Posts by Nate Anderson

Social media feeds are rife with memes depicting exhausted women guzzling wine in giant glasses, with phrases like, “Technically, you’re not drinking alone if your kids are home.” They refer to wine as “mommy juice” or to the hour of “wine o’clock” — a time that all moms apparently look forward to as a way…

Victoria Toline would hunch over the kitchen table, steady her hands and draw a bead of liquid from a vial with a small dropper. It was a delicate operation that had become a daily routine — extracting ever tinier doses of the antidepressant she had taken for three years, on and off, and was desperately…

Over at Reason, Jacob Sullum has written a much-needed corrective to the prevailing narrative about opioid addiction — that there is a widespread problem of “accidental addiction” among pain patients. It’s a destructive narrative, because it makes it more difficult for people in real pain to find doctors willing to treat them. From Sullum: Contrary…

By The Editorial Board An overdose is often a lonely way to die. Overdoses happen when a toxic amount of a drug, or a combination of drugs, overwhelms the body’s basic functions, first slowing and eventually stopping the brain’s drive to breathe. If someone notices the signs of an overdose — lips turning blue, restricted…

The Food and Drug Administration declared the popular herbal product kratom to be an opioid on Tuesday, opening a new front in its battle to get people to stop using it. New research shows kratom acts in the brain just as opioids do, FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said in a statement. And he said…

Club Soda, a sober social movement, is encouraging people to drink less alcohol and feel great about it You can be sober and social. That’s the idea behind Club Soda, an event series and community for “sober curious” people who want to drink less, or not at all not, while still having fun. Ruby Warrington,…

They say: Addiction is a choice and you should just stop. I do not understand the belief held by some that one chooses to become addicted. If addiction is defined as a compulsion to do something or behave a certain way repetitiously regardless of the negative consequences, I find little logic in anyone doing this by choice. Especially if it…