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.
With the coronavirus pandemic, many of us are looking at how we can reduce our risk of illness. For a person addicted to drugs or alcohol, it could be critically important to take such steps right now.
Some rehabs claim to teach life skills. But which ones do they teach? And how do they teach them? A rehab with an effective approach to developing life skills is essential if a person in recovery is to weather the ups and downs in life without relapsing. Learn more about the most important skills to develop in rehab.
Once a person walks through the doors of a rehab, the family may breathe a sigh of relief but in fact, the job's not done yet. It's likely for there to be demands or pleas which may sound terribly earnest, to allow the addicted person to come home. The family will have the easiest time if they expect these phone calls and plan ahead how they will deal with them.
In times of stress, natural disaster or isolation from contagion, it can be much more difficult to maintain sobriety. We offer practical, useful and creative ideas to make it easier to maintain your sobriety no matter what's happening around you.
New research indicates that a significant percentage of alcohol-related driving fatalities occur when the driver was NOT over the legal drinking limit of 0.08%. Is it time to lower the drinking limit? Will doing so save lives on the road?
Every day, in hundreds of cities across America, first responders save someone who’s overdosed on opioids. Incredibly, there’s many people who disagree with saving these lives, believing that the people became addicted should just be left alone to die from their overdoses. We’ll take a closer look at this controversy.
For some time, the U.S. drug problem has seemed entirely unique. But now, similar problems are beginning to develop in Europe. How will European countries tackle their drug problems?
For some time, rural America was thought to be safe from the 21st-century addiction epidemic. That is no longer the case. Many mostly rural states are now in an addiction upheaval. Oklahoma, for example, has one of the fastest-growing meth problems in the nation. How can this state free itself of such a vicious drug crisis?
Methamphetamine is a very strong and addictive stimulant drug. While there is a prescription form of methamphetamine (methamphetamine hydrochloride, known by the brand name Desoxyn), the form of the drug that normally makes problems for drug abusers is the illicit form of the drug.
When struggling addicts go to rehab and end up relapsing afterward, it might make them a little jaded at the thought of going to rehab again. What can the parents and family members of addicts do to ensure that their loved ones don't give up?
We’re a long ways away from being “out of the woods“ when it comes to the opiate epidemic. In states like Ohio, the state with the highest number of opiate deaths in the nation, much work is left to do to combat the harmful effects of opioid addiction.
Every year yet another dangerous virus crops up and threatens American lives. Sadly, drug users are at even greater risk, as drug use lowers the body's immune system. This is yet another reason why addicts must get help as soon as possible.
The children are the future of society, the guarantee that the human race will go on into the future. Protecting their health is of the utmost importance. How has the opiate epidemic affected children? And what can be done to reverse those effects?
It’s important to make sure that teens and young adults have the best shot at a healthy, happy life. A big part of that means making sure they don’t experiment with drugs and alcohol. But when overdoses are on the rise, parents should implement new strategies to keep their sons and daughters safe.
Substance abuse among veterans is a growing problem. As military men and women return from deployment suffering from battlefield trauma, substance abuse becomes more prevalent. For those who struggle with physical injuries and horrific memories of war, drugs and alcohol can seem like a way out.
Every year, the Drug Enforcement Administration reports on the biggest drug threats in our country because those threats never stay the same two years in a row. These annual reports can arm parents with enough information to warn their children of the intense, life-threatening risks of drug use.
One would hardly think that in a land so remote, so beautiful, and, in many ways, so unforgiving, that alcohol addiction would rear its ugly head. But among a certain demographic of Alaska residents, alcohol addiction is a serious problem.
Recovery is recovery is recovery – Isn’t it? Isn’t recovery the same thing for everyone finishing rehab? Aren’t we all talking about the same thing? Actually, we’re not. There are many definitions of recovery, depending on whom you talk to.
