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.
Some newsworthy developments on the subject of opioid overdoses have been published recently. On the one hand, recent reports indicate that overdose deaths from most opioids have dropped slightly. But those same reports also suggest that fentanyl-related opioid overdose deaths are continuing to increase. Alarmingly so in some areas.
When we think of drug and alcohol addiction, we almost always think of grown adults or young adults. Sometimes we think of teenagers or adolescents. But we rarely think of senior citizens, the demographic over the age of 65. And that’s a big mistake.
A surprising headline in an August 13th, 2019 issue of “U.S. News“ reads, “All U.S. Adults Should Be Screened for Illicit Drug Use, National Panel Urges.” That came as a bit of a shock. Such an approach has never been suggested before.
For some time, addicts, addiction experts, family members of addicts, treatment center employees, scientists, and others have tried to probe the secrets of addiction. For decades, centuries even, mankind has sought to unravel this seemingly universal flaw of human nature—the flaw of addiction.
I would hazard to say that America has become the land of the quick fix; the nation where we jump for band-aid approaches and fast solutions to problems. Americans move fast and tend not to linger on things.
The United States is undoubtedly one of the most powerful, wealthiest, and most advanced countries in the world. And while we should always anticipate some shortcomings in even the greatest of nations, it comes as a surprise that the United States takes fifth place in the entire world for drug overdose deaths. The U.S. is ahead of almost all other developed nations for drug overdoses. The U.S. also loses more people per capita to drug overdoses than most third-world countries. How could this be?
As parents, we want to take every precaution we can to protect our kids from harm. That’s just in our nature. Yet, even in the United States, one of the safest countries in the world, it seems like there is a never-ending array of dangers and risks that our children are faced with.
While it is true that drug addiction can affect anyone, it is also true that drug use touches down in some communities more than it does in others. What makes certain areas of the U.S. different than others?
One of the most concerning things about increasing marijuana legalization is that individual states are quickly legalizing cannabis before truly understanding the potential risks in doing so .
As interest in marijuana use has moved forward (partially thanks to state legislation), some proponents of the cannabis movement have said that medical marijuana might be a solution to the opioid epidemic.
A common line you hear when trying to recruit someone to help you address any one of the many societal problems that face our nation is this classic phrase: “That problem doesn’t affect me directly; why should I be concerned about it?”
For some time now our country has been in a debate on marijuana. Should we legalize? Shouldn’t we? Is marijuana harmful? Or is it harmless? Is it habit-forming? Or is it a recreational substance with few negative side-effects? Finding common ground on the issue is not easy, and each side has a wealth of data and rhetoric to support their viewpoints.
There have been shifts in our country in the last two decades that can be traced back to the increasing legalization of marijuana for both medicinal and recreational use. One such change is that more young people are using the drug.
The seemingly endless progression of the opioid addiction epidemic in the United States has left many of us wondering, “What are we missing? Why have we not been able to reduce this problem?” Opioid addiction began to manifest itself as a growing problem in the early-2000s, and the crisis has done nothing but worsen since then.
The misuse of any drug is going to have negative consequences. The consequences might vary depending on the drug being used and other circumstances, but the results are likely going to be the same no matter what drug you are using.
For decades, drug addiction has been a problem in the United States. We continuously see the daily headlines of terror and trauma relating to addiction. We are inclined to think that this is a new problem. In actual fact, this is not a new problem at all. There is just more of the problem.
Many eyes are watching Oklahoma State’s lawsuit against pharmaceutical corporation Johnson & Johnson. The outcome of this trial could set a precedent for the nearly 2,000 other lawsuits filed against pharmaceutical businesses and their executives.
It has been said that a society is built on the quality of its education and that society is torn down when ignorance outweighs its knowledge. The United States ranks 17th in the world for student performance in reading, math, and science, according to The Guardian.
In a lawsuit filed by the State of Oklahoma, we are learning more about how Johnson & Johnson helped create the opioid epidemic that has robbed more than a half-million Americans of their lives.
