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.
An article in the Washington Post from early April 2019 focuses on Kirsten Gillibrand, a Senator from New York and a possible contender for the presidential candidacy in 2020. The article discusses Gillibrand’s efforts to curb the opioid crisis and the criticism she has received in doing so.
“New research shows more than 600,000 American parents with kids under 18 are addicted to opioids.” That was the headline that caught my eye from a May article in U.S. News . A sucker for headlines and statistic-based research, I clicked on the material and read it.
Our country is in the midst of an opioid addiction epidemic. By now it would be difficult not to hear something about this. A story having to do with the opioid crisis can be found in the news just about every day. But it’s not just an opioid epidemic.
60 medical experts are currently under federal charges for doling out highly addictive and potentially lethal opioid pharmaceuticals for money or sexual favors from addicts, or for cash incentives from crooked pharmacies.
The field of medicine is an important profession where lives hang in the balance on a daily basis. It is assumed by nearly everyone without a medical degree that the physician always knows best. We are hesitant to press the doctor whom we believe to hold our lives in their hands with questions relating to the type of care they are providing…
Naloxone. This is the overdose reversal medicine, the injection or nasal spray which can bring an overdosing addict back from the brink of death. Naloxone truly is a miracle of modern medicine, but one might be surprised as to the controversy over the drug.
If you’ve heard of fentanyl, odds are you know something about just how dangerous and risky this drug is. By itself, the opioid drug fentanyl causes thousands upon thousands of overdose deaths every year. And it happens even when someone is using the substance exactly as prescribed.
Hearing about the effects of our country’s drug addiction epidemic is difficult. It's never a pleasant subject to talk about. But, when we hear about drug addiction or alcoholism occurring in young people, that particular crisis carries with it an extra pang of sadness.
When we work to address the current drug addiction epidemic that has swept our country, we must accept a universal truth. The truth is that the mass introduction of opioid pharmaceuticals (and other addictive pharmaceuticals, for that matter) onto the drug scene has changed how drugs are accessed and misused. In fact, the heavy proliferation of addictive medicines which began in the late 1990s served to alter the face of the addiction scene forever.
It doesn’t take a lot of effort to hear something mentioned that is negative or discouraging about the day-to-day lives of millennials. They’re up to their ears in student debt. They’re having a harder time finding jobs which can support a comfortable lifestyle…
Just about every day when I turn on the news, I see some update or media clip regarding the opioid addiction epidemic. Everywhere we look, opioid addiction disrupts our civilization and stains our communities with its toxic hold on millions of Americans. Our country is in the midst of a crisis.
Arkansas recently made national news when the state’s attorney general sued three major drug distributors for their alleged role in creating and adding to the opioid addiction epidemic. Attorney General Leslie Rutledge claimed that Cardinal Health, McKesson Corporation, and AmerisourceBergen failed to monitor and report highly suspicious shipments of opioids into Arkansas.
The subject of drug and alcohol addiction is riddled with stereotypes and stigma. Our negative view of addiction and addicts is actually a big part of the reason as to why we have such a terrible drug problem. We refuse to confront this problem as the health crisis that it is.
April 27th was “Prescription Drug Take Back Day,” a day which is celebrated in both April and October. The event was initially created and sponsored by the Drug Enforcement Administration. And why do we need two days per year where we all get together and dispose of unused prescription drugs?
As concerned as I am about the 19.7 million people in our country who struggle with addiction, I keep my ear close to the ground on all issues drug-related. So when I saw a report from last year in the Golden State Sentinel that presented one representative’s efforts to change opioid pharmaceutical prescribing, I was instantly interested.
Most of us who know anything about addiction or who have seen this crippling affliction first hand have also heard the term “intervention” tossed around. Intervention is a broad term, with multiple definitions and applications in several fields.
The marijuana issue is probably one of the most heavily contested segments of the addiction epidemic. Everywhere we look in anything addiction or marijuana-related, there will be an argument over whether or not marijuana is harmful, whether or not marijuana is addictive, whether or not it’s good for you, bad for you, and so on.
Being in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction is infinitely preferable to the alternative of living with an active drug addiction or a drinking problem. But that does not mean that living in recovery is easy or straightforward. No one ever said that it would be.
I’d like to invite our readers to consider an interesting and concerning truism in addiction science. We can all agree that any kind of drug use is dangerous. Any sort of alcohol misuse is dangerous. These are the facts. But there is this interesting, unique, and crucial datum that we don’t give enough recognition to.
I’ve often heard different drugs as being described as similar to one another. Many pharmaceutical drugs carry the same chemical compounds. Even some street drugs are close to each other. And we all know the iconic similarities of the horrible street drug heroin and our supposedly miraculous pharmaceutical opioid pain relievers. These two are very similar, down to their chemical structure.
