A Mother and Son Must Drive Across Three States for What Should Be a Common Addiction Treatment. By Jason Cherkis.

As a new film about the famed art collector hits screens, we sit down with its director to unravel the legacy of the woman who put art before her own life

Websites and apps are designed for compulsion, even addiction. Should the net be regulated like drugs or casinos? By Michael Schulson.

In search of the mother who gave her up for adoption, the author finds six siblings instead. Decades later, she contemplates the drug addiction that cost many of them their lives. By Michele Leavitt.

I sold my wife’s clothes to build a Christmas village in my parents’ basement. By Richard Kelly Kemick.

New evidence released today shows that public health policies targeted at smokers may actually have the opposite effect for some people trying to quit. A review led by LSE Research Fellow Dr Sara Evans-Lacko indicates that stigmatising smoking can, in some cases, make it harder for people to quit because they become angry, defensive and the negative messages lead to a drop in self-esteem.

Most people who smoke started in their teens. While the number of kids trying tobacco for the first time has declined since the 1970s, there are still new smokers every year and kids' doctors want to do something about it. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) came out with a strong new policy statement that urges policymakers to raise the minimum age people could buy nicotine products, be they cigarettes or e-cigarettes, to 21.

When Jessica Elm, a citizen of the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin, was studying for her master’s degree in social work, she frequently heard about how genes were responsible for the high risk of alcoholism among American Indians. But her own family’s experience — and the research, she discovered — tells a very different story. The "firewater" fairytale that Elm came to know all too well goes like this: Europeans introduced...

Every year, hundreds of black, brown and even polar bears are successfully rehabilitated from their addiction to human-reliant food sources and released back into the wild. How does bear rehab work?

After years of prison and addiction, my brother went silent. So I visited his rehab.

This cohort study used high school students’ responses to a substance use survey to evaluate whether baseline e-cigarette use among never-smoking adolescents is associated with starting to smoke cigarettes, cigars, or hookah water pipes.

One of the most commonly used treatment models in addiction is the 12-step model developed in the 1930s and rooted in spirituality. Yet, surprisingly, there is no clear understanding about how to nurture spirituality among people struggling with addictions.

The Food and Drug Administration approved limited use of the powerful painkiller OxyContin for children as young as 11 years old.

Video-Abstract of the article "A computational hypothesis for allostasis: delineation of substance dependence, conventional therapies, and alternative treatments" published by Yariv Z. Levy, Dino J. Levy, Andrew G. Barto and Jerrold S. Meyer in Frontiers in Psychiatry - Specialty Section Addictive Disorders and Behavioral Dyscontrol.

For Charlie, it was clear that rehab was necessary when, after months of obsessively playing a smartphone game called Spirit Lords, her mother called her at college worried that she had taken up gambling. Her savings account was drained. Multiple overdraft notices had arrived at her parents’ house. Over five months, she had blown $8,000 on “spirit upgrades” and in-app purchases like rare weapons to help her beat the game.

In this excerpt from The Biology of Desire, neuroscientist and former U of T professor Marc Lewis combines case studies and science to argue against the disease model of treating addiction.

A bacterium that consumes nicotine may help scientists develop a powerful anti-smoking drug, says a study.The researchers found that the bacterial enzyme can be recreated in lab settings and possesses a number of promising characteristics for drug development.

The new leader of the Drug Enforcement Administration said Tuesday heroin probably is more dangerous than marijuana, diverging in tone from his embattled predecessor. Acting Administrator Chuck Rosenberg, a former prosecutor whose stance on drug reform is somewhat of a mystery, also said his agents are not prioritizing marijuana enforcement -- though he's not ordered them off it.

It’s been hoped for years that securing safe and affordable housing for the homeless and mentally ill would go a long way toward reducing substance abuse and addiction rates among that population. That belief has been a cornerstone in government policies in B.C. at both the provincial and civic levels, and among the social welfare agencies that advocate for that housing.

New findings published in the journal Addiction examine research on low nicotine content (CLNC) for cigarettes and how this might function as a regulatory measure to help reduce smoke exposure and lower general addictiveness. Unfortunately, the study findings revealed that lower nicotine levels may not be enough.