I will have been sober for exactly 32 years this week. It’s a joyful anniversary, one that I’m sharing only to inspire others who may need to quit drinking but don’t think they can. more

This Christmas, will a new Smith & Wesson be under your tree? more

The drug addicts’ brain scans that Dr. Stephen Dewey takes appear in psychedelic shades of red, yellow, green and blue, each indicating a level of brain activity — or inactivity. Red means excited. Blue is dormant. Dewey is the laboratory director for behavioral and molecular neuro-imaging at the North Shore-LIJ Feinstein Institute for Medical Research. In that capacity, he’s put hundreds of addicts’ brains to the test — the positron emission tomography test, that is — seeking to understand precisely what happens to the mind when a pot smoker lights up or a heroin junkie shoots up. And, he has found, it isn’t pretty. more

The teenager, a student at Calhoun High School, had a “severe case of alcohol poisoning,” said Calhoun Principal Nicole Hollings in an email to parents on June 12. He drank at a “large gathering” of Calhoun seniors in the woods between Brookside School and the Meadowbrook State Parkway, Hollings wrote. more

Opioid-based medications and heroin are being abused in epidemic proportions. To combat the large number of Long Islanders dying of heroin and other opioid-related overdoses, the Bellmore-Merrick Community Parent Center; the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District; the Bellmore, Merrick, North Bellmore and North Merrick elementary school districts; and the Long Island Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence will host a free Narcan training for parents, families and community members. more