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.
If we focus too closely on the opioid epidemic, we could miss the growing problem with abuse of stimulants such as methamphetamine and cocaine, and prescription drugs such as Ritalin, Adderall and others. Just like opioids, these drugs can be deadly.
In my years as an addiction counselor, one thing I’ve learned is that while addiction does not see color, the ethnicity, age, gender, income level, background and geographic location of the addict can certainly affect their access to care and ultimately the outcome of treatment.
The United States has suffered for nigh on two decades with an opioid crisis. It is a sweeping addiction epidemic that has torn millions of families and individual lives apart. Widely publicized as the worst addiction-related epidemic in the history of our nation, opioid addiction first came about on a grand scale in the late 1990s with the mass introduction of opioid pharmaceuticals as being the primary method of dealing with patient pain.
To love and protect children is one of humanity's most important doctrines, one of the supreme, guiding principles of just being human. When we hear of a child’s suffering, it strikes a deep, painful chord in our very souls.
If you’ve had your eye on health news, you’ve probably heard “fentanyl” mentioned more than once in the last year. And why is that? Fentanyl is a powerful and potent opioid pain reliever first introduced into the medical pain-relief sector for treating cancer patients.
How Modern-Day Marketing Makes Good People into Addicts The United States is a unique country in a lot of ways. We are the land of the free, the home of the brave. But there is one area in which we are quite trapped.
A March 21st edition in the Washington Post caught my eye for its leading article by Allyson Chiu. The article was titled, “Americans Are The Unhappiest They’ve Ever Been, U.N. Report Finds.” An interesting topic certainly, but what really caught my eye was the subheading: “An ’Epidemic of Addictions’ Could be to Blame.” Now that had my attention.
A wise friend once introduced me to the concept that, “Correlation does not imply causation.” The principle is that, just because two incidents occurred side by side, or just because one event took place and was closely followed by another (correlation), that does not mean that the first event caused the second. Correlation does not imply causation.
When I checked the news the other day I was shocked to find a story of a federal judge who ordered that a county jail in Massachusetts be made to give an inmate his methadone doses, so he could continue his medication-assisted therapy.
In the U.S., we love our alcohol. That just goes without saying. Alcohol consumption has become a regular part of our lives and such a frequent and normal occurrence that we don’t even think twice about.
One of the most critical factors in determining the success of a recovering addict’s stay at a residential treatment center is the amount of time they get at that rehab.
Overcoming hardships is a part of the natural process of life. I don’t think anyone could say that life is “easy” for anyone. Challenges and obstacles are things we must all face from time to time. It’s just a part of life on planet Earth. Welcome to the show.
Imagine the worst possible drug den, the ultimate cesspool of addiction and drug-related misery. That was Portugal in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s. Then, in just a matter of a few years, the country completely turned their drug problem around and managed to create massive change for the better.
Most of the headlines I see on America’s addiction crisis are related to the opioid epidemic, and rightly so. Opiates account for a significant portion of our nation's drug crisis. But it’s not the only drug to be aware of.
When we hear the words, “HIV outbreak” odds are we think of Africa, or maybe the United States in the early to mid-1990s. Even if we consider an “HIV outbreak” as occurring on American soil, we instantly assume cloud-shrouded high rises, sprawling urban metropolis, and downtrodden poor neighborhoods tucked back into the industrial districts.
Throughout our history, the individual states of the United States of America have gone through their ups and downs. Sometimes these issues have mirrored what was going on in the country at large, and sometimes they were unique to the state.
We know that there are unintended consequences of alcohol consumption. We know that drinking alcohol can lead to poor choices, drunk driving, fights, public drunkenness, legal issues, unhealthy sexual decisions, bad hangovers, failed drug tests, career problems, family problems, and so on.
Opioid painkillers are a class of drugs which started off seeming like a good idea but which instead ended up creating the worst addiction epidemic that our nation has likely ever seen.
Crystal meth. Meth. Ice. Speed. Crank. Chalk. Glass. Wash. Pookie. These are all slang names for methamphetamine, a drug which grows in global public use every year. Across most parts of the United States as well, use of meth has increased.
