Drugs and alcohol news, articles and features | New Scientist

Why drug overdose deaths have suddenly plummeted in the US

Grace Wade — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 16:00:16 +0000

Fentanyl-related overdose deaths fell by nearly 30 per cent in the space of a year in the US, which could represent a significant turning point in the country's opioid addiction crisis

Vaccine may treat cocaine addiction by blocking drug’s entry to brain

Michael Le Page — Tue, 20 May 2025 14:00:58 +0000

A vaccine that helps people overcome cocaine addiction has shown signs of being safe and effective in a small trial

Experimental medication helps treat cocaine addiction

Grace Wade — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 18:30:08 +0000

A recently developed medication encourages people with cocaine use disorder to reduce their intake of the stimulant – a step towards the first approved drugs to treat the problem

Strongest evidence yet that Ozempic and Wegovy reduce alcohol intake

Chris Simms — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 16:00:54 +0000

People report lower alcohol cravings when on semaglutide

Shutterstock/David MG

Semaglutide really does seem to help people who are addicted to alcohol reduce their intake, according to the first randomised clinical trial of the drug for this purpose.

Sold under brand names including Wegovy and Ozempic, semaglutide works by mimicking a gut hormone called glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), hence the technical term for it is a GLP-1 receptor agonist. The drug was first used to treat type 2 diabetes, but because it reduces appetite, Wegovy has now also been licensed for weight loss . Semaglutide has also shown hints of helping an extraordinary number of medical conditions.

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The surprising mental health and brain benefits of weight-loss drugs

When it comes to alcohol use, a 2024 study of 84,000 people linked injecting Ozempic or Wegovy with a lower risk of alcoholism. Promising as that result was, it showed correlation rather than causation.

But now, at the University of Southern California and his colleagues have completed the first randomised clinical trial of semaglutide’s effect on alcohol use disorder, a type of study that can tease out causation.

Their trial involved 48 people in the US who had been diagnosed with the condition, of whom 34 were women and 14 were men. Half received weekly low-dose injections of semaglutide for nine weeks and the rest had placebo injections.

Those on semaglutide consumed fewer drinks per drinking session and had reduced weekly alcohol cravings compared with those on placebo.

“We didn’t have any evidence of significant adverse effects or safety concerns with the medication in this population and we found overall that across several different drinking outcomes it reduced the quantity of alcohol that people consumed,” says Hendershot.

“The results are promising,” says at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Ohio. “Despite the small sample size, this randomised clinical trial highlights the therapeutic potential of semaglutide in treating alcohol use disorder.”

at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, says the study adds “yet another piece of evidence that GLP-1RAs [GLP-1 receptor agonists] may be helpful in addiction disorders”.

Why do Ozempic and Wegovy seem to treat everything?

From Alzheimer's disease to depression to heart disease, Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonist drugs appear to offer a solution. Can one type of drug really tackle so many conditions, and if so, how does it actually work?

Larger studies are needed to corroborate the work, he says, and to answer questions about whether people increase their drinking if they come off semaglutide and what its longer-term effects might be, especially given concerns around loss of .

The study should be treated as promising initial evidence, says Hendershot, but more research is needed. People shouldn’t start taking semaglutide for alcohol problems, he says.

“This is the first study like this and people are excited about it, but we do have approved and effective medication for alcohol use disorder, so until more research has been done, people are advised to pursue existing medications that are out there and approved right now,” says Hendershot.

Journal reference:

JAMA Psychiatry

Laughing gas could be picked up by a breathalyser

Alex Wilkins — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 15:00:26 +0000

Many countries have made it illegal to possess nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, and research now shows the drug can be picked up in someone's breath

The problems with Dry January – and what you could try doing instead

Ian Hamilton — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 17:00:06 +0000

Many people decide to give up alcohol during January. But is this actually helpful in the long-term and are there better, easier ways to change our drinking habits, asks Ian Hamilton

US teens are using less of every substance – except for one

Grace Wade — Fri, 03 Jan 2025 13:00:05 +0000

Teenagers in the US roughly doubled their use of nicotine pouches in 2024, despite turning away from alcohol and other drugs

Hornets can hold their alcohol like no other animal on Earth

Sofia Quaglia — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 19:00:35 +0000

The oriental hornet (Vespa orientalis) could drink you under the table

Vladimir_Kazachkov/Shutterstock

A species of hornet that often munches on foods containing alcohol can hold its liquor, without any side effects, at levels that no other known animal can tolerate. “This is crazy,” says study author at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. The diet of the oriental hornet (Vespa orientalis) consists of nectar and ripe fruits, including grapes. This fruit contains sugar that, when it naturally ferments over time, turns into ethanol.

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While ethanol can be nutritious for animals, it is also highly intoxicating. Even animals that routinely eat fermenting fruits – like fruit flies and tree shrews – cannot stomach more than 4 per cent ethanol in their meals, according to Bouchebti and her colleagues. But when Bouchebti’s team gave hornets nothing to eat for a week except a range of sugary solutions containing different quantities of ethanol – between 1 and 80 per cent – the hornets seemed to be completely unaffected. Both their behaviour and lifespan remained unchanged. What makes this particularly surprising is that the solutions with 80 per cent ethanol contain an alcohol content four times as high as anything found in nature. “In the beginning, we did the experiment only with 20 per cent [ethanol] and we were already amazed,” says study author at Tel Aviv University in Israel. The 80 per cent ethanol figure is “even harder to believe”. Analysis of the genomes of several hornet species suggests the insects have two to four copies of a gene that produces NADP+, which helps break down alcohol. The researchers think this might help explain why the oriental hornet – and possibly other hornet species – can handle such large quantities of alcohol. These findings “remind us that we are not alone in our fondness for alcohol”, says at the University of Rochester in New York. But he isn’t persuaded that hornets are the only organisms that can handle this much alcohol, because data from other animal studies is hard to compare. The hornets’ penchant for alcohol might give them a competitive edge when it comes to feeding on highly fermented foods, which are highly nutritious, says at the University of Turin in Italy. She thinks the hornets’ tolerance is probably related to the animals’ mutualistic relationship with the fermenting brewer’s yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which have shown reside, survive and even mate within hornets’ intestines. Maybe the hornets help the yeasts move around from fruit to fruit, while the yeasts help the hornets find energy-rich foods.

Journal reference:

PNAS

MDMA was hyped as a promising treatment for PTSD – what went wrong?

Grace Wade — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 19:32:51 +0000

For years, it seemed MDMA-assisted therapy would revolutionise PTSD treatment. But poor trial design and alleged misconduct ultimately stopped the treatment from receiving government approval

Media portrayals peddle a dangerous fiction about substance misuse

Anna Wolfe — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 18:00:00 +0000

Narratives around addiction often reduce it to a series of poor choices, lack of values and weakness. This has real-world consequences, warns Anna Wolfe