The psychiatrist at the centre of the opioid crisis

Nora Volkow at her childhood home in Mexico City, now a museum to her great-grandfather, the Soviet revolutionary Leon Trotsky. (Alejandra Rajal for Nature)

The psychiatrist at the centre of the opioid crisis

Psychiatrist Nora Volkow is leading the world’s biggest funder of addiction research — the US National Institute on Drug Abuse — while the country is grappling with a devastating surge in drug use. Volkow’s obsession with the biological effects of excessive drug use — fuelled in part by her own family’s past — has not only shattered dogmas in neuroscience, but has helped to mitigate the stigma people with addiction face.

Nature | 14 min read