Millions of Americans struggle with substance abuse and tens of thousands die each year, according to the American Society of Addiction Medicine. Though treating addiction has become a vast (and at times abusive) industry, the underlying causes of drug or alcohol dependency—and how to successfully treat these debilitating conditions—are still poorly understood by science. Now, researchers think they’ve found the germ of an answer in our genetic past.

As an opioid epidemic spreads across the western world, researchers believe they’re close to developing a non-addictive painkiller. Figures from the US National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) estimate that about 115 people in the country are overdosing on opioids every single day. Aside from the financial costs such an addiction brings to a national healthcare system, it can be hugely traumatic for the person addicted to these drugs, and for their families.

The international health community has decided that if you play video games like Fortnite or World of Warcraft a lot, you might suffer from a mental-health issue: Gaming Disorder. It’s a behavioral condition that the World Health Organization has added to the proposed 11th revision of its International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, or ICD-11, the first update to the classification since 1992.

An online divorce website says the popular video game Fortnite has been cited in over 200 divorces this year. According to the website, the divorce petitions received specifically mention an addiction to Fortnite and other video games as one of the reasons for divorce. The website says the digital revolution has introduced a new way for relationships to break down.

“It is perhaps the defining feature of someone my age and from my state to have a friend, sibling, or cousin who has died from opioid addiction.” By Paul Blest.

The scale and darkness of this epidemic is a sign of a civilization in a more acute crisis than we knew. This nation pioneered modern life. Now epic numbers of Americans are killing themselves with opioids to escape it.

Doctor-prescribed painkillers are not the biggest threat.

The scale and darkness of this epidemic is a sign of a civilization in a more acute crisis than we knew. By Andrew Sullivan.

You can't overdose on the opioid just by touching it.

Two new studies support this correlation

Drug users don't take heroin because of postindustrial despair — they do it because withdrawal feels worse than anything you can imagine.

Amid the opioid crisis, the concept of “pain acceptance” is gaining credibility.

What opioid addiction treatments are more effective and can we vaccinate against addiction?

By your early forties, the best part about going to bed is imagining the coffee you’re going to drink in the morning.

In the midst of a national crisis, mothers addicted to drugs struggle to get off them — for their babies’ sake, and their own.

Just don’t quit entirely, okay?

Poop studies are helping communities make intervention decisions

WTF?! Since the dawn of video games, concerned parents have worried about their kids becoming addicted. Thanks to the advent of the internet and streaming platforms like Twitch, gaming is more popular today than ever before, but does that mean children are more at risk? One UK couple would likely agree, after their nine-year-old daughter was put into rehab to address her addiction to Fortnite.

I was a gay teen in the 1980s, hiding from a terrifying world in an arcade. The WHO's push to uniquely pathologize gaming won't help people like me.

A homeless woman addicted to heroin whose newborn was adopted by a police officer has completely turned her life around. The story behind her transformation.

Fentanyl is a big culprit, but there are also encouraging signs from states that have prioritized public health campaigns and addiction treatment.

It’s tempting to see each of the country’s creeping public disasters as an epidemic. But an epidemic would probably be a lot easier to solve.

The study suggests a comprehensive approach is needed — one that goes way further than what America has done so far.

A short documentary about my family's sordid past with Beanie Babies. Made for my Documentary Production class at The University of Arizona.

When “Breaking Bad” debuted in 2008, I was 27 years removed from a methamphetamine addiction. But if I thought about the drug, I could still smell it exactly: Medicinal and metallic and crude and burning. I know fans will be sad when the show ends its sixth and final season later this year, but not me. For me, the show can’t end soon enough.

Drug-harm experts to rank 20 drugs (legal and illegal) on 16 measures of harm to the user and to wider society

Electronic cigarettes could save the lives of millions of smokers, or they could set millions of non-smokers on the path to nicotine addiction, revolutionizing the tobacco industry into the bargain. So the question on the lips of health experts, policy-makers and consumers alike is, are the devices a health problem that needs tight regulation, or a welcome aid to smokers trying to quit?

The show developed legions of fans thanks to deft writing, superb acting and the miracles of binge-watching

Oreos are as addictive as cocaine, at least for lab rats, and just like us, they like the creamy center best. Eating the sugary treats activates more neurons in the brain’s “pleasure center” than drugs such as cocaine, the team at Connecticut College found.

The addicts stalk the streets of this border post like hollowed-out skeletons, hair matted by filth and eyes glassy. The villages that hug the roads are veritable zombie towns, where families of men, women and children hide their addiction within barren mud compounds.

The cigarettes of the future could be safer, cheaper and less taboo than the smokes of the past. But they also threaten to upend decades of anti-smoking efforts.

Scientists say that if all smokers in the world switched from cigarettes to electronic cigarettes, it could save millions of lives.

It’s not easy to export the American recovery movement — even to a nation that needs it.

Cigarette use among middle school and high school students is on the decline, but public health experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are concerned about other ways that tobacco and nicotine use is rising among kids.

Indonesia’s chain-smoking baby has kicked the habit. That’s the good news. The bad news is that he’s a junk-food junkie, packing on some serious pounds!