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876 stories, newest first.
August 2026
- Aug 28Lived Experience & Community
Brad Pitt Says He Can Drink Again 'in a Restrained Manner.' Your Brain Didn't Get the Memo About Restraint.
Brad Pitt says he can drink 'in a restrained manner' after seven sober years. The neuroscience of craving — and the doctors who avoid treating addiction at all — explain why that's a harder bet than it sounds.
- Aug 28Science & Medicine
The Feds Are Scheduling Three New Drugs at Once. The Chemists Are Already on a Fourth.
7-OH kratom, tianeptine, and medetomidine are reshaping the drug supply faster than regulators can keep up — here's what each one actually does to the body, and why banning one keeps producing the next.
- Aug 28Policy & Funding
Louisiana Gave Sheriffs 20 Cents of Every Opioid Settlement Dollar. Nobody Made Them Prove It Saved Anyone.
A KFF Health News investigation found Louisiana sheriffs spent opioid settlement millions on license-plate cameras and body cams while a father who lost his son to fentanyl keeps distributing naloxone himself.
- Aug 27Harm Reduction
Nobody Told Claudia Dimit's Son That a Can of Computer Duster Could Kill Him. The Label Still Doesn't.
Inhalants killed at least 30 Oregonians in three years and remain the most overlooked substance category in addiction coverage. New research shows exactly which teens are most at risk — and why the reasons have almost nothing to do with getting high.
- Aug 27Science & Medicine
Psilocybin Just Got the FDA's Fastest Lane Ever Built. Getting There Is Still the Hard Part.
An April executive order created FDA 'National Priority Vouchers' that cut psychedelic drug review from 10-12 months to 1-2 months. Compass Pathways, Usona, and Transcend Therapeutics now hold them — but scheduling and state-law access gaps haven't moved at the same speed.
- Aug 27Policy & Funding
Insurers Got a Year and a Half of Breathing Room on the Law That's Supposed to Cover Your Treatment
The Departments of Labor, HHS, and Treasury paused enforcement of the 2024 Mental Health Parity Final Rule while litigation plays out — leaving insurers more room on prior authorization and visit limits for addiction treatment, with no enforcement deadline in sight.
- Aug 27Policy & Funding
Kratom's Civil War Just Reached a Cabinet Secretary's Investment Portfolio
The DEA placed synthetic 7-OH kratom extracts in Schedule I this week. A Senate inquiry into a cabinet secretary's stake in a rival kratom brand shows how much money is riding on where that line gets drawn — and who it leaves without a legal option.
- Aug 26Science & Medicine
A Brain Region Lights Up Before Relapse Happens, Mouse Study Suggests
A Molecular Psychiatry study in mice found more than double the activity in a stress-related brain region, the BNST, before relapse to compulsive drinking — a possible early biomarker, with real caveats about what it can't yet tell us.
- Aug 26Lived Experience & Community
Filter Magazine Is Closing, and It Took the Only Newsroom That Read You as an Expert on Your Own Life
Filter's August 2026 shutdown removes one of the only newsrooms substantially written by people who use drugs, for people who use drugs — and with it, a specific kind of company few outlets ever offered.
- Aug 26Policy & Funding
The Global Stimulant Boom Is Hitting a Treatment System Built for Opioids
UNODC's 2026 World Drug Report found cocaine production at an all-time high and meth going industrial. The US treatment system, built around opioids, has no medication equivalent for stimulants — and hobbles the one behavioral treatment that works.
- Aug 26Arizona Watch
AHCCCS's New AI Locator Finds a Provider Faster. It Can't Find You an Open Bed.
AHCCCS launched a Gemini-powered AI locator with Google Public Sector and Syntasa to help Arizonans find opioid treatment. It's a genuine access upgrade, but it can't fix the state's real bottleneck: treatment capacity.
- Aug 26Harm Reduction
The FDA Just Let Nicotine Pouches Say 'Lower Risk.' Your Brain Will Hear 'Safe.'
The FDA authorized 'lower risk than cigarettes' marketing for specific Zyn pouches on Aug 5, 2026. Here's the psychology of why that claim helps an adult smoker and traps a nicotine-naive teenager — and the 'light cigarette' history that predicts exactly how.
- Aug 26The Crisis, By the Numbers
Overdose Deaths Are Falling Fast — Because the Supply Broke, Not Because We Fixed Anything
CDC provisional data shows overdose deaths down 12.1% and fentanyl deaths down as much as 54% from peak. The decline looks like a policy win. The evidence says it's a supply shock — and those have a history of getting more dangerous before they get safer.
- Aug 25Science & Medicine
MDMA Therapy's Second Shot at FDA Approval Skips the One Thing That Sank It Last Time
MDMA-assisted therapy was rejected by the FDA in 2024. It's back for a second review in 2026, without a new efficacy trial. Here's the science, the history, and what a September FDA hearing could change.
- Aug 25Lived Experience & Community
Your Craving Isn't Just a Feeling. It's Quietly Rewiring How You Learn.
A Yale study in Nature Mental Health found craving speeds up reward learning in people who drink and slows it in people who use cannabis — evidence that craving reshapes decision-making, not just mood.
- Aug 25Arizona Watch
Arizona Just Put Settlement Money Behind the Naloxone Gap Washington Keeps Threatening
AHCCCS opened grant applications this July for a rural naloxone distribution initiative funded by Arizona's $1.215 billion opioid settlement — money the federal funding fights can't touch.
- Aug 25Policy & Funding
Morgan Godvin Found Her People in a Newsroom. Washington Turned Off the Money, and the Newsroom Died Too.
Filter, the harm reduction newsroom that covered the overdose crisis from inside it, shut down August 11. Its closure traces the same funding whiplash now hitting syringe programs and naloxone distribution nationwide.
- Aug 24Treatment & Recovery
Two Years of Take-Home Methadone Proved the Critics Wrong. Clinics Should Act Like It.
A survey of 241 opioid treatment programs found most expanded take-home methadone after the 2024 SAMHSA rules, with a 17% average retention gain. Pew found no corresponding rise in diversion.
- Aug 24Arizona Watch
Arizona's Heat Isn't Background to the Overdose Crisis. It's Part of the Mechanism.
Arizona's overdose rate runs near double the national average, and summer makes it worse. Meth wrecks temperature regulation, opioids kill the impulse to find shade — and 150-degree concrete does the rest.
- Aug 24Technology & Innovation
A Patch That Doses Naloxone for 24 Hours Solves a Real Problem — Years From Now
Virginia Tech researchers built a penny-sized microneedle patch that senses fentanyl and releases naloxone in cycles over 24 hours. It addresses re-narcotization — but it's still in mouse trials.
- Aug 24Harm Reduction
Ketamine's Boom Just Met Its Bill, and Nitrous Oxide Is Getting the Bill Too
The FDA warned 14 online ketamine sellers, Texas moved to ban at-home IV ketamine, and states are banning retail nitrous oxide — all while young ketamine users show up in urology wards with permanent bladder damage. One story, not four.
- Aug 24Science & Medicine
The Wine Study Measured Wealth, Not Wine
A UK Biobank cohort presented at ACC.26 found a 21% lower cardiovascular death risk among moderate wine drinkers — and a 24% higher all-cause mortality risk among heavy drinkers of any kind. The beverage-type split is a socioeconomic portrait, not a prescription.
- Aug 24Lived Experience & Community
The Workforce Paid to Treat You Judges You Hardest
New University of Georgia research finds mental health workers and first responders hold stronger stigmatizing beliefs about opioid users than the general public. Meanwhile the most effective treatment for meth addiction still isn't offered in most places.
- Aug 23Treatment & Recovery
Two Psychedelic Drugs Got Rejected. Both Are Back at the FDA's Door — And the VA Just Widened the Stakes
Resilient's MDMA resubmission and Compass's psilocybin filing are converging with VA trials that now cover alcohol use disorder, not just PTSD — a detail the depression headlines keep skipping.