The media has become somewhat aware that you can't overdose from touching fentanyl, while continuing to propagate other myths every day.

The most famous anti-smoking campaign in history was branded, simply, as @truth. It was launched in 2000 by the American Legacy Foundation, a nonprofit organization funded with $1.5 billion from the ...

The need for harm reduction around alcohol use is both pressing and obvious. Yet too often—in a field dominated on the one hand by concerns over use of banned drugs, and on the other by the ubiquity ...

Tamera Lynn Stewart had been taking prescribed opioids for 12 years to treat her chronic pain, following some cancer-related surgeries. Then one day in April 2018, her doctor told her he could no ...

Drugs, troublemaking, bad grades. At the close of 1968, Sidi was expelled from school. Now, the party could begin in earnest. He made music and lived in a filthy shared apartment, pretentiously ...

Confrontational counseling, sometimes known as attack therapy, is most commonly associated with so-called “therapeutic communities” for people with addictions. It is worth noting that the term ...

Tanesia DeMacon is no stranger to jail. She estimates she was arrested no fewer than 15 times, starting at the age of 18 and continuing throughout her 20s. “I used to joke that county jail was school ...

[This article is an adapted excerpt from On Opium: Pain, Pleasure, and Other Matters of Substance, which was published in Canada by Goose Lane Editions in September. An audiobook will be available ...

It’s afternoon on the Monday after the Fourth of July. My daughters, ages five and six, sit perched on the edges of their beds. They are surrounded by a wealth of toys. Stuffed animals, dolls and ...

Kenneth Anderson founded HAMS (Harm Reduction, Abstinence and Moderation Support) in 2007 as a free online support group for people trying to change their drinking through harm reduction. He was ...

Calls to eradicate coca fields in the Peruvian Andes began a century ago as part of a mission civilisatrice led by eugenicist Enrique Paz Soldán, long before concern over cocaine and the subsequent ...

[This article is excerpted from UNDOING DRUGS: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction, by Maia Szalavitz. Copyright © 2021. Available from ...