Clinics selling NAD⁺ drips list the same benefits: energy, mental clarity, faster recovery, better sleep, detox, slower aging. Somewhere in the fine print there is often a line about addiction and craving, which is the one claim with any published human report behind it.
That report is worth reading in full, because what it actually shows is the central problem with judging a drip at all: the bag is almost never just NAD⁺.
What was actually infused
The human evidence most often gestured at by IV clinics is a series of fifty patients in chemical dependency programs (n = 50), poly-drug users who had failed between one and ten previous treatment attempts. They each received at least seven infusions over an average of four weeks, and their craving, anxiety, depression and sleep were scored on self-reported 1 to 10 scales by a counselor[1].
The infusion was not NAD⁺. It was NAD⁺ plus enkephalinase inhibition, plus d-phenylalanine, plus glycine, plus alanylglutamine dipeptide, plus a Myers’ cocktail of B vitamins, delivered in fluid [1]. Six or more active components, one outcome score.
Whatever those patients experienced, no part of it can be attributed to NAD⁺, and the authors do not claim otherwise. This is not a criticism of the study; it is a description of what a wellness drip is. When a clinic cites addiction research on its NAD⁺ page, it is citing research on a different preparation.
The numbers, and what the design does to them
The reported results are large. Comparing each patient’s baseline with their post-infusion score using Wilcoxon signed-rank tests, craving fell at P = 1.063E-9, anxiety at P = 5.487E-7 and depression at P = 1.763E-4, with a dose-dependent linear trend across infusions (cravings p = 0.015, anxiety p = 0.003) [2]. Of a subset of 40 patients tested mid-study, all 40 urine samples came back negative for illicit substances[2].
Here is what those p-values are not. There was no control group and no blinding. Every comparison is a patient against their own earlier self, during a residential or outpatient treatment program that was itself trying to reduce their cravings. A self-reported score, taken by a counselor, in people receiving intensive addiction care, cannot separate the infusion from the program or from knowing they were being treated.
The authors say this themselves. They call it a pilot study and write that “larger randomized double-blinded placebo-controlled studies are needed” [2]. That is the correct reading of their own data, and it is the sentence that never makes it onto a clinic page.
One more thing a reader should know before counting studies. These fifty patients appear to be the same fifty in both publications: the 2022 paper and the 2024 paper each describe “Fifty Cases” and each report the identical three p-values [1] [2]. One cohort, two papers. It looks like twice as much evidence as it is.
The sleep line, since drips are sold on it
The 2024 write-up is the one that reports sleep, and it is unusually candid: sleep hours rose from 6.28 before infusions to 7.34 after, and the authors describe the improvement as non-significant [1]. That is the only sleep number attached to any IV NAD⁺ report we can find, and the people who collected it declined to call it a result.
Everything else on the list
We searched four ways on September 13, 2026. A search for intravenous NAD+ infusion wellness energy randomized trial returned zero results. A search for NAD+ drip cognitive function clinical trial returned zero results. A search for intravenous NAD+ anti-aging outcomes clinical trial returned zero results. A search for NAD+ intravenous therapy fatigue placebo controlled returned zero results.
A 2026 PRISMA-guided systematic review reached the same place from the other direction. Screening the human and rodent literature from January 2010 to October 2025, it identified 113 eligible studies and then stated: “No eligible outcomes trials evaluated intravenous or intramuscular NAD⁺ itself for anti-aging or wellness indications.” The one intravenous NAD⁺ pharmacokinetic pilot it found was included as “contextual evidence only” [3].
And the drip does not behave the way you would guess
That pharmacokinetic pilot is the one piece of hard measurement in the category, and it is worth knowing before you book four hours in a chair. Researchers infused NAD⁺ intravenously at 3 µmol per minute over six hours and sampled plasma and urine throughout. Plasma NAD⁺ and its metabolites did not change until after two hours; the authors describe the infused NAD⁺ as “rapidly and completely removed from the plasma for at least the first 2 h”, with the metabolite pattern consistent with the molecule being cleaved as fast as it arrived [4].
So the mental model of topping up a tank is wrong at the first step. What the infusion produced by hour six was increased urinary excretion of NAD⁺ and of methylnicotinamide. If you want the cost of that per milligram, the IV explainer works it out against the other formats.
Where this leaves a drip
With one uncontrolled series of fifty patients, on a combination preparation, published twice, whose own authors ask for a randomized trial — and nothing else. That is not a scandal and it is not a fraud. It is a category that has never been asked to prove anything, because the people buying it have not asked.
If the benefits are the point rather than the experience, the honest starting point remains the cheap one: an oral precursor, which is the only format with randomized human data, and even that data is narrower than the bottle implies. If the experience is the point — a clinician, a chair, a supervised hour — that is a legitimate thing to buy. Just buy it knowing which of the two you are paying for.