August is truly unique month. We’re deep into summer, relaxation, vacation, and long, hot days. Yet it’s also on the cusp of fall, with plans and preparations for a new school year and even the holidays on our to-do lists. One big item on our late-summer to-do list is a complete redesign and relaunch of our site; this labor of love has been a long time coming and will allow us greater versatility in our content and reach. To debut our relaunch, we are planning a special Recovery Month edition, due out mid-September. Follow us on our social media outlets (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) for ongoing updates and details. We hope you are as excited as we are about this new season for RecoveryView!

We are very pleased to announce that our sponsor this month is Addiction Therapeutic Services (ATS), a brand-new IOP in Palm Springs that we (Jim and Josie) founded. We have poured our hearts into this project and are honored to now share it with you.

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Denial is not, as they say, a river in Egypt, but it can still be murky water in which to maneuver. In her latest article, Dr. Tian Dayton pieces out healthy from pathological denial and advises what to do when you find yourself up to your ears in the harmful sort.

We are very excited to welcome Ester Nicholson into the RecoveryView family. Her personal journey is both fascinating and inspiring, and, best of all, she shares it with us this month. (She generously shares her book, too, featured in this month’s Book Club – be sure to check it out.) *Deepak: Please make the words “Book Club” a live link to her Book Club post.

Dr. Herby Bell is a proponent of alternative medicine, which should come as no surprise when you find out he’s a chiropractor. What you may find surprising is why he posits that chiropractic care can be a very effective tool in recovery, particularly in early treatment stages.

In Part I of a two-part article, Larry Smith explores how brain chemistry can conspire to hijack best intentions, behaviors, and lives. (Part II coming in September.)

Choosing to get out of our heads and into our bodies provides another avenue to healing. When Dr. Jamie Marich developed Dancing Mindfulness, her intention was to offer the recovery community – clients and those treating them – a spiritual, nonjudgmental, and, yes, fun way to be present and reconnect with their bodies.

New RecoveryView author, Lisa Fredericksen, elaborates on a little-discussed issue, secondhand drinking.  The symptoms family and close friends of the addicted person may experience are rarely linked to the ongoing stress of living with the chaos of addiction; read this very important piece and pass it on to someone who needs to hear its message.

Another new contributor, Michael Yeager, brings to light grief recovery, especially as the process relates to trauma and traumatic losses. In addition to insights into how to heal well, he also offers treatment providers tips on how to effectively facilitate this recovery.

While psychotropic medications can be a godsend for many people, they also pose the potential for addiction in and of themselves. Kenneth Whitfield shines light on the dark side of common anti-anxiety medication, Xanax.

Our August Book Club is a veritable embarrassment of riches – consider it your lazy-days-of-summer reading list:

• Soul Recovery by Ester Nicholson
• Resilient Woman by Patricia O’Gorman
• The Light: A Novel by Robert Hammond
• Two Lives, One Lifetime by Patricia Reihl
• Spiritual Connection by Lynn Underwood

We wrap up our late-summer issue with two profiles of Recovery Members: Jerry Browder, CEO of Signet Health and the newly acquired Vista Taos Recovery Center; and Jace Horowitz of Herbert House in Los Angeles. These fascinating stories of personal and professional commitment to the recovery field and the lives of those they serve will uplift and inspire you. Sounds like the perfect summer reading to us!