Sober Day #150: Alcohol and smartphone apps- A-CHESS

This is really awesome-  A smart-phone app to help with continued sobriety after acute treatment.  This is not for most of us, as few of us have been through a formal treatment program.  Nevertheless, I think it is well worth knowing about.

I first heard about it on a CBS news feed, and then tracked down the actual article reporting this in the medical journal JAMA psychiatry.  And I found this online video vignette most helpful in seeing how the app could actually work in real time.  In a way, it's a formalized version of what Belle offers, a real-time response to help with those moments of searing temptation.  Belle's is a gentler, more personal version that works better for me, I think, than this app would.  But think of all the hundreds of people who could be helped by something like this!!

I find this in line with what I posted about yesterday, the effectiveness of a kinder, more personalized approach to helping people with alcohol and drug cessation.

I think that knowing what it feels like to be a semi-willing prisoner of a non-helpful chemical, whether alcohol or other mind-altering substances, makes me very driven to extend a hand to others, in the way such kind hands and friendships have been extended to me.  That's one of the reasons I love Lucy's posts.  She is such a great translator of the big picture, the cultural and policy mindsets that lead so many astray by insinuating that excessive drinking is normal and harmless.

May those of us who know what it is like not to have an alcohol OFF switch be always kind and encouraging to those who are still trapped in that daily drama!