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

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 ...

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 ...

“The Evolving Field of Opioid Treatment” was the theme of the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence (AATOD) conference, held in Philadelphia in October. But the field has been ...

Calls to defund the police are picking up national momentum from Los Angeles to New York City. The Minneapolis City Council recently voted to abolish its police department. This may seem radical to ...

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 ...

[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 ...

There must be all kinds of unexplored applications for harm reduction, but the one I always come back to is bulimia. This is partly because, like drug use, it revolves around a specific behavior—easy ...

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 ...

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 ...

Alcoholics Anonymous and its 12 Steps, with their prescription of abstinence, have dominated America’s response to addiction for a half-century or more. Yet despite the urges of advocates and the ...

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 ...