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.
When we think about drug and alcohol addiction and the drug crisis in general, odds are our thoughts and minds go instantly to the death toll of drug use and the families harmed by such losses. And that makes sense. Drug use cannot do more significant harm than claim the lives of those who struggle with such habits.
No one wants to undergo surgery, but it is sometimes necessary or desirable. Anything from a simple wisdom teeth removal to an appendectomy for a ruptured appendix or a C-Section for a pregnancy complication, all of these count as surgeries.
By now it is no new story that the United States is struggling with a pretty severe drug overdose problem. At this time, tens of thousands of people are dying from drug overdoses every year. Though statistics have not yet been tabulated for 2018, more than 70,200 people died from overdoses in 2017.
It’s never easy having a family member or loved one who struggles with a drug habit. We want to help them get clean, but we often don’t know how. A conversation with your loved one is a great place to start, so we’ve included a dozen “do’s and don’ts” to keep in mind when having such a discussion.
Let’s talk about one of the most controversial subjects in pharmaceutical prescribing. This is the current proposal for reducing opioid prescribing to curb the opioid epidemic.
In my morning reading, I happened across an article in U.S. News which discussed the disparity of the opioid crisis in America. The report, written by Robert Preidt, a HealthDay reporter, focused on the opioid turmoil as it has touched down in Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, and Ohio.
Good news out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The city implemented a “sobering center” about six months ago. A facility where individuals detained for public intoxication can go instead of jail. Sobering centers are good alternatives to jail time, as such centers specialize in referring addicts to addiction treatment and recovery instead of just putting them through time served.
Since the opioid crisis fully developed within the U.S. over the last two decades, pharmaceutical companies came under heavy inspection and even ruthless accusation from the American people. And not without good reason.
The U.S. struggles with an addiction problem, but this is not a problem that affects all of us equally. While there are over 20 million people in the U.S. who misuse drugs and alcohol regularly, some demographics and specific sectors of the population tend to suffer more than others do.
Parents want the best for their kids. That’s nothing new. Parents are always looking for ways to be better parents, constantly seeking tools and strategies for adjusting their parenting in the best way possible.
“For the first time in the nation’s history, Americans are more likely to die from an opioid overdose than a car accident.” That was the headlines from a January 14th, 2019 article in U.S. News. I knew the drug problem was terrible, but I was surprised that it had gotten that bad.
In a nation stuck in its worst addiction epidemic yet, one would think that our medical professionals would be fully prepared to help addicted patients. But quite the opposite is true. In fact, according to Jan Hoffman’s paper for CNBC, only about 15 out of 180 medical programs in the U.S. teach their medical students about addiction to alcohol, drugs, or tobacco.
Drug abuse is so prevalent in our society today that just about every industry and walk of life is affected by it. Drug addiction sneaks into our lives in the most terrible of ways. It seems like no industry or area or part of life is safe anymore. So it should come as no surprise to find out that drug abuse is now one of the leading causes of disciplinary action in the medical field.
The drug addiction problem in our country continues to grow, and as it does, our efforts to understand it increase in tandem. There is new data, new research, and new conclusions that link opioid addiction to loneliness.
Addiction is not a new struggle. We’ve dealt with this problem as far back as the history books go, and probably further than that. Addiction is a difficult factor of human nature. It’s something that’s gnawed at us, silently, from the darkest corners of the deepest shadows for thousands of years.
They say there’s an app for everything now, and if that’s not yet true, we’re probably getting there. Technology has expanded so immensely in the last 2-3 decades that even the sky is no longer the limit in how far we can go.
When it comes to addiction in 21st-century America, almost all of our attention is focused intently on opioids. But what about the country’s other drug problems? In fact, what about our addiction to pharmaceutical benzodiazepines, a prescription drug class which is just addictive and potentially lethal as opioids?
We’ve known for a while that when pharmaceutical manufacturers provide incentives to doctors to prescribe opioids, they prescribe opioids. This isn’t anything new. But according to research just published at JAMA Network Open, there is a direct connection between the payments that drug companies give to opioid prescribers and an increase in overdoses in those prescribers’ communities.
I went a few years without listening to the radio. Premium memberships to online streaming stations, why bother? But a few days ago I was driving across the state, coincidentally through an internet dead zone.
