Tag: drugs

For 50 years, Enthusiastic Sobriety programs have offered to help teenagers kick drugs and alcohol. But former followers say ES doesn’t save lives—it destroys them.

In an excerpt from her recovery memoir, Erin Khar recalls the depths of her self-destruction as a heroin addict.

A mother confronts the painful truths of trying to save a son who’s a danger not only to himself, but to the rest of the family as well.

“When you lay down to go to sleep, you better be prayed up, because there’s no guarantee you’re waking up.”

Jaquira Díaz witnesses her father’s rebellious fight for a better life, and her homeland’s fight for its place in the world.

Three psycho-spiritual “events” of the 1970s — involving Philip K. Dick, Robert Anton Wilson, and Terence and Dennis McKenna — had a strange synchronicity.

On a night out in the Hollywood hills, Valentina Valentini’s lifelong role-reversal with her mother becomes upended.

“Outside Looking In” dramatizes the discovery of LSD and the cult of personality surrounding Timothy Leary. Our reviewer drops acid and thinks about how, for women, it can be safer to be a downer.

Journalist Evan Ratliff has uncovered the shocking reach of Paul Le Roux’s criminal enterprise — a global network of pawns, most of whom were unaware of the full extent of the empire.

Health care and medical sponsored content from influencers is growing on Instagram. But is it ethical?

Chris Heath at GQ interviews nine sober musicians on thriving creatively.

Nic and his father David Sheff’s memoirs about grappling with Nic’s addiction are the basis for the new movie ‘Beautiful Boy.’ It was important to them that the movie communicate what addiction really is — an illness.

Aaron Thier contemplates the connections between privilege, addiction, and recovery.

Leaning in doesn’t work in real life. When I was writing, I kind of hoped that it would. I think I hoped that the answers are always within me. And when I reached the end of the book, it was like: there are no answers.

Michael Pollan talks about using psychedelic drugs, escaping his own ego, and the therapeutic potential of seeing yourself spread out over the landscape like a coat of paint.

After a profound shift in thinking about an unfairly stigmatized plant, Bolivia is ready to spread the gospel of coca.

Lance Armstrong ran a well-oiled cycling machine, and a well-oiled doping factory. Maybe those are the same thing.

Baltimore’s Gun Trace Task Force were celebrated for getting firearms off the street, until detectives discovered they were also robbing criminals of guns, drugs and money.

Amy Long on how it feels to fight for the man you don’t want.

“How do I tell my kids that their dad just died? What are the words?”

Aaron Gilbreath considers the impact a live Jane’s Addiction recording has had on him, and the effect heroin had on the band’s — and his own — creativity.

Inventing maladies and marketing drugs to relieve them isn’t a new m.o. for pharmaceutical companies. OxyContin is its fullest and most terrible expression.

Seven years after a vicious drug cartel massacre, residents are still looking for answers about the fates of their loved ones.

“But to bring cannabis to the region of the US where states are deeply red and religious and where pot is both a social taboo and a ticket to jail, Decker and others are harnessing their devotion to their faiths to evangelize for it.”

Carol Blevins’ work as a confidential informant put 13 members of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas behind bars. Now they want revenge.

At Toronto Life, Katherine Laidlaw tells the story of Darryl Gebein, who got hooked one of the most dangerous opioids on the market.

In the New Yorker, Naomi Fry writes about Cat Marnell’s new memoir in a piece that’s part review, part analysis of women’s addiction stories.

It took Leah Carroll years to determine that her mother was murdered by an organized crime syndicate as a suspected drug informant.

The story of Zaine, Arianna, and Zoie Pulliam — three kids under 17 living in South Charleston, West Virginia. Deemed “opiate orphans,” they exemplify a generation of children whose parents have died of drug overdoses as a result of the opioid epidemic.

This week, read stories by Mark MacKinnon, Rachel Cusk, Carmen Maria Machado, Suketu Mehta, and an excerpt from Bill Hayes.