Many addicts and their families know intuitively that drugs have a profound effect on the brain. But just exactly how do drugs and drug addiction damage the brain? Drugs can make profound, and sometimes irreversible, changes to the brain chemistry and neural pathways....
Some of the most popular – and successful – addiction recovery programs are 12-Step programs. Based on the original Alcoholics Anonymous program, these support groups help people remain sober by working through underlying issues that may have caused them to drink or...
Addiction is an extremely complex phenomenon that stands at the intersection of physical and mental health. Over the centuries, we’ve known very little about it and there was a prevailing notion that it was simply a failure of willpower. However, we now...
Many people may recognize the short-term effects of alcohol abuse – hangovers, erratic behavior, or a dependence on the substance. And while liver failure is a fairly well-known effect of long-term alcohol abuse, there are other serious health implications that are...
Millions of people across the US suffer from some sort of substance use disorder, and these addictions have derailed countless lives. While the addiction epidemic has only grown more serious in recent decades, treatment methods have grown to meet the challenge. Far...
America had some 6,100 tragic opioid overdoses in 1980, but this has skyrocketed to more than 56,516 in 2020. In 2015, opioid overdoses reached a point of severity that has caused American life expectancy to begin dropping year after year. How did it happen that the...
