The Log
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876 stories, newest first.
September 2026
- Sep 15Harm Reduction
Fentanyl Didn't Spare Cocaine — and the Overdose Data Show Exactly Who It's Hitting
A Pennsylvania county's emergency warning this week lines up with CDC numbers showing Black Americans bearing the sharpest rise in cocaine-fentanyl deaths — this isn't one county's bad luck.
- Sep 15Lived Experience & Community
Your Craving Isn't on a Lab Rat's Timetable — And That's Better News Than It Sounds
A 2024 review found zero of 20 human studies backed the 'incubation of craving' model that shapes addiction treatment advice. One woman's real crisis shows what actually predicts a hard month.
- Sep 15The Crisis, By the Numbers
CDC Finds Cannabis in 1 of Every 5 Overdose Deaths — and Says the Real Story Is What It's Riding With
A new CDC surveillance report on 209,166 overdose deaths found cannabis showing up almost three times more often in dead teenagers than in dead retirees — but the agency's own scientists say cannabis is a passenger, not the driver.
- Sep 15Science & Medicine
JUUL Is Legal Again — and the FDA's Whole Fix Is a Password Screen
The agency just authorized a new JUUL device built around an optional age-gate app, betting the benefit to adult smokers outweighs the risk to teenagers. Meanwhile the one new medicine that could actually treat nicotine addiction just got turned away — over a factory inspection.
- Sep 15Arizona Watch
Overdose Deaths Are Falling Everywhere in America Except Arizona — and Its Own Settlement Money Is Stuck in Court
The nation just logged a third straight year of record overdose declines. Arizona's death rate climbed 18 percent over the same year and is now roughly double the national average — while the state spent 2026 fighting in court over whether $115 million in opioid settlement money could legally go...
- Sep 14Science & Medicine
Getting High With Friends Is the Riskier Choice — If You Already Have a Problem
A September 2026 Addiction study of 104 adults found that using cannabis around other people amplifies craving and continued use, but only for those with more severe cannabis problems.
- Sep 14Harm Reduction
Xylazine Scheduling Didn't Shrink the Tranq Crisis. It Created a Worse One.
A new study links state xylazine scheduling to a surge in medetomidine, a more potent, harder-to-detect veterinary sedative now dominating drug supplies from Philadelphia to the Northeast.
- Sep 14Policy & Funding
The Overdose Numbers Are Falling. Cocaine Is the Exception Nobody's Toasting.
CDC data show overdose deaths falling nationally, but stimulant-only deaths are rising, and Medicaid coverage for the one treatment that works, contingency management, remains rare.
- Sep 14Science & Medicine
The Craving Doesn't Expire on Your Sobriety Anniversary
New EEG and animal studies show heroin cravings can be measured in the brain and persist more than a year into abstinence, challenging fixed-length treatment models.
- Sep 14Harm Reduction
The FDA Wants to Talk About Psilocybin's Future. It Won't Touch Who's Using It Right Now.
The FDA holds a public hearing today on psilocybin's therapeutic future while explicitly excluding legal status from the agenda — even as poison control calls and unsupervised use keep climbing.
- Sep 14Policy & Funding
SAMHSA Killed Funding for Fentanyl Test Strips. Then CDC Bragged About Falling Overdose Deaths.
SAMHSA cut federal funding for fentanyl test strips and syringes in April. Five months later, CDC's new overdose dashboard shows deaths falling 12.3% — and harm reduction groups in Kentucky, Ohio, and South Carolina are the ones absorbing the contradiction.
- Sep 13Technology & Innovation
Virtual MOUD Platforms Sell Access. New Data Says They're Selling a Detour.
A new PHTI assessment of virtual MOUD platforms — Bicycle Health, Ophelia, Pelago, Boulder Care, Workit Health — finds they retain existing opioid treatment patients longer but don't expand access to the untreated majority.
- Sep 13Lived Experience & Community
You Can Be Falling Apart and Growing at the Same Time — That's Not a Contradiction, It's Caregiving
New research on family caregivers of people with substance use disorder shows psychological burden and post-traumatic growth happening at once, not in sequence — a finding that matches what caregivers have described for years.
- Sep 13Arizona Watch
Banning Three Named Chemicals Won't Close the Loophole Selling Opioids as Kratom
The DEA scheduled three synthetic kratom chemicals in August, but the real 7-OH threshold is still a proposal. Arizona's own kratom fix died in the legislature in June. The gap is the point.
- Sep 13Science & Medicine
Nitrous Oxide Deaths Rose Nearly 600% While Regulators Treated Galaxy Gas Like a Whipped-Cream Ingredient
A JAMA Network Open study of CDC data found US nitrous oxide deaths rose from 23 to 156 a year between 2010-2023. Researchers tie the spike to culinary-labeled brands like Galaxy Gas exploiting a regulatory gap.
- Sep 13Treatment & Recovery
Ketamine Got Respectable. It Didn't Get Safe.
Ketamine clinics went from fewer than 100 to well over 1,500 in a decade, DEA enforcement is finally catching up, and recreational misuse is climbing alongside it. What that means if you're in recovery and someone offers you ketamine therapy.
- Sep 13The Crisis, By the Numbers
Meth and Cocaine Now Kill More Americans Than Opioids. Medicine Still Has Nothing to Offer.
Meth and cocaine deaths outpaced opioid deaths in 2025 for the first time, per Millennium Health's 8th Signals Report. There is still no FDA-approved medication for stimulant use disorder — and America has run this exact experiment before.
- Sep 12Science & Medicine
Dispensary Weed Is a Different Drug Than the One D.A.R.E. Warned You About
Dispensary THC now routinely exceeds 40%, quadruple 1995 levels. The addiction and psychosis science on high-potency cannabis is real, dose-dependent, and almost nobody at the counter has to mention it.
- Sep 12Lived Experience & Community
You Didn't Just Use Alone. Your Brain Was Trying to Replace Something It Couldn't Find.
National Recovery Month's 2026 theme, 'Recovery Happens Together,' names a real psychological mechanism: connection isn't a nice-to-have in recovery, it's competing for the same ground isolation and drug use both occupy.
- Sep 12Policy & Funding
DEA Drew a Real Line on Kratom. Whether It Holds Isn't Decided Yet.
The federal comment period on DEA's proposed 0.05% threshold for 7-hydroxymitragynine closed September 10, 2026. Here's the real state of kratom scheduling right now — and what it doesn't change.
- Sep 12The Crisis, By the Numbers
Cocaine Didn't Get More Dangerous. Everything Mixed Into It Did.
CDC data show cocaine-involved overdose deaths rose 85% from 2019 to 2023, driven almost entirely by fentanyl contamination in the stimulant supply — not cocaine itself.
- Sep 12Harm Reduction
Washington Defunded Harm Reduction. The Newsroom Covering It Couldn't Outlast the Cut.
Filter Magazine, the nonprofit outlet that covered drug use as lived expertise, is shutting down four months after SAMHSA barred federal funds from syringes, pipes, and fentanyl test strips. The money and the storytelling are being cut together.
- Sep 11Policy & Funding
The Government Stopped Checking Whether Insurers Follow the Parity Law. It Just Said, Carefully, That It's Watching Again.
DOL's Employee Benefits Security Administration issued an interim enforcement roadmap for mental health and addiction parity law after a year-long enforcement pause — here's what it does and doesn't fix.
- Sep 11Lived Experience & Community
"This Ends With Me": A Counselor Wrote the Essay Her Own Field Doesn't Usually Publish
A named counselor's personal essay on growing up around addiction, published alongside new craving research, shows why 'just say no' was never the right model of how urges actually work.