Module 1
Understanding Addiction Today
What addiction actually does in the brain, in current plain language: tolerance, withdrawal, loss of control, and where medications fit.
Clinical focus: Alcohol and Drug Education; Relapse Prevention
Free, open group curriculum for substance use treatment, recovery, and peer support. Written for today's clients, built to California Medi-Cal (DMC-ODS) documentation standards.
28 modules · participant packets + facilitator guides · all free to download
Most group treatment still runs on curricula written decades ago, and clients in long-term care have sat through the same chapters five or six times. Recovery in Focus is a full replacement series written in 2026: current science, current triggers (phones, betting apps, cash apps, the fentanyl supply), and exercises built for a room that talks to each other instead of listening to a packet get read aloud.
Every module is two documents. The participant packet is what members hold: four parts across two 2-hour group classes, with exercises, a named vignette, and a skill to practice during the week. The facilitator guide carries the class agendas, discussion questions, clinical guardrails, documentation scaffolds, and the evidence base behind each claim.
Each module names its clinical focus in recognized service categories (relapse prevention, trigger management, coping skills, and the rest) and maps to established evidence-based practices including CBT, Motivational Interviewing, and Relapse Prevention. Facilitator guides include group-size, documentation, and scope notes written to California DMC-ODS standards. Your county and program requirements still govern; review locally before use.
What addiction actually does in the brain, in current plain language: tolerance, withdrawal, loss of control, and where medications fit.
Clinical focus: Alcohol and Drug Education; Relapse Prevention
Current drug education for a fentanyl era: counterfeit pills, today's adulterated supply, and what each substance does in the body.
Clinical focus: Alcohol and Drug Education; Relapse Prevention; Overdose Safety
Trigger identification and management for a world where half the triggers live in your pocket.
Clinical focus: Relapse Prevention; Trigger Identification and Management; Craving Management
Supports, meetings, structure, warning signs, and the honest gaps in the plan you have now.
Clinical focus: Relapse Prevention; Recovery Support Systems
The legal ones: alcohol and nicotine as addictive drugs in their own right, and as triggers for everything else.
Clinical focus: Alcohol and Drug Education; Relapse Prevention; Trigger Management
The hole the substance was filling, and the connection and purpose work that fills it for good, spiritual and secular pathways both.
Clinical focus: Recovery Support Systems; Relapse Prevention
The topic treatment usually mumbles about: how use tangled with intimacy, why early-recovery romance is a named relapse risk, and building what holds.
Clinical focus: Relapse Prevention; Trigger Management; Relationship and Communication Skills
How stress works in the body, how trauma shapes the stress response, and why the stuck accelerator drives return to use.
Clinical focus: Stress Management; Coping Skills; Relapse Prevention
Grounding, relaxation, behavioral activation, and thought-checking: the skills that survive contact with a bad day.
Clinical focus: Coping Skills; Craving Management; Relapse Prevention
Depression, guilt, and fear without self-medication, and how to know when it's time to ask for more help.
Clinical focus: Emotional Regulation; Relapse Prevention; Co-occurring Awareness
Where anger lives in the body, what holding it costs, and the assertive communication skills that replace it.
Clinical focus: Emotional Regulation; Communication Skills; Relapse Prevention
How dopamine drives wanting, how phones and outrage feed the same reward system, and what to do about it.
Clinical focus: Relapse Prevention; Trigger Identification and Management; Craving Management; Coping Skills
The trauma and substance use link, with grounding and safety skills for managing trauma responses sober.
Clinical focus: Coping Skills; Emotional Regulation; Relapse Prevention
Fentanyl risk, naloxone, never using alone: staying alive long enough for recovery to work.
Clinical focus: Alcohol and Drug Education; Overdose Safety; Relapse Prevention
Buprenorphine, methadone, and naltrexone: the evidence, the myths, and the stigma that keeps people from treatment that works.
Clinical focus: Alcohol and Drug Education; Treatment Engagement; Relapse Prevention
Running recovery with the system watching: legal stress as a relapse driver, supervision strategy, and the long game.
Clinical focus: Relapse Prevention; Coping Skills; Recovery-Centered Life Skills
Betting apps, gaming, and scratchers run on the same reward system as substances, and cross-addiction is real.
Clinical focus: Relapse Prevention; Trigger Management; Cross-Addiction Awareness
Why early recovery feels gray, why boredom relapses more people than crisis does, and how the volume comes back.
Clinical focus: Relapse Prevention; Craving Management; Emotional Regulation
Poor sleep raises craving and relapse risk; this is the practical rebuild.
Clinical focus: Coping Skills; Relapse Prevention
Cravings rise, peak, and pass. Urge-surfing and the craving-management skills to ride them out.
Clinical focus: Craving Management; Relapse Prevention; Coping Skills
The most predictable trigger on the calendar: check day, money cues, the fast-money layer, and the payday plan.
Clinical focus: Trigger Identification and Management; Relapse Prevention; Recovery-Centered Life Skills
Social media comparison feeds shame, and shame drives return to use. The exit runs through self-respect skills.
Clinical focus: Emotional Regulation; Relapse Prevention
The cover story was a second full-time job. What carrying secrets costs, and how honesty gets rebuilt in the right order.
Clinical focus: Communication Skills; Relapse Prevention; Recovery Support
Holidays, weddings, funerals, game days: event plans and refusal scripts for the places where offers concentrate.
Clinical focus: Relapse Prevention; Trigger Management; Refusal Skills
Returning to work in recovery: workplace drinking culture, disclosure decisions, and work stress as a trigger.
Clinical focus: Relapse Prevention; Trigger Management; Vocational Life Skills
Chronic pain in recovery: opioid-sparing strategies, pain-driven relapse risk, and working openly with your prescribers.
Clinical focus: Relapse Prevention; Coping Skills; Care Coordination
Guilt about the past, rebuilding trust with your kids, and parenting stress as a trigger with a plan attached.
Clinical focus: Family and Relationship Skills; Trigger Management; Relapse Prevention
The words you use on yourself shape outcomes. This module hands you the pen.
Clinical focus: Recovery Support; Self-Efficacy; Relapse Prevention
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