Addiction

In May 2025, comedian Nick Kroll appeared on the Armchair Expert podcast hosted by Dax Shepard to talk about the intervention he coordinated for his friend and fellow comedian John Mulaney. Beyond his talent as a stand-up comedian, Kroll is known to be a stand-up guy and a great friend, so he covered the costs of retaining a professional addiction interventionist. He also offered to

Case management has been an important aspect of addiction recovery since the early 20th century. Essentially, it refers to the strategy of delivering treatment services based on the specific needs of patients. It’s often applied to the treatment of substance abuse and chemical dependence because such conditions often require complex support. Clinical case management began in the early 20th century with the Visiting Nurse Service

To a certain extent, substance abuse and neurochemical dependence are highly subjective medical conditions. For example, not everyone who is negatively affected by substance abuse will need to follow a treatment plan. Likewise, some people think or feel some substances are harder to quit than others. This subjective aspect of addiction treatment explains a maxim often heard in recovery circles: “The hardest drugs to quit

In February 2025, the son of British music icon Rod Stewart shared some details with the Daily Mail newspaper about his recent admission to a rehabilitation facility in Southern California. Sean Stewart is 44 years old. As the second of eight siblings, he has a history of substance abuse, addiction, and relapse. In the Daily Mail interview, Sean explained he checked into rehab voluntarily. However,

In the January 2022 issue of the Health Affairs journal, the Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse wrote about the need to make addiction treatment more pragmatic. Dr. Nora Volkow is a research psychiatrist who has pointed out the continuing failures of the “War on Drugs.” She argues that the 100,000 overdose deaths reported in 2021 underscore an urgent need for reforming existing

One of the most intriguing proposals in the complex field of neurochemistry appeared in the scientific journal Nature in November 2024. French researchers used an advanced optogenetics technique to modulate the dopamine levels of laboratory mice. In other words, they used a neurochemical remote control to turn brain cells on and off with light. One finding from this study is particularly interesting in the context

During the 2022 publicity tour for Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, a musical biopic about the career of the famous American pop music satirist, actor Daniel Radcliffe revisited parts of his life when he was struggling to recover from alcoholism in 2010. Radcliffe began drinking heavily as a way to deal with the pressures of fame and growing up in the public eye as the

In pharmaceutical research, substances that affect the mind or behavior are defined as psychoactive. This definition extends to substances that alter perception, mood, consciousness, or cognition. Then you have psychotropic substances, which are also psychoactive but are mostly used to treat mental health conditions. Psychoactives can range from tobacco and coffee to liquor and methamphetamine. Psychotropics may include antidepressants such as Prozac, antipsychotics like Haldol,

All psychoactive substances have the potential to affect normal physical activity to a certain degree. Impairment is a hallmark of drinking too much. Many people who drink at nightclubs call it a night when they’re too drunk to be on the dance floor. With opiates, the impairment is different in the sense that it forces your breathing and heart rate to slow down, thus hindering

In March 2023, during a guest appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, rapper Macklemore spoke about his struggles with relapse at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which kept many people in recovery from attending meetings at Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs. For the 39-year-old musician, it was the second relapse since he had begun his journey to recovery four years before