137 Fun Facts About Addiction Recovery

In which Ohio city did Bill W. and Dr. Bob meet in 1935, founding Alcoholics Anonymous?

Akron is where Bill W., on a failing business trip and tempted to drink, worked through church directories until Henrietta Seiberling led him to Dr. Bob.

AA's founding date, June 10, 1935, marks what?

Dr. Bob's last drink came after one more relapse at a medical convention, about a month after he first met Bill W. and stopped drinking.

What was Dr. Bob Smith's medical specialty?

Colorectal surgery was Dr. Bob's specialty, and for years he fitted it around his drinking: sober until the afternoon, then sedatives to steady himself for work next morning.

Through which Christian revivalist movement did AA's founders meet?

The Oxford Group stressed confession, restitution and surrender to God, ideas Bill W. reworked into the Twelve Steps after the alcoholics broke away from it.

Which old friend visited Bill Wilson in November 1934, refused a drink and said he'd 'got religion'?

Ebby Thacher could not stay sober himself and relapsed for decades, yet Bill W. looked after him for the rest of his life; he died sober in 1966.

Which New York doctor treated Bill W. and framed alcoholism as an 'allergy' plus mental obsession?

William Silkworth taught Bill W. to see alcoholism as an illness of body and mind, the idea that later won over Dr. Bob; his letter still opens the Big Book as 'The Doctor's Opinion'.

Why is AA's basic text nicknamed 'the Big Book'?

The first edition used thick paper, which made the volume unusually bulky; the fellowship, which had no name yet, then took its own from the book's title.

Where in the Big Book are the Twelve Steps first laid out?

Start of 'How It Works', Chapter 5, is where Bill W. stretched the six principles early members passed on by word of mouth into twelve numbered Steps.

In the first of the Twelve Steps, members admit that they are what?

Powerless reflects a doctor's theory Bill W. adopted: that alcoholics have a physical 'allergy' which makes it impossible to stop once they start drinking.

What is the term for the experienced member who guides a newcomer through the Twelve Steps?

Sponsor was not yet a word AA used when Bill W., fighting an urge to drink, sought out Dr. Bob; AA traces the practice to that meeting, where helping another drinker kept Bill sober too.

Which step involves reviewing a written moral inventory with another person?

The Fifth Step has members admit 'to God, to ourselves, and to another human being' what the Fourth Step's inventory found, a confession borrowed from the religious movement where AA's founders met.

Which tycoon declined to bankroll AA, fearing money would spoil it?

John D. Rockefeller Jr. refused the millions Bill W. hoped for, so AA learned to pay its own way; self-support became one of the Twelve Traditions adopted in 1950.

Which theologian is credited with the Serenity Prayer, adopted by AA from about 1941?

Reinhold Niebuhr's prayer reached AA in 1941 when a member spotted it in a New York Herald Tribune memorial notice; another member paid to have it printed on wallet cards.

The nun Sister Ignatia gave each departing alcoholic patient what, to hand back before any drink?

A Sacred Heart medallion went to each patient leaving her ward, with a request to return it before taking a drink; AA's sobriety tokens are often traced back to that custom.

Sobriety coins are traditionally the size of what?

A poker chip is the usual size, and often that is just what it was: many groups handed out inexpensive coloured poker chips to mark sober time, and AA itself has no official token.

Approximately how many members did AA estimate it had worldwide in 2021?

About 2 million, by its own estimate, spread over about 180 countries; yet it took the first four years to produce just 100 sober members.

A 2020 Cochrane review found Twelve-Step Facilitation for AA produced higher rates of what?

Continuous abstinence was more common after AA-based programmes than after therapies such as CBT, and healthcare costs were lower; one of its authors credited the support members give one another.

Which early AA member founded what became the National Council on Alcoholism to teach that alcoholism is a disease?

Marty Mann, one of the first women to get sober in AA, set up the committee in 1944 and toured the country telling doctors and legislators that alcoholism was an illness, not a moral failing.

Which famous psychiatrist told an American patient that only a spiritual awakening could cure his drinking, advice that reached AA's founders?

Carl Jung told Rowland Hazard his case was nearly hopeless without a spiritual experience; Hazard's circle passed the idea to Bill W., who exchanged letters with Jung about it in 1961.

Which fellowship did Jimmy Kinnon help start in California in 1953?

Narcotics Anonymous treats all drugs as equal, alcohol included, so its literature speaks of 'addiction' rather than any one substance; it began as a few meetings around Los Angeles.

Which twelve-step fellowship held its first meeting in Los Angeles on Friday the 13th of September 1957?

Gamblers Anonymous was started by Jim Willis, an AA member who adapted its programme for compulsive gamblers; a newspaper columnist's publicity drew thirteen people to that first meeting.

Bill W. first floated AA's Twelve Traditions in 1946 in the fellowship's own monthly magazine, known by what name?

The Grapevine was started in June 1944 by six New York members and became AA's national journal a year later, billed as 'an AA meeting in print'.

What does SMART stand for in the secular programme SMART?

Self-Management and Recovery Training, founded in 1994, swaps the higher power for tools from cognitive behavioural therapy, on the principle that people can learn to manage their own behaviour.

What does Rational Recovery call the 'addictive voice'?

The Beast is Jack Trimpey's name for the craving itself: every thought in favour of drinking is its 'bark', and from 1999 he cancelled the group's meetings as no longer needed.

Which programme did sociologist Jean Kirkpatrick found in the 1970s as an alternative to AA?

Women for Sobriety swaps the Steps for 13 statements meant to build self-worth and shed guilt, because Kirkpatrick saw low self-esteem as the core problem for women who drink.

What was Bill W.'s profession before he co-founded Alcoholics Anonymous?

Stockbroker Bill W. made his name touring the country to size up companies for investors, until drink wrecked his career; a failing deal later took him to Ohio and to Dr. Bob.

The Christ-centred programme Celebrate Recovery began in 1991 at which megachurch?

Saddleback Church's John Baker, drawing on his own alcoholism, founded it with pastor Rick Warren's backing, pairing the Twelve Steps with eight principles drawn from the Beatitudes.

Which former First Lady disclosed her alcoholism and founded a treatment centre in Rancho Mirage?

Betty Ford's family staged an intervention in 1978 over her drinking and pill use; four years later she co-founded the centre that carries her name.

Which Minnesota treatment pioneer, begun in a lakeside farmhouse in 1949, merged with a famous California clinic in 2014?

Hazelden came to treat alcoholism as a disease, giving alcoholics an alternative to the mental hospital and a simple programme built on AA's Twelve Steps.

A nationwide sober-living network began in 1975 when residents of a closing halfway house did what?

Took over the lease themselves: Paul Molloy, a former Senate staffer, and his fellow residents kept the Maryland house going when money troubles shut the halfway house that had been treating them.

Which California drug-rehab commune, founded in 1958 by ex-AA member Charles Dederich, later turned into a violent cult?

Synanon began in a seaside flat on a $33 unemployment cheque; two decades later its founder was charged after members left a rattlesnake in the mailbox of a lawyer who had sued it.

The DSM-5 (2013) merged 'substance abuse' and 'substance dependence' into a single diagnosis graded how?

Mild, moderate or severe is set by how many of 11 criteria a person meets; for alcohol, the 2013 rewrite also dropped 'legal problems' as a criterion and added craving.

Which is the only behavioural (non-substance) addiction recognised in the DSM-5-TR?

Gambling disorder was moved beside the drug addictions in 2013 because it works on the brain's reward system in much the same way; internet gaming is only listed for further study.

The first US drug court, sending addicted offenders to supervised treatment instead of jail, opened in 1989 in which Florida city?

Miami's court was an answer to the crack epidemic that was filling its jails; a judge tracks each participant's treatment and drug tests, a model since copied across the country.

Which neurotransmitter's signalling gives a drug and its cues their pull on attention in addiction?

Dopamine drives wanting rather than liking: in addiction the system grows sensitised, so drug cues trigger craving even when the drug itself no longer brings much pleasure.

Severe alcohol withdrawal, which can bring seizures and hallucinations, is usually treated with which class of drug?

Benzodiazepines such as diazepam calm an overexcited nervous system; the most dangerous stage, the DTs, usually starts two to four days after the last drink and can kill if untreated.

Which medical term comes from a Latin phrase meaning 'to go off the furrow' while ploughing?

Delirium comes from the Latin delirare, built on lira, a furrow: the mind strays like a plough off its line; the shaking form seen in alcohol withdrawal is delirium tremens.

Which vitamin is routinely given to heavy drinkers in withdrawal to prevent the brain damage of Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome?

Thiamine, vitamin B1, runs short in heavy drinkers because poor nutrition leaves the gut less able to absorb it; untreated, the deficiency can cause confusion and lasting memory loss.

Which medication, sold as Narcan, reverses an opioid overdose by blocking opioid receptors?

Naloxone works within minutes but wears off in 30 to 90, sooner than many opioids do, so the overdose can return and emergency help is still needed.

Methadone, used in maintenance treatment for opioid use disorder, was developed in the 1930s in which country?

Germany's chemists Max Bockmühl and Gustav Ehrhart made it in the late 1930s as a painkiller; the US approved it for pain in 1947, and only in the 1960s was it turned against heroin addiction.

Which pattern does the US alcohol institute NIAAA define as drinking that brings blood alcohol to 0.08 percent or higher?

Binge drinking usually means five or more drinks for men in about two hours, or four for women, who tend to reach the same blood alcohol level on fewer drinks.

Which drug, sold as Antabuse, makes drinking unpleasant by letting acetaldehyde build up?

Disulfiram became a medicine by accident in 1940s Denmark, when drug-company researchers testing it on themselves as a worm treatment felt ill after drinking.

Which industry accidentally revealed the Antabuse chemical's effect on drinkers?

Rubber making used the chemical and its close relatives to speed vulcanisation, and in 1937 an American plant doctor reported that workers handling them fell ill when they drank.

Which drug, sold as Vivitrol in a monthly injection, blocks opioid effects and cuts alcohol cravings?

Naltrexone is also the basis of the Sinclair Method, in which it is taken alongside drinking so that alcohol stops feeling rewarding and the habit gradually fades.

Contingency management, where patients earn vouchers for abstinence, was introduced in the 1990s for which drug?

Cocaine dependence was where Stephen Higgins's team first tried it in 1991, handing out vouchers for each drug-free urine sample that patients could trade for goods.

Motivational interviewing, described by William Miller in 1983, helps clients resolve what?

Ambivalence, wanting to change and not wanting to at the same time, is drawn out rather than argued with: the method grew from work with problem drinkers, where confrontation tends to backfire.

In Prochaska and DiClemente's stages of change, which stage comes right before 'action'?

Preparation, when people intend to act soon and start taking small steps, was missing from the model's 1983 version and added later; the model itself grew out of studies of smokers quitting.

The 1970s 'Rat Park' experiments found rats consumed less morphine when housed how?

In a large social colony about 200 times the floor area of a standard cage, Bruce Alexander's rats drank far less morphine water than caged rats did, though later attempts to repeat the result were mixed.

Portugal decriminalised personal drug possession in 2001, referring users to what instead of court?

Dissuasion commissions see anyone caught with up to ten days' supply: the drugs are confiscated but there is no criminal charge, a change made to slow the spread of HIV through injecting.

Insite, North America's first supervised injection site, opened in 2003 in which city?

Vancouver's Insite survived a federal bid to close it: in 2011 Canada's Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that withdrawing its legal exemption would violate drug users' rights.

Which British charity runs the Dry January campaign, formalised in 2013?

Alcohol Change UK, then called Alcohol Concern, built the campaign after Emily Robinson, who joined its staff in 2012, gave up drink for a month to train for a half marathon and found everyone wanted to hear about it.

Which drug did AA co-founder Bill W. take in supervised 1950s sessions, hoping it could bring alcoholics a spiritual awakening?

LSD convinced Bill W., after his first session in 1956, that such insight might help hardened drinkers recover; in the 1960s he turned to promoting niacin, vitamin B3, instead.

Which magazine listed Bill W. among its 100 most important people of the 20th century, as 'The Healer'?

Time's 1999 list ranked him among the century's heroes; in life Bill W. had refused to appear on the magazine's cover, even photographed from behind, to stay anonymous.

Which of these is one US 'standard drink'?

A 12-ounce can of 5% beer holds about 14 grams of alcohol, as does a 5-ounce glass of 12% wine or a 1.5-ounce shot of 40% spirits, so a pint or a generous pour quietly counts as more than one drink.

Which is the most commonly consumed psychoactive substance in the world?

Caffeine works by blocking adenosine, the brain's own drowsiness signal; a dose keeps acting for four to six hours, which is why an afternoon coffee can spoil a night's sleep.

Which substance is the greatest cause of preventable death worldwide?

Tobacco kills more than 7 million people a year by the WHO's count, about 1.6 million of them non-smokers who only breathed other people's smoke.

Which US official's landmark 1964 report declared that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer?

The Surgeon General, Luther Terry, released it on a Saturday to soften the blow to the stock market and catch the Sunday papers; Congress ordered warning labels on packs the next year.

After inhalation, roughly how long does nicotine take to reach the brain?

10 to 20 seconds is all each puff needs to deliver its reward, tying the act of smoking tightly to the hit; nicotine's half-life of about two hours then brings the craving back.

Which US e-cigarette brand, born of Stanford design-school work, held about 72% of the market by 2018?

Juul's rise among teenagers proved costly: in 2023 it agreed to pay $462 million to six states and Washington, D.C., to settle claims that it had marketed to young people.

Fentanyl is roughly how many times more potent than morphine?

50 to 100 times morphine's strength means about two milligrams can kill, so a slight error in pressing street pills is deadly; Paul Janssen first made it in 1960 as a medical painkiller.

Which veterinary sedative, nicknamed 'tranq', did the White House declare an emerging threat in 2023 when mixed with fentanyl?

Xylazine was tested as a human blood-pressure drug in the 1960s and shelved because it sedated people too heavily; in street drugs it is linked to deep skin wounds that are slow to heal.

Which company sold heroin over the counter from 1898 as a supposedly non-addictive cough remedy?

Bayer sold it widely before its addictiveness was recognised, and doctors even used it to wean patients off morphine, until they found the new habit just as hard to break.

Which brand of methamphetamine was sold without prescription from 1938 and issued to Wehrmacht troops?

Pervitin was used so freely that it was placed under the opium law in 1941, yet ten million tablets were still shipped to the troops that same year.

Cocaine is derived from the leaves of a plant native to which continent?

South America's Andean peoples have chewed coca leaves for thousands of years; in 1884 Karl Koller showed that cocaine numbs the eye, making it the first local anaesthetic.

Which 1914 US law taxed opiates and coca products, often seen as the start of federal drug prohibition?

The Harrison Narcotics Tax Act was written as a tax and record-keeping measure, but in 1919 the Supreme Court read it to bar doctors from prescribing opiates simply to maintain an addict.

Which US president declared drug abuse 'public enemy number one', launching what became the war on drugs?

Richard Nixon made the declaration in June 1971, yet during his presidency most federal anti-drug money went to treatment and prevention rather than law enforcement.

Which Controlled Substances Act schedule holds drugs with no accepted medical use?

Schedule I is the strictest of the Act's five tiers and includes heroin; methamphetamine and fentanyl sit one rung down in Schedule II because they have recognised medical uses.

Which constitutional amendment brought in national Prohibition, in force from January 1920?

The Eighteenth Amendment banned making, selling and transporting liquor but never drinking it, and it remains the only amendment ever repealed.

The 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act pushed states to age 21 by threatening to withhold what?

Federal highway funding was the lever, 5 percent of it at first and 10 percent after that; South Dakota sued, and in 1987 the Supreme Court upheld the law 7-2.

Which mother founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving in 1980 after her daughter Cari was killed?

Candace Lightner started the group after a driver with a recent drunk hit-and-run arrest killed her 13-year-old; she left the organisation in 1985, five years after founding it.

Robert Borkenstein, an Indiana State Police captain, invented which roadside device in 1954?

The Breathalyzer replaced the 1930s Drunkometer, which had drivers blow up a balloon inside the machine; Borkenstein's version gave police a far simpler breath test.

What level of alcohol exposure has been established as safe for a fetus?

No amount has been shown to be safe, and harm can come before a woman knows she is pregnant, so the advice is to stop drinking while trying to conceive as well.

Which Los Angeles police chief, who resigned after the 1992 riots, launched the D.A.R.E. programme in 1983?

Daryl Gates's programme reached three-quarters of US school districts at its height, even though studies kept finding it did little to cut drug use; D.A.R.E. later switched to a redesigned curriculum.

Which First Lady's reply to an Oakland schoolgirl became the 'Just Say No' anti-drug slogan?

Nancy Reagan gave the answer when a girl asked what to do if someone offered her drugs, and thousands of 'Just Say No' clubs later sprang up across the country and abroad.

Red Ribbon Week, held every October, began as a tribute to which murdered DEA agent?

Kiki Camarena was kidnapped and murdered in 1985 after more than four years on the trail of Mexico's biggest traffickers; people in his California hometown wore red ribbons in his memory.

Researchers estimate that roughly half or more of a person's risk of developing an addiction comes from what?

Genetics accounts for 50 to 60 percent of the risk of alcohol use disorder in twin and adoption studies, yet no single 'addiction gene' exists: the effect is spread across many common variants.

Which is the world's most widely used illicit drug, with about 228 million users in 2022 by the UN's count?

Cannabis has nearly four times as many users as opioids, the next group at about 60 million, yet opioids are involved in close to 80 percent of the world's drug-related deaths.

MDMA, known as ecstasy or molly, was first synthesised before the First World War by a chemist at which company?

Merck patented the compound and then shelved it for decades; psychotherapists took it up in the 1970s, and it spread to nightclubs in the 1980s.

Which organisation runs the Great American Smokeout each November, urging smokers to quit for a day?

The American Cancer Society took the event nationwide in 1977; it grew from a 1970 Massachusetts idea to give up cigarettes for a day and donate the money saved to a high school.

US drug overdose deaths peaked at roughly what annual figure in 2022?

The rate had climbed from 2.5 per 100,000 people in 1968 to 33.2 in 2022 before falling back to about 77,600 deaths in the year to March 2025.

In AA's Twelve Steps, the word 'God' is followed by which qualifying phrase?

As we understood Him leaves each member free to picture a higher power in their own way, and the Big Book goes further with a whole chapter, 'We Agnostics', written for doubters.

The first wave of the US opioid overdose epidemic, which began in the 1990s, was driven by what?

Prescription painkillers came first, as doctors prescribed opioids far more freely in the 1990s; heroin drove a second wave from 2010 and illegally made fentanyl a third from 2013.

Which Billy Wilder film, a Best Picture winner, stars Ray Milland as an alcoholic writer over a few desperate days?

The Lost Weekend so worried the liquor industry that a trade group lobbied Paramount before its 1945 release; it went on to win Best Picture and Best Actor.

Alateen is a part of which fellowship, designed for younger relatives and friends of alcoholics?

Al-Anon, co-founded in 1951 by Bill W.'s wife Lois, added Alateen in 1957 after a California teenager gathered five other young people with a drinker in the family.

What is the term for needing ever larger doses of a drug to get the same effect?

Tolerance fades during a spell of abstinence, which is why relapse is so dangerous: a dose the body once handled can then be enough to kill.

Which magazine ran Jack Alexander's glowing 1941 article about AA?

The Saturday Evening Post piece ran in March 1941, when AA had about 2,000 members; the response was enormous, and by the end of the year it had 6,000.

What makes up the second part of AA's Big Book?

Members' stories fill the second part, and the selection is revised with each edition while the opening chapters on the programme are left largely untouched.

Which hallucinogen did AA co-founder Bill W. take in medically supervised sessions from 1956?

LSD let Bill W. relive, he said, the spiritual experience that had ended his own drinking in 1934. Most AA members opposed the experiments, and he never publicly urged the drug on others.

Which food did a 1987 anti-drug advert fry in a pan to show 'your brain on drugs'?

An egg cracked into a hot frying pan was followed by the deadpan line 'Any questions?' The Partnership for a Drug-Free America remade it in 1997 with actress Rachael Leigh Cook smashing the egg with the pan.

Which Amy Winehouse single won the Grammy for Record of the Year in 2008?

"Rehab" grew from a remark Winehouse made to producer Mark Ronson as they walked down a street: 'He tried to make me go to rehab and I was like, pfft, no no no.' Ronson took her straight back to the studio.

Which moonwalker recounted his alcoholism and depression in the 1973 memoir Return to Earth?

Buzz Aldrin's spells in hospital alternated with bouts of heavy drinking until he quit for good in October 1978. He later tried to support other drinkers, including the actor William Holden.

Which spirit's hold on London did William Hogarth show in a 1751 print of a ruined slum street?

Gin Lane was issued with a companion print, Beer Street, whose beer drinkers look happy and healthy by contrast. Hogarth made the pair in support of what became the Gin Act of 1751.

Which drug's trade did Britain fight two 19th-century wars to protect, the first of which won it Hong Kong?

Opium shipments had soared to about 30,000 chests a year by 1833. When the Qing government cracked down, Britain sent a naval expedition to demand reparations and reopen the trade.

Which body added 'gaming disorder' to its International Classification of Diseases in 2019?

The World Health Organization files it under 'disorders due to addictive behaviours', and its main test is a loss of control over gaming. The listing came into force in January 2022.

Which fairy-tale heroine named a South Korean law that shut under-16s out of online games overnight?

Cinderella fitted because the block began at the stroke of midnight and ran until 6 a.m. Passed in 2011, the law drove some teenagers to steal resident registration numbers to get round it, and it was abolished in 2021.

Which university's Alcohol Project got sitcoms such as Cheers to feature designated drivers?

Harvard's School of Public Health borrowed the idea from Scandinavia, where it had been taking shape since the 1920s. Its 1988 campaign is credited as one factor in the fall in alcohol-related road deaths by 1994.

Which word do the last four digits of SAMHSA's treatment referral line, 1-800-662-4357, spell?

HELP is how 4357 reads on a phone keypad. The line gives confidential referrals in English and Spanish, every day of the year, to people and families facing substance use or mental health problems.

Which future US president gave up alcohol in 1986, a decade after an arrest for driving under the influence?

George W. Bush credits his wife Laura's steadying influence for the decision. He had been pulled over near his family's summer home in Kennebunkport in 1976.

Which 1996 Danny Boyle film follows Mark Renton and his heroin-using friends around Edinburgh?

Trainspotting was adapted from Irvine Welsh's 1993 novel, and its soundtrack became a best-seller. A sequel, T2 Trainspotting, followed in 2017.

Which organ breaks down 90% or more of the alcohol in a drink soon after it is swallowed?

The liver's capacity to process alcohol is almost completely saturated by a single standard drink. It turns the alcohol into acetaldehyde, which is then broken down into acetate.

Which compound, first isolated in 1964, is the principal psychoactive ingredient of cannabis?

THC is one of at least 113 cannabinoids identified in the plant. CBD, another of them, was isolated earlier, in 1940.

Which HBO drama stars Zendaya as Rue Bennett, a drug-addicted teenager and unreliable narrator?

Euphoria won Zendaya the Emmy for lead actress in a drama for each of its first two seasons. It is based on an Israeli miniseries of the same name.

Which war's American troops could not board the flight home until they passed a urine test for heroin?

Vietnam War servicemen who failed the test had to stay behind, go through detoxification and try again, under a programme nicknamed Operation Golden Flow.

Which brain-made peptides, released during exercise, dull pain in much the way morphine does?

Endorphins take their name from 'endogenous morphine'. They turned up when scientists went looking for the body's own counterpart to the drug, after a receptor for it was found.

Which alcohol, produced when yeasts ferment sugars, is the type found in beer, wine and spirits?

Ethanol also goes by the name grain alcohol. It turns up naturally in overripe fruit and has even been detected in interstellar space.

Which gas, used to froth whipped cream, is also inhaled as a recreational drug for a brief high?

Nitrous oxide was nicknamed 'laughing gas' by the chemist Humphry Davy for the giddy mood it brings on. It also serves as an oxidiser in rocket propellants and motor racing fuels.

Which A&E documentary series about addiction, begun in 2005, won the 2009 Emmy for Outstanding Reality Program?

Intervention ends each episode with relatives giving the addict an ultimatum: accept a fully covered 90-day treatment plan or risk losing contact, income or privileges.

Which CBS sitcom starred Anna Faris and Allison Janney as estranged relatives in Napa trying to stay sober?

Mom brought Allison Janney back-to-back Emmys in 2014 and 2015 for playing Bonnie Plunkett, who tries to pull her life together alongside her daughter Christy.

Which 1936 film, financed by a church group to warn parents about cannabis, later won a cult following?

Reefer Madness was first titled Tell Your Children. It ends with a lecturer pointing at parents in the audience and warning that the next tragedy may be 'yours'.

Which ADHD medication, a mixture of four amphetamine salts, is often misused by students as a study aid?

Adderall is made of equal parts of four amphetamine salts. Surveys suggest 5–35% of college students use diverted ADHD stimulants, mainly to lift their academic performance.

Which country in 2021 limited under-18s to online gaming between 8 and 9 p.m. on Fridays and weekends?

China had tried limits before: a 2005 rule expelled players from a game after three hours, and a 2019 curfew barred minors from playing between certain hours.

Which term for unhealthy coping with a loved one's addiction did Melody Beattie's 1986 bestseller popularise?

Codependency most likely grew out of the late-1970s label 'co-alcoholic'. Beattie's book inspired a twelve-step fellowship, Co-Dependents Anonymous, founded the same year.

Which guitarist founded the Crossroads Centre, an addiction clinic on the island of Antigua, in 1998?

Eric Clapton, himself recovering from addiction, has raised money for the clinic since 1999 through his Crossroads Guitar Festival.

Which family owned Purdue Pharma, maker of the painkiller OxyContin, and gave to the Guggenheim museum?

The Sackler brothers bought the small drug company Purdue-Frederick in 1952. Arthur, the eldest, pioneered medical advertising aimed at doctors, while Raymond and Mortimer ran the firm.

Which class of tranquillisers includes Valium, the best-selling medicine in America from 1968 to 1982?

Benzodiazepines began with Librium, discovered by accident by Leo Sternbach in 1955 and the one most commonly used for alcohol detoxification. Valium followed in 1963.

Which state legalised recreational cannabis alongside Washington in November 2012 by passing Amendment 64?

Colorado's first licensed shops opened on January 1, 2014. The state had allowed medical cannabis since 2000.

Which singer earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination playing a drug addict in The Man with the Golden Arm?

Frank Sinatra's character gets clean in prison but struggles to stay that way outside. The film changed the ending of Nelson Algren's novel, in which he takes his own life.

Which temperance crusader became famous for attacking taverns with a hatchet in the years before Prohibition?

Carrie Nation, nicknamed 'Hatchet Granny', also opened a shelter in Kansas City in 1901 for the wives and children of alcoholics.

Which state was the first in America to cut its drink-driving limit to 0.05% blood alcohol, in 2018?

Utah had led the way once before: in 1983 it was the first state to lower its limit from 0.10% to 0.08%.

Which state banned the sale of alcohol in 1851 under a law crafted by Portland's mayor Neal Dow?

Maine's law met violent opposition in the Portland Rum Riot of 1855, when one man was killed and seven were wounded. It was repealed the following year.

Which country became the first of the modern era to legalise recreational cannabis, in December 2013?

Uruguay's president José Mujica signed the law, which his government had proposed as a way to fight drug-related crime and health problems.

Which country, facing one of Europe's largest open drug scenes, began trials of prescribed heroin in 1994?

Switzerland has made heroin available to addicts under supervision ever since, as part of its national health system. Its trials used the drug as a maintenance treatment.

Which country's Gaming Commission ruled that loot boxes in FIFA 18 and Overwatch broke its gambling laws?

Belgium's justice minister said it was often children who came across such systems, 'and we cannot allow that'. Valve went on to block Belgian players from opening loot boxes in Counter-Strike.

Which psychologist studied the 'variable ratio' reward schedule that makes slot machines so hard to quit?

B. F. Skinner studied rewards that arrive after an unpredictable number of responses. That schedule produces the fastest responding and the habit that is slowest to die out.

Which opioid in prescription cough syrup is the usual active drug in 'lean', also called 'purple drank'?

Codeine syrup, usually paired with promethazine, gives the Houston-born drink its nickname, because the cough syrups used are often purple.

Which Oprah's Book Club memoir of drug addiction was exposed by The Smoking Gun in 2006 as partly fabricated?

A Million Little Pieces topped the New York Times list for fifteen straight weeks. The website's report was headlined 'A Million Little Lies', and James Frey's book was later marketed as a semi-fictional novel.

Which 1945 Billy Wilder film about an alcoholic New York writer won the Academy Award for Best Picture?

The Lost Weekend also shared the top prize at the first Cannes Film Festival. Wilder was drawn to the story after working with Raymond Chandler on the screenplay of Double Indemnity.

Which vitamin do long-term heavy drinkers often lack, causing the brain disorder Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome?

Thiamine (B1) deficiency first brings confusion, eye problems and an unsteady walk. It can then move into a second phase marked by impaired memory.

Which four-question screening test for problem drinking asks about needing a morning 'eye-opener' drink?

CAGE is an acronym of its four questions, the last being the Eye-opener. In its first study, on 130 hospital patients, those questions picked out all sixteen alcoholics.

Which Southeast Asian tree's glossy leaves contain alkaloids that bind to the body's opioid receptors?

Kratom leaves come from a tropical evergreen native to countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia, where they have been used in herbal medicine since at least the 19th century.

Which online role-playing game, played by her late son, led Liz Woolley to found Online Gamers Anonymous?

EverQuest was hailed by critics as the 'most addictive online RPG to date', and some players jokingly called it 'EverCrack'.

Which 1971 book, sold as the real diary of a teenage drug user, was later attributed to Beatrice Sparks?

Go Ask Alice takes its title from a line in Jefferson Airplane's 1967 song 'White Rabbit'. Sparks went on to write other books presented as the real diaries of troubled teenagers.

Near which Kentucky city did the federal government open its 'Narcotic Farm' for drug addicts in 1935?

Lexington's 'farm' was the first of its kind in the country and took patients who admitted themselves. One, the writer Alexander King, recalled that he 'heard the best jazz ever played anywhere' there.

Which drug-treatment programme, founded by Charles Dederich in Santa Monica in 1958, became a violent cult?

Synanon began under the name Tender Loving Care and grew into a community built around a form of attack therapy. It disbanded in 1991 after members were convicted of offences including attempted murder.

Which US Surgeon General chaired the committee whose 1964 report tied cigarette smoking to lung cancer?

Luther Terry's report was followed within months by a federal ruling that cigarette packs must carry a health warning from January 1965.

Which hallucinogen from the root bark of a Central African shrub is used in clinics abroad to treat addiction?

Ibogaine's effects were first discovered by forager tribes, who passed the knowledge to the Bwiti of Gabon. Its medical use is limited by serious risks, including toxicity to the heart.

Which country held the first International Overdose Awareness Day in 2001, handing out 6,000 silver ribbons?

Australia's first event was started by S. J. Finn, who ran a needle and syringe programme at a Salvation Army crisis centre in St Kilda. The day is marked every 31 August.