Addiction News

January 3, 2025

Top Headlines

Preclinical Study Finds Surges in Estrogen Promote Binge Drinking in Females

Dec. 30, 2024 — The hormone estrogen regulates binge drinking in females, causing them to 'pregame' -- consume large quantities of alcohol in the first 30 minutes after it's offered, according to a preclinical ...

Brain Structure Differences Are Associated With Early Use of Substances Among Adolescents

Dec. 30, 2024 — A study of nearly 10,000 adolescents has identified distinct differences in the brain structures of those who used substances before age 15 compared to those who did not. Many of these structural ...

New Study Reveals How Brain Stimulation Improves Cognition, Decision-Making in Mental Health Disorders

Dec. 19, 2024 — Researchers have uncovered important insights that could improve how mental health conditions are treated with brain stimulation therapy -- a treatment where electrical signals are used to stimulate ...

Researchers 'See' Vulnerability to Gaming Addiction in the Adolescent Brain

Dec. 9, 2024 — Researchers found that adolescents with more symptoms of gaming addiction showed lower brain activity in the region involved in decision-making and reward processing; this blunted response to reward anticipation is associated with higher symptoms of ...

Latest Headlines

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'I Don't Feel Your Pain': How Alcohol Increases Aggression

Dec. 2, 2024 — Alcohol's ability to increase people's pain threshold is one reason that drinking also leads to more aggressive behavior, a new study suggests. Researchers found that the less pain that study ...

Reducing Risk of Opioid Addiction While Alleviating Pain

Dec. 2, 2024 — Increasing the levels of chemicals naturally produced in the body called endocannabinoids may thwart the highly addictive nature of opioids such as morphine and oxycodone while maintaining the drugs' ...

Rats on Cocaine: When Aversion Is Not Enough

Dec. 3, 2024 — Propensity to addiction starts with the very first drug use experience, a new study ...

How Long Ring Fingers Can Point to a Love of Alcohol

Nov. 26, 2024 — There is evidence that alcohol consumption is influenced by prenatal sex steroids, so experts decided to use a sample of students for their research into the ...

Trial Shows Alcohol-Mimicking Medication Can Give Laryngeal Dystonia Patients Back Their Voice

Nov. 20, 2024 — Researchers have led a clinical trial of a drug that mimics the effects of alcohol in more than 100 patients with laryngeal dystonia, a neurological ...

Exposure to Marijuana in the Womb May Increase Risk of Addiction to Opioids Later in Life, Study Finds

Nov. 14, 2024 — Evidence has been growing to suggest that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, poses risks to the developing ...

Diabetes Medication May Be Effective in Helping People Drink Less Alcohol

Nov. 14, 2024 — New research has found that certain types of medication used to treat diabetes may be effective in reducing alcohol use. The study looked at whether a type of diabetes medication, called GLP-1 ...

Pandemic-Era Increase in Alcohol Use Persists, Research Shows

Nov. 11, 2024 — A new finds that heavy drinking among adult Americans increased more than 20 percent during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic and continued for the following two ...

Alzheimer's and Alcohol Use Disorder Share Similar Gene Expression Patterns, Study Finds

Nov. 5, 2024 — By examining RNA in hundreds of thousands of individual brain cells, scientists further support that alcohol use disorder could accelerate ...

Professional Ice Hockey: Depressive Symptoms and Burnout Linked to More Concussions

Oct. 25, 2024 — Elite ice hockey players with a history of concussion report heightened mental health symptoms, according to a new ...

How Next-Day Responsibilities Influence Cannabis Use

Nov. 15, 2024 — A study found that people are less likely to consume cannabis if they had an upcoming activity, which is consistent with other studies, and would reduce use the most for job interviews and caring for ...

Nearly 6 Percent of Pregnant Women Report Marijuana Use, U.S. Study Finds

Oct. 30, 2024 — A new study, using responses from the U.S. National Survey on Drug Use and Health, has found that about 6 percent of pregnant women reported using marijuana during the last month, and many did not ...

An Individual's Reward-Seeking Strategy Reflects Responses to Nicotine

Oct. 24, 2024 — Individualistic reward-seeking strategies predict responses to nicotine among mice living in a micro-society, according to a new ...

Methadone Much More Effective Than Buprenorphine/naloxone for Treatment Retention, With No Difference in Mortality Risk, Study Finds

Oct. 21, 2024 — People with opioid use disorder in British Columbia who received methadone had a 37- to 40-percent lower rate of treatment discontinuation compared with those who received buprenorphine/naloxone. The ...

Initial Prescriptions of Sedatives Among Older Stroke Survivors May Include Too Many Pills

Oct. 17, 2024 — Initial prescriptions of benzodiazepines, a class of drugs used to treat anxiety and sleep problems after a stroke may include too many pills for adults ages 65 or older, finds new ...

For Heavy Drinkers, Chronic Pain Associated With Alcohol Withdrawal Could Be Permanent

Oct. 17, 2024 — One of the main physical symptoms of alcohol withdrawal is 'allodynia' -- increased sensitivity to mechanical stimuli that are normally innocuous, which is a clinical sign of chronic pain. ...

Men and Women Process Pain Differently, Study Finds

Oct. 16, 2024 — According to new research, men and women rely on different biological systems for pain relief, which could help explain why our most powerful pain medications are often less effective in ...

Students Who Feel More University Connection May Be More Likely to Binge Drink, Study Finds

Oct. 10, 2024 — Mentally healthy college students who felt connected to their university were more likely to binge drink than those who did not feel connected to their university, according to a new ...

Arrhythmic Hearts After Excessive Alcohol Consumption

Oct. 9, 2024 — Researchers find cardiac arrhythmias in partygoers who had drunk a lot of ...

Cognitive Deficits from Meth and PCP Use Are Generated by a Common Neurotransmitter Switch

Sep. 26, 2024 — The effects of sustained drug abuse can manifest in many ways. Loss of memory and reduced cognitive functions are some of the effects that can persist for years. Scientists have now identified a ...

Sep. 25, 2024 — Researchers have identified a potential new approach to address the opioid overdose epidemic. Semaglutide was shown to lower opioid overdoses in people with opioid-use disorder and type 2 ...

Higher Doses of Buprenorphine May Improve Treatment Outcomes for People With Opioid Use Disorder

Sep. 25, 2024 — Adults with opioid use disorder who receive a higher daily dose of the opioid addiction treatment medication buprenorphine may have a lower risk of subsequent emergency department visits or use of ...

Calorie Labels on Alcohol Might Help Some Drinkers Maintain a Healthier Weight

Sep. 19, 2024 — Just over half of heavier drinkers in England say they would make changes to their drinking if calorie labels for alcohol were introduced, according to a new ...

Ultra-Low-Dose Ketamine Can Curb Opioid Withdrawal

Sep. 17, 2024 — A pilot study showed that a small amount of ketamine can reduce or eliminate the withdrawal symptoms associated with quitting ...

Shrinking the Pint Can Reduce Beer Sales by Almost 10%

Sep. 17, 2024 — Reducing the serving size for beer, lager and cider reduces the volume of those drinks consumed in pubs, bars and restaurants, and could be a useful alcohol control measure, according to a new study. ...

Mechanisms of How Morphine Relieves Pain Mapped out

Aug. 29, 2024 — Researchers describe the neural processes behind how morphine relieves pain. This is valuable knowledge because the drug has such serious side ...

Taking a Trip Down Memory Lane Could Be the Key to Drinking Less Alcohol

Aug. 22, 2024 — A new study suggests recollecting a previous drinking episode could put women off drinking too ...

AI Can Speed Up Drug Development

Aug. 22, 2024 — Artificial intelligence (AI) can help identify molecules that could serve as new drugs for mental health disorders. AI can be used to predict the three-dimensional structures of important receptors ...

Compound in Rosemary Extract Can Reduce Cocaine Sensitivity

Aug. 20, 2024 — A team of researchers has discovered that an antioxidant found in rosemary extract can reduce volitional intakes of cocaine by moderating the brain's reward response, offering a new therapeutic ...

Methamphetamine-Involved Psychiatric Hospitalizations Have Increased, Study Says

Aug. 16, 2024 — A new study that details trends among psychiatric hospitalizations between 2015-2019 finds that while most hospitalizations did not involve any substances, methamphetamine-related hospitalizations ...