When I was teenager, I was heading home from a family vacation when my hands started cramping. I did not feel overheated, overexerted or ill. I was simply looking out the window from the backseat of my parents’ car when it began. Two distinct muscle spasms seized both...

When I was 19 years old, I fell in love with an alcoholic. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time. It’s not like he handed me a card or introduced himself as one. He was neither sloppy nor unintelligible. On the contrary, he was exciting, artistic, funny, philosophical, and evidently knew how to have a good time. For his alcohol tolerance was as vast as he was charming.

It should come to no surprise the country is amid an opioid epidemic. But COVID has cast a shadow over the problem. Prior to the virus, news of opioid addiction and its devastating impacts were making headlines. Who can forget the harrowing picture of a four-year-old...

Addiction is a disease that affects virtually all aspects of life. Family, friends and work suffer, relationships fall apart, and all that is left is a constant urge to seek the very substance that ruins your life. Decades of research proves that addiction is not the...

Life is nothing without our loved ones. It's meaningless without the connections we establish throughout our time here on earth. We are inherently social creatures, and we thrive on human support, on the relationships we foster, and on the love we feel for others.But...

When I was diagnosed with cancer, I was consumed by a crushing weight of debilitating thoughts. These thoughts, like a herd of stampeding buffalo, ran rampantly through my mind. I didn’t know how to corral them. I didn’t know how to calm them. And I didn’t know how to...

Often times, there are misguided assumptions made about those who are addicted to a substance. They can be looked upon as weak, inferior or social pariahs. Sometimes they’re thought of as criminals, homeless, attention-seeking or reckless people, who simply use to...

While I was going through chemotherapy, there were many nights I would lie awake praying for sleep that never came. The illness, the fear, but most of all the steroids kept me up. So in these eternal hours of the night, I would sometimes pray and listen to meditation...

The world has been turned upside down, as of late. Between COVID-19 and the social injustices pervading our country, life seems unrecognizable, unfair and uncertain. But sometimes you have to tear something down to rebuild it even stronger. A deconstruction is...

Like the earth revolving around the sun, so has been our concern surrounding COVID-19. This flare of a disease has captured our attention and turned our world upside down. And even though society has begun to slowly show signs of life, this virus’ gravitational pull...