The Narcotic Farm: The Rise and Fall of America’s First Prison for Drug Addicts is a book exploring an experiment to deal with addicted criminals.
The farm was the first place to look at drug addicts as patients that were in need of treatment instead of criminals in need of punishment. The farm did experiments [...]

Smokefree from the UK National Health Service provides useful advice for smokers everywhere. It is targeted to those living in the United Kingdom (sensibly, given their mission) but provides information anyone can benefit from, such as: “you are up to four times more likely to succeed if you use NHS support and stop smoking [...]

Alcohol major cause of drug rehab admissions, again
Alcohol has again topped harder drugs like ice and heroin as the addiction which drives the most Australians into crisis rehab. Seventy per cent of people admitted to the major not-for-profit rehab centre Odyssey House, based in Sydney, in the past financial year listed alcohol as among [...]

Brett Favre’s addiction to painkillers (1996)
After the seizure had ended and he had come to his senses, Favre looked into a sea of concerned medical faces and saw Packers associate team physician John Gray. “You’ve just suffered a seizure, Brett,” Gray told him. “People can die from those.” Favre’s heart sank. Upon hearing from [...]

From the United States National Institute of Health, Principles of Drug Addiction Treatment: A Research Based Guide – Why can’t drug addicts quit on their own?
Nearly all addicted individuals believe in the beginning that they can stop using drugs on their own, and most try to stop without treatment. However, most of these attempts result [...]

National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIH on how effective is drug addiction treatment:
According to several studies, drug treatment reduces drug use by 40 to 60 percent and significantly decreases criminal activity during and after treatment. For example, a study of therapeutic community treatment for drug offenders (See Treatment Section) demonstrated that arrests for violent and [...]

September is National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month. Voices of recovery…

His Life Nearly Destroyed by Drugs, Robert Downey Jr. Found Love and Fought His Way to Recovery.

“In fact, with a few exceptions most residential programs run along broadly similar lines. The typical stay is a month, which might not be optimal but is as much as most insurance plans covered back in the 1980s when the programs were designed.”

From the Center for Disease Control (Aug, 2008):
The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism defines binge drinking as a pattern of drinking that brings a person’s blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to 0.08 grams percent or above. This typically happens when men consume 5 or more drinks, and when women consume 4 or more [...]