RMA 156: This Week in Recovery: Kratom Deaths, Ozempic and Drinking, the End of Housing First
Court documents finally named the product found in both Ole Miss students’ rooms, and it isn’t kratom. Smax Pseudo-DHM contains three lab-made compounds — MGM-15, 7-OH, and mitragynine pseudoindoxyl — the exact three the DEA made illegal on August 25. Four weeks before Aidan Hamilton and Robert Strang died, those compounds were banned in any quantity. They were still on a shelf in Oxford, Mississippi. Toxicology is still pending and no cause of death has been established.
Then the first real numbers on Ozempic and drinking. A JAMA Psychiatry study found 44.2% of people who were drinking when they started a GLP-1 cut back within three months — and among those with unhealthy drinking patterns it was 54.1%. The effect was bigger in the people with the bigger problem, which is not what you’d expect from wishful thinking.
New Zealand researchers put the real risk threshold for alcohol at around nine standard drinks a week, possibly as few as three. Which means anyone who’s spent a decade carefully drinking “within the guidelines” was never inside a safe zone — there wasn’t one where they thought it was.
And the federal government has formally abandoned Housing First. Treatment First reverses twenty years of policy by tying housing to treatment participation, backed by $42.3 million already sent to the states. Disability rights groups say it’s building toward involuntary commitment without using the words.
LINKS:
Ole Miss product identified (CNN) — https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/03/health/kratom-related-drugs-ole-miss-students-wellness
Court documents and Smax Pseudo-DHM — https://thenationaldesk.com/news/fact-check-team/fact-check-team-what-we-know-about-ole-miss-student-deaths-kratom-court-documents
GLP-1s and alcohol, JAMA Psychiatry — https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/glp-1-receptor-agonists-linked-reduced-alcohol-use-us-survey-2026a10013jd
Otago alcohol guidelines study — https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2019056585/study-finds-current-alcohol-advice-exceeds-safe-levels
The withheld US alcohol study — https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5916395-alcohol-guidelines-new-study/
SAMHSA Treatment First toolkit — https://www.hud.gov/sites/default/files/Main/documents/Best-Practices-Toolkit.pdf
$42.3 million awarded to states — https://www.samhsa.gov/newsroom/press-announcements/20260918/samhsa-awards-more-than-42-million-advance-treatment-first-model
DREDF statement opposing the toolkit — https://dredf.org/statement-condemning-federal-treatment-first-toolkit-august-2026/
Community Solutions analysis — https://www.communitysolutions.com/resources/federal-homelessness-policy-shifts-to-a-treatment-first-model
Protective behavioral strategies meta-analysis — https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/can-slow-sipping-curb-heavy-drinking-not-really-study-says-2026a10012z5
Recovery in the Middle Ages is a weekly news podcast about finding lasting sobriety later in life. Mike and Nat are two middle-aged suburban dads covering addiction recovery news, 12 Step and alternative recovery paths, alcohol use disorder, and the research behind it all.
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