Veteran and Missouri man Joshua Lee has learned the hard way how dangerous opioids can be. Lee was deployed to Afghanistan in 2009, and today suffers from PTSD, fibromyalgia and arthritis. For the pain, he was prescribed opioids by his physicians through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). But things quickly spun out of control. By August of last year, Lee said he was taking 27 pills a day.

Some technologies can be used to manipulate mood. Drug research offers insights into their possible impact.

There was my sunny, likable mother, and there was the dark one who’d call late at night. Should we have intervened when her drinking got out of hand? By David Sedaris.

For six days in Portsmouth, Ohio, I keep trying to fool myself. Eventually, I am unable to just watch and listen. By Chris Arnade.

West Virginia has the highest overdose death rate in the country. Locals are fighting to save their neighbors—and their towns—from destruction. By Margaret Talbot,

The disappearance of manufacturing and the rise of opioid abuse has hit men in the Rust Belt hard. That’s meant women are left to pick up the pieces. By Alana Semuels.

Gandelina Damião, 78, is permanently hunched, carrying her sorrow. She lost three children to heroin in the 1990s. A quarter century ago, her cobblestone lane, up a grassy hill from Lisbon's Tagus River, was littered with syringes. She recalls having to search for her teenagers in graffitied stone buildings nearby, where they would shoot up.

“I could take a bath in Paris while listening to someone in Los Angeles complain about her dating life.” By Pamela Druckerman. (Mar. 17, 2017)

Sean Dunne

The researchers found that although the percentage of people who smoke has declined, the overall number of smokers has actually increased, thanks to population growth, according to the study, published April 5 in the journal The Lancet. The percentage of people who smoke is lower than it was 25 years ago.

A new book from Fuel features previously unpublished anti-alcohol posters and graphic design from the 1960s to 80s in the Soviet Union.

Faced with a rising national wave of opioid addiction and its consequences, families, law enforcement and political leaders around the nation are linking arms to save souls. But 30 years ago, it was a different story. Ekow Yankah, a Cardozo School of Law professor, reflects on how race affects our national response to drug abuse.

It’s not smoking. It’s platform-agnostic nicotine delivery solutions. By Felix Gillette, Jennifer Kaplan, and Sam Chambers.

What would you do if your child was a heroin addict suffering from acute withdrawal symptoms?

In the storage room of a Wasilla boutique, 35 volunteers worked a makeshift assembly line Thursday, putting together kits to fight heroin overdose and hoping to save lives. Much of the work was done by people recovering from drug addiction. The crew assembled 1,500 rescue kits, each with nasal spray doses of the drug naloxone, known by the brand name Narcan, which reverses the effect of opioids. Getting the rescue drug into the hands of the people closest to the addicts at risk is an ongoing project run by the state's Department of Health and Social Services.

In a remote corner of Colorado, a radical experiment is underway to rehabilitate the state’s most downtrodden residents. By Will McGrath.

A recent study of Medicare recipients found that in 2011, about 15 percent were prescribed an opioid when they were discharged from the hospital; three months later, 42 percent were still taking the pain medicine. It's perhaps no surprise, then, that some, like Evard, end up addicted. Doctors have commonly managed the persistent pain of people over 65 with prescription opioids. But that has left some still in pain, and with a physical and emotional dependence that can ruin life.

In October 2013 a Time magazine article entitled ‘Syria’s Breaking Bad’ alerted Western media to the prevalence across the region of a little-known stimulant drug, Captagon. Lebanese police had found five million locally produced tablets, embossed with a roughly stamped yin-yang... By Mike Jay.

New studies indicate that the potential for cannabis to increase creativity varies depending on dose and baseline personality of the person using it.

federal prosecutors in Massachusetts announced the arrest of six former employees, including a former CEO and two former vice presidents, of the Phoenix-based and NASDAQ-traded fentanyl producer Insys Therapeutics… By Ben Mathis-Lilley.