More people are dying from drug overdoses in the U.S. than ever before, according to a new preliminary report released Wednesday by the federal government. There were an estimated 72,287 drug overdose deaths last year, the report found, with the majority caused by opioids. The toll is yet another record high.
For several months, Google did not allow any ads for recovery-oriented services to appear when you searched drug addiction-related terms. But the search giant is easing up on its rehab-related restrictions, TechCrunch reports.
A new study could revive an abandoned theory about how to treat narcolepsy, the thus-far incurable disorder that makes people chronically sleepy. And it could also provide a new lead on how to treat drug addiction.
On Tuesday, the National Institutes of Health revealed its new plan to tackle the opioid crisis, which it dubbed the Helping to End Addiction Long-term, or HEAL, initiative. Among the ideas presented are research programs devoted to better understanding chronic pain, developing new non-opioid painkillers and addiction…
Facebook says it’s “working to” reduce the number of annoying notifications it sends you when you add new friends. The alerts, which masquerade as Facebook Messenger notifications, were the subject of a BuzzFeed article lambasting the feature two days ago.
Over the past few years, a hospital in Portland, Oregon has dramatically shifted its approach to treating patients with substance use disorders, including opioid addiction. And since then, the hospital has undergone a “sea change” in the way its medical staff think about and address addiction, according to a study…
In 2016, 63,632 people in the US died from a drug overdose, a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has concluded. And many more of those deaths were caused by potent opioids obtained on the streets than in years past.
The dangers posed by the opioid crisis only seem to be getting worse, according to a new Vital Signs report released today by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More people than ever are ending up in the emergency room as a result of an opioid overdose, and in some parts of the country, the increase has been…
In response to the opioid epidemic that is killing tens of thousands of Americans a year, the U.S. government is poised to further restrict the amount of opioids Medicare patients can have access to at any one time, via a policy that would tell insurers to deny coverage for certain prescriptions on the spot. But a…
The Trump administration’s approach to the opioid crisis has been at times clumsy and nonsensical. With that in mind, it seems the Food and Drug Administration is preparing to take a big step in the right direction: It plans to widen the scope of medication-assisted treatment, or MAT.
Who you are is the result of a complicated interplay between your environment, your genes, and probably a few other factors science has yet to uncover. Genetics influence somewhere around half of a person’s “vulnerability to addiction,” according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Now, as opioid addiction has…
The World Health Organization is on the verge of officially recognizing a phenomenon that researchers have been studying since the Super Nintendo era: video game addiction. Scientists and public health advocates who back the move say that compulsive video-game playing is a discrete disorder that can seriously damage a…
From 2000 to 2015, more than 188,000 phone calls were made to US Poison Control Centers on behalf of children who were exposed to prescription opioids, according to new research. That’s an average of 32 calls a day, or one call every 45 minutes.
The results are in: Teens are inhaling The Good Plant like never before.
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved Probuphine, the first implantable drug for the treatment of opioid dependence. It’s a welcome development at a time when scores of Americans are addicted to painkillers such as OxyContin and Vicodin.
A new British report concludes that e-cigarettes are a blessing rather than a curse, arguing that the potential health benefits greatly outweigh the risks. It’s a position that runs in stark contrast to the dire warnings put out in the United States.
When Saturday Night Live aired a skit this weekend riffing on America’s new heroin epidemic—a satirical fake ad for “Heroin A.M.” to help addicts remain productive while using—many people weren’t laughing. That’s because heroin and other powerful opiates are killing more people than ever, across all demographics. So…
Over at Science of Us, Melissa Dahl reports on an interesting new study that suggests the distress some internet pornography users feel about their oh-so-private internet activity has far more to do with their worries about internet porn addiction than the actual amount of pornography they’re watching.
Methamphetamine is one of the nastiest drug addictions to overcome, in part because memories of the high are so powerful. But what if scientists could erase those drug-infused recollections? Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in Florida have developed a drug that’s able to do just that in mice.
We’re missing out on the world around us because we’re all so focused on what’s happening in the world inside of our phones. This bitingly hilarious animation jabs at our smartphone addiction by showing cartoon characters so obsessed with their phones that they don’t notice danger in front of them or when their…
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