Addiction is one of the most intensely studied conditions in modern medicine, yet even with high‑resolution brain scans and genetic tools, scientists still cannot fully explain why some people get ...

For years, addiction was seen as a matter of personal failure—a bad habit or a lack of discipline. People believed those who struggled with substance abuse could stop if they simply wanted to. But ...

Cocaine addiction may persist because the drug rewires brain circuits through a protein called DeltaFosB. This buildup ...

Health Affairs' Rob Lott interviews Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the National Institutes of Health, to discuss addiction as a brain disorder, treatments for ...

When considering the drugs most likely to cause former addicts to repeatedly relapse, opioids, cocaine, and methamphetamine ...

To explore these neural differences, the researchers used a computational approach called “network control theory” to measure how the brain transitions between different patterns of activity during ...

Addiction science is at an impasse. Rates of addiction remain high. Translational results from decades of research conducted within the dominant brain disease paradigm are shockingly meager. Meanwhile ...

Like many who have endured childhood trauma, Shannon Hicks turned to drugs at an early age. Pregnant by 16 and a mother of two by 19, she was married and living in her first home — believing she was ...

One of the key themes of the book is that understanding addiction is not just a scientific project but a humanistic and imaginative one. At various points throughout the book, I address the reader ...