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.
In August of 2018, the National Institute on Drug Abuse published the CDC’s statistics for American drug overdose deaths for 2017. According to the research, more than seventy-two thousand people died from drug overdoses in 2017 alone, a new highest-ever in overdose deaths.
We have all likely heard of heroin, the drug whose very name inspires thoughts of sorrow and despair when we hear it spoken. Heroin’s wicked web of addiction and dependence of millions of people over the years has built a thoroughly bad reputation for this life-threatening drug.
Alcohol ads make drinking look like a lot of fun or a sure way to attract the opposite sex. But if you think about it for a minute, that might not be all of the story. If you watch any kind of cable or broadcast television, you’ve seen ads for alcohol.
If you’ve had an ear to the ground on the recent drug news and its media coverage, you may have heard whisperings and suggestions that psychedelics, hallucinogens, and a few other designer drugs are supposedly “helpful” or beneficial for addressing certain mental health issues.
One of the big news items to hit the airwaves recently was Congress’s new health agreement. This was a bipartisan event in which both Democrats and Republicans from the Senate and the House of Representatives alike agreed on something. Amazing.
For those of us who follow the medical news, we may have heard whisperings about the use of psychedelic drugs for addressing mental health issues. This is a relatively new movement, or at the very least, it’s a new spin on the 1970s-era effort to create legitimacy for psychedelics in the field of mental health.
A disparity exists in our health and medical sphere here in the United States. On the one hand, we have one of the absolute best health systems in the world. But on the other, we are struggling with a massive addiction epidemic to drugs and alcohol.
Everyone loves a good conspiracy. Or, we like to think that we do, but we all know that life would be a whole lot better if the conspiracies never happened in the first place. The drama and the subterfuge might be interesting at first, but it always comes at a cost.
Some say that it is the relationships that we foster with each other that are the very fabric that makes us human. Without a doubt, our relationships can be the difference between misery and happiness.
When people hear that alcohol is the most addictive drug in the world, their instantaneous response is usually one of disbelief. Most people do not believe this to be true, because after all, everyone drinks, right? Certainly, except for perhaps cigarettes, and maybe sugar or coffee, alcohol is the most commonly used substance that could be considered to be addictive.
Sometimes we hear this idea tossed around that, “Not all drugs are created equal,” or “Not all drugs are the same, some are worse than others.” We have to be careful with this concept because it precludes the general fundamental truth that all drugs are unhealthy and risky.
When recovering addicts explore the prospect of getting off of drugs and alcohol, they can usually only think as far into the future as getting into and through a drug and alcohol rehab center.
Americans make choices every day, choosing what to wear to work, what kind of lunch to get, and what kind of route to drive home when the day is done. Making choices is a natural, daily part of our lives, just as natural as the air that we breath is.
For the last twenty-plus years, the United States has been on the receiving end of what might be the worst drug addiction epidemic that this country has ever seen. Everywhere we turn, there is an addiction. Every year that passes, the problem gets worse.
The United States is struggling with a powerful addiction epidemic, a crippling health crisis revolving around drugs and alcohol. Is this a new problem? Not really.Addiction has been around for thousands of years. Maybe longer. But is this a new level of severity of the same old problem? Yes indeed.
We are approaching a point in our society where drug and alcohol addiction are our primary concerns in the overall health and vitality of the American people.
The United States of America is suffering from a drug addiction epidemic, a state of national crisis quite unlike anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes.
