Eight days ago, Angela was in rehab. Now she’s completely off heroin and has an impressive five weeks of sobriety under her belt. She has a new job and a new apartment. But things are starting to get a little more stressful than she thought they’d be — so many changes, so many new responsibilities. …

Medication-assisted treatment (MAT) has been a life-saving tool for so many people with opioid use disorder. In fact, the most popular medication used in MAT—Suboxone (buprenorphine/naloxone)—is approved and endorsed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the Federal Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Thousands of people …

Between April of 2020 and April of 2021, 100,000 Americans died from drug overdose. Around 75,000 of those deaths were due to opioids, mostly fentanyl. At least 76 recent fentanyl cases involved the use of social media to traffic the drugs. Dealers use Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and YouTube to reach customers.

Childhood emotional neglect has a high correlation with addiction. It is not uncommon for a person in addiction treatment to have an aha moment where they realize their emotional or physical needs were neglected as children. They see for the first time how this neglect influenced their choices, feelings, and behavior as adults.

Let’s take a quick trip back to the 1990s. That’s when it all started. Opioid prescription numbers were beginning to climb. And they didn’t slow down. Over the next two decades more and more doctors filled their prescription pads with painkillers. By 2012, opioids were being dispensed at a rate of 81.3 prescriptions per 100 …

There is no safe amount of IV drug use. IV drug use increases the risk of infectious disease, overdose, and addiction.

It is estimated that by 1890, several hundred thousand Americans—a majority of them Civil War veterans—were addicted to opioids. Historian Jonathan S. Jones says “It was epidemic both in scale, just the sheer number of people who got addicted. It becomes a really major public health, and also kind of a cultural, crisis.”

While Jones is describing a crisis that happened over 130 years ago, much of his statements about the history of opioid addiction ring as true in the 2020s as they did in the 1890s.

“We, the jury, find the defendants…guilty.” In the first trial of its kind, a jury has found three major pharmacies guilty for their roles in fueling the opioid epidemic. Pharmacies Take Their Chances With a Jury The case is just one among more than 3,000 opioid lawsuits that have been filed across the country against …

I was watching a crime drama on TV the other day. The cops were able to identify a drug user because she kept sniffing when they interviewed her. But then I did a little digging. And as it turns out, drug use causes far more damage than a case of the sniffles. It can really …

69,710. That’s the number of people who died from opioid overdose in the U.S. in 2020. That’s up nearly 30 percent from the year before. And many expect those numbers to continue rising. And why wouldn’t they? As we see more and more drugs laced with deadly doses of fentanyl, overdoses are becoming more and …