Chief Clinical Editor for Narconon, Claire Pinelli
Claire Pinelli has been a teacher and counselor for over 45 years. Claire has always been interested in helping others, even while working on her degree in mathematics. Eventually, Claire took a year off to follow her passion, then returned to finish her degree graduating Cum Laude for Brooklyn College, CUNY.
Throughout the 1970s Claire continued to counsel others, moving to Los Angeles before eventually settling in New York City where she married. While in New York Claire began a new chapter in her life by teaching in the New York City School System, where she helped establish the first computer science curriculum for the New York City School System. Despite her busy schedule, Claire found the time to earn her Master of Science Degree, Cum Laude, in Computer Engineering from Polytechnic Institute of New York (now New York University).
In 1985 she left New York with her husband and moved to Los Angeles finding herself managing a multi-specialty medical clinic in Los Angeles. As time went on, Claire’s family grew to 3 children and with her husband, they made the decision to move to Northern California for her children to have a quality education. It was here that Claire began one of the most fulfilling chapters in her life when a local Narconon drug and alcohol rehab center asked for her help. She agreed, and it was there she realized her passion and ability to use her counseling skills to help those addicted to drugs and alcohol as well as their families. While there, she was able to put in a standard withdrawal protocol and double the program enrollment.
In 2004 she moved on to work at a larger Narconon facility in Oklahoma. Here she was met with a new challenge. Over the course of her 2-year tenure, Claire saw the enrollment double as she supervised treatment for over 200 clients at a time. Her skills as an administrator as well as a counselor were put to good use as she helped thousands of addicts discover how to live life free from drugs and alcohol. After ensuring a smooth transition, in 2007 she decided to move to Houston, Texas, where she and her family live today. In Houston, she and her husband founded Q.U.A.D. Consultants of Texas, Inc. A Texas corporation whose goal is to help people Quit Using Alcohol and Drugs by treating and educating not only the addict, but the counselors, the family and the facility as well.
Over the years, she never stopped learning and advancing her knowledge and certification to increase her expertise and skill to help others. She became an LADC with Clinical Supervision Certification from the Oklahoma Board of Licensed Alcohol and Drug Counselors; an Internationally Certified Advanced Alcohol and Drug Counselor (ICAADC) and a Certified Clinical Supervisor (CCS) from the International Certification and Reciprocity Consortium; a Registered Addiction Specialist (RAS) from the Breining Institute in California; and a Master’s Level Certified Addiction Professional and Certified Addiction Professional (MCAP) from the state of Florida.
Claire has been doing talks and lectures on drug addiction and treatment as well as classes for professionals since 2005.
She currently is living in Houston with her family and consulting for several facilities and creating and delivering Board Approved Continuing Education training for professional and lay people alike.
Anyone can fall prey to addiction. But some people who work in certain careers may be at a heightened risk due to workplace stress, exposure to substances, etc.
There's no doubt that marijuana has harmful effects. But as scientific studies of the drug continue to report their conclusions, it would appear that there is much in the name of harmful effects regarding marijuana that we did NOT know, not until now.
In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, people all across the country are taking extra precautions to protect their health. But what about those who are also struggling with an addiction to drugs and alcohol?
People who struggle with drug addiction and alcohol abuse are at higher risk of contracting an illness. And in a time when a contagious virus is spreading across America, it could not be more vital that struggling addicts seek help as soon as possible.
Meth addiction is skyrocketing, despite the clearly harmful nature of meth use. Why is meth growing in popularity? And what can people do to curb this problem?
Opiate prescribing trends seem to have fallen across America. This is movement in the right direction; however, there is still much to do to effectively tackle addiction in our nation.
Opiate overdoses are likely the greatest fear any parent or family member has for their addicted loved one. But what actually happens during an overdose? Read on to find out.
Sometimes we want to blame the medical community for the opiate epidemic our nation is now stuck in. But as it turns out, the vast majority of doctors have nothing to do with the overprescribing of addictive pain meds. In fact, only a small percentage of doctors are contributing to this serious problem.
Just about everyone enjoys listening to music. Music makes people feel good. Listening to music is calming, relaxing, soothing, enlightening, uplifting. Listening to music is simply a fun thing to do. There are hundreds of music styles and millions of different songs out there.
Every year we're given clear reports on drug deaths in America. But new data suggests that these reports have severely underestimated the real crisis of drug fatalities across the 50 states.
The War on Drugs has often been called one of the most unpopular criminal justice reform policies in recent U.S. history. Begun in the early-1970s and accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s, the War on Drugs was a Nixon-era policy that declared drug abuse as “public enemy number one.”
There are lots of ideas about how to tackle addiction, many of them excellent ideas. But one concept is agreed upon amongst a considerable majority of Americans: We need to move away from the constant criminalization and incarceration of addicts and drug users.
Since the turn of the century, the United States has experienced what might be its worst-ever drug problem. Just in the last two decades, millions of people have fallen prey to drug habits, and hundreds of thousands of people have died from drug overdoses. But who is actually falling prey to addiction?
Unfortunately, military men and women often experience struggles that most people in the civilian population never have to face. When soldiers return home from a tour of duty in a foreign country, they often come back with more than just a duffel bag on their shoulders…
With the onset of the New Year and the new decade ahead , I decided to do some light reading of health-related reports for the last twenty years, as well as projections for the coming decade. I happened across a report from Brookings. Its opening statement was pretty grim.
In the last year, several pharmaceutical lawsuits have come to the forefront of our attention. We can thank the media for that. But in this case, it’s a good thing that these lawsuits have been reported on so extensively. We’re speaking of course of the state and federal lawsuits against pharma companies for the hand that such organizations played in the creation of the opiate epidemic.
