Donna Hunter
LCSW, CAP
Clinical Social Worker/Therapist
Booneville, USA
Answers questions in Addictions · Alcoholism · Anxiety
About Donna Hunter
I have been a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in New york State, Maine, Florida and now Arkansas. During my career, I have worked in community mental health as a therapist and program director. For the past 15 years I have been in private practice helping people finding solutions to life's challenges.
What I do
I currently see individuals and families face to face in the Ft. Smith AR area. I also provide tele-health services to the state of Arkansas and Florida. Over the past 15 years I have provided professional and community education on a vareity of mental health and substance abuse topics.
My story
I have been a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in New york State, Maine, Florida and now Arkansas. During my career, I have worked in community mental health as a therapist and program director. For the past 15 years I have been in private practice helping people finding solutions to life's challenges.
Why life is worth living
Everyday is a new opportunity to learn and grow
Treatment Offered
Specialties
Therapy approaches
Patient population
Modalities
Answered Questions(30)
Hitting Bottom
My brother in law brags about his sports betting but the strange things is that he and my sister have to live in a tiny apartment because they never have any money. What is up with that then? He claims to have a football betting system that can’t lose. He bets on every game every week and for each game he places multiple small bets like first half score and other things and then he doubles up on any bets he loses until he wins it and then he stops. It is a pretty smart system if you are willing to do the work but where he goes wrong is he never stops betting when he wins so the money never comes in. He won’t admit that he has a problem and he argues that it is like a scientific program. He has an answer for everything. My sister is getting really fed up with him. How can I make him admit or at least see that he has a gambling problem?
Read answer →dip
Is using dip a good way to quit smoking? I know that cancer organizations can’t exactly recommend this method but is it at all a practical way to go? The gum doesn’t really work for me because I always still want a smoke after but dipping gives me even more of a buzz than smoking a cigarette does. I don’t really enjoy a dip though because I find it kind of gross and I am not very good at spitting and aiming. The idea is to break the smoking habit by switching to dip for a few weeks and then gradually weaning myself off the dip. It’s the habit that I have the most trouble with,,,smoking on coffee breaks and with morning coffee etc ect.
Read answer →Meth use
If a friend says she only uses meth on weekends but she has lost a lot of weight is it likely that she is actually lying to me and she is actually using it everyday and is addicted to it. She is 5 foot 6 and she used to weigh about 140 pounds. I do not know what she weighs now but I think she has probably lost 20 pounds or more over the last 3 or 4 months.
Read answer →Am I an alcoholic
Do I have a drinking problem if I drink heavily for two months and then go on the wagon for 2 months and dry out. I have been doing this for about 3 years. My situation is I work 2 months away from home and then I am home for 2 months without work on a cycle. By the end of my 2 months at home I am always drinking a lot and I know if I didn’t have to go to work my situation might get out of control. Or maybe I let it get a little crazy because I know I am going to have to stop. I am not sure. I am 26 and I did not really start drinking until I was 20. What I want to know is can I be an alcoholic if I can not drink for 2 months without too much trouble (it is not even available)?
Read answer →"Dry Drunk"?
Is dry drunk a real thing? Like would a doctor or a psychiatrist say this was a real phenomenon or is this just another manufacturance from those kooky 12 steppers? As far as I can tell most everyone I have ever met in AA is dry drunking it all over time the way they react to me!
Read answer →HALT
I am a recovering alcoholic with 11 months no-relapsing sober time. I am an executive salesperson for a major cosmetics brand and my (new) job involves a great deal of travel to Asia. I find the jet lag very tough to deal with and when I am tired and stressed after a long day and in some anonymous hotel room (I always ask that the minibar be emptied before I take residence) I have almost slipped a couple of times, going so far as to order a drink at the bar on one occasion before coming to my senses. There is always something about being away from home and in a hotel room that makes having a drink seem that much easier. I do not want to lose this great job that I have but it is most important that I do not fall back into a bottle. What advice do you normally give people trying to stay sober who have to travel a lot and get tired and hungry and angry and lonely almost by default on a weekly basis!
Read answer →Colleague drinking
I am a high school teacher. I witnessed one of my colleagues drinking at lunch hour. He did not see me witness him and he was trying to be very secretive about it. He is a sweet older man but it does not surprise me to learn that he has an alcohol problem. I and others have had suspicions for a while. If I reported him he would obviously get fired and I do not wish that for him but I think I have to do something now that I have seen what I have seen. I am thinking about gathering a few other colleagues who know him well to sit down with him, without notifying administration, to ask him to get some help so we don’t have to report what we now know. The thing I am uncertain about is what we should ask him to do? Is rehab what is necessary in this situation? He is unmarried and I do not know his extended family situation.
Read answer →My brother is a gambling addict. What's best kind of treatment for him?
My brother came to me for a loan. He is a gambling addict. I swore I would never give him money again but he came to me with 2 broken fingers and he said that he was going to get killed unless he paid some gangsters back what he owed. I gave him $5000 but made him promise he’d get help. It was the first time he actually admitted what everyone has known for a long time – That he is an addict. So now what’s the best kind of treatment for him to get. My parents will not give him any more money but they will help pay for treatment. So if money is not really a problem, what’s the best thing for him to do if he is really serious about stopping for good?
Read answer →When is it alcoholism?
If my mom drinks a bottle of wine every night is she an alcoholic? I am worried about her but she says I am being crazy. I am not sure because she has a good job and she takes care of me and my brother really well but I can see that she is really tired and hung over every morning.
Read answer →Addiction and having children
I am 28 and I am 7 months clean. I go to AA and NA at least once a day and I am starting to take on jobs at meetings. I am not sure if I am ready to have kids or not but I am starting to consider it and I am so blessed to even be in this spot right now considering the trainwreck my life was not so long ago. There is no family history of addiction in my family other than my own. I did all drugs but I was mostly into crack and crystal. What I want to know is now that I am not using any more are any kids that I might have at an increased risk to have birth defects or behavioral problems or anything like that? I have heard people say that meth can cause DNA damage and mess up your chromosomes and stuff but I am not sure if this is true or not? The guy who told me this was a pretty smart guy who had a masters degree. But he was also a junkie.
Read answer →Gambling- The black pit of debt
This is really messed up. I started with online poker about 6 months ago and for a while I was doing really well. At one point I was up more than ten thousand $. Now I am down almost the same amount and the big problem is I have borrowed money from my employer to pay off some of my debts thinking I only needed a short term loan and now I don’t have the money I need to pay off my new loans, and I am getting a lot of pressure pay up. I have about 1500 and I need at least 5000 by next week. A big part of me seriously wants to gamble for the money but a small part of me knows that this is just digging the whole deeper – another part of me just doesn’t really care and just wants to get online and play. I am so stressed out and that just makes the urge to play stronger. I need to get control of myself now or I am going to lose it all. How can I stop gambling right away? What do I have to do to get back in control?
Read answer →Honesty in detox
I want to try to detox off norcos at home. My doctor prescribed to me but I have been supplementing without his knowledge. From everyone I have talked to getting some valium really helps for the withdrawal symptoms. I wasn’t to ask him for some valium but I am scared to admit that I have been abusing the opiates he has been prescribing. If I tell him this will I get put on some sort of list for people who doctor shop or are addicted to opiates or anything? I am very worried about how this might affect my health insurance because I have secondary conditions that require a lot of expensive treatment and I cannot afford to risk my insurance.
Read answer →I have a real gambling problem... Will registering for a self-exclusion ban help?
I have a real gambling problem. I am thinking about registering for a self exclusion ban that would make it illegal for me to gambling in any casino in the state. I am kind of scared to do it even though I know it is the right thing to do. You can choose to ban yourself for a year or for 5 years or forever. Should I choose a year to start with to try it out? These bans are not reversible and a year would be a big step for me and maybe I could get myself sorted out a bit by then. I have just finished losing my child support payment money for this month, which is the same thing that happened last month. I would have already gambled the rent money away but for I live with my mom again so I don’t have to pay it.
Read answer →Sober Coach
My brother is an alcoholic. He has tried to quit drinking many times in the past but he never lasted more than a week or so before he sneaks back into some bar and then that’s the end of it. I have heard that celebrities sometimes use sober coaches who follow them around 24 hours a day for the first while to help them stay sober. We are in no position to afford something like that but I am currently unemployed and I was thinking I could be my brother’s sober coach for a few weeks to help him get over the hump. I was wondering if you thought this was a good idea or not. I would also like to know if you have any suggestions for me to help me make this work. Thank you very much for taking the time to read my question, Jim
Read answer →Gambling addiction "in moderation"
I am in Uni and I have a gambling problem. I have tried doing the whole gamblers anon thing but the sanctimoniousness of those people really grates on me and I’m not much for group things either. I have been trying it though and in the end it is just not working for me. My financial situation is really f***ed and my parents have no idea how bad it is or that I’ve already passed through a fund that I inherited a couple of years ago, but for me I don’t think that not ever never gambling again is ever going to be an attainable option. When it gets going I just feel this pressure and it feels l I just have to go and do it just so I don’t have to keep thinking about it every second of the day. I have really tried to fight this and it’s really not doable. Can I learn how to gamble more sensibly? I don’t think abstinence is for me but I can’t keep on going like I am now. Is there some sort of gamblers for moderation group out there that would make more sense for people like me who want to get things under control but can’t really stop altogether?
Read answer →Money as a trigger
I have a problem with crack. I have been trying to quit using but every time my payday comes along I just can’t resist the temptation of that cash in my pocket and I don’t stop until the whole thing is gone. I have tried having my work do a direct deposit into my girlfriends account but I would always end on the phone screaming at my girlfriend to give up my money. Eventually she’d fold and give it up. Who wants an angry crack head calling you at work screaming for money? Anyway, having someone else hold onto the money doesn’t seem to really help me. She isn’t my girlfriend any more but I have learned that if I have money having someone else hold onto it for me doesn’t really work because when I know I’ve got it I just crave so hard and I won’t stop until I get it. So what do I do? I’m a pretty good bodywork guy so I’ve been keeping this job for the last 6 months and I am really trying to get my shit together but every two weeks like clock work I just go on this bender and even though I swear it won’t happen again it just does, every time. I try the NA thing but it’s no good against the feelings I get on those Friday afternoons when I know I’ve got money to burn.
Read answer →Taoist in recovery
Is there any such thing as Taoist based addiction treatment?
Read answer →Ivory Wave - How dangerous are bath salts?
How dangerous are bath salts? I read in the paper that a woman lost her arm and half her chest from a flesh eating bacteria she got from shooting bath salts. My friend is using bath salts regularly to get high and I am worried about her. I showed her the article about the flesh eating bacteria but she says that it’s only a problem if you inject. She only snorts. Is she in danger?
Read answer →Switching Addictions
I am a recovering marijuana addict. I am 4 months clean and I am not doing much right now except going to meetings 3 or 4 times a week and the rest of the time I am holed up in my parent’s basement playing game, like Star Wars the Old Republic and WoW. I can get really into the games and I can find a lot of time can pass before I want to take a break. I can basically spend the whole day in game without any problem. The way I look at it is that maybe playing games all day isn’t the best way a person could spend their time but I am taking things very much one day at a time right now and every day I make it through without taking a drink or lighting up is a day of victory. My sponsor agrees with me and he says I just gottta keep doing what I have to do to keep adding up those days, especially in the early months. I don’t really have any friends I can hang with anyway. Everyone I know smokes joints all day and there’s no way I can hang with them and make it through clean. My parents though are starting to give me a very hard time. They think I am getting pretty addicted to playing games and that it isn’t actually doing my recovery any good to spend all day ‘escaping’ from reality instead of moving on with my life. I am not sure what to think. I can see that having my mom bring me dinner at night while I am still in the pjs I started playing in that day is not exactly an impressive lifestyle, but at the same time, it is working for me at the moment. Should I be worried about getting too hooked on these games or should I just use these games like I am now to keep from going back to more destructive habits, like hittin that bong like I really want to?
Read answer →Blackouts
I am 18. My friends and I like to drink and we will all get pretty wasted at one of our houses like 2 or 3 times a week. It’s a pretty normal thing for us to do around here. Lately I have been having blackouts. I don’t drink any more than I used to (like a 12 pack) but now I can’t remember shit about what I did the night before after about the 8 beer stage. None of my other friends seem to black out like I do. Does this mean I am becoming an alcoholic?
Read answer →Binge Drinking and Alcoholism
Can I be addicted to alcohol if I only drink on weekends? I thought alcoholics needed to drink every day or they’d get the shakes or something. I never drink during the week but I always drink on the weekends. I drink a lot on the weekends and I can’t seem to stop myself even though I know I need to slow down? So can a person by a weekend only alcoholic or is that impossible?
Read answer →Death Obsession
I think about dying a lot and it really upsets me. I worry about what my kids will do once I am gone and I get very sad about what I will be missing if I die early. If I look at things rationally, I am only in my mid 30s and I don’t have anything really wrong with me, but whenever I get any kind of unexplained ache or pain I always overreact and fear the worst. Why do I do this to myself? It’s like this daydream fantasy that I can’t turn off and that I don’t enjoy and once I start worrying about death and dying I can get into a sadness funk that lasts all day. I am not depressed, by the way, because there are lots of days where I don’t worry about dying and everything is fine then. But there are too many days when I do. Do you have any advice for me? First of all, is it within a normal range to be thinking about death on several days of the week? I can see that these thoughts do not do me any good. How can I stop myself from thinking this way? Thank you G.
Read answer →Sobriety and Trauma
I discovered my nephew’s body this week. He was 25 and had been struggling with bipolar disorder for years. He had taken his own life by carbon monoxide poisoning by running his car in the garage with a hose into the cabin. I was stopping by my sister’s place in the middle of the day to drop off some bricks and so at least it was me and not my sister who found him. I tried to resuscitate him but it was no use. I don’t know how she would have been able to handle that since to be honest I am having some difficulty dealing with it myself. I know what I am going through is insignificant compared to the loss in my sister’s family, but I am having a lot of trouble getting the memory of that afternoon out of my head and it has been giving me nightmares. If I weren’t an alcoholic I’d have like 10 drinks before bed so I wouldn’t have to dream about that horrible day again, but that’s not really a good idea for me right now. What can I do to get the memory of that day from invading my thoughts at all hours and especially from my dreams at night. I can’t take it anymore and I am worried it will affect my ability to stay sober.
Read answer →Switching addictions
My sister is a compulsive eater. Lately she has been trying to control her eating urges with alcohol as a way to lose weight. I know this sounds dumb, since who loses weight with beer, but when you realize how much she would eat if she didn’t have that 6 pack then maybe it is not so crazy after all. I know a lot of people can have a few beers a day and not have too much problem with it but I am worried that my sister might be going towards alcoholism. It seems to me that she just doesn’t have much control over what she puts in her body. Does her compulsive eating make her more likely to have a drinking problem too?
Read answer →Children online, and predatory advertising
My 7 year old son is always wanting play on these free games websites for kids. They really are websites that are designed with kids in mind and with basically only age appropriate games – nothing too violent or too sexy or anything like that. I don’t let him play very much because I don’t think that these games do him as much good as playing outside or with his imagination, but he loves them so I do relent and let him play a couple few times a week. But last time I did he showed me this ‘really cool’ site where he could win real money and prizes – and what it was, was basically that you played games and you could win tickets for playing well in games. And then when you had enough tickets you could enter into competitions like bingo games or draws to win cash and prizes. Here is the website I am talking about. http://www.candystand.com/play/bingo http://www.candystand.com/prizes Is working to earn tickets so you can spend them to try to win contests of chance to win money so very different from in real life working to earn money so you can spend it on contests of chance to try to earn more money? Isn’t that called gambling? Isn’t it bad to be teaching young children how much fun it is to gamble? I mean the website basically makes itself look like a slot machine. Am I crazy or should sites like this be allowed to prey on children in this way?!! Am I crazy here…?
Read answer →Starting a family: How long do I wait?
I am 6 months sober. When I was drinking I would sometimes (crazily I can now see) try to convince my husband that we should start a family together. He would never agree to the idea because I think he could see that I wasn’t really fit mom material back then and I am not sure he really believed I’d be able to change. I think I was clinging to this fairytale that getting pregnant would be the thing that would have forced me to stop. More likely things just would have gone terribly wrong. Now our roles are reversed. He says he’s so proud of me and he’ll do everything he can to support me, and he really has been great so far. He says that now is the time to start the family we’ve been delaying for so many years, before we get any older or too old (I am nearing 40). I do really want to have a family with him and I don’t want to go back to drinking and maybe getting pregnant would just give me some more really string motivation to keep it together. But there is a little part of me that says it is too soon. I go to a weekly continuing care therapy group and when I brought the subject up there the reaction was pretty mixed, with about half saying I should go for it and half saying it was a train wreck waiting. How long is the right time to wait after getting sober before taking such a big life turn? I don’t want to wait too long and my husband has already waited so long, but I don’t want to screw this thing up because I couldn’t wait long enough.
Read answer →Pot is still pot
I am a 15 year old competitive downhill skier and I am aiming to be on the junior nation team by next year. I train really hard and I also have school responsibilities and sometimes I find that it gets to be a bit heavy and hard to manage. I find that smoking a little joint most nights helps me to feel a lot more relaxed about things and it gives me a little break to look forward to at the end of the long day. One of the junior coaches caught me toking last weekend at a training camp and he asked me how often I smoked and he freaked on me when I told him I smoked most nights and he threatened to tell the head coaches unless I agreed to stop. I said I would, but I am not sure I really want to give up the only thing that keeps me from losing my mind. I guess I understand how smoking even a small amount every night could hurt my lung capacity and my performance , but what if I switched to eating pot brownies? Would that have any impact on my performance? If I ate a pot brownie most nights but made sure to stop for a couple days before races, how could that hurt me at all?
Read answer →Beyond Help?
My brother in an alcoholic and he has liver disease (not cirrhosis) reoccurring gastritis and he just had seizures which have put him in the ICU for almost a week. He says that I need to give up on him because he’s never going to be able to quit drinking and that no matter what he tries he is never able to stop for more than a day or two before the shakes and cravings get too bad to resist. Is it true that some people are beyond help or is it that he just hasn’t gotten the right kind of help yet. I pray that he’ll find something that will work because the drinking has already cost him a beautiful family and a good job and he looks about 20 years older than me even though he is my baby brother.
Read answer →Cocaine Use At Work
I caught my business partner using cocaine at work. He laughed it off as something he never does but it shocked me totally to see it and now that I think back it would explain some of the erratic behavior and poor work performance I’ve observed over the last couple of months. I thought he was just having a hard time with the separation he’s going through with his wife. I respect him as a person and I care for him, but we have always had a very professional only working relationship, whereby our personal lives were our own business and not very relevant to the workings of the company. However, our financial fates are very intertwined and though he is a very skilled architect if he fails to live up to his potential or his promises then I could be in very deep trouble. I don’t want to make more of this than I should. I have never done drugs, but I get it that not everyone who does cocaine is a drug addict. But how can I tell if he has a drug problem? I need to know if it’s a recreational thing for him or if it’s more, and knowing him I am not going to be able to ask and get a straight answer. So what are the signs I should be looking for?
Read answer →Is the gambler ready to handle money?
My son has a gambling problem. And in the past couple of years he has taken a couple of substantial loans from us and not payed them back and he has even stolen from our family business to cover his gambling debts. I am not angry anymore because I recognize that he has a disease and he did a lot of things he never would have normally done because he was not really in control of himself. Now he has completed a gambling treatment program and he is going to GA and he says he is doing good and he has not gambled at all for 6 months. He does not have much an education and he is finding it very hard to get a job right now. He has some debts he needs to pay off to which makes things harder for him. We have a family business which involves selling imported handicrafts at festivals and fairs around the state. He has always worked with us and he can make a good living doing it and now he is asking for his job back. He says he is ready and we can trust him now. But the problem is it is very easy for someone working a festival on his own to skim the sales without our knowledge. This is why we only have family working with us. I am worried that it will be too much temptation for him to be able to have access to a lot of money. Maybe the only reason he can control himself now is because he has no money to lose? How can I tell if he is ready to come back to work and control the money again?
Read answer →