- RSS Description: Alpine Recovery Lodge Residential & Dual Diagnosis Treatment Center
- Childhood Trauma, Addiction and Mental Health Mental Health & Dual Diagnosis · Trauma Childhood Trauma, Adult Addiction, and Mental Health: What Families Should Know Childhood trauma can affect adult mental health, relationships, stress responses, self-worth, and the way a person uses drugs or alcohol to cope. Quick answer: Childhood trauma can increase the risk of adult addiction and mental health symptoms […]
- EMDR, CBT, DBT and Trauma Therapy Explained Trauma Treatment Guide EMDR, CBT, DBT, and Trauma Therapy: What Helps Trauma Heal? EMDR, CBT, DBT, and trauma therapy can all help trauma heal, but they work in different ways. The right approach depends on the person’s symptoms, safety, nervous system stability, substance use history, and whether they need outpatient support or a higher level […]
- How Trauma Affects the Brain and Nervous System Mental Health & Dual Diagnosis · Trauma How Trauma Affects the Brain and Nervous System Trauma can change how the brain detects danger, stores memories, regulates emotions, and sends stress signals through the body. Quick answer: Trauma affects the brain and nervous system by keeping the body stuck in survival mode. This can lead to […]
- Signs Unresolved Trauma Is Affecting You Mental Health & Dual Diagnosis · Trauma Signs Unresolved Trauma May Be Affecting Your Life Unresolved trauma can affect how you think, feel, sleep, trust, cope, and respond to stress even when the original event happened years ago. Quick answer: Signs unresolved trauma may be affecting your life include feeling constantly on edge, avoiding reminders, […]
- PTSD vs. Complex PTSD: What’s the Difference? Mental Health & Dual Diagnosis · Trauma PTSD vs. Complex PTSD: What’s the Difference? PTSD and Complex PTSD can both happen after trauma, but Complex PTSD usually involves deeper, longer-lasting patterns with emotions, self-worth, relationships, and trust. Quick answer: PTSD is commonly linked to trauma symptoms such as flashbacks, nightmares, avoidance, and feeling constantly on […]
- What Is Trauma-Informed Care? A Simple Guide for Families Mental Health & Dual Diagnosis · Trauma What Is Trauma-Informed Care? A Simple Guide for Families Trauma-informed care is an approach to treatment that recognizes how trauma affects the brain, body, emotions, relationships, and recovery. Quick answer: Trauma-informed care means treatment is built around emotional safety, trust, choice, respect, and understanding instead of shame, pressure, […]
- Trauma and Addiction: Why People Use Drugs or Alcohol to Cope Mental Health & Dual Diagnosis · Trauma Trauma and Addiction: Why So Many People Use Drugs or Alcohol to Cope Trauma and addiction are often connected because drugs or alcohol can become a way to numb emotional pain, calm the nervous system, sleep, escape memories, or feel temporarily in control. Quick answer: Many people use […]
- What Happens in the First 24–72 Hours of Residential Mental Health Treatment? Mental Health | Residential Treatment What Happens in the First 24–72 Hours of Residential Mental Health Treatment? Alpine Recovery Lodge Updated April 23, 2026 Residential mental health guide The first 24–72 hours of residential mental health treatment are usually focused on safety, orientation, assessment, calming the nervous system, and starting a clear plan. Alpine Recovery […]
- When Trauma Treatment Needs More Care Mental Health & Dual Diagnosis · Trauma When Trauma Treatment Needs a Higher Level of Care Trauma treatment may need a higher level of care when symptoms, substance use, safety concerns, withdrawal risk, or daily instability are too difficult to manage with weekly therapy alone. Quick answer: Trauma treatment may need a higher level of […]
- What Is an Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP)? Who It’s For & How It Works IOP | Treatment Guide What Is an Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP)? Who It’s For & How It Works Alpine Recovery Lodge Updated March 17, 2026 Intensive outpatient program guide An intensive outpatient program, also called IOP, is a structured level of care for people who need more support than weekly therapy but do not need […]
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Disclaimer
Someone told me that this webpage may on the surface look like it condones drugs.
I assure you: It. Does. Not.
I have a lot of experience with addicts and addiction. Both personally and indirectly, and addiction is no laughing matter. It may start out as "simple" pain- or palliative treatment but it can quickly escalate into fullblown addiction and it is never a pretty sight. It's tough as nails, not only on the addict him-/herself but also on family and friends. The road to addiction can be both sneaky, meandering, treacherous and insipid and it's an inexorable and unforgiving trap once it takes you into its clammy embrace. Sadly, the road out of it is one few have the psyche to travel once they're trapped. Then again people usually have reasons for what they do.
Granted, when you're young you may "just" be experimenting, but if you find, in your late teens, that you're prone to a bipolar or schizophrenic disorder you may end up with a so called "dual diagnosis" and the road out becomes double hard. Other people have undefinable "defects", "neuroses", "character failures" - some have perhaps lived through trauma in their childhood - be it abuse, neglect or even worse. Some people use drugs to turn off specific things in their minds. Unfortunately drugs are like a scattergun. They don't turn off exactly what you want turned off, but does a lot of random damage.
Not all addicts steal or lack empathy (although, sadly, I realize a lot do). I also do not agree with the premise that alcoholism or drug addiction is a "disease" in itself. There is almost always a reason behind the madness.
The link between mental illness and addiction is well known and well documented. Denmark, where I am from - is presumably one of the better countries to be ill in - but almost no country on Earth puts adequate funds towards mental healthcare.
In Denmark the law states that you're entitled to be referred to a psychiatrist by your personal physician, but a psychiatrist will almost always try to medicate the problem away where the help really needed is a psychologist. Still, even if they could afford one, many addicts don't want to talk about their problems.
So, in the end, those of us who care, are forced to rely on damage control, and that is basically what this site is about.
It may contain humor because I believe information wants to be free and it's a grim subject. So, I share a lot, some would say too much, but apparently noone finds it strange that a guide for making ANFO is easily accessible on Wikipedia, that you can download schematics for a gun or rifle to print with your 3D-printer or deduce how to build a hydrogen bomb in your garage. I'm not sharing anything not already on the web.
So, make no mistake. This site is for the purpose of saving lives; not taking them!!
Many of these may be behind institutional paywalls. If you really want to read them you'll find a way.
Nitazene-analogues Make Fentanyl Look Like Drugs for Children
Mental Illness and Substance Abuse
- Substance abuse treatment for people with schizophrenia
- Comorbidity of opiate dependence and mental disorders
What Heroin Does to Your Brain
- Heroin Addiction: Neurobiology, Pharmacology, and Policy
- Hypoxic/ischaemic brain damage, especially pallidal lesions, in heroin addicts
- The neuropathology of heroin abuse
- Heroin Addiction Impairs Human Cortical Plasticity
- Effect of heroin use on changes of brain functions as measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging, a systematic review
- Drug Abuse and Mental Illness: Progress in Understanding Comorbidity
- Substance abuse and mental illness: Challenges for interventions
- Violence and Severe Mental Illness: The Effects of Substance Abuse and Nonadherence to Medication
- A Randomized Clinical Trial of a New Behavioral Treatment for Drug Abuse in People With Severe and Persistent Mental Illness
- Substance Abuse/Mental Illness: Diagnostic Issues
What Cocaine Does to Your Brain
- Cocaine induces apoptosis in cerebral vascular muscle cells: potential roles in strokes and brain damage
- Cocaine effects on the developing brain: current status (Neuroscience and Behavioural Reviews)
- Cocaine Destroys Gray Matter Brain Cells and Accelerates Brain Aging
- Cocaine Wreaks Subtle Damage on Developing Brains
- Acute Effects of Cocaine on Human Brain Activity and Emotion
- The effect of cocaine on traumatic brain injury outcome: a preliminary evaluation
What Antipsychotics Do to Your Brain
- Case study Neuroleptic malignant syndrome induced by haloperidol following traumatic brain injury
- Risperidone attenuates brain damage after focal cerebral ischemia in vivo
- Use of Risperidone in Psychotic Disorder following Ischemic Brain Damage
- Divergent Long-Term Consequences of Chronic Treatment with Haloperidol, Risperidone, and Bromocriptine on Traumatic Brain Injury–Induced Cognitive Deficits
- Neuropharmacological effect of risperidone: From chemistry to medicine
What Dissociative Psychedelics Do to Your Brain (and your bladder)
- Potential mechanisms for phencyclidine/ketamine-induced brain structural alterations and behavioral consequences (Neurotoxicology)
- Ketamine, Phencyclidine, and MK-801 Protect Against Kainic Acid-Induced Seizure-Related Brain Damage (Official Journal of the International League Against Epilespy)
- DARK Classics in Chemical Neuroscience: Phencyclidine (PCP)
- Differential effects of phencyclidine (PCP) and ketamine on mesocortical and mesostriatal dopamine release in Vivo
- Phencyclidine (PCP) (Drug and Alcohol Abuse)
- Phencyclidine (PCP): A Review and Perspectives (CRC Critical Reviews in Toxicology)
- Haloperidol prevents induction of the hsp70 heat shock gene in neurons injured by phencyclidine (PCP), MK801, and ketamine
- Neurological, sensorimotor and cardiorespiratory alterations induced by methoxetamine, ketamine and phencyclidine in mice (Neuropharmacology)
- Super-Potent Synthetic Opioids Spread Across US Amid Fentanyl Crackdown (Nitazene-analogues)
- Urological symptoms following ketamine treatment for psychiatric disorders: A systematic review
- Upper urinary tract damage caused by ketamine snorting—A report of nine cases
- Involvement of Purinergic Neurotransmission in Ketamine Induced Bladder Dysfunction
- The Risk of Upper Urinary Tract Involvement in Patients With Ketamine-Associated Uropathy
- Cystitis and ketamine-associated bladder dysfunction
What Benzodiazepines Do to Your Brain
- Benzodiazepines protect hippocampal neurons from degeneration after transient cerebral ischemia: an ultrastructural study
- The Effects on Benzodiazepines on Cognition
- Peripheral-type benzodiazepine receptors: Their implication in brain disease
- Benzodiazepines: Uses, Dangers, and Clinical Considerations
- Benzodiazepines revisited—will we ever learn?
- Long-term consequences of benzodiazepine-induced neurological dysfunction: A survey
- Benzodiazepines: the time for systematic change is now
- Consumption of benzodiazepines in a French university hospital between 1980 and 1991
- Benzodiazepine harm: how can it be reduced?
What MDMA Does to Your Brain
- Elucidating the neurotoxic effects of MDMA and its analogs
- The effects of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) and 3,4-methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA) on monoaminergic systems in the rat brain
- 3,4-Methylenedioxy analogues of amphetamine: Defining the risks to humans
- CuZn-superoxide dismutase (CuZnSOD) transgenic mice show resistance to the lethal effects of methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA) and of methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA)
- Behavioural, hyperthermic and neurotoxic effects of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine analogues in the wistar rat
- A comparison of the neurotoxic potential of methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA) and its N-methylated and N-ethylated derivatives
- The hyperthermic and neurotoxic effects of ‘Ecstasy’ (MDMA) and 3,4 methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA) in the Dark Agouti (DA) rat, a model of the CYP2D6 poor metabolizer phenotype
