In Sikkim, football is weaning drug users away from the dark

In one year, the drug overdoses in Roanoke, VA have taken 12 lives and another 76 have overdosed but survived. The police department developed a new program called the Roanoke Valley Hope Initiative, designed to provide rehabilitation without arrest for those who seek it. The program simulates the successful national effort to help drug abusers instead of incarcerating them.

The Healing Hurt People program, or HHP, is an ER-based violence intervention program that works on the public health-based notion that violence - like other diseases that spread - can be prevented. It targets services to those at highest risk, patients like those in Philadelphia, who are being treated for violent injuries in the city's emergency rooms. Unlike other programs, it recognizes and attempts to heal the underlying emotional trauma that results from, and often predates, violent injury.

Back on My Feet helps people experiencing homelessness and substance use through the power of exercise, specifically running. Participants have ran more than 950,000 miles and 70% of them have found employment and housing. Moreover, participating in the group helps people in need find a sense of community and build a support system.

As the number of veterans with both physical and psychological injuries balloons, this softball team of 11 wounded warriors wards helps one another deal with war trauma and combat isolation by playing a little ball.

Alcohol has claimed more lives in Rio Arriba County in the past five years than other drugs. SMART, a secular alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous, provides one path toward recovery, increasingly incorporating scientific findings into treatment as well as support for family members of addicts, helping them change the environment.

The over-prescription of pain medicine has been a problem in southwest Colorado. Collective efforts of health care providers to standardize opioid prescriptions, clinics to expand recovery programs, and law enforcement to encourage addicts to enter rehab rather than prison, have reduced over-prescriptions of pain medications. However, they also could be unintentionally causing a rise in heroin use.

While weight loss can be challenging to maintain, different structures are being created to help. Certain support groups, financial incentives, and tough love are proving to be effective.

Drug courts can help some people with serious drug problems who face serious criminal charges, if such court programs are run carefully, based on evidence-based approaches. But, too often, such courts – which push criminal defendants into treatment as an alternative to incarceration – can do more harm than good. The proof of drug courts' effectiveness is mixed, and fairly thin. Thousands of such courts exist, based on widespread political support for an approach seen as less punitive. But many critics say the courts' track record overall is weak and their approach can be just another form of punishment.

The UK is home to an artificial surfing lagoon that aims to help those with disabilities have access to water sports they otherwise may not be able to participate in. Acting as both a physical and mental rehabilitation methodology, The Wave was designed "to make sure the space was accessible physically and in terms of culture, to make sure that all people have the same opportunities on site as each other and to normalise being around people who have got physical or mental health issues."

RVA League For Safer Streets uses a basketball league as "bait" to change young men's lives by teaching critical thinking and better ways to resolve conflicts. The Richmond, Virginia, program was co-founded in prison by a former drug dealer convicted of murder who learned the methods of cognitive behavioral therapy behind bars. Paroled after 23 years, he began counseling youth with an approach that police say contributed to a significant drop in Richmond's gang violence and other crime.