug

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In our world today, partying and binge drinking in college a lot are often considered milestones we will experience at some point in their lives. There’s a recent trend of campuses who have had more students experiencing alcohol related problems and critical injuries thanks to easily accessible bars and the pressure to some exerted by the Greek system. Bars that offer tempting drink specials, sometimes mandatory hazing, and wine binging focused exchanges to get tipsy when work gets too tough are considered a social standard to live up to for fitting in. Studies show that almost sixty percent of college students drank alcohol in the past month, and almost two thirds of those students engaged in binge drinking during that same time. Many of us know someone who talked about their drunk night out meeting up with someone not safe at all. It’s disturbing to hear some those stories while wondering if your friend really remembered everything that happened. Especially in an open campus, seeing crimes regularly happen close to home isn’t much help either. Aside from risking your safety, actively living a binge drinking lifestyle is extremely negative and brings your body’s health down the drain. The truth is that we can still get tempted and maintaining self-discipline is almost impossible when everyone else is following along. Ultimately, we must be educated about alcohol’s effects and seek treatment if addiction is present.

Being High Functioning

Almost twenty percent of adults, especially college students who often consume alcohol, can be considered a highly functional addict in our country today. High-functioning alcoholics are hard to recognize sometimes since they have learned with trial and error how to mask it easily. Chronic drinking leads to a negative change in how they look on the outside, act with others, and feel throughout their day. Some signs of one, especially if they’re a college student, is if they use alcoholic drinks to wind down after stressful tests or become more outgoing at social gatherings, drink by themselves, black out often, run into problems with the campus police, often joke about having an addiction or get rather upset and defensive when confronted about their habits.

I’ve witnessed many of my peers start their taste of alcohol with a few drinks here and there. There’s nothing bad about having fun and enjoying a drink in moderation if you’re of age and know your limit when you go out. The point is that binge drinking to manage stress or self-medicate is what causes negative changes to occur in the body that are sometimes permanent. Drinking a lot of alcohol is socially acceptable in college and doesn’t have the same stigma attached to it as other popular vices like marijuana, cocaine, or Adderall. What seemed like a moderate activity can grow into a weekly wine night, tons of beers at happy hour, and endless vodka shots on weekends to celebrate just getting through to Friday. Rarely are such nights filled with truly wholesome memories, since drinking so much can cause it to end short or scary from a black out. The media and social norms around us are also constantly showing a glamorized version of drinking after work or at lunch breaks as a figure of humor. It seems like battling the side effects of alchohol is a piece of cake when done right. However, this notion is incredibly false and is misleading thousands of people who believe the lie.

Long-term Health Problems

It’s no joke that alcohol abuse can lead to serious acute and long term effects on a person’s mind and body. Besides severe withdrawal symptoms that develop, addicts may also develop a bad habit of experiencing memory loss and lose concentration on important tasks throughout the day. They could also develop anxiety and depression, increase risk of cancer in the colon, liver, throat, breast, etc., high blood pressure, and a damaged digestive system. A study about alcohol’s long term consequences also showed a link to a heightened risk in heart disease because of the heart not being able to effectively pump blood through the circulatory system and arteries. It depicts a striking statistic that the number of people in three years who developed heart failure, heart attack, or a condition of irregular heartbeat called atrial fibrillation, were three times more likely in their risk if they drank a lot of alcohol in the past.

Overcoming Your Addiction 

While forming a plan to recover by yourself may seem more convenient, it’s more helpful to get professional assistance; for example, getting treatment from an established alcohol rehab in Florida. They can provide you with more education on the dangers of alcohol, health consequences, and recommend the best programs for alcohol addiction recovery so you’re in the best place possible!

Wine glass and Bottle on a wooden background

 

Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing

Black Hat SEO and Buying Followers

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In the social media world today, having a large user following and engagement is what makes or breaks the success of an account. Popular influencers and businesses across several industries are partnering up to create niche products, campaigns, and advertising videos to elevate both players. Several retail brands and Internet personalities have found success within the past few years by tapping into this method like Saboskirt, Gymshark, Puma, and Pacsun to name a few. This is due in part by brands being willing to pay or sponsor highly popular “faces” to the world to share their products with their loyal community of social media users. Creating awareness with big celebrities like Kylie and Kendall Jenner, models like Gigi Hadid, musicians like Kanye West, and fitness gurus like Nikki Blackletter has drastically improved their marketing effectiveness. From having special collaboration lines to seasonal promotions, each brand is now extremely recognizable across Instagram and are growing exponentially.

While this digital marketing plan is ingenuous for growing organically, some businesses take the alternative route to find the short cut of gaining views, likes, and followers to seem more promoted on the app. To seek short cuts, some social media managers have been using “black-hat SEO” tactics, or online ways to boost their accounts without doing the work. This consists of purchasing fake engagement from mostly idle accounts to look more popular on the surface level in the platform. To take a stand against this tactic, Instagram is taking drastic measures on their software to temporarily and permanently block users who do this, so be sure to do your job as a marketer to avoid it.

How Does Buying Followers Work?

Several black hat SEO services exist on the web and the app store to allow someone to increase their likes, views, and followers on Instagram. These can be referred to as “bots” ask for a specific payment in advance to gain hundreds to tens of thousands of followers at a single time. They also repeatedly follow and unfollow the same accounts in hopes of getting the reciprocated follow in return. While it sounds effective in the short term, doing this repeatedly throughout time is against terms of service of Instagram and can cause turmoil with organic followers on your account. Another major way to get a large following is to connect to zombie social media accounts by paying a third party business to get 10, 100, or even as much as 10,000 likes on a single picture post. These zombie accounts are usually inactive, have very few followers, and contain either zero personal posts or solely spam content. A few Instagram influencers, Hollywood celebrities, and musicians out there have been caught with this tactic and have struggled with covering up the negative headlines it caused.

The Black Hat Impact

The reality with black hat SEO is that many social media users don’t realize that they are tarnishing their online reputation for the future. A more effective and realistic way to assess if your Instagram marketing campaign is actually working is by measuring the amount of people you’re engaging with, the amount of site visits and sales conversions trailed from your posts and the growth in organic comments you receive. By simply buying thousands of fake followers from an app, you will inevitably cause a growing number of uninterested customers, spread a highly negative and unprofessional name for your business, and anger your competitors and followers who are being more mindful to post only genuine content for true growth. Though online, the reality of social media still places honesty on a pedestal, and your integrity can take a hit as your real followers discover the scam like methods being used for your marketing.

Genuine Growth and Engagement

If you rather decide to grow your following on social media in an honest manner, avoid using black hat bots and applications. Instead of aiming to cheat the digital marketing system, wasting your time and energy, and ultimately risking your own online image, switch to aiming for active engagement with other businesses and perhaps gaining advice from a marketing consultant. Experts knowledgeable in social media can listen to your business aspirations and forma step by step plan to boost your engagement across your various social media platforms. Don’t wait to achieve a higher level of digital marketing and reap the rewards.

 

Drug Addiction, Holistic Health, Mental Health, Website Design

Holistic Recovery and Alternative Treatment

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Holistic addition treatment is marked as an efficient method to treat substance abuse as it weaves together integrative medicines to boost a client’s physical well-being, emotional levels, and prevent relapses in the future. In many cases, depending on a prescribed medication from doctors can hide more serious addiction symptoms which hurts a person’s through recovery in the long term. The point of alternative treatment, and especially holistic recovery, is for a person to start from within and break away from using foreign chemicals in the form of medications, They focus on bettering their exercise habits, dive into meditation, improve their nutritional diet, and strengthen their spirituality. For example, starting a routine of doing aromatherapy, music therapy, and joining a local sports group would be advised as a perfect mix of holistic recovery methods. When combined, these activities energize the mind, body, and soul for true healing that will last a long time.

Wine glass and Bottle on a wooden background

How Can You Start Holistic Recovery

The first step to practicing holistic recovery is setting a consistent time throughout the day to practice the act of mindfulness. This involves reflecting on your thoughts and feelings for a few minutes every day and focus on your body right there in the present moment. Treating yourself with care and taking a short break can help lower stress levels that may be built up and strengthen the bond you have with changes occurring within your body. Another great method for mindfulness is by tapping into yoga or dance, as it combines the physical body and directions from the mind to transport strength and develop flexibility as an exercise. Yoga also helps a person to build more internal discipline and strength as well.  Each yoga session a person undertakes involves having an intense focus on inhales, exhales, and being more concentrated on various aspects of the body that are pushed throughout each position.

Practicing your breathing can also increase your levels of energy, lower stress, and develop a better sense of clarity. Introducing more exercise is also extremely beneficial to holistic recovery, whether it’s running, tennis, or even basketball. Training in sessions with others and competing together helps build rapport to keep you accountable. You will sense that you are developing a stronger sense of confidence as you are consistently improving as well.

Holistic Benefits

Putting together multiple approaches in the idea of holistic recovery is backed up by various researchers who have observed its effects in long term studies. One study published in Complementary Therapies in Medicine in 2013 found the result that participating in yoga and mindfulness-based meditation during addiction recovery for drugs and alcohol made a huge difference with patients who can become much less vunerable to relapses. Two years later, in 2015, a report published in the Australian Journal of Primary Health also supported that there is a powerful link with mental and physical health. These support the many benefits associated with holistic treatment as it plays a role on whether a client will gain long-term sobriety.

Holistic therapy is also extremely easy to plug into as it doesn’t involve uncomfortable hospital tests, countless pills, and intense therapy sessions to get negative feelings out of the mind. Relying on medication, while based in science, may provide a powerful psychological or physical dependency which is difficult to break away from over time. That is why many people opt for holistic therapies instead. People are also more comfortable where fun activites like running therapy or yoga classes are widespread and accessible in their local community. Along the lines of the holistic recovery method of treating the mind, body and soul, these programs encourage their clients to learn new skills and use them as a building block of their long-term recovery. If a patient is willing to take the time to consider their overall health, they can pay attention to more details like their breathing, hydration, and food that together build a stronger and more disciplined body. Throughout the entire process of holistic treatment, each client is the tooled with a variety of relapse-prevention skills which they can put to good use even after they complete their recovery program.

Becoming Well

If you feel that you can identify as a patient who is struggling to overcome your substance addiction, consider the holistic therapy approach for a more effective recovery. The perfect way to learn more about holistic recovery and traditional addiction treatment is to speak with experts. Find a rehabilitation center that understands the importance of catering to each person’s specific needs and are enthusiastic to discuss their various methods.

 

 

 

Uncategorized

Sobriety and New Age Alcoholics Anonymous

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If you find yourself feeling like you can’t get out of the rut starting your recovery journey, you will definitely experience some days where staying motivated alone will feel extremely difficult. Being independent in the battle for long term health is the worst way to get over an addiction to very strong substances like drugs or alcohol. Having a close knit peer support system who can guide you and keep you motivated throughout your addiction recovery is crucial to prevent any relapses from happening in the future.

Traditional methods of peer support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous have been around for many years as the go-to opportunity to talk amongst a group of people who can understand and listen to your struggles. In the past few years, we have been quickly integrating our lives with the internet and social media. Public forums, online messenger, and even video chat groups has allowed the peer support method to evolve into a powerful online community to help keep people motivated, learn more about their “triggers” to avoid sinking to temptation, and staying consistent to ensure long term success. People from a variety of lifestyles and backgrounds pursuing this accessible resource and are finishing it with success as a stronger person than ever before.

Peer Support Impact

It’s a long journey that is required to recover from addiction without any consistent support from other people around you. Although people who are within a peer support group may come from different walks of life and each have a variety of needs, everyone depends on each other as a line of support. Every person involved in the group is aware of what life is like as an addict in our current society, the difficulty of dealing daily temptations, and dealing with feelings that occur during recovery like sadness, guilt, and remorse that comes recovery. Most people try to rebuild their sense of self -confidence, their relationships with any friends and family, and their professional careers for the future. Being part of an active support group increases your likelihood to stay in recovery and finish it strong. You will gain needed emotional support with understanding mentors and informational support from educational seminars that teach important recovery skills. You will also acquire an important sense of belonging, as well as tips for interacting with other people that don’t revolve around consuming drugs or alchohol.

A Variety of Services

No matter where you start in your recovery journey, there are a variety services available for to help you gain sobriety and ensure relapse prevention. Peer support groups are great at being adaptable and could be individualized to your pre-recovery, recovery in progress, or post-recovery time line. For example, a peer support group can be initiated before a person enters their rehab treatment to help them develop an organized mindset for making lifestyle changes. If they’re already enrolled in a specific treatment program, support groups can also accompany it and provide an important link to a community of people going through the same experience. If treatment is done, a person has the option to still join to increase their chance of preventing relapse in the future. Even if you feel like pursuing a support group is expensive or do not exactly wish to open up to a room full of strangers, the support system that develops is foundational to your overall success as a patient. Throughout each stage, while participating in each meeting, members of peer support groups will be building their leadership abilities that will be vital to use in the future.

Online Support

There is definite evidence that having a peer support group provides enormous benefits to the body, mind, and spirit. If you have a very busy schedule and can’t find enough time to attend Alcoholic Anonymous type events in person, you might want to take a look at joining online programs to digitally stay on track. No matter how large the forum is, chances are you will find someone who shares similar troubles and can form a meaningful bond alongside you as you grow. New Age Alcoholics Anonymous meetings are now increasingly popular for people to bond over remote locations and global time zones. The online community provides a safe space to discuss personal failures, goals, and experiences to develop into a healthy person again. Facebook and Reddit has many forums and groups that are open to their members for free, and welcome them with open arms. A lot of colleges throughout the country also run discussion forums for their students to join on a weekly basis. You can also easily Google search for online AA groups that suit your lifestyle and personal goals to help you best succeed!