The Log
Archive
876 stories, newest first.
September 2026
- Sep 24Arizona Watch
Arizona's Settlement Naloxone Ships This Month. It Needs to Reach the Shelter, Not Just the Clinic.
Arizona's Hikma and Amneal opioid-settlement naloxone shipments land this September, funded by litigation rather than Congress, while Maricopa County builds a new countywide prevention framework with no public-input process published yet.
- Sep 24Policy & Funding
Congress Bought Hemp THC One More Month. It Didn't Buy Anyone Safety.
A one-month funding-bill reprieve for hemp-derived THC, a DEA that won't guide states on cannabis rescheduling, and a Michigan recall over an unnamed banned chemical — cannabis policy is modernizing everywhere except where it touches your body.
- Sep 24Lived Experience & Community
There's No Pill for a Cocaine Craving. A $20 Gift Card Might Be the Closest Thing We Have.
Cocaine and methamphetamine use disorder still have zero FDA-approved medications in 2026. Contingency management — paying people for verified negative drug tests — is now the evidence-backed standard of care, and SAMHSA just raised its funding cap tenfold.
- Sep 24Science & Medicine
The Government Spent 55 Years Calling Psilocybin Medically Worthless. Now It's Racing to Approve It.
FDA held a September 2026 hearing on psychedelic drugs months after issuing priority review vouchers for psilocybin and methylone. Here's the biology behind serotonin 2A agonists, and why federal approval still isn't the same as a prescription you can fill.
- Sep 24The Crisis, By the Numbers
Overdose Deaths Are Plunging. Washington Just Defunded the Reason Why.
Overdose deaths fell 27% in 2024 and kept falling in 2025 even as SAMHSA lost more than half its staff and roughly $2 billion in funding. New peer-reviewed research says up to 30% of the 'accidental' deaths inside that falling number may be misclassified suicides.
- Sep 23Technology & Innovation
No Drug Treats Stimulant Addiction Yet. The FDA Just Fast-Tracked a Device That Might.
FDA granted Breakthrough Device Designation to a transcutaneous stimulation device for stimulant use disorder — a category where no medication is FDA-approved and no device was previously FDA-cleared.
- Sep 23Policy & Funding
Five Years Sober Isn't a Finish Line. Medicaid's New Work Rule Treats It Like One.
New CMS guidance caps the Medicaid work-requirement 'medically frail' exemption for substance use disorder at five years of recovery. Case managers on AHCCCS and other state Medicaid plans should flag affected clients now.
- Sep 23Lived Experience & Community
Sobriety Didn't Give Beth McDonough Her Life Back. She Had to Build a New One.
Two people in long-term recovery describe sobriety as reconstruction, not subtraction — and new brain research explains why craving keeps shaping decisions long after the drink or the drug is gone.
- Sep 23Science & Medicine
A Bladder Clinic for 13-Year-Olds Is What Ketamine's Growth Curve Actually Looks Like
A UK pediatric ketamine-bladder clinic has taken 100+ referrals since opening in 2025. The demographic pattern in its first 60 patients — and new dependence-psychology research — say the risk isn't evenly distributed.
- Sep 23Treatment & Recovery
The Smoke Shop Sample Was Free. The Withdrawal Wasn't.
Boulder Care's new-patient kratom share tripled in a year and clinics are running buprenorphine protocols on 7-OH patients, even as DEA's temporary Schedule I fight over concentrated 7-OH remains unresolved three months in.
- Sep 22Science & Medicine
Weed Got Four Times Stronger and Nobody Sent a Memo. The FDA Just Noticed.
Average THC potency has quadrupled since 1995 and dispensary concentrates now run 60-90% THC. Cannabis withdrawal syndrome, barely discussed a decade ago, now affects up to 87% of people who quit in clinical settings.
- Sep 22Harm Reduction
A New Study Finally Measured Why Naloxone Access Actually Prevents the Next Overdose
A cross-lagged panel study of 136 syringe services program clients in Miami finds that receiving naloxone measurably predicts a lower chance of overdosing again — with the numbers to prove it.
- Sep 22Lived Experience & Community
Addiction Runs in Circles Through Families. One Counselor Mapped the Way Out.
A new lived-experience essay by counselor Shameka Coleman traces how addiction moves through families in a cycle — and names the five things that actually break it.
- Sep 22Science & Medicine
The Same Drug Class Reshaping Obesity Medicine Is Now in a Phase 3 Trial for Alcohol Cravings
A Phase 3 trial of brenipatide, a GLP-1/GIP drug, is testing whether the same receptor pathway behind Ozempic-class weight-loss drugs can reduce alcohol cravings.
- Sep 22Science & Medicine
There's Still No FDA-Approved Pill for Meth or Cocaine Addiction. Here's What Fills the Gap.
No medication is FDA-approved for methamphetamine or cocaine use disorder. Contingency management works better than almost anything else on offer — and stays chronically underfunded.
- Sep 22The Crisis, By the Numbers
The Drug Replacing Xylazine in the Supply Doesn't Answer to Naloxone
Medetomidine, a veterinary sedative up to 200 times more potent than xylazine, has taken over Philadelphia's fentanyl supply. Naloxone doesn't reverse it, and federal funding for the test strips that catch it just ended.
- Sep 22Harm Reduction
Overdose Deaths Just Had Their Best Year in a Decade. Washington Just Cut the Program That's Doing It.
U.S. overdose deaths are falling faster than they have in a generation, and the evidence says naloxone and syringe programs are why. The administration just cut $245 million from the agency that funds them.
- Sep 21Science & Medicine
Craving Doesn't Break Your Willpower — It Rewrites the Math Your Brain Runs on Every Choice
A 2026 Nature Mental Health study shows craving measurably changes how the brain computes risk and reward. A separate qualitative study captures what that feels like from the inside.
- Sep 21Science & Medicine
Benzodiazepines Were Sold as the Safe Pill. Quitting Them Cold Can Still Kill You.
How benzodiazepine dependence forms in the brain, why combining it with opioids multiplies overdose risk, and what a structured, medically supervised taper actually looks like.
- Sep 21Treatment & Recovery
California Has Three Months to Prove Its Meth Treatment Program Deserves to Survive
By the end of 2026, California's Medicaid director has to prove contingency management for stimulant use disorder is worth continued federal funding — a bar no medication-based addiction treatment has ever had to clear.
- Sep 21Arizona Watch
Arizona's Medicaid Fraud Isn't Over — It's Just Better Hidden, and Tribes Want the Law Rewritten
New investigations into Arizona's AHCCCS sober-living fraud have dropped from 1,400 to 270, but tribal leaders say recruiters are still active — and the real fix is sovereignty, not another audit.
- Sep 21Policy & Funding
Washington Just Made Sobriety the Price of a Lease. The Evidence Points the Other Way.
HHS, HUD, and ONDCP's new Treatment First toolkit — backed by $44.3 million in September SAMHSA funding — makes documented abstinence a condition of housing. The housing-outcomes research it cites points the other direction.
- Sep 20Lived Experience & Community
Cutting Back Counts. American Treatment Just Won't Say So.
Total abstinence is the only alcohol recovery most US treatment will fund — but the psychology, and the data, say moderation-based harm reduction saves people abstinence-only programs turn away.
- Sep 20Arizona Watch
Arizona's Sober-Living Fraud Crackdown Caught 140 Predators — and Now Threatens the Beds Survivors Still Need
Arizona has indicted 140 people in its $2.8B sober-living Medicaid fraud scheme, but the crackdown is now delaying payments to legitimate treatment centers and shrinking bed capacity survivors still need.