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.
What does it mean for an addictive product to be commercialized – in other words, manufactured and sold solely for the purpose of making profits? Is this a good idea or one that is destructive? We’ll provide the facts and you can decide.
For the last decade, we’ve been focused on fighting an epidemic of opioid use and overdose deaths. While we were occupied dealing with that problem, methamphetamine has made a comeback. This should be a lesson to never get too fixed on one specific drug problem.
When you’re dealing with an addicted loved one, there comes a time you have to draw a line to stop enabling and to help them stop their addicted behavior. When is the right time? How do you do it?
Yes, it is possible to maintain your recovery, even if things around you are uncertain and upsetting. It mostly takes making the decision to start things moving in a more positive direction. If there’s any influence that’s likely to cause a person in recovery to relapse, it’s stress.
Controversy has surrounded facilities established to give injecting drug users a safe space with medical supervision in which they can consume their drugs. Up to now, it's been hard to tell if they were truly beneficial or actually harmful. A new report from the Government of Alberta provides a possible answer.
For some people, returning to their usual environments after completing rehab can be a serious mistake. A change of environment can be just the therapy some people need to succeed in their new sober lives.
In the decades that America has allowed direct-to-consumer drug ads plus posters and billboards for alcohol and marijuana sales, we have come no closer to resolving our nation’s problems with these substances.
So your friend or loved one has completed rehab. Now what? You might be surprised at the many ways you can help. In fact, MORE than just help. You might be the deciding factor in whether they succeed in sobriety or not!
Any time we try to solve the drug problem, we have to look at the whole of the problem, not just one drug. Have you ever been to a carnival and played the game called “whack-a-mole”? This game consists of a large board with holes through which mechanical moles stick their heads, one after another.
Especially for those who have spent time addicted to drugs or alcohol, this is the best possible time to boost your immune system. We'll provide you with simple suggestions to help you increase your resistance to disease.
Before a son or daughter gets into rehab, parents worry about an overdose. After a son or daughter completes rehab, parents worry about a relapse. What can YOU do, as a parent, to ensure your son or daughter has a healthy and relapse-free life?
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?
