Locate Treatment

A key resource for recovery information is the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

SAMHSA’s National Helpline, 1-800-662-HELP (4357) (also known as the Treatment Referral Routing Service), or TTY: 1-800-487-4889 is a confidential, free, 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year, information service, in English and Spanish, for individuals and family members facing mental and/or substance use disorders. This service provides referrals to local treatment facilities, support groups, and community-based organizations.

Also visit their online treatment locator, or send your zip code via text message: 435748 (HELP4U) to find help near you. Read more about the HELP4U text messaging service.

Dispose of Medicine

In April and October every year, the U.S. Department of Justice reminds us to dispose properly of all unused prescriptions on National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day. ​To locate a drop-off site:

1. On a computer, phone, or other device, visit google.com/maps
2. Type "drug disposal near me" in your browser search bar

Learn More

• Drugs of Abuse videos by Learn. Genetics cover a range of substances including cocaine, meth, and nicotine.
• Hepatitis C is a virus that damages the liver. It usually spreads when blood from a person infected with the hepatitis C virus enters the body of someone who is not infected. Today, most people become infected with the hepatitis C virus by sharing needles or other equipment to prepare or inject drugs. Because opioid and drug use has profound economic and health consequences on Americans, including a marked increase in acute hepatitis C infections, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acknowledges Hepatitis Awareness Month every year in May with its campaign, ​Know More Hepatitis.
  • Use the CDC's Opioid and Health Indicators Database to find counties most at risk of an HIV or a hepatitis C outbreak to help raise awareness of hepatitis testing in your community
  • Share a fact sheet, Hepatitis C: General Information or the Comic EPub, Take Action Against Hepatitis C [28 pages PDF]
• National Drug and Alcohol IQ Challenge
• Pathways to Safer Opioid Use is an interactive one-hour training that promotes the appropriate, safe, and effective use of opioids to manage chronic pain. Pathways begins with a 7-minute video that provides background on the principles of health literacy, patient communication, and opioid-related ADEs that are addressed in the training.
• How to Talk to Your Partner About Their Addiction. Rights of Rain by UWMedicine
• Understanding the Opioid Crisis: Where Do I Begin? This one hour, Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) online training is appropriate for anyone providing health information to the general public including public and medical librarians, patient or community educators, and healthcare professionals.​ This recording will help you to understand what addiction and opioids are and where you can find authoritative information to understand this complex epidemic. You also will learn how to discuss many of these resources and explore ideas for their use in community outreach education and programs in your library or organization.

There's an NIH for that

• National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is the largest supporter of the world’s research on substance use and addiction and plays a major role in HEAL (Helping to End Addiction Long-term^SM). Launched in April 2018, this initiative, funded by Congress, provides scientific solutions to the national opioid overdose crisis, including improved treatment strategies for pain as well as opioid use disorders (OUDs). The agency also sponsors National Drug and Alcohol Facts Week® (NDAFW) to stimulate educational events in communities so teens can learn what science has taught us about drug use and addiction.
• National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism advances research on drinking and alcohol's impact on health.
• National Institute of Mental Illness researches and transforms the understanding and treatment of mental illnesses including drug, alcohol, or tobacco addiction. Multiple national population surveys have found that about half of those who experience a mental illness during their lives will also experience a substance use disorder and vice versa. [Source]

News Report

Book

A memoir of unblinking honesty and poignant, laugh-out-loud humor, Blackout is the story of a woman stumbling into a new kind of adventure – the sober life she never wanted. Shining a light into her blackouts, she discovers the person she buried, as well as the confidence, intimacy, and creativity she once believed came only from a bottle. Her tale will resonate with anyone who has been forced to reinvent or struggled in the face of necessary change. It’s about giving up the thing you cherish most – but getting yourself back in return.

New York Times Bestseller

Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget | Sarah Hepola | Grand Central Publishing | 2015 | 256 pages | ISBN: 978-1455554577 | WorldCat |  

Author

Sarah Hepola’s writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, New Republic, Glamour, Slate, Guardian, and Salon, where she was a longtime editor. She has worked as a music critic, travel writer, film reviewer, sex blogger, beauty columnist, and high school English teacher. She lives in Dallas.

Official Website of Sarah Hepola

Interview

Book

When Dr. Will Cooke, an idealistic young physician just out of medical training, set up practice in the small community of Austin, Indiana, he had no idea that much of the town was being torn apart by poverty, addiction, and life-threatening illnesses. Soon, however, he would find himself at the crossroads of two unprecedented health-care disasters: an opioid epidemic and the worst drug-fueled HIV outbreak ever seen in a rural American community. Confronted with Austin’s hidden secrets, Dr. Cooke decided he had to do something about them. But in taking up the fight for Austin’s people, he would have to battle some unanticipated foes: prejudice, political resistance, an entrenched bureaucracy—and the dark despair that threatened to overwhelm his own soul. Canary in the Coal Mine offers inspiration for anyone fighting in the face of daunting obstacles — and a road map of hope for those concerned about our nation’s preparedness to deal with ever more deadly outbreaks of disease.

Canary in the Coal Mine: A Forgotten Rural Community, a Hidden Epidemic, and a Lone Doctor Battling for the Life, Health, and Soul of the People | William Cooke, MD | Tyndale Publishing | 2021 | 320 pages | ISBN: 978-1496446480 | WorldCat |  

Author

Dr. William Cooke is a fellow of the American Academy of Family Medicine and the American Society of Addiction Medicine. His work has received national recognition including being named Physician of the Year by the American Academy of Family Physicians, joining the ranks of two U.S. surgeons general by receiving the Ryan White Distinguished Leadership Award, and becoming the first physician in the nation to be awarded the Pillar of Excellence by Addiction Policy Forum. He lives with his wife and six kids in his home town of New Albany, Indiana.

Interview

 A Q&A with Dr. William Cooke Author of Canary in the Coal Mine by Scott Recker. LeoWeekly.com. June 23, 2021

Book

Keri Blakinger always lived life at full throttle. Growing up, that meant throwing herself into competitive figure skating with an all-consuming passion that led her to nationals. But when her skating career suddenly fell apart, that meant diving into self-destruction with the intensity she once saved for the ice. For the next nine years, Keri ricocheted from one dark place to the next: living on the streets, selling drugs and sex, and shooting up between classes all while trying to hold herself together enough to finish her degree at Cornell. Then, on a cold day during her senior year, the police caught her walking down the street with a Tupperware full of heroin. Her arrest made the front page of the local news and landed her behind bars for nearly two years. There, in the Twilight Zone of New York’s jails and prisons, Keri grappled with the wreckage of her missteps and mistakes as she sobered up and searched for a better path. After she walked out of her cell for the last time, Keri became a reporter dedicated to exposing our flawed prisons as only an insider could.

Corrections in Ink: A Memoir | Keri Blakinger | St Martin's Press | 2022 | 336 pages | ISBN: 978-1250272850 | WorldCat |  

Author

Keri Blakinger is an investigative reporter based in Texas, covering criminal justice and injustice for The Marshall Project. She previously worked for the Houston Chronicle and her writing has appeared everywhere from the New York Daily News to the BBC and from VICE to The New York Times. She was a member of the Chronicle's Pulitzer-finalist team in 2018 and her 2019 coverage of women's jails for The Washington Post Magazine helped earn a National Magazine Award. Before becoming a reporter, she did prison time for a drug crime in New York. Corrections in Ink is her first book.

Interview

Book

The unfettered prescribing of pain medications during the 1990s reached its peak in Purdue Pharma's campaign to market OxyContin, its new, expensive - extremely addictive - miracle painkiller. Meanwhile, a massive influx of black tar heroin - cheap, potent, and originating from one small county on Mexico's west coast, independent of any drug cartel--assaulted small town and mid-sized cities across the country, driven by a brilliant, almost unbeatable marketing and distribution system. Introducing a memorable cast of character - pharma pioneers, young Mexican entrepreneurs, narcotics investigators, survivors, and parents - Sam Quinones, an acclaimed journalist with the storytelling ability of a novelist, weaves the tale of this catastrophic collision of events.

Winner of the NBCC Award for General Nonfiction | Amazon's Best Books of the Year 2015 | Michael Botticelli, U.S. Drug Czar (Politico) Favorite Book of the Year | Angus Deaton, Nobel Prize Economics (Bloomberg/WSJ) Best Books of 2015

Dreamland (Young Adult Edition) | Sam Quinones | Bloomsbury | 2019 | 224 pages | ISBN: 978-1547601318 | Ages 12 and up | WorldCat |  

Author

A reporter for almost 30 years, Quinones lived and worked as a freelance writer in Mexico from 1994 to 2004. He spent time with gang members and governors, taco vendors and Los Tigres del Norte. He wrote about soap operas, and he lived briefly in a drug-rehabilitation clinic in Zamora, while hanging out with a street gang. He did the same with a colony of transvestites in Mazatlan, with the merchants in the Mexico City neighborhood of Tepito, and with the relegated PRI congressmen known as the Bronx. He hung out with the promoters of Tijuana's opera scene and with the makers of plaster statues of Mickey Mouse and Spiderman in that city's Colonia Libertad. In 1998, he received an Alicia Patterson Fellowship, and Columbia University's Maria Moors Cabot Prize in 2008, for a career of excellence in reporting about Latin America. He returned to the United States in 2004 to take a job with the LA Times, where for 10 years he wrote stories about immigrants, street gangs, drug trafficking, and marijuana growers in Northern California.

Official Website of Sam Quinones

Interview

Book

Abandoned by his parents as a toddler, Jesse Thistle and his two brothers were cut off from all they knew when they were placed in the foster care system. Eventually living with their paternal grandparents, the children often clashed with their tough-love attitude. Worse, the ghost of Jesse’s drug-addicted father seemed to haunt the memories of every member of the family. Soon, Jesse succumbed to a self-destructive cycle of drug and alcohol addiction and petty crime, resulting in more than a decade living on and off the streets. Facing struggles many of us cannot even imagine, Jesse knew he would die unless he turned his life around. Through sheer perseverance and newfound love, he managed to find his way back into the loving embrace of his Indigenous culture and family.

#1 National Bestseller | Winner, Kobo Emerging Writer Prize Nonfiction | Winner, Indigenous Voices Awards

From the Ashes: My Story of Being Indigenous, Homeless, and Finding My Way | Jesse Thistle | Atria Books | 2021 | 368 pages | ISBN: 978-1982182946 | WorldCat |

Author

Once a high school dropout, Jesse Thistle is now a rising Indigenous scholar. In his memoir, From the Ashes, he chronicles his life on the streets and how he overcame trauma and addiction to discover the truth about who he is. Jesse is an assistant professor in Humanities at York University in Toronto, has won a Governor General’s Academic Medal in 2016, and is a Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation Scholar and a Vanier Scholar. A frequent keynote speaker, he lives in Hamilton, Ontario, with his wife, Lucie, and is at work on multiple projects, including his next book.

Official Website of Jesse Thistle

Interview

Book

In kindergarten, Jarrett Krosoczka's teacher asks him to draw his family, with a mommy and a daddy. But Jarrett's family is much more complicated than that. His mom is an addict, in and out of rehab, and in and out of Jarrett's life. His father is a mystery; Jarrett doesn't know where to find him, or even what his name is. Jarrett lives with his grandparents, two very loud, very loving, very opinionated people who had thought they were through with raising children until Jarrett came along. Jarrett goes through his childhood trying to make his non-normal life as normal as possible, finding a way to express himself through drawing even as so little is being said to him about what's going on. Only as a teenager can Jarrett begin to piece together the truth of his family, reckoning with his mother and tracking down his father. Hey, Kiddo is a profoundly important memoir about growing up in a family grappling with addiction and finding the art that helps you survive.

A National Book Award Finalist - All Iowa Reads

Hey, Kiddo | Jarrett J Krosoczka | Graphix | 2018 | 320 pages | ISBN: 978-0545902489 | Young Adult | WorldCat |  

Author

Jarrett J. Krosoczka is a two-time winner of the Children’s Choice Book Awards Third to Fourth Grade Book of the Year and has been a finalist for the prestigious Will Eisner Comic Industry Award. He has delivered two TED Talks, which have collectively accrued more than two million views online. Krosoczka has been featured on NPR and can be heard weekly on The Book Report with JJK on SiriusXM’s Kids Place Live, a show focusing on books, authors, and reading. His Punk Farm, Lunch Lady, and Platypus Police Squad series are all currently in development for film. Krosoczka lives in western Massachusetts with his wife and children, and their pugs, Ralph and Frank.

Official Website of Jarrett J Krosoczka

Interview

Book

In his groundbreaking memoir, The Weight of Air, David chronicles his struggle to overcome mental illness and addiction. By age nineteen, he'd been through medical detox, inpatient rehab, twelve-step programs, and a halfway house. He saw his drug use as a symptom of depression, but the experts insisted that addiction was the problem. Over the next thirteen years, he went from one relapse to the next, drowning in guilt, shame, and secrets, until he finally found an evidence-based treatment that not only saved his life, but helped him thrive. With grit, humor, and brutal honesty, David's story exposes the danger in traditional recovery models: they actually increase stigma and the risk of overdose, relapse, and death.

2022 International Book Award in Addiction & Recovery | 2022 Indie Excellence Award in Addiction & Recovery | 2022 Memoir Book Prize in Addiction & Recovery | 2022 Independent Press Award in Addiction & Recovery

The Weight of Air: A Story of the Lies about Addiction and the Truth about Recovery | David Poses | Sandra Jonas Publishing | 2021 | 262 pages | ISBN: 978-1954861992 | WorldCat |  |

Author

David Poses is a writer, speaker, and activist. After hiding his struggle with depression and opioids for twenty years, he started opening up and challenging conventional addiction wisdom. He has been published by the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and New York Daily News and has appeared on national TV programs, including The Doctors TV Show, and numerous radio shows and podcasts. With candor, humor, and a unique perspective informed by science and experience, David advocates for evidence-based approaches to drug policy, prevention, and treatment. He lives in New York with his wife and two kids.

Official Website of David Poses

Interview