When I started my first sober living in Rancho Cordova back in 1987, I interviewed potential residents to move into shared housing with people that they did not know. Sometimes, the outcome was very unsuccessful and unacceptable, sort of like a really bad blind date. Then, I ran across this house for sale on Madison Avenue, and that is where I cooked up the secret sauce for Clean & Sober Transitional Living.

Meds to manage addiction can cause unintentional overdose. How's that happening?

Designed to treat addiction, the medication buprenorphine has started to show up as a culprit in some overdose deaths. Why would a person trying to escape addiction misuse the very medication designed to help? Maybe they (or someone esle) doesn't even realize they're on meds with counterindications. Bottom line: It’s not as simple as you might think.

It's time to be more alert than ever while on the road. Flashing lights are dead ahead as drugs and alcohol increase driving dangers. Drugged driving or drunk driving…which is worse? More importantly, how can death and injury from impaired driving be prevented? This fact sheet from the Centers for Disease Control has those answers – and more.

Only about 15 of 180 American medical school programs teach that addiction includes alcohol, tobacco and other drugs. Yep, you read that right. And it's so wrong.

Patients fearful of being judged, doctors who don’t know how to stop a medication they’ve started, the best way to launch that difficult conversation about medications showing up on a tox screen…the lack of addiction training in American medical schools is taking a steep toll. The addiction education in all medical schools varies, ranging from one pharmacology lecture to several weeks during a third-year clinical rotation, usually in psychiatry or family medicine. It’s “like trying to fight World War II with only the Coast Guard,” says one expert. Learn how medical schools are trying to change course and tackle America’s addiction to alcohol and other drugs.