Every year the White House sends Congress a budget request, and every year the numbers for addiction and mental health programs look alarming. Then Congress writes its own version....

Here’s the Argument on Each Side. Earlier this year, the federal agency that oversees addiction and mental health funding told its grantees they can no longer use federal dollars...

If you’ve started or continued opioid use disorder treatment through a phone or video visit anytime since 2020, you’ve been relying on a rule the federal government still hasn’t...

Mental Health Five days ago, the Department of Health and Human Services announced it had already awarded $247.9 million in grants to communities across the country for addiction treatment,...

Addiction Fight Most people don’t get a research institute named after their recovery. Darryl Rouson did. Not as a courtesy, either. He spent years pushing the legislation that eventually...

That Might Change. If someone in Bay County gets involuntarily committed under the Baker Act, or ordered into treatment under the Marchman Act, the paperwork behind that isn’t private....

Approach Could Help If someone is addicted to opioids, there are FDA-approved medications that measurably help. Same with alcohol. Methamphetamine and cocaine don’t have that option, which is exactly...

Pick up a bottle of wine or a six-pack, and the label will warn you about drinking while pregnant and about operating machinery. It won’t mention cancer. That’s not...

A nurse struggling with addiction is rarely the person anyone pictures when they hear the word. They are often the one everyone else on the floor relies on. That’s...

Substance Until recently, you could walk into a gas station almost anywhere in Florida and buy something that looked like candy, worked on the same receptors as an opioid,...

There’s a state-run addiction program with an actual office on 15th Street in Panama City, and most people in Bay County have never heard of it. It’s called the...

Except in One Group Florida adults, taken as a whole, drink less riskily than the rest of the country. Roughly 32 percent of Floridians report risky drinking compared to...

Roughly one in six adults in Florida binge drinks at least once a month. That’s the actual number, somewhere between 16 and 17 percent depending on which year’s survey...

Overdose deaths fell nationally again last year, roughly 14 percent, the third year in a row that number has dropped. That’s real and it’s good. It’s also not the...

Here’s What Actually Predicts It. Somewhere between 40 and 60 percent of people treated for a substance use disorder relapse within the first year. That number gets repeated constantly,...

For the last few years, Ozempic and Wegovy have mostly been a weight loss story. Doctors are now looking at something else these drugs might do, something that has...

If you’ve ever called your insurance company about treatment and gotten a runaround, you already know this fight. A confusing denial letter. A provider list full of people who...

Here’s What the Research Says You’re probably reading this because someone you have heard inpatient treatment is the answer, and you want to know if that’s actually true or...

It has been a busy few days at Florida Springs Wellness and Recovery Center. Bay County marked International Overdose Awareness Day, and local officials showed up here at Florida...

Good news doesn’t come around often when discussing overdose numbers, so when it does, it’s worth actually looking at instead of just repeating the headline. Bay County’s overdose numbers...

Ask most people what the Good Samaritan law protects them from, and they’ll say something about drugs. That’s if they are familiar with it at all. Fentanyl, pills, and...

If you give or sell someone drugs in Florida right now, that could be enough to charge you with murder. It doesn’t matter if you’re a stranger who sold...

Meeting People At Their Worst Moment You don’t always get a second chance handed to you in a hospital bed. Most people who survive an overdose and get discharged...

You might have heard someone say that handing out Narcan gives people an excuse to keep using drugs. Maybe you have seen people who are just a little bit...

Many people go into withdrawal expecting it to feel like it did in the past. You may have detoxed off of pain pills or heroin before and remember a...

Family members often struggle to distinguish between actions that help a loved one recover and actions that improperly shield them from the natural consequences of addiction. Enabling behaviors usually...

Addiction affects both the brain and daily behavior, we talk about those things all the time here. Treatment that relies on a single intervention often fails to address the...

First-time attendance at a recovery support group can be scary. This is a very serious topic, as there are absolutely many people who have never attended a support group,...

Completion of residential treatment marks the first step in a much longer process. We talk about this all the time here, because it’s so important. When you leave a...

(Or Managing New Stress Once You Get a Job) In some respects, returning to a job after drug and alcohol treatment is a luxury many don’t have. Drug and...