The New York Times today includes a moving personal story about overcoming opioid addiction. But while it describes one woman’s triumph, it also illustrates something the Institute of Medicine calls a “quality chasm” between …
Addiction
Bypassing Obesity for Alcoholism: Why Some Weight-Loss Surgeries Increase Alcohol Risk
People who undergo gastric bypass surgery for weight loss have more than twice the risk of developing alcoholism, compared with those who have gastric banding surgery, preliminary research finds. This line of inquiry could shed …
Perspective: The Debate Over Anonymity in Addiction Recovery
Should addicts and alcoholics remain anonymous about their recovery? Eighteen years ago this month, I wrote my first op-ed for the Washington Post‘s Sunday Outlook section, arguing against that idea. It was headlined “Addicted to …
Happy Hour? ‘Wet Houses’ Allow Alcoholics to Drink, With Surprising Results
It sounds like an alcoholic’s vision of heaven: a free place to live, paid expenses (mostly), and an ample supply of booze. But the reality of “wet houses” for homeless alcoholics looks more like hell, even as these programs — …
Defining Recovery in Anorexia — and Addiction
How do you define recovery from anorexia? Tuesday’s New York Times explores this question — and highlights striking similarities to the debate over defining recovery from alcoholism and other drug addictions.
Perspective: Why Comparing Painkiller Addiction to Crack Worsens the Problem
As the Obama administration and the media increasingly promote the idea that prescription drug misuse is this generation’s crack epidemic, I want to take a few minutes to note how irresponsible and off-base this idea is.
U.S. Aims to Reduce Overdose Deaths, But Will the New Plan Work?
The Obama administration announced on Tuesday a new initiative to reduce prescription painkiller misuse and overdose, a problem that has become the leading cause of accidental death in 17 states, surpassing car accidents — and …
Hooked on Addiction: From Food to Drugs to Internet Porn
America is having an addiction moment. Media headlines scream daily about new neuroscience findings on porn addiction, Internet addiction, food addiction and plain, old-fashioned drug addiction.
Are Oxycontin Babies This Decade’s Crack Babies?
In the late 1980s and early ’90s, it was almost impossible to avoid hearing about the plight of “crack babies” — infants born to mothers who had used crack cocaine during pregnancy. These offspring were predicted to become a …
Increasingly, Internet Activism Helps Shutter Abusive ‘Troubled Teen’ Boot Camps
For the last 40 years, teens with drug problems, learning disabilities and other behavioral issues have been sent to residential facilities to endure “tough love” techniques that are widely known to include methods of outright …
Drug Courts: Martin Sheen Defends Them in Congress. But Do They Work?
(Updated) U.S. drug courts, which divert non-violent drug cases and assign offenders to treatment and supervision rather than jail, are championed by the left, right and center. The left likes them because they favor treatment …
Does Narconon’s Addiction Rehab Really Work?
In a field in which the meetings and prayers of 12-step treatment are among the most accepted ways to help people with drug addiction, consumers have little way of knowing which rehabs are genuinely evidence-based and which …
Appreciation: G. Alan Marlatt Brought Compassion to Addiction Treatment
Many people claim to be pioneers in addiction treatment, but few have left a more important legacy than G. Alan Marlatt, professor of psychology at University of Washington, who died of melanoma on March 14, at age 69.
