Wellness Tackles Addiction and Harm Reduction
It’s a new wellness category, from trendy brands giving smoking cessation a modern makeover to the new wave of sober tours and retreats
By Claire MacCormack
Our 2025 trend, “Wellness Tackles Addiction,” explores an emerging category, with the wellness space poised to further topple taboos and offer innovative products around addiction, just as it has for sexual wellness and menopause.
Wellness practices are increasingly being integrated into all manner of addiction treatment—from alcohol to illicit drugs to technology—and wellness companies are enthusiastically entering the harm-reduction space. With the rise of drug use around the world and alcohol’s recent classification as a Class 1 carcinogen, there is urgent need for creative, judgement-free options.
Cool-kids-approved brands aimed at harm reduction have gone viral. Blip and Jones are bringing smoking cessation into the modern era with slick packaging, innovative products, and online support. New ingestibles, like Soft Landing Chocolate (“a reverse edible”), are helping people come down fast and safely if they get too high on THC. There are so many more health dupes, like Puff Herbals’ herbal wellness “cigarettes” that help with sleep or focus.
New apps and wearable tech are supporting people with addictions, as are new “habit” coaching platforms, like Zabit. The trend examines a new wave of medical technology innovations for addiction treatment, like Spark Biomedical’s neuro-stimulating earpiece, easing opioid withdrawal symptoms, and explores the new ways psychedelic drugs are being used to treat drug addiction.
The distinction between a medical addiction treatment center and the most sophisticated luxury wellness resort is becoming increasingly blurry, as more treatment centers realize how many wellness approaches are proving incredibly helpful in supporting people through recovery. Carrara in California marries medical treatment with EMDR therapy, somatic experiences, yoga, tai chi, TCM, spa treatments, and mandatory hyperbaric oxygen chamber sessions. At Zurich’s Paracelsus Recovery, cutting-edge medical advancements (from full-body MRIs to epigenetic testing) are integrated with acupuncture, shiatsu, and equine and art therapy.
With younger gens now questioning booze, from the UK to Japan, there has been an explosion in beverages that are either antidotes or replacements for alcohol––from all the adaptogenic- and nootropic-infused beverages duping spirits (such as canned beverages from Kin Euphorics) to the sea of THC tonics in the US. A “safer buzz” is a booming business.
Even if your alcohol use doesn’t require a two-week medical stay, more hotels and wellness resorts are hosting wellness-focused sobriety retreats to help people cut down on everything from booze to technology, such as Gill Tietz’s Sober Powered Nervous System Reboot Retreat in Mexico. Taylor Kitsch, the Friday Night Lights star, just opened a sober-curious retreat in Montana, using nature, a sweat lodge and shamans as wellness supports. More tour companies in 2025 have launched sober (and wellness-focused) itineraries for younger travelers, from Contiki to EF Ultimate Break.
Early clinical studies show GLP-1s reduce cravings for (and use of) alcohol and drugs, and
Eli Lilly is testing them for addiction treatment this year. If GLP-1s have already made their way into medical-wellness resorts for weight loss, the future could be addiction centers and wellness destinations using medically-supervised GLP-1s along with integrative wellness approaches to tackle a variety of addictions. The upscale Caron Treatment Centers is already doing just that.
There are huge opportunities for the wellness industry ahead, whether through hosting sober-curious retreats or forming partnerships to create wellness and spa programming with global luxury recovery centers.
This is just one of 10 in-depth trends in the GWS’s The Future of Wellness: 2025 report. Purchase it here.
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