The Log
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876 stories, newest first.
September 2026
- Sep 7Harm Reduction
Washington Decided Test Strips Send the Wrong Message. Kentucky Has a Month Left.
SAMHSA's April 2026 Dear Colleague letters cut federal funding for fentanyl test strips and syringe services. On the ground, the cuts are landing exactly where the evidence said they'd hurt most — and the outlet that spent eight years tracking that evidence just shut down.
- Sep 6Science & Medicine
Your Craving Isn't Just a Feeling. Yale Says It's Rewiring How You Decide, in Real Time.
A Nature Mental Health study of 132 participants found craving speeds up reward-learning in people who drink and slows it down in people who use cannabis — a finding that could turn a slot-machine task into a clinical biomarker.
- Sep 6Lived Experience & Community
The Colleague Who 'Just Gets It' Isn't Being Nice to You. She's Doing Her Job.
A 36-worker qualitative study out of Australia found peer support staff treat their own recovery as professional skill — while colleagues still read a bad day as a warning sign. It lands during National Recovery Month.
- Sep 6Science & Medicine
The FDA Finally Wrote Rules for Psychedelic Trials. Now It Wants to Hear If They're Any Good.
The FDA finalized clinical trial guidance for psychedelic drugs and scheduled a Sept 14, 2026 public hearing — the regulatory infrastructure behind three National Priority Vouchers already issued this year.
- Sep 6Policy & Funding
You Have Four Days to Tell the DEA the Difference Between Kratom and 7-OH
The DEA's proposed 0.05% threshold for 7-OH products closes for public comment September 10, 2026. It's the difference between a kratom leaf staying legal and a boosted extract going Schedule I.
- Sep 6Harm Reduction
Whippets Are Still Legal Everywhere, and the Death Toll Just Went Up 578%
Nitrous oxide deaths rose from 23 to 156 a year between 2010 and 2023 — a 578% increase — while federal law still treats whippets as a 'culinary' product. A Missouri jury just put a number on what that gap costs.
- Sep 6Policy & Funding
The Strategy Says Test Strips Save Lives. The Letter Underneath It Says Don't Pay For Them.
The 2026 National Drug Control Strategy promotes naloxone and drug-checking as public health tools — while a SAMHSA letter issued weeks earlier bars grantees from buying the test strips it's promoting. A modeling study puts the cost in bodies.
- Sep 5Harm Reduction
Xylazine Is Losing Ground in the Drug Supply. What's Replacing It Is Worse, and Naloxone Still Won't Touch Either One.
Since xylazine was scheduled, medetomidine — up to 200 times more potent — has replaced it in Philadelphia's drug supply. Naloxone doesn't reverse either sedative.
- Sep 5Lived Experience & Community
Researchers Are Arguing Over What the Word 'Recovery' Even Means. People Living It Already Know.
Addiction researchers are debating whether 'recovery' as a clinical term still works. A new study on peer support workers suggests the field has been asking the wrong people.
- Sep 5Policy & Funding
The FDA Keeps Approving Nicotine Pouches Faster Than It Can Explain Why Teenagers Are the Ones Getting Hooked
Nicotine pouch sales nearly tripled in a year. The FDA is authorizing new products almost weekly while a state just taxed them at 75% wholesale — a regulatory system built for cigarettes trying to keep up with a market that changes faster than it can.
- Sep 5Science & Medicine
Relapse Isn't a Willpower Failure. Two New Studies Say It's Math the Brain Never Stopped Running.
Two 2026 studies on craving and relapse in addiction converge on the same finding: relapse runs on reward-learning circuitry, not weak willpower — and treatment that ignores that mechanism is fighting the wrong battle.
- Sep 5The Crisis, By the Numbers
The Country's Overdose Deaths Are Falling. Arizona's Are Climbing — and Washington Just Cut the One Thing Proven to Help.
US overdose deaths fell 27% in 2024. Arizona's rose 18% the same year, driven by heat, fentanyl powder, and a treatment-access gap — just as federal harm-reduction funding gets restricted.
- Sep 4The Crisis, By the Numbers
Overdose Deaths Are Down 12%. That Is Not the Same As Fixed.
CDC's newest provisional 12-month total shows 67,798 overdose deaths, down 12.3% year over year, with nonfatal ED visits declining more slowly. Here's how to read a falling number without getting complacent.
- Sep 4Policy & Funding
The DEA Isn't Banning Kratom. It's Going After the Products Designed to Act Like an Opioid.
The DEA has moved to temporarily Schedule I concentrated 7-hydroxymitragynine (7-OH), the kratom-derived compound behind the shot and tablet products that act far more like an opioid than kratom leaf or tea.
- Sep 4Science & Medicine
The FDA Is Finally Asking the Public What It Thinks About Psychedelic Therapy. That Question Was Illegal to Even Study for 40 Years.
The FDA holds a public hearing September 14 on therapeutic psychedelic use, while Compass Pathways, Usona, and Transcend Therapeutics all hold fast-track vouchers. Here's what's real, what's hype, and why the mechanism matters more than the trip.
- Sep 4Treatment & Recovery
There's Still No Pill for Cocaine. The Treatment That Works Pays You Instead — and Most States Won't Cover It.
There is no FDA-approved medication for cocaine or meth addiction. The one treatment with the strongest evidence base pays people for negative drug tests — and only five state Medicaid programs cover it.
- Sep 3Technology & Innovation
AI Just Caught Addiction Coalitions Stigmatizing Their Own Best Medicine
An AI analysis of real coalition meetings finds stigma spikes specifically around medication for opioid use disorder — proof stigma lives inside funding decisions, not just public opinion.
- Sep 3Lived Experience & Community
A Proclamation Isn't the Same Thing as Being Seen
National Recovery Month puts a number on recovery — 23 million Americans. But the psychology of getting sober runs on a currency proclamations can't count. A ground-level look at what actually sustains someone on day 274.
- Sep 3Policy & Funding
SAMHSA's Recovery Month Grants Restock a Shelf the Cuts Emptied
SAMHSA opened Recovery Month with $77 million in new grants and a $45 million young-adult sober housing supplement. Here's why that's restocking, not investment.
- Sep 3Science & Medicine
Ketamine Works Because It Unmoors You From Yourself — And Almost Nobody Is Watching How It's Sold
Ketamine clinics grew from under 100 to over 1,500 in a decade, built on a telemedicine waiver about to lapse and a psychiatric use the FDA has never approved. Here's what dissociation actually is, why it may be the mechanism, and who's checking on you.
- Sep 3Policy & Funding
The DEA Isn't Banning Kratom Again. It's Betting a Decimal Point Can Do What a Blanket Ban Couldn't.
The DEA's threshold-based ban on concentrated 7-OH closes for public comment September 10. A look at who it protects, who it strands, and why the DEA already tried the blunt version of this fight once before.
- Sep 2Arizona Watch
40,000 Doses of Naloxone Are Landing in Arizona This Month. Almost Nobody Outside County Health Will Know.
Arizona's opioid-settlement naloxone shipments from Hikma and Amneal Pharmaceuticals are landing this September — roughly 40,000 doses combined, distributed through county and state channels.
- Sep 2Lived Experience & Community
Recovery Month's Theme This Year Is 'Together.' The Psychology Says Why That's Not Just a Slogan.
National Recovery Month 2026 opened September 1 built around a stigma-reduction, storytelling theme. The psychology behind why telling your story changes how craving and shame interact.
- Sep 2The Crisis, By the Numbers
The CDC's New Overdose Dashboard Confirms the Decline Is Real. It Also Confirms It's Slowing.
CDC opened a new Overdose Prevention Data Channel on September 1, showing 67,798 provisional overdose deaths for the year ending March 2026 — down 12.3%, but the pace of decline is easing.