In a world where major media outlets are being taken over by oligarchs who use them to protect and project, more and more scientific research is reaching the public through podcasts and blogs (such as AddictionNews). These niche outlets are revealing scientific breakthroughs months and years before they get noticed by the mainstream press.

Last month, one of these private podcasts featured an interview with neuroscientist Dr. Keith Humphreys. Dr. Humphreys is a professor of psychiatry, behavioral sciences, and health policy with the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford University. The interview was conducted by Nicholas Weiler for Stanford Neuroscience’s house podcast, From Our Neurons to Yours.

The topic of the podcast is “Brain Science and Addiction Policy,” and Weiler lays out his objectives right from the start:

I want to understand how has brain science influenced our understanding of addiction and influenced how we think about addiction policy? […] What has neuroscience or psychiatry or psychology taught us over the past decade or so about what addiction is, and maybe new ways of thinking about treating people with addiction?

That’s a tall order for a 45-minute conversation. Dr. Humphreys gets the conversation rolling with how neuroscience sees addiction as basically a fatigued reward system damaged from repeated abuse. He explains how the use of methadone, buprenorphine, and naloxone has allowed them to create a “therapeutic target” for opioid addiction research.

Dr. Humphreys explains the reduced reward response resulting from repeated use of opioids in this verbatim transcript of the podcast:

[W]e all are evolved to pursue certain natural rewards, things like food and sex, and warmth, safety and love, which has kept Homo sapiens alive. As people repeatedly administer these drugs, which is giving them remember this massive dopamine spike beyond what anything else does, those other rewards start to gray out for people and they don’t seem as appealing anymore.

The lowered reward response of a person with substance use disorder manifests in a variety of poor choices, according to Dr. Humphreys:

• short-term time focus
• skewed balance of risk and reward
• distant rewards are undervalued

Dr. Humphreys takes a very mechanistic approach to structuring addiction treatment: you have to shorten the time frame and increase the penalties to ensure compliance. Similarly, in designing drug addiction policy, policymakers have to work “in sooner, smaller awards, not longer, later ones.”

Dr. Humphreys says if public policy focuses more on preventing drug abuse, the public will spend less money on treating it. Thankfully, he does not recommend D.A.R.E., but does insist there are interventions that improve children’s abilities to cope with stress. These interventions decrease reward discounting, resulting in increased high school completion rates and other signs of valuing distant rewards.

The important point is that reward response can be strengthened, and that increased reward response leads to reduced adolescent substance use. 

Dr. Humphreys also brings up housing several times in the interview, which is refreshing for a neuroscientist:

[H]ousing is obviously important. We have lots of homeless people, but there’s a subset of people who really need housing that is recovery focused.

Just last week, we ran a piece at AddictionNews about how the city of Juneau, Alaska, is building micro-unit housing that’s only available for people during addiction recovery.

Regarding addiction treatment, Dr. Humphreys is very positive about several promising therapies. These include transcranial magnetic stimulation, GLP-1 drugs, and psychedelics such as ibogaine. Overall, he argues for doing more, and sooner, for people suffering from addiction, treating it like any other health condition that sometimes requires urgent care and often requires lifelong support.

Written by Steve O’Keefe. First published August 11, 2025.

Sources:

“Can brain science save addiction policy?,” From Our Neurons to Yours podcast, Stanford University Neuroscience News, July 10, 2025.

“Why our brains are wired for addiction: What the science says,” Stanford Medicine News Center, August 5, 2025.

Image of Stanford University courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, used under Creative Commons license.