Weight-loss drugs that reduce cravings. Ultrasound beams that target the brain’s reward center. AI that spots relapse before it happens. Addiction medicine is moving fast.
Addiction treatment is being reshaped by a handful of technological advances. Here’s the short version:
- GLP-1 drugs (Ozempic, Mounjaro) are showing significant promise in reducing cravings for alcohol, opioids, nicotine, and cocaine, with more than 15 clinical trials now underway.
- Focused ultrasound can non-invasively target the brain’s reward center to reduce cravings, with early clinical trials showing most opioid use disorder participants staying substance-free through 90-day follow-up.
- AI and wearable sensors are learning to detect the physiological and behavioral warning signs of relapse hours or days before it happens, enabling earlier intervention.
- At-home brain stimulation devices are getting FDA approval for related conditions like depression, with addiction applications on the horizon.
- Virtual reality and telehealth are making specialized addiction care accessible to people who previously couldn’t get it.
Addiction is still one of the biggest public health problems we face. In the U.S., more than 100,000 people die from drug overdoses every year. Alcohol use disorder affects roughly 29 million adults. Globally, the number of people with substance use disorders has climbed from 27 million in 2016 to 46 million in 2022, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. And despite the fact that effective treatments exist, fewer than one in four people who need help actually get it.
But there’s real momentum right now. Researchers are repurposing existing drugs, testing non-invasive ways to stimulate the brain, using AI to predict relapse, and building wearable tools that offer support in real time. Some of these developments are still in early trials. Others are already being used with patients. All of them point to a shift in how we think about and treat addiction.
GLP-1 Drugs: A Weight-Loss Medication That Quiets Cravings
GLP-1 receptor agonists, the same class of drugs behind Ozempic and Mounjaro, originally made for diabetes and obesity, are showing real promise in reducing cravings for alcohol, opioids, nicotine, and even cocaine.
It started with doctors noticing something unexpected. Patients who were prescribed GLP-1 drugs for weight loss began reporting, almost as an aside, that they’d stopped drinking or lost interest in smoking. As Harvard researcher Dr. Mary Shen has described it, patients would casually mention things like, “Oh, I haven’t had alcohol in a while.” Those observations set off a wave of research.
The biology behind it makes sense. GLP-1 receptors exist not just in the gut and pancreas, but also in brain regions like the ventral tegmental area and nucleus accumbens—the parts of the brain that control motivation and pleasure, and that addictive substances essentially hijack. Activating these receptors seems to turn down the dopamine-driven reward signals that fuel compulsive substance use.
A 2024 analysis of 33,000 medical records found that patients on Ozempic had roughly one-third to one-half the risk of opioid overdose compared to those on other diabetes medications. A separate study of nearly 600,000 records found semaglutide was linked to a 50 to 56 percent lower risk of new or recurring alcohol use disorder. And a randomized trial published in JAMA Psychiatry showed that low-dose semaglutide reduced alcohol consumption, drinking frequency, and cravings in people with alcohol use disorder.
There are now more than 15 clinical trials underway worldwide looking at GLP-1 drugs for substance use disorders, including trials at Brigham and Women’s Hospital for both opioid and alcohol use. In animal studies, GLP-1 drugs have reduced self-administration of heroin, fentanyl, oxycodone, cocaine, and nicotine, and also reduced relapse-like behavior.
Some programs aren’t waiting for full FDA approval. In Providence, Rhode Island, a nonprofit called Open Doors is providing free weekly GLP-1 injections to formerly incarcerated and homeless women with various addictions. Dr. Steven Klein, an addiction physician involved in the program, put it this way: addiction is like a record playing on repeat in someone’s mind, and these drugs help lift the needle long enough to teach the person a different song.
It’s worth noting that this is still early. GLP-1 drugs are not FDA-approved for addiction, and there are real concerns about what happens when someone stops taking them—including the possibility of reduced opioid tolerance, which could raise overdose risk.
Focused Ultrasound: Reaching the Brain’s Reward Center Without Surgery
Low-intensity focused ultrasound, or LIFU, uses MRI-guided ultrasound beams to stimulate or calm specific regions of the brain with high precision. What makes it different from other non-invasive methods like transcranial magnetic stimulation is that it can reach areas buried deep inside the brain, like the nucleus accumbens, a key part of the reward system.
A team at West Virginia University’s Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute, led by Dr. Ali Rezai, has been running clinical trials using LIFU on patients with severe opioid use disorder. Their results, published in Biological Psychiatry in mid-2025, showed that the treatment significantly reduced cravings. Most participants didn’t use opioids or other substances during the 90-day follow-up.
The procedure itself is straightforward: the patient lies inside an MRI scanner, stays awake, and receives targeted ultrasound pulses through the skull. No implants. No incisions. Compare that to deep brain stimulation, which requires surgically placing electrodes in the brain.
Other trials are expanding the approach. NIDA is funding focused ultrasound research for cocaine use disorder and for opioid use disorder combined with chronic pain—both conditions that currently have no FDA-approved medication. A trial in Korea is looking at stimulant addiction. And researchers at NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine are preparing their own trial.
A 2025 animal study showed that focused ultrasound targeting the nucleus accumbens reversed fentanyl-conditioned place preference in rats, essentially erasing the learned association between a specific place and the drug’s rewarding effects. That raises the possibility that focused ultrasound could eventually help disrupt the drug memories that make relapse so common.
Questions remain about the right treatment protocols, how long the effects last, and safety over time. But with startup companies already developing portable and MRI-free ultrasound devices, this technology could move into wider use sooner than expected.
AI and Wearables: Spotting Relapse Before It Happens
Relapse is one of the hardest parts of addiction, partly because it often seems to come out of nowhere. But AI and wearable sensors are getting better at picking up warning signs, sometimes hours or days before a relapse actually happens.
A 2025 study in JAMA Psychiatry found that people using biofeedback wearables were 64 percent less likely to use substances on any given day. These devices track things like heart rate variability, sleep quality, and stress levels—signals that correlate with higher relapse risk. When those signals shift in a concerning direction, the system can alert the patient and their care team so they can step in early.
Researchers are also combining smartphone surveys with deep learning to predict outcomes. A 2025 study tracked patients receiving buprenorphine for opioid use disorder and had them complete brief check-ins on their phones several times a day—reporting on stress, mood, cravings, and what was going on around them. AI models trained on this data were able to accurately forecast opioid use, missed medication doses, and treatment dropout.
The idea is sometimes called “just-in-time adaptive intervention.” Instead of waiting for a scheduled appointment to find out how a patient is doing, these tools provide a continuous picture—pulling in data from wearables, phone sensors, self-reported surveys, and health records. Over time, the AI learns what each person’s unique warning signs look like, making the predictions more personalized.
There are already FDA-cleared digital tools in this space. Pear Therapeutics’ reSET-O, for example, was the first prescription digital therapeutic for opioid use disorder, delivering cognitive behavioral therapy through a phone app alongside buprenorphine treatment.
There are real concerns here too. Some addiction apps have been found to share sensitive data with third parties. Not everyone has a smartphone or reliable internet. And technology alone can’t replace the human side of treatment. But the shift from reactive care—waiting for a crisis—to proactive care—catching problems early—is significant.
Brain Stimulation You Can Use at Home
While focused ultrasound happens in a clinical setting, other forms of brain stimulation are getting smaller and more portable.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is already FDA-approved as a supplemental treatment for smoking cessation. And in early 2026, the FDA approved the first at-home brain stimulation device for depression—Flow Neuroscience’s FL-100, which uses transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). It’s not approved for addiction yet, but the company has said it plans to study the device for additional conditions, including addiction and sleep disorders. Given how often depression and addiction overlap, a validated at-home device for one could open the door for the other.
There’s also progress with peripheral nerve stimulation. The FDA has approved a device that stimulates nerves in the ear to treat acute opioid withdrawal, and vagal nerve stimulation is being studied for several substance use disorders. These approaches work through the body’s nervous system rather than directly targeting the brain, which makes them simpler to administer and potentially suitable for use outside a hospital or clinic.
Virtual Reality and Telehealth: Making Treatment More Accessible
Virtual reality is finding a role in addiction treatment as a way to practice coping skills in a controlled setting. A person recovering from alcohol use disorder, for instance, can walk through a virtual bar, experience the sights and sounds that would normally trigger cravings, and work through their response, all with a therapist guiding them and without any real risk. This kind of exposure therapy is being explored for multiple types of addiction.
Telehealth, meanwhile, has gone from a pandemic workaround to a permanent part of addiction care. Virtual therapy, online support groups, and app-based medication management mean that people in rural areas, people balancing treatment with jobs and families, and people in the criminal justice system can access specialized care that used to require showing up in person. Research shows that hybrid models, combining virtual and face-to-face care, work well, and for many patients the flexibility makes the difference between getting treatment and not.
What It All Adds Up To
Experts are clear that technology works best when it supports human connection, not when it tries to replace it. A wearable can detect stress, but it can’t sit with someone through a hard moment. An AI model can flag risk, but it takes a person to help someone work through what’s underneath it.
What these tools can do is extend the reach and precision of that care—bringing quality treatment to rural communities, giving therapists real-time data between visits, repurposing medications for problems no one originally designed them for, and using sound waves to reach parts of the brain that were previously only accessible through surgery. For the millions of people and families dealing with addiction, a more personalized, more proactive approach to treatment matters.
