How to prevent substance abuse in teens & young adults According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA), an estimated ten percent of Americans aged 12 and older currently struggle with a substance use disorder (SUD) of some kind. In California, nine percent of the total population met the criteria for an SUD in 2021. Many of those people began using substances in their childhood and teenage years. Nine out of ten adults who currently struggle with substance abuse first began using substances before the age of 18. That means prevention efforts must begin e ..read more

Medication Assisted Treatment  For those who struggle with addiction to fentanyl and other opioids, the real challenge is not so much getting sober, but staying sober. Oftentimes, those exiting outpatient treatment for substance use disorder return back to the environments where their substance abuse first began. There, surrounded by triggers, stressors, and bad influences, they often begin using again. A good option for someone in this situation is a sober living environment (SLE), also known as a sober living home (SLH). Sober living homes/SLEs are structured residential facilities wher ..read more

Fentanyl Use in Teens: What to Look For, and How to Respond The opioid epidemic has hit the nation hard, and California has been no exception. But while always tragic, the group most affected by the opioid crisis has historically been older adults between the ages of 35 and 45. Teens and young adults, meanwhile, were considered less vulnerable. That appears to be changing. Here’s a sampling of some of the recent headlines: 15-year-old girl died from suspected overdose in Roseville, police say Sacramento woman arrested after 14-year-old’s suspected overdose death in Lodi Teen charged with murd ..read more

Opioid usage and overdose rates in the United States are at all-time highs, with 2021 the highest year on record. One of the main drivers of the crisis in recent years has been fentanyl, an extremely powerful synthetic opioid prescribed for pain management.  Fentanyl is considered 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. Because of its high potential for abuse, it’s classified under Schedule II of the Controlled Substances Act. Yet, despite these tight controls, fentanyl use has become widespread across the country, both due to illegal trafficking as well as ove ..read more

It is now one hundred years since drugs were first banned — and all through this long century of waging war on drugs, we have been told a story about addiction by our teachers and by our governments. This story is so deeply ingrained in our minds that we take it for granted. It seems obvious. It seems manifestly true. Until I set off three and a half years ago on a 30,000-mile journey for my new book, Chasing The Scream: The First And Last Days of the War on Drugs, to figure out what is really driving the drug war, I believed it too. But what I learned on the road is that almost everythi ..read more

BUFFALO, N.Y. — After three defendants fatally overdosed in a single week last year, it became clear that Buffalo’s ordinary drug treatment court was no match for the heroin and painkiller crisis. Now the city is experimenting with the nation’s first opioid crisis intervention court, which can get users into treatment within hours of their arrest instead of days, requires them to check in with a judge every day for a month instead of once a week, and puts them on strict curfews. Administering justice takes a back seat to the overarching goal of simply keeping defendants alive. “The idea behi ..read more