Addiction

Naloxone can reverse an otherwise fatal heroin overdose within minutes. Carrie Arnold meets the doctors who put this remarkable drug in the hands of the police, families and addicts—and saved thousands of lives. Alexander Walley was a twentysomething medical student when...

The treatment of people who cannot keep their gambling habits in check is often complicated because they also tend to suffer from personality disorders. So says Meredith Brown of Monash University in Australia, in a review in Springer’s Journal of...

Teens prescribed anti-anxiety or sleep medications may be up to 12 times more likely to abuse those drugs illegally than teens who have never received a prescription, often by obtaining additional pills from friends or family members, according to new...

Americans consume a staggering amount of the opioid painkiller hydrocodone - about 99% of the world’s supply. In October, after 10 years of debate the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) reclassified medications like Vicodin, and products that combine hydrocodone with other...

Drug tests on 517 mothers in English inner city hospitals found that nearly 15% had taken recreational drugs during pregnancy and that mothers of babies with birth defects of the brain were significantly more likely to have taken drugs than...

Ghrelin is a hormone released by the stomach and it stimulates appetite and food intake. Alcohol is commonly viewed as a psychoactive substance that primarily affects brain function, but it is also a highly caloric food. This knowledge, combined with...

A study led by investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has identified a potential target for therapies to treat cocaine addiction. In their study receiving advance online publication in Molecular...

By Michael B Friedman, Columbia University It should be no surprise that older adults are the largest users of prescription medication. After all, older adults are far more likely to have chronic health conditions than are younger people. It follows,...

Could a mysterious hallucinogen used by shamans during healing ceremonies deep in the forests of Gabon be the key to defeating addiction? Though it sounds unlikely, preliminary research suggests a little-known psychedelic chemical called ibogaine could help people who abuse...

People are significantly more likely to have negative attitudes toward those suffering from drug addiction than those with mental illness, and don't support insurance, housing, and employment policies that benefit those dependent on drugs, new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of...