It’s all over the news: Opioid use is on the rise, whether it involves powerful prescription pain relievers, such as Vicodin, codeine, Demerol, or OxyContin, drugs used for maintenance therapy in opioid use disorder treatment, such as methadone or buprenorphine, or illicit drugs like heroin. This upward trend impacts many pregnant women as well. According…
By Tamarra Kemsley Ketamine, an anesthetic infamous for abuse among club drug users, may actually help to alleviate even the most stubborn cases of depression. It’s a hypothesis researchers have been testing for years, including as far back as 2006 when a group from the National Institute of Mental Health injected 17 patients with the…
According to recent estimates, more than 52,000 people lose their lives from drug addiction each year. Of those overdose deaths, about 63 percent or 33,000 people, are from opioids like prescription painkillers and heroin.1 Of course, there’s hardly a single demographic that hasn’t been devastated by the opioid epidemic, but teens are one of the fastest-growing…
If you’re a legislator or public official in contemporary America, one of your primary duties revolves around finding a solution to the opioid epidemic. For instance, many would agree that the defining feature of former president Barack Obama’s tenure was the passing of the Affordable Care Act, which effectively expanded access to health coverage and,…
On This Page: Patrolman Overdoses on Fentanyl During Drug Raid An Accidental Acid Trip Innocent Victims of Crystal Meth Exposure Parts of the Body that Can Absorb Drugs The Dangers of Drugs Absorbed Through Skin Although many people know that injecting, smoking and inhaling drugs can cause intoxication, few are aware that many drugs can…
In spite of the effects it has on society, we tend to think of addiction as the individual’s disease. After all, it’s the individual who chooses to abuse mind-altering substances, who exercises less and less restraint over his or her substance abuse, and who eventually suffers from profound physical and physiological deterioration due to having…
By Kathryn Millán, MA, LPC/MHSP Addiction has become a primary issue across the world. The United States is experiencing a drug crisis with the ongoing opioid addiction epidemic, meth addiction, alcoholism and drug-related crimes. Many people are talking about the culture of substance use in the US and debating what should be done to help…
Millennials are those who had just come of age, were coming of age, or were about to come of age as we stepped into the 21st century. If we go by the dates published by Time Magazine, this roughly equates to anyone born between 1980 and 2000.1 Alternately, some call this group Generation Y. Whichever…
There’s a prevailing narrative in addiction treatment that says a person only seeks help for their substance misuse once they’ve hit rock bottom. The narrative is so common, in fact, that it’s often seen as a necessary step for a person to change. This belief can be traced back as early as 1953, the year…
Although addiction isn’t exactly a new problem, it wasn’t until it became the leading cause of accidental death that the seriousness of the heroin epidemic really came into focus for the population at large. In 2015, there were over 20.5 million Americans over the age of 12 with substance abuse problems. As well, there were…
