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 medicines [...]

Masekela’s message for ‘addictive’ SA One of the biggest names in world music – trumpeter Hugh Masekela – has said the message behind his latest album Time is to help the fight against drug and alcohol addiction in his native South Africa. Masekela himself is a recovering addict, having gone into rehabilitation six years ago [...]

Actor, Who Wanted To Be A Better Dad, Is Glad To Be Sober “I knocked that on the head, I haven’t had a drop in six months,” the Irish actor said Monday on The Late Show With David Letterman. “It was tough. It was something that I did every day for about fifteen years so [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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

The six steps that are included in many addition treatment programs are: detoxification, diagnosis, cognitive therapy, family therapy, medication and some 12-step type program. WebMD has an article examining Rehab’s Role in Treating Addiction Experts now agree that addiction is a brain disease with a genetic component, Gordon says. But it’s also affected by behavior. [...]