The Dr. Junkie Show: Recent Episodes
Benjamin Boyce
The Dr. Junkie Show is a podcast hosted by addicted person, convicted criminal, prison educator and college educator Ben Boyce. Topics include drugs and those who use them, media, and communication, along with an overall focus on systems, not (just) people.
This week I talk about who owns the media and why that matters. I get into the consolidation of media outlets from local owners a century ago to mostly multinational super-rich corporations today, and I unpack some of the ways that change has shaped the media we consume, which in turn shapes us. I talk about the Fairness Doctrine, the war on drugs, free speech, Buster Brown shoes, monopolies and why they are generally discourages in the US, Reagan, neoliberalist policy and lots more.
You can find a visual version of this episode with graphics on YouTube.
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This week I kick off a new section of the show by talking about the cycle of democracy, which philosopher Polybius outlined more than 2000 years ago. I cover aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy, anarchy, monarchy and tyranny, explaining the seemingly-unavoidable cycle that links them all together into a loop...one we appear to be nearing the end/beginning of.
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This week I dive into some of the work Freud wrote later in his life, particularly a book called Civilization and its Discontents published in 1930. Freud believed that the evolutionary process we can use to trace the changes humans have gone through over the centuries can also explain why culture itself has evolved as it has. He basically thinks we are all self-deceiving, chronically unfulfilled and unsatisfied bots programmed to lie to ourselves above all else, and to avoid feeling guilt or shame based on unavoidable urges we all have by lying to ourselves and everyone else about those urges existing. Instead we redirect them. Killing someone in revenge becomes laser tag this weekend. Driving 100mph like an asshole to work everyday becomes gokarts and beers on Friday night. Cheating with the neighbor becomes an Only Fans subscription or a weekend at a swinger's convention.
In this episode I cover morality, guilt, shame, intoxication, sublimation, civilization, and Freud's views on why all of these things exist in the human species.
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This week I talk about Freud's love of cocaine, the historical legacy of Freud's cocaine use, and the cultural changes that have occurred since then in relation to cocaine. The stories we tell about drugs impact the experience we have when we consume them, but Freud wasn't dealing with a century of propaganda. He was, in many ways, creating some of the original stories about cocaine that others would tell later on. But his positive stories were largely erased when cocaine was outlawed in the early 1900s, and the impact cocaine had on his theories was minimized in much of his surviving work.
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This week I dive into some of Trump's recent comments about "Venezuelan gang members" and the USA's legacy of dehumanizing people based on their drug use. I discuss Rodney King, Joaquín Guzman aka "El Chapo," George Floyd, dehumanization, Hannah Arendt's Banality of Evil, the art of shilling for Trump (aka "minionism"), and lots more.
You can find clips and images of the "Venezuelan Gang deportations" here.
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This week I share a conversation with one of my students, Madeline Grace/Levin, who is creating a podcast of her own called Dependence. I will update this episode description with a link to her podcast when it's live, but in the mean time I thought I'd share a cool conversation we had last week. We talk about religion, drugs, addiction, Michel de Certeau, neoliberalism, atheism, 12-step programs, chihuahuas, spirituality, Trump Derangement Syndrome, religion as a drug, and lots more.
You can find Maddy's fabulous podcast Dependence here: https://www.dependencepodcast.com/
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This week I sat down to record a conversation with my dad, Steve Boyce. We talk about my childhood, his first marriage to my bio-mom, addiction and drug use in his life, what I was like as a kid, cocaine, marijuana, alcohol, and religion (plus more).
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This week I talk about the kratom wars: the argument over whether kratom is a deadly drug or a miracle cure (or somewhere in between). While some states are currently trying to ban kratom, others are working to make it easier and safer to get. Meanwhile, the federal government has been a bit all over the place on it, and with Trump 2.0 gathering early steam by pandering to Project 2025 nationalists, it's hard to say what attempted legislation might materialize in coming years. So let's talk about kratom.
Check out the American Kratom Association to get involved or to find safe suppliers, local activists, or more information about kratom.
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This week I tackle some of the questions and comments I've been getting over the last couple months. I talk about Trump's neoliberal agenda, his capture of the Evangelical Right, Consistency and Accountability in both criminal justice and religion, and I clean up some of what I may have missed during the last few episodes I've done on these issues.
This episode was mostly unscripted and it's all over the place, but hey, some people enjoy rants, so if that's you, have at it.
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This week Dr. Christy Perez (C Dreams) is back to talk about her new projects, and to be dragged back into old theological debates. We talk about trans rights, Christianity, the capture of Evangelical Christianity by MAGA, expectations for the next 4 years, the anti-fact stance of the recent anti-trans executive order, and we spend way too long spinning our tires trying to figure out which parts of the Bible we should read as legitimate, which parts we should disregard, and how on Earth anyone is supposed to know the difference (but if you've listened for long, you already know that's just me).
You can find out more about Dr. Perez's work here. Christy's (Dr. Perez's) personal website: Www.UnCagedCritique.com
Her new organization's website is: Www.poderunides.org
You can email her at Christinasvida@gmail.com or at Cperez@poderunides.org
Her social media is fabulous. X @UnCagedCritique IG @UnCagedChristy
Dr. Perez's work is also available on Filter Magazine's website.
https://gofund.me/52983010
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This week I get back to the heart of the show: drug policy, drug addiction, and drugs. I talk about free will as it relates to the war on drugs, addiction and intoxication, and I dig into genetics, criminal justice, punishment and prevention.
The nonsensical notion of free will, which I've yet to hear defined with any sort of coherence, plays no part in addiction, and our insistence that it does has allowed us to construct a culture that maximized both the occurrence and the severity of addiction.
I plan to do a follow up show to respond to questions or comments you have about this (or any) episode. Let me know what you want to hear.
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This week I talk about coffee: the history, the pharmacology, the politics and the legal battles. I take a dialectical perspective, which just means I focus on both sides of the coffee discussion: it has been blamed for sexual promiscuity and inability to perform; it has been the instigator of both dictatorships and revolutions; it has been labeled both a drug and an anti-drug in different times and places.
I also talk about caffeine as a drug and the reason we don't live in a world where we are at war with caffeine in the same way we are at war with so many other drugs and drug users. I discuss Coca-Cola's caffeine lawsuit, cocaine/coca, feminist movement and coffee, neoliberalism and coffee, and the USA's persistent habit of meddling in the affairs of S. American countries.
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This week I finally finish the topic a started a few weeks ago: religious trauma and why religion often makes people into worse versions of themselves without them noticing. I discuss two of the most important questions in life: how does one find truth, and how does one decide on morality. And I point out the many ways that religions, particularly Christianity, disrupts the process by which we do both while preventing us from noticing our lack of recipe for finding either one (truth or morality). Now days, most of us practice objective morality in which we make our own rules and morals based on what feels right to us. But religious people do so without ever having to admit it; they say they take their morals from holy books while selectively skipping those rules they don't think should apply anymore.
As always in these episodes on religion, I'm not attacking Christians. I am criticizing an idea, not people. If you practice a religion, the challenge here is not to give it up (unless you come to the conclusion it's not true), but rather to practice it responsibly and to value the truth enough to make sure you are practicing the correct form of your religion.
To see Kenneth Copeland's full interview with Inside Edition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LtF34MrsfI
To see Kevin thank God and no one else for saving him from 37 stab wounds: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=944370430207535
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This week I get back to the roots of the show and talk about drugs, specifically alcohol. How does it work?
What does it do in the body?
Why is it so popular in so many cultures?
How has capitalism both attacked and encouraged alcohol use at various times?
Why did prohibition happen in the first place?
How did our relationship with alcohol change as neoliberal capitalism expanded?
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The title of this week's episode is a shout out to philosopher Bertrand Russell, who wrote a book by the same name: Why I am not a Christian. This week I talk about religion as an addiction, responsible use of religion, how religion often programs people to avoid accountability and double down on things they know are not true, the problem with the Bible and other religious books, and lots more.
*Of all the many things people complained about in this episode, there is one error that is worth fixing: the goats I claim Jesus threw off a cliff for no reason were actually pigs. See Mark 5.
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Today's episode includes an interview with formerly incarcerated activist Jeremy Pavlik. Jeremy was incarcerated in Colorado for more than 15 years before his release in 2014. Since then, he has worked with multiple agencies who assist other recently released people trying to get back on their feet. He is currently working to start up his own organization, which you'll hear us talk about today, devoted to fulfilling all needs of recently released people under one roof, from transportation to licensing to food to clothing to medical assistance and housing.
You can reach Jeremy at jpavlik@haloreentry.com
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This week friend of the show Meghan Cosgrove stopped by to interview me in our ongoing series about previously incarcerated people who have used education to find a pathway to success. Long time listeners have heard pieces of my story, but I've seldom stopped to dig deep into what happened to me and why my life went the way it went. We talk about prison education, addiction, religious trauma, heroin injection versus snorting, bank robbery, free will, teaching in prison, and lots more. FYI, the 1963 Impala I talk about rolling at the end was actually a 1967 (my dad remembered)
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Today I continue a series of interviews with recently incarcerated people who are doing some great things in the community. Taylor Doucet was sentenced to 28 years in prison for two attempted murderers in 2013. While inside he found a different version of himself and worked to overcome his past. Now he is a peer recovery coach, a personal trainer, and a bad ass academic.
We talk about prison tattoos, prison identity, gang life in prison, peer recovery, addiction, the war on drugs, parole, prison politics, and lots more
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This week I host another interview with a previously incarcerated student who is doing some great work in the community. Sean Mueller was sentenced to 40 years in prison in 2010 after being convicted of running a "Ponzi Scheme" and losing a few million dollars of investors' money. Since his incarceration, he's worked to become an artist, an author, and an academic; he is currently nearing the completion of his Bachelor's Degree. We talk about capitalism, education in prison, addiction, the culture industry, identity, and the struggles of getting out of prison.
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This week I share a story from another previously-incarcerated person who is doing some incredible work in the community. Geordan Morris was one of my students in the CU-Denver Strategic Communication program, and since his release earlier this year, he's worked with others who have struggled with addiction, trauma, and incarceration to help them define recovery on their own terms and to embody a better way of life. We discuss stigma, prison education, adoption, addiction, trauma, recovery, free will and self inflicted gunshot wounds.
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This week I sat down with Colorado's David Carrillo, who was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole thirty years ago, when he was 19 years old. Since then, David has accomplished some incredible things behind bars. He enrolled in college, completed his Bachelor's and then his Master's Degree, and then got hired to teach for a local college inside prison while he was still incarcerated. We talk about life in prison, drugs in prison, prison education, redemption, identity changes in prison, politics in prison, and we focus on the importance of educational opportunities inside.
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Today is the first episode in a series about people who are justice impacted and who managed to break out of the trap of recidivism. I start with my partner, Dr. Erin Boyce, whose story winds through 20 years, 5 drugs, 4 states and 3 felony arrests. We discuss religious trauma, addiction, role models, prison transports, check fraud, the lost art of gas-and-dash, and we zoom in on education as a way to escape the trap of prison.
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This week is about the evolution of drugs and the role of big pharma (#Capitalism) in creating and exploding the war on drugs.
From Cannabis to Marinol to Spice/K2...
From coca leaves to cocaine to crack...
From willow tree bark to Aspirin to Ibuprofen...
From eucalyptus to amphetamine to methamphetamine to Adderall...
From PCP to Ketamine...
From tea to barbiturates to benzos to SSRIs to glutamate drugs...
From beer and wine to spirits and liquor....
Something capitalistic has been driving our addictions. This isn't natural.
This week I get back to the roots of the show: drugs. I discuss the evolution of drugs via capitalism, and the reason the drugs we used to take decades (and centuries) ago were natural, and, as such, safer and less addictive than the drugs we usually take today. Those old-school, natural drugs are now hard to find, replaced by more potent, cheaper, synthetic chemicals that can be patented by big pharma then shoved down our throats. Cocaine replaced coca leaves only to be replaced itself by methamphetamine. Heroin replaced opium gum only to be replaced itself by fentanyl(s). Cannabis was replaced by...35% THC Cannabis in the early 2000s only to be replaced by synthetic cannabis (Spice, K2).
Article with Jacob Carlock: Crafting Convict Criminologists: An Invitation to Join us in Prison available in The Prison Journal.
Episode 112: The Opium Wars
Read more about David Carrillo here: https://www.chalkbeat.org/colorado/2024/04/11/david-carrillo-continues-to-teach-incarcarated-students-college-classes/
Read more about the Returning Artists Guild (RAG) here: https://thereturningartistsguild.org/
Read Captured Words/Free Thoughts here: https://clas.ucdenver.edu/communication/research-creative-work/captured-words-free-thoughts
Drop me an email at DrJunkieShow@gmail.com.
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Why does everyone in the 2020s seem to have their own version of reality? And why does truth seem to be up for debate in every area? Marshall McLuhan explained why 50 years ago.
This week I answer the question, "why don't you host commercials?" I also discuss the larger, related issues of capitalism, neoliberalism, and Marshall McLuhan's claim that the medium is the message as it relates to our current culture of post truth.
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Email us at DrJunkieShow@gmail.com
This week I talk about Karl Marx's claim that religion is the opium of the masses. I also talk about Friedrich Engels's concept of exploitation by wage labor, Friedrich Hegel's dialectics, capitalism, globalization, and the religious values of different eras (and why they always align with economic values of that era).
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Email us at DrJunkieShow@gmail.com
This week I dive back into some philosophical theory related to why we are so prone to struggle with anxiety, addiction and alienation in today's world. Guy Debord wrote The Society of the Spectacle more than 50 years ago, and in it he explained the current state of so-called "Western Cultures" as having moved from the importance of being to a culture where the importance is on having, and eventually, on to the importance being placed on appearance only (to appear to own something by snapping a photo is good enough).
As a culture, we are now completely preoccupied with and focused on the spectacle, not the real. It's more important to change your Facebook banner to an LGBTQ+ flag on the right day to show your support than it is to support LGBTQ+ people in your heart. It's more important to be seen as having the perfect family or the perfect life than it is to actually build the perfect family or the perfect life. Some people drive $60k cars and live in crumbling homes. In today's cultural setting, a reputation for success requires the complete abandonment of one's personal identity in exchange for the stock characteristics that the audience wants in a performer — whether Marylin Manson actually drinks blook or Ozzy Osborn actually worships the devil doesn't matter. Only the spectacle of performance is valued.
I also cover Marx's theory of capitalism increasing alienation, the Frankfurt School's and the Situationists' (many of the same people) work on how Marx's world of commodity fetishism expanded to spectacle fetishism (the appearance came to be more important than the real), and Debord's (and re-Marx's) concept of magic properties bestowed upon commodities if producers can manage to hide the actual process of manufacturing from the public.
Before you listen to this episode, you might want to take a moment to listen to Macklemore's "Wings." on YouTube here, or anywhere you stream music. Check out the Nike commercial from that song on YouTube for a great example of recuperation (pt 2), and check out the corporate logo US flag for a great example of détournement (pt 2).
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This week I dive back into some philosophical theory related to why we are so prone to struggle with anxiety, addiction and alienation in today's world. Guy Debord wrote The Society of the Spectacle more than 50 years ago, and in it he explained the current state of so-called "Western Cultures" as having moved from the importance of being to a culture where the importance is on having, and eventually, on to the importance being placed on appearance only (to appear to own something by snapping a photo is good enough).
As a culture, we are now completely preoccupied with and focused on the spectacle, not the real. It's more important to change your Facebook banner to an LGBTQ+ flag on the right day to show your support than it is to support LGBTQ+ people in your heart. It's more important to be seen as having the perfect family or the perfect life than it is to actually build the perfect family or the perfect life. Some people drive $60k cars and live in crumbling homes. In today's cultural setting, a reputation for success requires the complete abandonment of one's personal identity in exchange for the stock characteristics that the audience wants in a performer — whether Marylin Manson actually drinks blook or Ozzy Osborn actually worships the devil doesn't matter. Only the spectacle of performance is valued.
I also cover Marx's theory of capitalism increasing alienation, the Frankfurt School's and the Situationists' (many of the same people) work on how Marx's world of commodity fetishism expanded to spectacle fetishism (the appearance came to be more important than the real), and Debord's (and re-Marx's) concept of magic properties bestowed upon commodities if producers can manage to hide the actual process of manufacturing from the public.
Before you listen to this episode, you might want to take a moment to listen to Macklemore's "Wings." on YouTube here, or anywhere you stream music. Check out the Nike commercial from that song on YouTube for a great example of recuperation (pt 2), and check out the corporate logo US flag for a great example of détournement (pt 2).
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C. Dreams, Dr. Christina Perez's moniker while incarcerated, joins me today to talk about addiction, recovery, reentry, education, stigma, social movement, reappropriation, colorism, plus she shares her story of doing interviews (including for this show) on a contraband cell phone smuggled into her prison cell.
Check out C. Dreams' work at Filter Magazine.You can also find her on Twitter/X @UnCagedCritique.
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This week I revisit a topic I've discussed repeatedly on this show: the reported success rates of 12-Step programs like AA and NA. I talk about the reason these programs persist as the norm despite an odd lack of data to verify their success, and I walk through the reasons AA and other 12-Step programs are highly religious while almost always claiming (and appearing) not to be.
Read Cochrane's new(er) meta-analysis of 12-step success rates on their website.
Read more about aging out of addiction in Zimburg's work.
14% - 31% of people who walk into a 12-Step meeting keep coming for at least 1 year.
21% - 22% of people who stay in a 12-Step program for more than a year remain sober.
5% - 8% of people who walk in a 12-Step meeting will remain sober for at least 1 year.
Some studies show that those who try a 12-Step program actually have worse success rates than non-treatment groups.
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This week I talk about the medication shortages across the United States. Drugs used to treat ADHD, chronic pain, and other conditions have been in short supply lately for reasons unexplained. Different groups have blamed the shortage on one anther: the manufacturers blame the DEA, while the DEA blames manufacturers. But as usual, the problem comes down to a design issue.
For more about Assent's issues with the DEA, check out the Reason article, "DEA Shuts Down Factory even as Adderall Shortage Persists."
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This week I wrap up a multi-part discussion of Foucault's theories of panoptic power, institutional knowledge, and discourses used to endorse awful ideas and beliefs about drugs and drug users. I also talk about Michel Foucault's car accident while high on opium, the notion of panoptic power, Jeremy Bentham's panoptic prison, discourse, stigma and stereotype.
Foucault audio at intro and outro from Century of the Self lecture series.
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Captured Words/Free Thoughts is an annual, non-profit publication packed with art, poetry and prose inspired and written inside US prisons. Every year a group of volunteers records some of the submissions in audio form to share with the world.
An online version of the full magazine (and all previous volumes) is here. If you or someone you know (in prison or out) would like a paper copy, contact me and I'll make sure to send one out (for free). You can reach us by mail at CW/FT, 1201 Larimer St, Suite 3014, Denver, CO, 80204.
Intro: Ben Boyce
"My Freedom Kite," by Monica Petrosian
"What's in a Name?" by Gary K. Farlow
"Pledge of Allegiance," by Gary K. Farlow
"Nana," by Tanya Austin
"Attempting Sobriety," by Dylan Lapointe (DJ)
"To My Trans Brothers (My Incarcerated Word)," by H.L. Tapia
"Quiet Night," by Anthony Enis
"Prison is not a Depository," by Abdullah Muhammad
"Mr. Box," by Larry N. Stromberg
"Methamphetamine," by Dylan Lapointe (DJ)
"To Imprisonment," by Eric Perez
"A Birthday in Prison," by Keith Pertusio
"Prison World" by Larry N. Stromberg
"Bound," by Christian J. Weaver
"Living are the Dead," by David Neff
"A Better Way," by Todd Broxmeyer
"No," by Eugene "Tsunami” Miller
"The Beast in the Mirror," by David Zenquis
"Incarcerated but Inspired," by David Richardson
"My First Day on Death Row," by Anthony Enis
"Black Boy Dark Child," by Daniel Mopkins
"Can’t Breathe," by Larry N. Stromberg
"Pain," by Shawn Harris
"Lockdown," by Gary K. Farlow
"The Man Not Taken," by Christian Weaver
"Convict Chronicles: An Ode to Time," by Leo Cardez
"Loving a Convict," by Debbie Magee
"Meaningful," by Taveuan Williams
"Finally," by Manuel G. Sisneros Sr.
"QUO VADIS?" by Troy Brownlow
Outro: Meghan Cosgrove & Ben Boyce
Cover art painting of MLB pitcher Satchel Paige by Warren Worthington
Sestina Godspell
Six months in prison became a theater
Uniforms became just another costume
Not knowing that all of life is a stage
Every man a star to the director
Expectations changed the meaning of dance
Soon this chaotic troupe began to dance
together breathing freedom into theater
Even the gods came to absorb their song
Commitment was fit to wear the costume
guided by the light of the director
All his tender loving care set the stage
A bus transported All actors and stage
where even the law could begin to dance
with shackle and chain requested one director
whose eye was trained on a different theater
Attempting to restrain men in costume
all the while each was singing the same song
Unforgettable Nights echoed their song
Ancestors followed footprints to the stage
where reality wore a different costume
the love of family improved the dance
Never before hade HOME become theater
except in the heart of our director
Five shows meant oneness with their director
A certain harmony in their song
could be felt in the vibrating theater
Hugging hands joined families on stage
where every soul entered the act of love dance
stripping away Lucifer's green costume
In the next act gone was every costume
Filled with satisfaction our director
coordinated the tear down dance
of this newly formed society's song
echoing in their love of theater
Their hearts will Never leave the magic stage
Empty feels the dance without the old song
and costumes feel senseless without a theater
directed by o
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If we wanted to design a culture from the ground up to maximize both the potential and severity of addiction, we would build it exactly like the United States today.
Once upon a time, humans received contentment and fulfilment from their work, and they often went home feeling connected to their communities and identified with the service or goods they offered for sale. But for the last hundred years we've steadily changed that. Today, 1 in 8 of us in the United States has worked at McDonalds, a job that might pay the bills, but certainly isn't showing anyone how much they are truly capable of doing or connecting them to a sense of identity related to their work. We just do it to get a paycheck.
In this episode I will cover the various ways our medical, educational, employment, legal and political systems are all built to maximize addiction potential and severity, and to hide their tracks by blaming drugs and drug users for problems caused by the environment in which we life.
Cocaine and heroin costs around $1 per gram to produce from coca leaves and opium poppies, respectively. Yet these substances will cost a consumer upwards of 50x that much on the streets.
Find out more about behavioralist B.F. Skinner here. Read about his use of Operant Conditioning here.
In Bruce Alexander's experiments, rats that were put in a toyless, friendless cages used 19 times more morphine than those placed in comfortable, familiar homes with other rats.
For more about maximizing button-pressing by rewarding the button-presser randomly, in unexpected and unpredictable patters, check out this article.
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This week I dive into neoliberalism and oligarchy, 2 systems the USA has repeatedly rejected despite their current resurgence of late. The war on drugs is part of a larger move to privatize public systems like medicine, post office services or policing, and to allow profiteering by rich folks who can step in to provide gear and services for these new markets once managed and paid for by the government.
For more about Clarence Thomas 's grifts, see The Nation article here.
Read more about the call for Clarence Thomas to excuse himself in Trump ballet case here.
For more about 6 corporations controlling 90% of our media, see the short article here.
More about Newt Gringrich's (and Frank Luntz's), "Language: A Mechanism of Control" here.
For stats on wealth/income gains between 1944-2014, check out this article by Thom Hartmann.
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Why do humans have such an odd fascination with criminals and outlaws? What happened to all the kings and queens who used to be in charge of everything...where did they go? Why? And what does any of this have to do with drugs?
In this episode I pick up where I left off last time by introducing Michel Foucault's concept of panoptic power, which explains why now days we all self-discipline to conform to social regulations. The war on drugs thrives in spaces where most citizens are thoroughly convinced of the stereotypes that surround drug use: immorality, contagion, degradation, the "disease" of addiction. Today I explain how that cultural knowledge comes to exist, and perhaps how we might be able to disrupt and rewrite those scripts.
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Have you ever thought, "dang, I just got out of work and I already dread going back tomorrow!"? Most of us have, and in response we did something to make ourselves feel better, something to take the edge off: we treated ourselves to an ice cream cone or binge watched our favorite Netflix series. That's the norm of 21st Century capitalism. Today's episode is about America's drug problem, but I take a route through a number of related topics including capitalism, leisure time, the "culture industry" (a term coined by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer), and Marx's alienation.
I also cover some theory from Friedrich Nietzsche, Theo Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse and Karl Marx. Intro from Office Space
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This episode is all about America's unhealthily relationships with work and drugs. We live in a world where we are increasingly distracted and secluded, and our daily schedules often consist of punching a clock and returning home. It's no wonder we feel so compelled to use drugs. We are torturing ourselves with capitalism.
Benjamin Fong's book, Quick Fixes: Drugs in America from Prohibition to the 21st Century Binge, is available now. His other work is linked below on most pod-catchers.
"The Psychedelic Renaissance Is on the Verge of an Uneasy Enlightenment" in Jacobin.
"Monsters of the Brain, Images of the Deity: Psychology and Religion in the Eighteenth Century" in The Journal of Religion."Hans Loewald and the Death Drive" is in Psychoanalytic Psychology."On Critics and What's Real: Russell McCutcheon on Religious Experience" is in the Journal of American Academy of Religion.For more about eugeroics/nootropics like modafinil, check out the Vice article, "Taking the 'Smart Drug' Modafinil Made Me Love Work but Hate People"
The Spectacle of Punishment and Dr. Junkieavailable at Amazon and B&N.
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Colorado's state prison budget has grown by almost 1300% in the last 35 years; it's now more than a billion dollars-per-year.
This week I talk to Christie Donner, founder of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition. We discuss the current state of prisons in Colorado and across the US, and we spend some time digging into a few specific bills currently being debated by Colorado Legislators, including Good Samaritan Laws, fentanyls, safe use sites, and education in prison. We also discuss Pell Grants, the school-to-prison pipeline, negative press coverage, and the ongoing staff crisis in departments of corrections across the country, specifically in Colorado.
You can watch the negative news coverage of La Vista Women's Prison Honor House on YouTube.
You can hear Dean Williams entire interview on the With(in) podcast, season 1, episode 1.
The DOC in crisis article Christie mentioned is available at ccjrc.org.
The Spectacle of Punishment and Dr. Junkieavailable at Amazon and B&N.
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This week my partner Dr. Erin Boyce joins me to talk about one of her areas of study, attachment theory. We discuss childhood development, identity formation, the important of strong attachments to parental figures, authenticity, depression, repression, and lots more.
For more on Attachment Theory, check out Mary Ainsworth's work.
For more on attachment, authenticity and addiction, check out Dr. Gabor Maté's work.
The Spectacle of Punishment and Dr. Junkieavailable at Amazon and B&N.
This week I share a summary of my new book, The Spectacle of Punishment: Lessons from a Century of Prison Films. I discuss cinematic outlaws and lawmen, and I cover the three main prisons used in every movie: prison as a playground, prison as a paradox or prison as penance.
For more on Bill Yousman's work, check out his book Prime Time Prisons on US TV. Check out Ear Hustle and DU-PAI's With(In) Podcast for voices from inside US prisons.
This week I follow the trail of the US War on Drugs from 1970-2020. I cover Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal, the CIA's importation of cocaine into low income communities, Freeway Ricky, crack-versus-powder sentencing disparities, fentanyl, xylazine, and the role of media in all of it.
You can find links to citations in the episode descriptions of sampled audio.
The Spectacle of Punishment and Dr. Junkieavailable at Amazon and B&N.
This week I share part 2 of The War on Drugs: 1920-1970. If you prefer the video format with lots of images and videos, you can find it on YouTube at The Dr. Junkie Show channel.
I cover Harry Anslinger, the origins of the war on drugs in the early 1900s, alcohol prohibition, stigmatization, and the recipe used by every politicians since to ramp the war up a bit more.
The Spectacle of Punishment and Dr. Junkieavailable at Amazon and B&N.
This week I share lecture I recorded a few years ago in video format. If you prefer to watch the video, you can find it on YouTube here: The War on Drugs pt 1.
I discuss the stereotypes that surrounded drugs prior to the 1900s, the ease with which addicted people could live normal lives, the medicalization of drugs, and the racism used to create and support the original drug laws in the United States (from California's ban on opium smoking in the late 1800s, to Maine's early prohibition of alcohol in the 1850s to the southern states' focus on cocaine and marijuana).
The Spectacle of Punishment and Dr. Junkieavailable at links.
This week I talk to Dr. Ashley Hamilton, director and founder of DU-Prison Arts Initiative. Dr. Hamilton's work has focused on using theater as a space of identity (re)formation, and she has become a force in Colorado DOC, spearheading the state's only prison newspaper, The Inside Report, the state's only prison radio station, Inside Wire, and a podcast devoted to rethinking incarceration called With(in).
She also periodically directs plays inside prisons across the state. You can check out DU-Prison Arts Initiative's recent production of These Walls on YouTube.
This episode features the annual performance of Captured Words/Free Thoughts: Art and Poetry Inspired Inside US Prisons, volume 19. This year we have a great lineup commentated by Meghan Cosgrove, Dr. Erin Boyce, and of course, me.
To read complete editions of Captured Words/Free Thoughts, check out the CU-Denver Communication Dept. page.
You can check out Javonte Evans' work at his Instagram page
Special thanks to Dr. Hamilton Bean for recording his father's poem. Thanks to my students in Communication 4040 Spring 2023 semester for recording many other poems. And of course, thanks to Meghan's sister, Sophie, who has a future in spoken word.
For a free copy, or to contribute art, poetry or prose to our next edition, please email me at benjamin.boyce@ucdenver.edu, or snail mail me at Captured Words/Free Thoughts, 1201 Larimer St. Suite 3014, Denver, CO, 80204.
Intro & Outro by Javonte Evans. All other music from Pixabay.
Have you ever wanted to reduce or moderate your consumption of alcohol or other drugs, but you didn't know how to do it or where to go for help? Today I talk to the founder of the nonprofit support group HAMS, Kenneth Anderson. HAMS stands for Harm reduction, Abstinence, and Moderation Support. They are a coalition of drug and alcohol users who support one another through recovery on their own terms. Kenneth and I discuss 12-step programs, harm reduction, cultural issues with alcohol, the difference between booze and other drugs, the lack of treatment options for folks who want to moderate (not quit) their drug or alcohol use, and a lot more.
Additional links to Kenneth's work:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09B78Z88R
https://www.amazon.com/How-Change-Your-Drinking-Reduction/dp/145383060X
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=4zOAEAAAQBAJ&pg=GBS.PP1
This week I talk about synthetic cannabis, also known as Spice or K2. It hit the market in the late 1990s, and it was legal for many years before government officials both in the US and elsewhere passed new legislation banning it in all its forms.
Check out the 1982 article, "“Cannabimimetic Activity from CP-47, 497, a Derivative of 3-Phenylcyclohexanol" to read about the earliest synthetic cannabinoid on record. For more general information about Spice, check out the academic article, "Spice drugs are more than harmless herbal blends: A review of the pharmacology and toxicology of synthetic cannabinoids."
For more on Marshall McLuhan's "The Medium is the Message," check out his work in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.
This episode features part 2 of a conversation with activist, author and academic C Dreams. We dig into some of the basic pathways to learning about God, finding spirituality, navigating holy books, avoiding self-deception, and avoiding our tendency as humans to avoid critical analysis of our valued beliefs or morals.
To follow up on some of our topics, check out the following. For more about the historical journey of our current Biblical text, I suggest Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus. For more about the connection between spirituality and recidivism, check out Said & Davidson's recent article in Justice Quarterly, "A Mixed Method Evaluation of the Role of Religion in Desistance and Reentry."
Check out C. Dreams' work at Filter Magazine.You can also find her on Twitter @UnCagedCritique or the GoFundMe she is sponsoring.
C. Dreams is back, and this time we got into all sorts of topics we missed the first time around. Today's episode is part 1 of 2. We talk about prison abolition, prison education, trans rights in prison, stigma, imposter syndrome, "I ain't shit" syndrome, patriarchy, Christianity, Faith, redemption, sex offender registries, identity and lots more.
Check out C. Dreams' work at Filter Magazine.You can also find her on Twitter @UnCagedCritique or the GoFundMe she is sponsoring.
In this episode I discuss the reason for the podcast, the choice of the name Dr. Junkie, and the purpose of teaching college classes inside prisons. I also talk about sigma, capitalism, incentivization, addiction, identity and opportunity.
For more on drug laws around the world, check out my article in Filter Magazine called "Our Pathway to the Legal Regulation of All Drugs," or Episode 102 of this podcast, "What It's Like in Places Where Drugs are Legal."
For more about placebo effects (SSRIs, 12-step meetings, etc.) you can check out Episode 113 of this podcast, "Placebo Effect." To learn about the history of 12-step programs (particularly AA), check out Episode 119: "Alcohol, 12-Step Programs, and Bill Wilson on LSD."
Check out my new book about the impact of prison movies on our cultural attitude toward incarceration: The Spectacle of Punishment: Lessons from a Century of Prison Films.
This week I sit down with my fellow professor in the college education in prison program at CU-Denver. We talk about our experience as prison educators, the reasons for college in prison, the benefits of education as an identity-building tool, and lots more.
To read published work from our incarcerated students, check out the Westword Article, "Educating Incarcerated People: An Easy Choice," or check out "In Between the Sword and the Pen" in the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice. The article Meghan mentioned (by me) about pushups in prison is "I did 340 Pushups to Prepare for the TV Version of Prison, Then I got There" in The Marshall Project. You can watch the Channel 9 news story talking shit about treating those in prisons like humans on YouTube, "Inmates drop female staffer into dunk tank during prison fundraiser."
Check out my new book, The Spectacle of Punishment: Lessons from a Century of Prison Filmswherever you buy books. You might also enjoy the open sources article I recently published about prison films called "Lessons from Shawshank: Outlaws, Lawmen and the Spectacle of Punishment." Check out the latest edition of Captured Words/Free Thoughtsfor a collection of art, poetry and academia from inside US prisons.
Today I revisit one of my favorite topics: opioids. The ongoing overdose crisis is due to the Iron Law of Prohibition, which states that any time a substance is illegal, the most potent form of it will become the most common form. Fentanyl replaced heroin because it is more potent, and therefore easier to smuggle. But that dynamic creates a lot of avoidable problems for drug users.
For more about opioids in the brain and body, check out the PBS article and video, "How A Brain Gets Hooked on Opioids."
You can find my article "Our Pathway to the Legal Regulation of All Drugs" on Filter.
You can listen to episode 102 for more about places where drugs are legal now.
This week I talk 12-steps programs and the history of alcohol. The self-reported success rate of AA is 5%-8%. The average spontaneous recovery rate for addiction is 3.7%-18% (depending on the study). That means the big claims made by 12-steppers and tough-lovers are based on shaky evidence at best.
For more information about success rates of AA and other 12-step programs, avoid for-profit research and stick with peer reviewed journals or metanalyses of peer reviewed journals. I recommend Dodes & Dodes book The Sober Truth. Saturday Evening Post article from 1941.For more about Jeffery Brandsma's study that showed AA participants fair worse than other options for treatment, see his article, "Outpatient Treatment of Alcoholism: A Review and Comparative Study."
Read the infamous 2006 Cochrane Study that showed AA's "success" rates.
This week I chat with activist and academic C. Dreams about drugs in prison. But we talk about a lot more than that. We cover prison politics, harm reduction, education in prison, the design of the prison industrial complex, the history of incarceration, LGBTQIA rights in prison, tattoos and safe sex in prison, the foster care to prison pipeline, and the trickiness of doing activism in an environment where people are often punished and targeted for suggesting solutions to problems.
Check out C. Dreams's work in Filter Magazine.You can reach out to C. Dreams on Twitter @UnCagedCritique
You can show support by donating to the Go Fund Me here.
Nearly 2 million people are locked in US jails and prisons on any given day. That's a 500% increase in during the last 40 years. Mass incarceration fueled a move toward private prisons-for-profit as states ran out of space to house incarcerated people and money to build new prisons. Our contemporary system of private prisons -for-profit began in the 1980s. Today, private prisons make billions of dollars every year housing, feeding and overseeing incarcerated people who the state pays them to lock up. But making money off of incarcerated bodies isn't a new idea. It's actually older than the United States.
For a great genealogical take on the contemporary prison system, check out Shane Bauer's book American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment.For more on the drug war, prison profits and CCA (CoreCivic), see Discourses of Deception: (Re)Examining America's War on Drugs.
Before the war on drugs picked up much steam in the United States, the war on Cannabis had to be built from scratch. In this episode, I trace the war on drugs back to pre-1900s roots, including the interests of John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon, Lammot Dupont II, Harry Anslinger, Henry Ford and hemp farmers nation wide.
I cover the outlawing of hemp farming, the industrial conspiracy to monopolize the use of petroleum-based products, the capitalistic roots of the war on drugs, and the use of racism by early war-engineers to garner support from the public. And in the process, we review some important US history.
Ann Bracken has written two books recently that we talk about in this episode. First we discuss her project of prison poetry called Once You're Inside: Poems Exploring Incarceration in which she describes her experience teaching students inside a Maryland prison. We also discuss her second book, Crash: A Memoir of Overmedication and Recovery, in which she describes her experience growing up with a mother who was overmedicated and eventually being overmedicated herself. We cover prison education, the prison industrial complex, SSRIs, set and setting, overmedication, doctor-client relationships, the value of spiritual stories and methods for healing, and lots more.
News stories have recently started covering what might be the next big drug terror: Rainbow Fentanyl. It's scary. It's powerful. And according to your grandma, it's being marketed to kids. And oh my--Halloween is right around the corner. Who will look out for the children?
For a basic outline of how easy it is to produce fentanyl(s), check out the United Nations bulletin. For more about the Cartel's incredible Public Relations techniques, check out chapter 4 of Tom Wainwright's book Narconomics.
What we experience when we take a drug has little to do with what the drug does to us biologically. That might sound like an incredible claim, but the evidence bears it out.
Since the first laws restricting the sale, possession and/or use of drugs in the United States, a consistent pattern has reoccurred. First a drug is heralded as the next great breakthrough and a cure to all sorts of illnesses and disorders. The hype leads to a massive increase in use, lining the pockets of manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies. As more people take the wonder drug, more horror stories begin to emerge, causing many to reconsider the efficacy and safety of the drug. Next the drug is stigmatized, or even outlawed outright, closing legal channels of access and thereby contaminating street supplies.
At this point, the people who can't take the drug anymore want a replacement, so the pharmaceutical development firms work to establish a new version of the old drug--a safer, better version they can sell once again. When they find it, the same promises are made, the same pockets are lined, and the same process of stigmatization and outlawing follows. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Set and setting have everything to do with why everyone experiences every drug differently than everyone else. But our current pharmacological model doesn't leave space for us to think about drugs like that. Instead, pharma sells products with blanket statements that paint all drug users as the same. For more about what Richard DeGrandpre calls, "the cult of pharmacology," check out his work: "Constructing the Pharmacological: A Century in Review"
For news reports as early as May 9, 1991 regarding Prozac's dangers, check out the linked ABS News special.
Music by Aleksey Chistilin from Pixabay
We often think of the War on Drugs as beginning some time during the Twentieth Century, either with Harry Anslinger in the 1920s, or Richard Nixon in the 1970s. But the first war against drugs was a war against opium, and it started in the 1700s, turning into a political war between China and England, then again, later, between China and a number of aligned countries, including England.
In this episode I talk about the roots of the original war on drugs, the Opium Wars, and what they can teach us about the current ongoing war on drugs.
All music from Pixabay
This week Aaron Akulis from The Peace on Drugs Podcast joined me to finish up a conversation we began on his podcast last week. We talk about our similar religious upbringings and how we have both navigated the trauma that came with them, and we discuss belief in belief, addiction, Trump and his supporters, drugs, self-deception, patriotism, the US national anthem (verse 3), the shift in political platforms, and lots more.
You can check out Aaron's other fabulous work on his podcast at the link above, or you can start by listening to part 1 of our conversation on episode 58 of The Peace on Drugs Podcast.
Check Aunt Bee on The Andy Griffith Show getting drunk on patent medicine.
Watch fake televangelist MarJoe in the documentary he made about the power of belief.
Derren Brown did the same thing without faking religion in his Netflix special.
What do alcohol, religion and pandemics have in common? A lot, as it turns out. This episode is a deep dive to the origins of our human love of alcohol, religion and social connection. In short, whenever a drug (like gambling, opium, sex, religion, social media, lies, alcohol, etc.) becomes more potent and less social, humans get ourselves into trouble. The pandemic has accelerated our already-problematic relationship with both religion and alcohol, and the similarities are pretty obvious once you know where to look.
For more on ancient cities built to produce and drink alcohol (including Göbekli Tepe), check out The Guardian article, "10,000 Years of Cheers: Why Social Drinking is an Ancient Ritual" or Edward Slingerland's book, Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced and Stumbled our Way to Civilization.For more on human genetic mutations that allowed us to drink much more alcohol than other animals, check out the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) article, "Hominids adapted to metabolize ethanol long before human-directed fermentation." To read more about the relationship between visits to the bar and personal happiness (based on friendship), check out Robin Dunbar's work.
For a great supplement to this episode (with lots of additional information) check out Kate Julian's article in the Atlantic, "America has a Drinking Problem." Ted Slingerman's Google Talk is also worth a watch: "Trying not to Try"
Music by prazkhanal from Pixabay
From 1985-1992, Dr. John Marks managed a clinic where addicted people in parts of England could go to get prescription heroin, cocaine and amphetamine. And just like those who did so before him, and those who came after, he noted improvements in his patients' quality of life and a reduction in their use (and purchase) of street drugs. But in 1992, he was run off by the government when his work gained too much attention, in part by appearing on 60 Minutes and sharing footage of cigarettes spiked with cocaine and heroin being picked up by users from local pharmacies.
Today I am joined by Toby Seddon, who has a podcast of his own in England which you can check out at TobySeddon.com . His research covers various areas of drug policy, but we talk about a few specific articles which you can find below. We discuss the genealogy of drug policy, Michel Foucault's work regarding power and human nature, the changing landscape of pharmacology, capitalism, moralistic arguments against drug use, Dr. Marks's drug clinics, treatment versus sustainment, and lots more.
Read Toby's piece on the genealogy of "drug policy."
Read Toby's coauthored metanalysis (an analysis of numerous studies) about opioid use and criminality.
You can also read about marijuana and autism in this 2022 article.
The Dr. Junkie Show does not offer medical advice.
Set & Setting are important to how we experience the world, including drugs. In today's episode I share a personal story about reducing and stopping my drug use, a project which required a deliberate acknowledgement of set and setting on a daily basis.
I talk about Kratom, set and setting, anxiety, sleeplessness (insomnia), withdrawal, and how I stopped using drugs at various times in my life.
Read Morgan Godvin's article about getting off kratom.
Music by DaddysMusic from Pixabay
Caffeine (via coffee), alcohol and nicotine (via tobacco) are the top three human-used drugs on Earth. And you are probably familiar with all three. But the fourth most common drug isn't cocaine, heroin or marijuana. Betel Nut is a drug you might not know much about if you don't live in a tropical region. It is the fruit from the Areca catechu, a palm tree that grows wild in humid regions of the globe. The pit of the fruit can be crushed and chewed to instigate a euphoric high.
In this episode I explain what Betel Nut is, why its use is so common, why (and how) it can be dangerous, and why we don't use it (or know about it) very often in the United States.
Learn more about arecoline's action in the body in this Public Library of Sciencearticle.
For more on Arecoline as treatment for parasites in animals, check out Science Direct. Check out this YouTube documentary about "Betel Girls" working in open air markets in Hsin Ju County, Taiwan. You can also check out Tobie Openshaw's Ted Talk about "Bingland Beauties"
Music by FASSounds from Pixabay
The Dr. Junkie Show does NOT offer any sort of medical advice.
For as long as we have been humans, we have loved using drugs, and some of us have struggled with problematic use. Epidemics have come and gone, and with them various stigmas and stereotypes about drug use. By looking closely at those numerous epidemics and how they were handled, we can pinpoint various places for improvement in our current drug policies.
On this episode Dr. Carl Erik Fisher joins me to talk about addiction, identity, treatment, recovery and drugs, plus we dig into his new book, The Urge: Our History of Addiction. We discuss the history of addiction, concepts of recovery, stigmas surrounding use in particular groups, double-standards regarding punishment, 12-step programs, identity and lots more. You can contact Dr. Fisher or buy the book at the links above.
This episode examines "poppers," the nickname for amyl nitrite (and some additional alkyl nitrites sometimes sold as analogs). I cover the origins and history of the drug, its current and past uses, methods of ingestion, cultural connections, stigma, and safe use.
🏳️🌈Happy Pride Month🏳️🌈
Music from Pixabay.
The Dr. Junkie Show does NOT offer medical advice.
In this episode, Dr. Erin Boyce (aka "The Other Dr. Boyce") joins me to talk about what's going on in the world. We discuss the frequency of mass shootings, the current state of social media, and we draw some lines between current social climates and the war on drugs.
We also talk about Capitalistic systems and spaces that violate the rules—like this podcast. We discuss the ongoing January 6th hearings and the insurrection that spurred them, mass shootings, social media, the art of self-deception, political polarization, long term issues related to the COVID lockdowns, atheism, the idea of community in the digital era, and (hopefully) we will explain why these things are all related.
The CDC claims that as many as 1 in 68 children are on the autism spectrum. But that might not mean what you think it means. If you don't have much personal experience with someone on the spectrum (or even if you do), you might not understand what autism is, how it works, or how it impacts addiction.
Autism isn't an under-wiring of the brain; it's an overwiring of sorts. And once those of us with it figure out what's going on, it's something that can aid in our success.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
The US is on a shrinking list of countries that haven't yet recognized how counterproductive the war on drugs is. As we have continued to kill and arrest drug users, making the problem worse, other countries have seen tremendous results in decriminalization, and in some even legalization and regulation of drugs. In this episode I'll walk through various drug laws and how they work across the world, and I'll explain why legalization with regulation is the best way to address the current drug overdose crisis.
Follow the link for statistics regarding UK heroin addiction in the 1960s versus US heroin addiction.
To read about Dr. Marks's work prescribing heroin to addicted people in the 1980s, check out Maia Szalavitz's book, Undoing Drugs.
For more about Tim Rhode's "Structural Risk Environment," see "Risk Environments and Drug Harms."
To read more about Portugal's drug policy, check out the linked article from The Guardian.To read more about harm reduction and drug policies across the world, check out the linked article in Filter.
Music by Muzaproduction from Pixabay
In 1994, producer Frank Darabont teamed up with author Stephen King to create their first prison movie, The Shawshank Redemption. It was based on King's short story, "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption," from his book, Different Seasons: Four Novellas. Despite disappointing sales during its time in theaters, the film would become a cult classic. Nearly 30 years later, it's still frequently rerun on TV.
In this episode I unpack the links between what we see on TV and what we come to believe about the world. In the case of prison, when we see images of dark spaces with violent characters willing to victimize one another for minimal gains, we naturally come to believe that those scenes are based on something real. We might not believe that prison is that bad, but we still come to believe that it is bad. And the characters themselves also teach us things about prison which cause us to become more supportive of harsh punishments, including the death penalty.
Mike Nellis's work, “The Aesthetics of Redemption: Released Prisoners in American Film and Literature,” is available in Theoretical Criminology.
In the episode, I talk about the police. And while I'm at it, I talk about the United States.
Follow the links to learn more...
...about Duterte's war on drugs and his daughter's political career which looks to carry on his legacy.
....about Biden's current and past stance on drugs.
...from bell hooks talking about violence as an expression of masculinity in her book Feminism us for Everybody.
...about Safe Use Sites in my piece in Westword.
In this episode I talk about the biological, social and cultural consequences of punishing addiction, a counterproductive habit that's become so normalized in the US that many of us can't imagine doing things any other way. But as the data make clear, the best way to get people to stop using drugs is to get them to want to stop using drugs. And the best way to get them to want to stop is to just give them their drugs and stick around until (or if) they want to reduce or halt their use.
Addiction rates in people who make less than $20k per year are three times those of people who make more than $50k per year (Centers for Disease Control, “Today’s Heroin Epidemic,” updated regularly https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/heroin/index.html )
For info about 12-step programs, success rates and huge failure rates, see the Atlantic article, "The Surprising Failures of 12 Steps"
Drug use rates in US versus other countries: see the UN Drug Report (I used the 2014 version here, but they all have the same info).
For information about how prison makes criminality worse (in 11 out of 23 studies in this meta-analysis), check out Martin Killias and Patrice Villetaz, “The Effects of Custodial vs Non-Custodial Sanctions on Reoffending: Lessons from a Systematic Review,” Psicothema 10, no. 1 (2008).
For the study in Baltimore with a group of 1300 addicted people, authors found that one out of five IV drug users stopped using between 1988 and 2000, and that those who spent time in jail during that time were half as likely to be in the group who stopped using: N. Galai, et al., “Longitudinal Patterns of Drug Injection Behavior in the ALIVE Study Cohort, 1988-2000: Description and Determinants,” American Journal of Epidemiology 158, no. 7 (2003).
Another study found the same thing in Canada from 1996-2005: recent incarceration made it half as likely for an addicted person to have stopped using drugs post-release: K DeBeck et al., “Incarceration and Drug Use Patterns across a Cohort of Injection Drug Users,” Addiction 104 (2009).
For more about kids who were given custodial sentences, like jail or juvenile hall, and were three times more likely to be arrested as adults then those who were charged with the same crimes as kids, but given non-custodial sentences, like probation or house arrest, see A. Aizer and J. J. Doyle, “Juvenile Incarceration & Adult Outcomes: Evidence from Randomly-Assigned Judges,” National Bureau of Economic Research, (February, 2011).
For more about 2/3 of people in drug studies valuing reward over punishment, see Sarah Bechara, Sara Dolan, And Andrea Hindes, “Decision-Making and Addiction (Part II): Myopia for the Future or Hypersensitivity to Reward?” Neuropsychology 40, no. 10 (2002): 1690-1705.
For more about the Learning Disorder model of addiction, see Maia Szalavitz's work, or my book, Dr. Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you know about the War on Drugs.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
We humans have learned a lot about drugs from experimenting on rats. In this episode I discuss the findings of those experiments, and I show (yet again) that the war on drugs is designed in a way that ensures as many people as possible will struggle with addiction, and that their addictions will be as bad as they could possibly be. We couldn't design a less effective system if we tried (and I do in this episode).
To read more about the mechanisms of dopamine's action and how dopamine aids in the learning process, check out the Frontiers article, "A New Paradigm for Training Hyperactive Dopamine Transporter Knockout Rats: Influence of Novel Stimuli on Object Recognition."
To learn more about Rat Park, check out Maia Szalavitz's book, Unbroken Brain, or my book Dr. Junkie. To read more about B.F. Skinner's so-called "Skinner Box," which showed that rats given random doses of food will press the lever more than those given consistent doses, check out this Simply Psychology article.
For more on why punishment make addiction worse, check out Maia Szalavitz's work.
For more on how changing our setting can cause our tolerance mechanisms to fail, check out this article from The Journal of Psychopharmacology For statistics regarding drug arrests, see The FBI Uniform Crime Report.
Cigarette smoking numbers come from The American Lung Association, “Overall Tobacco Trends,” and CDC Data: “NHIS 1974-2018.”
Music on this episode from Pixabay.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
It isn't just PSAs with our brains as a fried egg. Sometimes it's Euphoria's Mouse, a Latino drug dealer with face tattoos who forces a young girl to take fentanyl at knifepoint. Other times it's reruns of Robert Downey Jr. in Less than Zero, or Tupac and Tim Roth in Gridlock'd—characters suffering the predictable consequences of using heroin in the movies: their lives falling apart. But always on our televisions we are given a single story about drugs and those who use & sell them: failure and destruction.
Media teach us things. We learn from what we see on screen, even if we know it isn't true. In this episode I talk about drugs on TV and in movies, and I unpack the way we learn things from the films we watch, even though we know they aren't real or true.
Bill Yousman's work related to media, prison and learning is available here.
You can check out bell hooks' work related to media studies in her book Reel to Real.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Marshall McLuhan famously said "The medium is the message." That's where we begin this week.
You have probably seen the headlines in recent weeks, "Philadelphia drug supply polluted with Veterinary Tranquilizer." As our self-created "opioid epidemic" continues, we can expect similar drugs to pop up, boogie men for the government and the press to blame for a problem which is designed into the system.
Xylazine is a sedative drug which is an analogue (synthesized version) of Clonidine. It can be purchased without a prescription in most US states and is now making its way into the drug supply of many big cities.
The first time I heard of Xylazine was in 2012 in this article from the Journal of Urban Health.Back then it was reported to be a huge problem across Puerto Rico, leading to abscessed skin infections and terrible scarring or even death. Now its showing up across the US. A paper published in April 2022 in the Journal of Drug & Alcohol Dependenceshowed rates of Xylazine in streets drugs is on the rapid rise.
Always test your drugs. The Dr. Junkie Show does not offer medical advice. Consult your doctor; I'm not them.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Ketamine, also known as Special K, is a drug that has only been on Earth for slightly longer than I have, and in that time we've seen an incredible cultural shift in how it's viewed. Where Special K was once a dangerous street drug kids were using to get high, now Ketamine treatment is the frontier of antidepression therapy, the first of what will probably be many glutamate inhibiting drugs.
This week I talk about Ketamine, what it is, how it works, where it comes from, and why it appears to outperform every antidepressant ever synthesized in rapidly reducing the symptoms. I also discuss the claims that ketamine reverses opioid tolerance overnight, the way it reduces anxiety and PTSD, and why it has seen a massive destigmatization in recent years.
For the quote I mentioned, see "Ketamine and Calcium Signaling: A Crosstalk for Neuronal Physiology and Pathology." To read more about Ketamine therapy, check out "Ketamine," in The British Journal of Anaesthesia.To read about how Ketamine might reduce cravings or even reduce opioid tolerance, check out this article inFrontiers in Psychology, "Efficacy of Ketamine in the Treatment of Substance Use Disorder: A Systematic Review."
To learn more about the Elijah McClain case, check out the CPR story here.
Some music on this episode from PenguinMusic @ Pixabay.com
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Last month HBO's drug-fueled hit Euphoria wrapped up season 2 with a bang. And my living room had a few lively days of discussion following the short season. So instead of doing the review alone this year, I invited my fabulous partner, Dr. Erin Boyce, to join me.
We talk about Jules, Rue, Nate & Fezco's violence, drug dealers and the stereotypes surrounding them, plus what we think they got right this season. We hit on tropes of good and bad parents, dialectical tension on screen, and stereotypes & archetypes. We also take a shot at unpacking that last 2-part episode, which (as a Communication scholar) was fascinating on numerous levels. Plato said art imitates life, and Oscar Wilde said life imitates art far more often, so their take on art imitating art imitating life was worth the watch.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
In the 1990s we called it Hippie Crack. In the early 2000s we called them Party Balloons. Today the kids call them crackers or whippets. They are all the same things: Nitrous Oxide, aka "laughing gas" that your dentist might offer you for a particularly painful procedure.
In this episode I discuss the history of Nitrous Oxide (N2O), its medical applications, its illegal use, plus the dangers associated with the drug, which (as usual) are mostly related to the war on drugs, not the drug itself.
To read more about N2O, check out "Past, Present and Future of Nitrous Oxide" in the British Medical Bulletin.
As always, this is not a medical podcast, I am not a medical doctor, and The Dr. Junkie Show does not offer medical advice.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Portugal decriminalized all drugs more than 20 years ago, in 2001. In this episode, I share my thoughts on Portugal's drug policy and I explain how it works: the good, the bad, and the not-yet-finished. Portugal's decriminalization efforts have lowered overall drug use rates by almost 75% and greatly reduced the most dangerous types of drug use through education and (barebones) compassion.
I also discuss Methadone Vans, a new trend in the US which Portugal began using long ago to curb heroin addiction and the crimes associated with it.
This episode is dedicated to the late, great David Poses. Your work was invaluable; we won't stop until it's done. Check out David's incredible memoir, The Weight of Air, or listen to us chat on this episode of Dr Junkie from 2021.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Captured Words/Free Thoughts is a non-profit publication dedicated to sharing poetry and artwork inspired behind prison bars. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this edition, both in submissions and in recording audio to bring these pieces back to life.
Guest Speakers: Meghan Cosgrove, Dr. Erin Boyce, Dr. Stephen Hartnett and Dr. Bill Yousman.
Contributors
"Many Goodbyes," by Michael Owens
"I Pick up my Pen," by Ojore McKinnin
"Happy Holidays in the Era of COVID: Its all about Perspective," by Dortell Williams
"Stop Domestic Violence," by Dortell Williams
"Misconceptions," by Vance Hicks
"Dead Man Walking," by Ojore McKinnin
"Whose Neighbor am I?" by Daniel Gamboa
"Modern Day Martyr," by Vance Hicks
"Two Shades of a Color," by Anthony Billings
"Why We Can't Breath," by Michael Smith (ed. Anthony Penton)
"Depression on Lockdown: Prisoners Empathize," by Dortell Williams
"Fever Dream/Cold Splash of Water in the Face/Caesura," by Dr. Bill Yousman
"Barking" (during Introduction) by Moki the Pooch
The Antwon Rose poem Dr. Erin Boyce mentioned is "I am not what you Think."
To contact us or submit work, write to Captured Words/Free Thoughts, 1201 Larimer St., Suite 3014, Denver, CO, 80204.
Thanks to everyone who contributed to this volume, and to those who helped turn text back into lyrical content to share the voices of incarcerated people with the world. If you would like to contribute to the next recording of poems (2023), let us know.
You can watch the video version of this episode, complete with slides and visuals, at YouTube.
If you have ever wondered what it is like to sit in a classroom where I am teaching, this is the episode for you. The audio is from a guest lecture I gave at a local college. I managed to cover a lot: tolerance, sensitization, dopamine, the thrill of the hunt and the thrill of the feast, liking versus wanting, pruning during adolescence, the price of cocaine production versus the price on the streets, the design of the war on drugs and how it ensures we will always have new users and dealers to replace those we arrest, and I even manage to squeeze in a few questions at the end.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Know someone inside prison who makes art? Want to strike up a relationship with an artist in prison? Just want to get involved in a great organization helping incarcerated artists get their work out there? This is the episode for you.
The Justice Arts Coalition is a nonprofit organization that works to unite activist, incarcerated people and educators seeking to create and share art created inside prisons. This week the organization's founder Wendy Jason joins me to talk about art, prison, collaboration and our work with incarcerated students and artists. Plus I get to her to talk about the origins of this project, the struggles of being a prison educator, and the new normal in post-COVID collaboration.
You can check out the Gallery of the Month on JAC's website.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Getting out of prison is overwhelming. There are people who can help. Remerg is a non profit organization that can help with anything you might need or want to know during that process of reentry. Founder Carol Peeples and director of communications Roohallah Mobarez join me this week to talk about reentry after incarceration, ways to prepare, and organizations that can help.
You can check out Remerg's Youtube page, or their websites Remerg.org and Remerg.com
You can also call the Remerg hotline with any questions: 303-993-3351
Carol and Roohallah explain the organization.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
The Dr. Junkie show does not offer medical advice.
In this episode I take another shot at describing how cocaine works in the body. I talk about where it comes from and how it's produced, why it is so extreme in its effects, and how we can regulate and decriminalize it to put all illegal drug dealers out of business overnight. Plus, I discuss sleep cycles and why they are so important, Sigmund Freud's dark outlook on life and why we can thank cocaine for his conclusions, what happens when we mix cocaine and alcohol.
For more on sleep, check out Dr. Matthew Walker's book, Why We Sleep.For more on the history of coca farming, cocaine production, cocaine addiction, and all sorts of other stuff, check out my book, Dr. Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you know about the War on Drugs. The Dr. Junkie Show was recently listed in Feedspot's top 10 podcasts about drugs.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Neuroscientist Dr. Judith Grisel joins me to talk about mechanisms of addiction and why we can't stay high forever. We also discuss antiopioids, trends in drug use, tolerance, sensitization, how to talk to kids about drugs, and why youth is both the most common and most dangerous time to become addicted to drugs. Plus we cover how drugs work in the brain, how cannabinoids might actually be a neural marker of important memories, cocaine's action in the synapse, the neurology of opioid and alcohol addiction, and much more.
I don't often read a book that teaches me as much as Dr. Grisel's book did about how drugs work and what our brains do long-term to establish tolerance. Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addictionis also written in a language that is understandable by the general public despite Dr. Grisel's unpacking of issues which require a degree in neurology to fully understand.
BTW, the Nelson Mandela quote Dr. Grisel mentioned is, "There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children."
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Feminist scholar bell hooks passed away in late 2021, leaving behind a legacy that will outlive her by generations. She taught us what feminism is and why we should not be afraid of it. She explained why media (music, TV, film, etc.) teaches us things about the world without us realizing we have learned anything. She reminded us that rap music is not a reflection of black life in the United States, but a capitalistic product purchased by mostly white, mostly middleclass kids who recognize something in it that they have been promised by their families, churches, schools and culture: domination. And perhaps most importantly, she taught us that our everyday lives are inevitably caught up in systems of power which we cannot escape, and which we either support or resist.
Her life was dedicated to understanding how power works. This episode is dedicated to her work.
Today my partner (the other Dr. Boyce) and I sit down to talk about what bell hooks means to us, and what she means to the movements we support. We talk about why she doesn't capitalize her name, what love should look like, why domination is such a problem, and how media works to reinforce oppressive systems without us realizing it. Plus we walk through what she meant by the term she coined: "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy."
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
In this episode, I take you along on my first experience of injecting heroin.
Rituals of use are a big part of addiction. They have increasingly become the focus of both addiction researchers and treatment providers. When we do something that makes us feel better (take a drug, place a bet, make a move, hit the gas, take a trip, etc.), we begin to feel the effects of that action before we actually do it. And the more we do it, the earlier and more intense our feelings become.
Injecting drugs is a ritual of use. We lay out the equipment in a familiar room, on a familiar table. We turn on the same TV or we click on the same stereo. We notice the same sounds and smells, the same sense of what is coming. All of it becomes part of the ritual.
In cultures of drug prohibition, rituals of use expand to fill an addicted person's entire life. Our laws are designed to make it appear to be the fault of drug users, not the culture which ensured it will happen.
Audio for the intro & outro came from a 1967 anti-drug PSA called Narcotics: Pit of Despair.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
The United States is obsessed with policing drugs and those who use them, yet the most deadly, well-studied drug in existence, nicotine, is a regulated product, legal to buy once a consumer is 21 years old. According to the WHO, tobacco, when used properly, will kill half of all people who don't stop using it. And because cigarettes are so obviously dangerous yet still widely distributed and glamorized, they hold a clue to our human condition. The story of cigarettes is the story of media.
In this episode I discuss the history of tobacco advertising and what that can teach us about the history of drugs. I also discuss the roots of the Communication field of study, the power of propaganda, and methods for influencing human behavior (Freud & Bernays).
Check out Mitch Zeller's Ted Talk for more about current statistics and proposed solutions to the tobacco death problem. To get an idea of what Zeller's "non-addictive cigarette" would look like, check out JAMA's "Less Addictive Cigarettes" (2019). For a great summary of Big Tobacco's history, from film to feminism, check out "The Tobacco Conspiracy" on YouTube. And for the history of Communication as a contemporary field of study, see Stephen Hartnett's piece, "Communication, Social Justice and Joyful Commitment."
In the 1960s, Phillip-Morris (Marlboro) began putting ammonia into their cigarettes, allowing tobacco to be freebased and thereby reducing the quantity one needed to smoke to achieve desired effects (less tobacco required to deliver a dose of nicotine). Around the same time, manufacturers introduced the so-called "Light Cigarette," which you can read about in Anne Harding's article.
To watch Dick Trickle smoke as he drives around the race track, check out YouTube.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
I have recently received so many questions about the book that I thought I would spend an episode talking about it. Dr. Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugsis available on Amazon and Barnes & Nobel. This autobiographical account of addiction and crime in the United States reveals the design-flaws of the current War on Drugs, which has consistently failed to focus on the things citizens should want prioritized, like saving lives, reducing addiction and getting rid of dangerous street drugs. Instead, the we have spent trillions of dollars imprisoning our neighbors, killing our family-members and driving the price of these chemicals sky high. And if we have learned nothing else through the 120 years plus of this worthless war, it is that people will not be stopped from using drugs, no matter how dangerous, expensive or illegal they are.
Dr. Junkie is a story about how we can change our priorities and save lives. We are currently in the midst of the worst overdose crisis in contemporary history, and it can only be stopped with safe supply, therapy, support, treatment...in a word, love.
If we truly want people to stop, and to experience minimal damage from their use, we would legalize all drugs and, as a bonus, put all illegal drug dealers out of business overnight.
In this episode, I explain what it is like to teach college classes in a correctional facility. And I focus on one of my favorite academics and authors, bell hooks, who anchors our classroom discussions about feminism, an idea that many of us have totally misunderstood. I cover the "feminist waves," how media impacts our beliefs, and why many of us think feminism is something very different than what it is.
Working as a prison educator is the most fulfilling job I have ever had. When we are thrown in prison and cut off from the world because (we are told) we are too dangerous and awful to play with everyone else, we internalize those feelings of hate and disdain, leading to a long-standing 66% recidivism rate in the USA. But when we are offered services, treatment and reasonable options for self-improvement, we often change our thinking without realizing it, and we begin projects of self improvement.
Check out Yousman's work about media making us afraid.
You can also read about Roy Cohn, political advisor for both Donald Trump & Joe McCarthy.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
What is the difference between medical cannabis and recreational marijuana? Is it a good idea to get your medical card even if you live in a state where Marijuana is legal? How about research: have they started applying the scientific method to this plant? It would be so great to know someone who you can just ask about these things. Luckily, I do know someone. Her name is Katie Sullivan.
Katie is the operator and founder of Modern Compassionate Care, an affordable company offering various services related to marijuana, including medical cards, health advisements, and research updates. If you have ever wondered what sorts of cannabis might help with some condition you are struggling with, she is the person to call.
In this episode, we talk about the benefits of getting a medical card even if you live in a state where "recreational marijuana" is legal. We discuss the latest research findings related to cannabis and autism, cancer, Alzheimer's, plus evidence of marijuana's neuro-protective properties.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
If you want to stop using a drug in the United States, your only choice is often "cold turkey," a terrible name for an unnecessary risk that can often prove fatal if not properly treated. One alternative to this painful experience is a service called In Home Detox, which comes in many shapes and sizes depending on the part of the world you live in. Some doctors do it on the low; others are willing to give you take-home meds like Suboxone, and others, like Dr. Abe Malkin, will come to you. His company is called Elite Home Detox.
The most heart breaking thing about withdrawal from drugs is how easy it would be to make sure no one ever suffered from it again. Drugs are incredibly cheap to produce and easy to taper in controlled environments. But until we rethink our stance on drugs, the stigma surrounding use delegitimizes non-sober forms of recovery. Our cultural beliefs stand in the way of many who would otherwise begin their own process of recovery.
In this relatively short conversation, Dr. Malkin and I discuss the dangers of detox, medication assisted treatment (MAT), holism, anti-aging treatments, age-related updates in drug use and vitamin intake, the disease model of addiction, stigma, recovery, how prison and punishment make addiction worse, the problem with 12-step models, Kratom, "recovery," Ketamine Infusions, IV therapy, and "Cold-Turkey Detox." We also discuss why you should never detox from alcohol or benzodiazepines without seeking medical treatment.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
In music it is called Purple Syrup, Sizzerp, or Lean. At the dope house it is called liquid codeine. At the doctor's office it is called Codeine with Promethazine. Regardless of where you get it, it is more popular today than ever before.
In this episode I examine Codeine and Promethazine syrup: what it is, what it does, why it is so popular, and why, like most drugs, the war on drugs has made it much more dangerous than it would otherwise be. And I talk about the power of media to teach us things we don't realize we are learning, especially when it comes to things or places we are not familiar with.
To read more about D.W. Griffith's film Birth of a Nation, check out "The Birth of a Nation: How the Fight to Censure DW Griffith's Film Shaped American History."
For more about racism in media, check out Bill Yousman, "Challenging the Media Incarceration Complex through Media Education," or Travis Dixon's, "Good Guys are still Always in White."
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Morgan Godvin joined me last week to talk about Oregon's Measure 110, which decriminalized all drugs around one year ago. In this powerful conversation, we discuss the results of decriminalization, the increase in overdoses nationwide, fentanyl(s) and how we can prevent them from flooding the streets, thefts of desperation, Medication Assisted Treatment success and the stigma that goes with using drugs like Methadone or Suboxone, the cost of doing time in prison, and much more.
Morgan has tons of work available with an internet search. You can read her Marshall Project piece, "I thought Going to Jail would get me Clean: I was Dead Wrong."
Morgan also published an article about Oregon's drug decriminalization efforts.
She also came on my podcast last year to talk about her convictions, time in prison, and recovery after release: available here.
Morgan also appeared on a recent episode of The Tamron Hall show.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Every day in the United States possessions and cash are stolen from citizens who have committed no crime. They can't call the police because the police are responsible for the theft. Its called Civil Asset Forfeiture.
In this episode I will talk about the history of Civil Asset Forfeiture, an underhanded scheme used by police departments across the country to confiscate cash or valuable items, often without charging the owner with a crime. And it is all legal, based on a law that was passed back in 1984...or was it 1684?
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
In this episode, I take a look at rapid (roadside) drug tests which are often used as probable cause for arrest. Police make up to 100k arrests every year using Roadside Drug tests with a failure rate high enough to require lab tests for validation of every charge in most jurisdictions. But even though you can't convict someone based on a rapid roadside test, you can arrest them and keep them locked up until they can pay the ransom or do the time. And you can use the roadside results to pressure them into pleading guilty, even if lab results eventually show no drugs were actually discovered.
You can check out popular articles from The New York Times for Amy Albritton's story in Houston, or ProPublica to read about Dasha Fincher's million dollar bond.
Research published in the Journal of Drug Testing and Analysis found oral cannabis tests return both false positives and false negatives, and that even CBD-heavy products might trip saliva tests for THC, resulting in possession or DUI charges when drivers are in fact not consuming THC. You can also watch the Atlanta Fox 5 story about Vitamin C causing false MDMA positives in roadside tests, as happened to Clarice Daku.
For more about how "Reality Police TV" is problematic, check out the podcasts, Headlong: Running from COPS or Wrongful Convictions: Junk Science-Roadside Drug Tests.
*It appears some episodes of COPS have been updated to remove content which has drawn the attention of social justice advocates. The pieces discussed in this episode appear to be on that list as of Oct. 2021.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
You asked for it...literally. In this episode, Dr. Erin Boyce and I will answer many of the questions we have received over the years doing this podcast, and the specific questions sent out recently by those of you responding to my request.
For Ben
- Why didn’t you use methamphetamine?
- Are you anti-Christian? Do you think of yourself as having a religious identity?
- What is your favorite drug?
- Do you think prisons should be abolished?
- Do you have any suggestions for recovery success?
- Did you learn anything in prison that helped you later on?
- Who if your favorite artist, singer, researcher or author?
- Did you ever try to stop using drugs unsuccessfully?
- Where did you grow up?
- Who has been your favorite guest?
For Erin
- Did you enjoy heroin/fentanyl?
- Why did you stop using meth?
- What do you do when you encounter “Karens” in your class?
- Do you or did you ever have a religion?
- How does your religious identity work with Ben’s?
Bonus Question: How can someone prepare for release from prison?
You can find out more about Dr. Kristin Neff's ideas of compassion and self-care (mentioned by Erin) at SelfCompassion.org
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Hollywood feeds viewers a lot of problematic stereotypes regarding drug use, perhaps none as misleading as the notorious speedball. Users who combine heroin with a stimulant like methamphetamine or cocaine to create a single injectable liquid are said to be "speedballing," and when it is depicted on television or in books, it is used as the proverbial rock bottom of addiction, the final stop along the train of illogical and uncontrollable drug use. But injectable speedballs are actually pretty uncommon in the drug world. The ways these drugs are prepared and the way the work in the body usually makes combining them a hassle most of us don't bother with; we just shoot them up one-after-the-other.
But there are also a lot of reasons why we are tempted to use these drugs together. The chemicals which compose the individual parts of the speedball concoction compliment one another in ways that entice users. They fill the gaps in each other's affects; they both have properties which the other lacks.
Check out the research mentioned in this episode here:
Kent Berridge & Terry Robinson, "Liking, Wanting & the Sensitization Theory of Addiction."
Kent Berridge, "The Debate over Dopamine's Role in Reward: The Case for Incentive Salience."
Kent Berridge, "Evolving Concepts of Emotion and Motivation."
Maia Szalavitz, Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction. For Donald Klein's ideas about the Thrill of the hunt/feast, see Peter Kramer, Listening to Prozac
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Stories about viral apocalypse are not new. Some of our oldest narratives play with the gloomy fantasy, and it has become a spectacle of contemporary Hollywood productions like 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, Resident Evil, The Walking Dead, and Shaun of the Dead.
The way we talk about contagions and diseases says a lot about what we value and how we see the world. When news networks cover COVID-19 by focusing on fear-based scenarios and blame game politics, they cater to viewers who might otherwise tune out if they covered the story some other way. In the 21st Century, "covering the story" has come to include making the story into a spectacle.
As the old adage goes, "if it bleeds, it leads."
Dr. Lisa Keränen has been studying the way humans talk about viral apocalypse for more than a decade, and she had published numerous articles, chapters, and is working on an upcoming book about what she called the rhetoric of contagion. I recommend Dr. Keränen's lecture on Morgellons Disease. You can also check out some of here research here:
"Concocting Viral Apocalypse: Catastrophic Risk and the Production of Bio(in)security"
" Biosecurity and Communication" in The Handbook of Communication and Security
She is also working on her book called Envisioning Viral Apocalypse: Biosecurity Rhetoric, Risk, and Resilience from Anthrax to Covid, so keep an eye out for that.
To read about Ben Franklin's Fake News campaigns, check out this Washington Post article, "Fake News? That's a Very Old Story"
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
As always, the Dr. Junkie Show does not provide medical advice. In this episode I discuss fentanyl(s) and why they are causing so many problems culturally right now, 100 years into a war on drugs.
Fentanyl and its relatives (remifentanil, etc.) are not the problem. The war on drugs is the problem. Doctors have been using fentanyl(s) in hospital settings for more than 50 years, and they provide a number of benefits which make them preferable to other opioids in all sorts of procedures. I also explain why fentanyl(s) get us so much higher than heroin and morphine, why they are so dangerous when laced with other drugs, and how we can fix the current problem with overdose.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
This week marks the start of another semester of college classes, and this year I managed to get approved to teach inside the Department of Corrections; I am heading back into prison. In this episode, I discuss the classes, the approval process, and I talk about my criminal record. In a few weeks I will record the "Ask Me Anything" episode. Submit your questions at DrJunkieShow.com
If you are or know an incarcerated person who has art, poetry, or creative writing that you want published, you can contribute to the poetry project (or just check it out) Captured Words Free Thoughts. The Student-Performed Episode is also linked there.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
David Poses recently released his addiction memoir The Weight of Air: A Story of the Lies About Addiction and the Truth About Recovery.
David joined me this week to me about it. We discusses ways to end the war on drugs, the rehab industrial complex, Suboxone (buprenorphine), methadone, stereotypes that don't pan out (speedballing, addiction, rehab, religion), and a lot more. We also dig into his book and some of the stories that didn't make it, including a bogus arrest that involved police misconduct.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
New York recently announced a $1.8 billion settlement with major drug distributors, and a larger $26 billion "global settlement" scheduled to follow shortly thereafter. But that money won't be devoted to methadone treatment or paying for rehab. It will probably be devoted to making the war on drugs even larger and more violent. This week I sit down with Christine Minhee, author and editor of The Opioid Settlement Tracker, to talk about why this is happening, and how we can prevent the worst of the damage.
You can also check out Christine's piece, "The Cure for America's Opioid Crisis? End the War on Drugs."
You can also check out John Oliver's website with information (and comedy) related to the Sackler family, Purdue and the opioid epidemic.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
The "Western World" has trained most who live here to feel as if monogamy is natural and normal: that it's "just the way thigs are." But humans are not wired up to live in monogamous frameworks. Evolutionarily, we fit somewhere between monogamy and polyamory, and our history as a species makes it easy to recognize why. This week's episode is all about polyamory (poly: many, amor: love).
My guest is Dr. Stephanie Webb, whose book, Use Your Words: Opening Language for Open Relationships, examines the link between cultural norms, language and polyamory. Like many things in US culture, love is policed in ways we seldom talk about and hardly notice. The feeling of, "that's just the way things are" is the result of being covertly taught what love can and cannot be.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
As always, the Dr. Junkie Show does NOT provide medical advice. On this episode, Elise Keller joins me to discuss the endocannabinoid system. What is it? How does it work? Why is it so un-studied? Plus what on Earth is Cannabis Coaching.
Just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Elise gave a Ted Talk sharing her journey to and through cannabis: "The Surprising Connection between Cannabis and Mind-Body Health". In addition to it, we also discuss methods of consumption (oral, sublingual, smoking), stigma and how to combat it, holism and the mind-body connection, and the endocannabinoid system as the body's "Master Regulator." We also list ways of increasing your endocannabinoids naturally through foods, behaviors and types of exercise, and how to avoid toxins which decrease natural endocannabinoid levels.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Big Pharma opioid settlements already total billions-of-dollars. In this episode, I talk about why the government is really after that money, and what these settlements mean for the war on drugs. I also introduce topics which I will cover with Christine Minhee when she comes on the show to unpack her work at opioidsettlementtracker.com.
In this episode, I also discuss the "systems, not people" aspect of the so-called opioid epidemic, and how the design of the drug war ensured everything that has happened would eventually happen . . . and that when it did, we would be able to pretend we hadn't seen it coming all along. I also discuss the war on drugs as a funding scam—as a way to trade the lives and wellbeing of drug users for the salaries of well paid warriors and the web of employees who support them for decades to come, all while simultaneously ensuring Big Pharma can not offer safe drugs to users who will instead be forced to the underworld market, where they will inevitably use unsafe drugs and accidently overdose, by design.
I also introduce Civil Asset Forfeiture, and I explain how pharma made oxycodone and fentanyl—drugs that were almost a century old—appear to be brand new. Plus CDC overdose numbers and why they are consistently exaggerated.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Addiction specialist and best-selling author Maia Szalavitz joins me to talk about her new book, Undoing Drugs: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction.Maia has been researching, writing about, and working within the harm reduction community for more than twenty years, and her latest book is just one of many required reads for anyone who is beginning to realize they have been lied to about drugs and those who use them.
Maia and I discuss different frameworks of recovery, definitions of harm reduction, and ways of embracing our identities (as addicted people, Aspies, etc.) without letting them weigh us down. We also talk about Nirvana & Kurt Cobain, drug regulation as a fix to the overdose crisis, ways of undoing stigma, and we preview the best parts of her new book.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
The things we are trained to remain silent about usually involve shame. We learn from a young age to avoid particular issues: "never talk politics or religion at parties." But it turns out that the things we are taught to never talk about are usually the things we should be talking about most. What sort of world do we want to build for our posterity? What sorts of practices ought we allow to be considered religious? And who is benefitting from the suffering we see around us every day?
Disciplined silence is how systems and cultures weave terrible behavior into their histories for long periods of time, then finally jettison those rituals as outdated, usually long after they should have. Once they are no longer normalized, and once we are free to discuss them, it suddenly becomes obvious that they were unacceptable oppressive practices. It is too bad we didn't fix them sooner.
Disciplined Silence is how the war on drugs is still a thing.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Dr. Travis Heath joins me to discuss many of the problematic norms in both therapeutic and academic communities. We talk about the war on drugs, therapy and how it works, systems approaches and how to teach them, gender and how it instigates unconscious (and often toxic) performances, drugs, crime, trauma, reauthoring, ideas and who owns them, approaches to therapy, and our cultural lust for revenge in place of restoration.
We also discuss anti-racism, the digital commons, critical race theory (CRT), and more.
Dr. Heath teaches at the University of Denver and provides therapeutic treatment to court ordered defendants in criminal cases.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Power is something we seldom discuss despite living enmeshed in its inescapable web. Power is "visible and unverifiable," per Foucault, and it "concedes nothing without demand," per Frederick Douglass. But what the hell does any of that mean?
In this episode I discuss the performance of roles and what that has to do with power, plus Michel Foucault's idea of panoptic power, Plato's Cave, Theodor Adorno, Michel de Certeau's "referential reality," Life Imitating Art, Art imitating Life, Oscar Wilde, gender, class, race and ableism.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Drugs were not always illegal in the USA. For a good deal of our history you could walk into your local pharmacy and buy cocaine, heroin or cannabis right off the shelf, without a prescription. But something changed around the turn of the century (1900), and by the 1930s the War on Drugs was in full swing.
Opium was outlawed by associating it with Chinese immigrants.
Cannabis was outlawed by associating it with Mexican immigrants.
Cocaine was outlawed by associating it with Black men.
Later, amphetamines would be criminalized by associating them with poverty.
DMT (Ayahuasca) & Peyote were outlawed by associating them with non-Christian religions.
There is a long history of racism in this country. Without it, the War on Drugs would never have existed.
In this episode, I also talk about LSD, MDMA, Methamphetamine, challenging trips, Communication as a field of study, Bicycle Day, set and setting, the origins of the DEA, Harry Anslinger, PSA campaigns, Junkie Bonds/Junkie Unions, and the name of the show, "The Dr. Junkie Show."
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
This short episode is a recording of a submission from repeat-guest Chris Trigg, who is currently still incarcerated in the US Federal Prison System.
You can write Chris at:
Chris Trigg #11383112
USP Beaumont
PO Box 26030
Beaumont, TX 77720
You can check out more of Chris's work (along with other prisoners across the country) in Captured Words Free Thoughts
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Karl Marx famously described religion as, "the opium of the people," not (only) because he thought religion was a drug, but because he saw how much relief it brought to those in the most hopeless of situations. Last week I talked about religion as a drug. This week my wife, Dr. Erin Boyce, joins me to talk about the phenomenon of wokeness as a religion, and as such, a drug.
We also discuss Critical Race Theory, Chronic Wokeness, US Patriotism, Racism, Cancel Culture, Patriarchy, and the difference between evidence-based models and feel-good (religious/drug) models. Plus, how to avoid falling into the trap of religious thinking.
"Sin City" has hundreds of hotels without a 13th floor and a Roulette wheel with numbers totaling 666 in every casino. What happens there supposedly stays there. Anything is possible, or so it seems once you step onto the Strip.
In this episode I will talk about how the city gets us high when we visit, or when we just think about it. Plus some history, and my favorite don't-skip destinations for visitors on a budget.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
In this episode, I share a bit about my past with religion (Christianity), and why I see religion as a drug. I also discuss what the word religion means in a Western context, why everyone (especially religious people) believes they are not religious yet everyone else is, the role of holy books (religions) in the formation of human morals, and why humans evolved to need religion, or rather, needed religion to evolve.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Today I will share a few stories about my experience with The New Jim Crow, a title Michelle Alexander popularized when discussing the legal discrimination of convicted criminals.
The Department of Corrections (DOC) is all about a lot of things. But helping prisoners avoid recidivism is not one of them.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Emanuel Sferios, host of the podcastsDrug Positive and Drug Nonsense joins me to talk about US drug policy, ending the war on drugs, MDMA therapy, Dance Safe, Fentanyl(s), test strips, stigma & stereotype, and Emanuel's theory that QAnon is a government psyop.
To get your street drugs tested for fentanyl(s) and other adulterants, see DrugsData.org and check out Dance Safe either at their linked website, or your local concert, where they will test your drugs for free.
In this episode I sit down with my editor, Laura Hull. We talk about how parents should talk to kids about drugs, and we begin a 2-part discussion about Ketamine Treatment.
We also discuss Judge Holmes (episode 21), class privilege, Systems Perspective, stereotypes about drug use(rs), George Floyd's murder, Andrew Brown's shooting, Kurt Cobain's suicide (or was it?), Jimi Hendrix's overdose, Amy Winehouse's alcohol consumption, and how to talk to kids about other awkward issues, like death, sex or mental health.
Laura has been vital to this show's success, so it was a blast to finally get her on this side of the mic.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Every morning for around half a decade in the early 2000s, I would make my way to the Methadone Maintenance Therapy (MMT) clinic in Kansas City, Missouri. For me and millions of others, methadone, Suboxone (Buprenorphine), Vivitrol and heroin maintenance therapy are invaluable to our success in life.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Tupac Shakur once said the police are "the biggest gang in New York City." He was right. They are actually the biggest gang in the country.
That might not be a bad thing (as Tupac also pointed out). There are ways to make sure that "gang" has society's best interests in mind, and that individual actions conform to that goal. Until we update the system which currently exists, we will see the same results as always. Locking up individuals might feel good in our revenge-fueled culture, but it doesn't fix anything.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
There are 2 ways for the war on drugs to end. Both have already been attempted in countries across the globe. In Portugal, decriminalization has reduced the amount of heroin-addicted people by 75%. In the Philippians, where up to 25,000 drug users and dealers have been murdered by police and state assassins since 2016, there are new dealers and users every day to replace those gunned down by police.
3D molecular printing will change everything, and the war on drugs will suddenly be impossible to fight. When we can all print heroin in our own homes, law enforcement won't have any way to arrest us, and the illegal market will evaporate.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Ghost Dope: you can't touch it, you can't smoke it, and you can't weigh it. But it sent Chris Trigg to prison for 30 years.
In this episode I share the story of Chris Trigg, who remains in prison, serving time for a conviction for drugs which never existed. My Prison, Communication & Social Justice Spring, 2021 class joins me to share Chris's story.
In this episode, I talk about the trial of Derek Chauvin, and the defense's ironic argument that the system is at fault. Derek was following his training, and he actually could have used more force than he did, according one defense witness.
All of this feels eerily familiar. For decades, "Reality" TV shows like COPS have shown us spectacles of law enforcement wherein a resisting suspect is hogtied ("hobbled"). We have listened as officers responded to suspects screaming, "I can't breathe!" with the heartless line, "if you are talking than you can breathe." We have watched as suspects who are caught with drugs are made to look like fools, trouble-makers and worthless criminals, just because they had drugs. And it has worked. Many citizens feel as if our current prison-industrial complex isn't big enough!
If we want to stop cases like George Floyd's from happening again (and again...), we have to make systemic changes. And we can't do that until we acknowledge that it is, indeed, happening over, and over, and over.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Brandon Stickney was a successful journalist when he handed one of his friends a pill. But that pill was a Suboxone (buprenorphine), so when his friend told on him, Brandon wound up in prison for 19 months.
Brandon's latest book, The Five People You'll Meet in Prison, is part memoir, part activism, and all indictment of a system which locks people up for using drugs, then does everything it can to make sure they become life-long criminals.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Free will is the underlying principle of our criminal "justice" system. Without the ability to blame people for their "crimes," we would be forced to focus on prevention instead of revenge, restoration instead of retribution.
But free will is not a thing. The illusion of free will isn't even a thing. In this episode, I will take a stab at explaining why so many people still claim to believe that free will aligns with their experience of the world, even though it clearly does not.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
In 1971, Dr. Phillip Zimbardo gathered a group of undergraduate students and convinced them that they were not allowed to leave the basement of the Stanford Psychology Department. Half of the group played the role of guards, while the other half became prisoners for what was supposed to be a 14-day experiment. What followed was six days of legitimized abuse, and fifty years of legitimized research, all based on a misrepresentation of motives.
In this episode I talk about what happened in that study, and what it means about our human tendency to blame our bad behavior on others.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Once WWII ended, the "Western World" got to work figuring out what had happened. But (as usual), we had no interest taking any blame or self reflecting on our own systems of power. Researchers who understood how much we hate to point the finger at ourselves designed study after study meant to reveal the thing or things which caused otherwise good people to do horrible things.
In this episode I will talk about two of those studies: The Robbers Cave Experiment (1954) and the Milgram Shock Experiment (1963). The results can tell us a lot about systems of hierarchical power, but they can tell us even more about our cultural habit of chronic wokeness.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Have you ever felt like the news and TV programs are reinforcing racist stereotypes? Have you ever seen a drug dealer or a thief on television and known they were a bad guy before they did anything illegal?
Dr. Travis Dixon's work reveals the statistical cause of that feeling. The news, television and movies are indeed misrepresenting the facts about crime and criminal justice, showing us far more images of criminality which align with our preconceived notions of what a criminal looks like, and in the process, reinforcing stereotypes about people of color, men, and black folks.
The end result is that people who watch more news tend to be more afraid that a crime will occur, more convinced that the perpetrator will be a non-white person, and less likely to feel that the offender is capable of redemption. The media are indeed "Teaching us to Love Fear."
Author Rebecca Traister joins me to talk about her book, Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger.
We talk about feminism, cancel-culture (and accountability), the Capitol raid, representation, patriarchy, stereotypes, and how women have been vital to social movement in the US throughout history (even though their stories are often overshadowed by men). We also discuss methods of disempowerment, specifically, how women have been strategically silenced and disempowered in Western Cultures by creating the constant appearance of advancement, while nothing really changes.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Between 1999 and 2021 the US saw a massive increase in opioid (heroin, fentanyl, morphine, etc.) overdose deaths. The result: we are now in the midst of a so-called “opioid epidemic.” But what does that mean? How should the government respond? And how can we change it?
It turns out the CDC's overdose death counts are exaggerated, and the inaccuracies have fueled a massive and never ending war on drugs. In this episode I discuss the mistakes we often make when thinking (and talking) about the opioid crisis.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Join me for a brief history of cocaine, an overview of the biopharmacology, and roadmap for how to undo the damage done by the war on drugs.
Crack cocaine is just cocaine. The only difference is it can be smoked, which means it kicks in harder and wears off faster. And because of that, it can also be sold in small doses. These differences, which aren't differences, have been used to defend a racist war on drugs. More than 80% of Reagan-era crack sentences were given to black men, even though black folks don't use or sell drugs at rates any higher than white folks.
In this episode I cover the history of crack in the United States from the late 1970s up to the present, including Richard Pryor's accident, Len Bias's (alleged) overdose, Freeway Ricky Ross, the Iran-Contra Scandal, Oliver North, the Rampart Scandal, and stereotypes about crack.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Fair warning: this episode is philosophical and theological, and I swerve a bit out of my lane to argue that we should think of cultish-behavior, like engagement with conspiracy theories and evidence-free logic, as an addiction.
Thinking about QAnon, or Far-Right Trumpism (or Far-Left conspiracy theories) as addictions allows us to better understand both addiction and the folks who are engaging in these movements. It feels good to know something that others do not, and to figure out a riddle that invariably paints you as the center of the universe. But without the criticism of those who care about us, we can sink into a world of alternative facts, and once we are there, things get scary. Paradoxically, things also become more controllable.
Just like addictions to drugs like heroin, engagement in conspiracy theories & extremist ideologies always provides a predictable effect, reliably putting us back into our cozy space where we have figured out the world, where we have discovered why it is seems aligned against us. We come to ignore the negative consequences of our beliefs, and we develop a tolerance, requiring more and deeper theories each time to provide the same effects. And like all addictions, COVID has only made things worse, because isolation inclines us to turn to drugs, gambling or conspiracy theory even more.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Dr. Mia Fischer joins me to talk about systems of power, and the way that they refuse to change, even when they appear to do so. Our military has recently incorporated, then unincorporated, then reincorporated openly-trans folks. Our prisons often house incarcerated people in the wrong facilities based on their assigned birth gender.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Any good hegemonic system will begin with this foundation. Unless we work towards systemic change, the small battles we win will accomplish little within the bigger systems of control. When marijuana is legalized, drug enforcement units target shrooms. When shrooms are decriminalized, drug enforcement units target other illegal drugs. And when all drugs are decriminalized, officers target sex workers, or other petty "crimes" which we would do better to legalize and regulate.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Most of what we know about addiction is wrong. It isn't chemical hooks or a weak mind. Our survival depends on our ability to do the things that eventually lead to addiction when they get out of control. We become sensitized to things we find exciting or dangerous – things that we need to notice right away to avoid injury – and we become tolerant to things we find comforting and safe – things that we want to do again. It isn't just drugs. It's relationships, jobs, religious organizations, chores, foods, sleep patterns., partnerships: in a word, life.
Addiction is a Learning Disorder. Maia Szalavitz joins me to talk about tolerance, sensitization, addiction, dependency, autism, predictors of addiction, trauma, The Joy of the Hunt (cocaine) versus The Joy of the Feast (heroin), mainlining drugs, recovery, Jerry Garcia, 2.5 kilograms of blow, and harm reduction
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
When I was court-ordered to attend a 12-step program back in 2003, I knew within a meeting or two that it wasn't for me. The entire program is based on religion, on finding and trusting your so-called "higher power." The only requirement–a desire to stop using drugs or alcohol–wasn't something I was willing to lie about. And most importantly, it was based on the disease model. And I didn't have a disease.
Despite insisting addiction is a disease, the treatment offered by 12-step programs involves confession, prayer, pretending a higher power is in control of your life, and sitting in group sessions where others share their issues. None of these is treatment for a medical condition.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
The War on Drugs is designed to grow forever. But now that the warriors have arrested us into a crisis, and killed us into an overdose catastrophe, they are running out of targets to fund their war. So they cooked up a solution: sue the pharmacies into cutting off opioid users so that we head to the streets, then arrest the new dealers that pop up to supply the new market, and confiscate their property to pay for police department budgets.
And now they only have two choices: end this brutal, pointless war which has never reduced drug supply, or ramp it up yet further and pretend they don't realize how violent and unnecessary their behavior is.
We can do better. And recognizing the scam being pulled by the Department of Justice (DOJ) might just prevent it from being successful. Join me to talk about Walmart, the latest scapegoat in Uncle Sam's war on drugs.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
As 2020 comes to a close and COVID rages on, we are all stressed out, and many of us are taking more drugs than we were before this pandemic began. That is normal. It is not sinful. It is not a sign of weakness. It would be weird if we weren't.
But if we don't talk about it, we will be in trouble when this lockdown ends in a few months. The shame that we all feel is the reason we aren't talking about it, and the consequences are largely the result of our silence.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
HBOs hit series Euphoria is on track for a Blockbuster second season. But amongst the hyperviolent scenes and transphobic terrorism, there is a story about addiction that is both wrong and dangerous. Join me for a critical review of Season 1 and Special Episode 1.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Media teaches us facts about our world. And most of the time we don't even notice. We learn that elevators have roof hatches and that most of Earth's oxygen comes from the rain forests, along with a bunch of other TV lies, and we don't even realize we have learned these things (incorrectly).
Dr. Bill Yousman joins me to discuss media, prison, and the war on drugs. We also talk about rap music, masculinity, and methods for avoiding the miseducation that comes with irresponsible media consumption.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
What is meditation? Why does an image search bring up thousands of cross-legged sun-gazers? Dr. Jeni Hunniecutt joins me to discuss meditation, mindfulness, and overall quality of life.
We discuss types of meditation, how to begin, why to start, and why it can be so valuable to experience Being instead of always Doing.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
What is Whiteness? Why does it feel like such a scary word? And what does it have to do with the War on Drugs?
Dawn-Marie McIntosh joins me for a conversation about power. The United States was built upon the institution of White Supremacy, but the slavery and murder of black folks was eventually replaced by a system of segregation much more insidious than white supremacy. Whiteness is the Jim Crow South in contemporary language. Its the same rules and laws, now internalized so that we no longer need them written down.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Every year volunteers at the University of Colorado-Denver assemble a collection of poetry, artwork, short story and prose, all submitted by inmates across the country. This episode is dedicated to the 7 million US citizens currently doing time in prison or on probation/parole.
Captured Words Free Thoughts is a free publication which will be released (online and in paper format) in early 2021.
If you or someone you know is locked up, send them our info., and send us their work.
Captured Words Free Thoughts
CU-Denver
1201 Larimer Street, Suite 3014
Denver, Co, 80204
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
What is addiction? What is dependency? What is the difference? And what does dopamine have to do with all of this?
It turns out that most of what we think we know about addiction is wrong. In this episode I unpack my thoughts (and the current science) on addiction, tolerance, dopamine, sensitization (habituation), and the Learning Disorder model of addiction, which is rapidly replacing the old disease model.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Around 1% of US citizens control nearly half of the nation's wealth. They can only keep things that imbalanced by dividing the rest of us against ourselves. Otherwise we might join together and update the system that allows them to maintain (and increase) their imbalanced control over resources.
This week Paul Kivel joins me to talk about some big words with simple meanings: hegemony, white supremacy, domination, Christian Privilege, White Privilege, and "Buffer Zone Jobs"
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
In April of 2017 Jessie Dunleavy lost her son, Paul, to the war on drugs. Now she is fighting to end it for good.
Jessie and I discuss mistakes she feels like she made supporting Paul, as well as harm reduction strategies, the struggle of raising a neuro-atypical child, heroin prescriptions, and a host of other issues related to harm reduction and activism.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Kevin Ott was arrested with 3.5 ounces of methamphetamine in 1996. That's the weight of a bar of soap. His sentence was life without the possibility of parole.
Kevin was pardoned by the governor in 2019, 7 years after a documentary called The House I Live in highlighted his story from prison. Last week I sat down to ask him about his transition to the free world, his time inside, and what could have been different.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Xanax, Valium, Librium, Rohypnol, Ativan, Klonopin, Phenobarbital--if you want to know how benzos and barbiturates work in the brain, check out this episode. I also talk about the history of anxiolytics (anti-anxiety drugs), the connection to race and class in the war on drugs, and the consequences of irresponsible use.
Harm Reduction saves lives. Share the knowledge.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Language is oppressive. Labels are powerful. Feminism is for Everybody (bell hooks). And the New Jim Crow is no less abusive than the old.
In this episode I explain the name, Dr. Junkie, along with a bit of Audre Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins, Michelle Alexander, Ta-Nehisi Coates style feminist thought.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
When Morgan Godvin sold her friend a gram of heroin, she had no idea he would suffer a fatal overdose. When the police texted from his phone the next day to ask for more dope, she had no idea they were coming for her.
Join me for a powerful interview with Morgan Godvin.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
This week I talk to Judge John R. Holmes, who sentenced me 20 years ago.
We talk about why drugs should be legal, Black Lives Matter, the movement to "defund the police," and about the view from the bench.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
I talk to Justice Rivera of Reframe Health and Justice about the war against sex work(ers), bodily autonomy, poverty, and drugs. We discuss what it means to decolonize your imagination, to consider defunding the police, and feminist perspective generally, which emphasizes first-and-foremost our united struggle, and the strength that comes with unity.
The war on drugs and the war against sex work are the same war.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Drug users are dying from street drugs in record numbers. Yet most of us still turn away when our friends let us know that they are struggling with addiction. COVID-19 has only made things worse. Once we push the drug users in our life away--good ol' tough love--they often wind up on the streets, where there are few services available to them.
The Denver Harm Reduction Action Center is one of the few resources devoted to the safety and well-being of addicted people in the local community, and their mission aligns with those of harm reduction centers and activists across the country. Kat Humphries joins me to discuss their services, their needs, and the effects of COVID on homeless and drug-using communities.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
We have all been robbed of something very valuable, and we don't even know it.
Our ability to recognize and control much of what goes on in our bodies is gone, replaced by an auto-pilot system that allows us to focus on more "important" concerns, like where to eat or what to watch on television. This trait once saved us from predators that would have consumed us if we were busy looking inward, regulating our kidney function or controlling our digestion. But now days it prevents us from living in the moment.
Enter Leary's "turn on, tune in and drop out."
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Who hasn't taken a handful of magic mushrooms and walked seven miles in a psychedelic haze of love while sharing your heart with a friend? If you haven't, life is short. Come to Colorado for a vacation. In May of 2019, psilocybin consumption was decriminalized.
In this episode I sit down with one of my daughters and her partner to unpack their first trip--a magic mushroom fueled night just 48 hours earlier that is still fresh in their minds. And we model a little bit of responsible drug use. We unpack what they discovered about themselves and each other during their trip, and we (re)discover just how valuable these chemicals are to those of us who find a new way of being when using them.
We also discuss set and setting, Stoned Apes, stigma and depression, the history of psychedelics, and we introduce our new recurring segment: "Only when you are Tripping."
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
(Meth)amphetamine is one of the most widely used legal drugs in the United States. In some parts of the US doctors write enough prescriptions for (meth)amphetamine to give every person 70 milligrams per year. Amphetamines are popular drugs, and they have been ever since they were first synthesized, in 1887. But a lot has happened since then, namely, stigma and shame.
Dr. Erin Boyce joins me to discuss rituals of use, myths surrounding meth, the sense of community that drug users build in our enclaves, moving on from using meth when the time comes, and children in the foster-care system who are over-prescribed methamphetamine and other drugs.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
In this episode I will talk about shame, where it comes from and how it poisons those who experience it. The war on drugs only works with the central pillar of Shame in tact, yet we have made a political habit of talking about "destigmatization," and "shame reduction" of late. Our lip service is worthless, counterproductive even, so long as we don't actually change anything. This episode is about what to change, how to change it, and why it was fucked up in the first place.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
You asked for it. You got it. This episode is about my criminal record, including the way that shame was vital to my life course. I also talk about prison, trauma, and the costs of incarceration, a $180 BILLION-per-year budget-drainer supported by taxpayers.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Join me for a chat with author, poet, activist and ex-inmate Chandra Bozelko about all things prison. Our inside views of the prison-industrial complex gave us both a lot of insight into criminal "corrections." And as inmate-workers who both wiggled our way up the short ladder of prison labor, we had lots to talk about.
We also discussed the way power works in prison, the nature of change in a system designed to prevent it, and the double-edged sword of attempting to reform prison labor.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
One out of 50 US citizens is under the thumb of the Prison-Industrial Complex at any given time. That's seven million of us right now! 2.3 million are in prison or jail, and another 4.5 million are on parole or probation (one mistake away from being thrown back in). And each of them represents a paycheck: for COs, for investors, for prison labor contractors, and for probation officers. There are a lot of people who stand to lose out if we end the war on drugs and allow our prisons to empty out.
Almost half of all federal inmates are locked up for drugs, and another 200,000 state level inmates are doing time for a drug charge, along-side thousands more who were never caught with drugs, but committed crimes to get them (like me). But since prisoners are the one group in the United States whom we are allowed to hate (M. Alexander), those of us outside prison tend to ignore the problem...until it effects us personally.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Kratom is a leaf from a tropical plant, often dried and crushed for easy shipment, then brewed into tea or swallowed in a gelcap by consumers, like you and me.
Kratom is showing incredible potential for treating withdrawal symptoms from opioid use, and we haven't even begun to test it in clinical trials. But for many addicted people, and for people dealing with pain who don't want to take opioids, kratom is a game-changer.
In this episode, Dr. Grundmann shares his latest research on kratom.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
What happens when we feel the spirit? Are we high? Are we faking it?
Does a Mormon religious experience feel the same as a Pentecostal experience? Or a Baptist experience?
Join me for a conversation with Dr. Michael Ferguson and Dr. Jeff Anderson, two neuroscientists whose work to pinpoint the mechanisms of religious experience has yielded some fruitful results.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Molly, Ecstasy and MDMA--different names for the same drug.
MDMA is no longer restricted to underground rave culture. It is finding its way to the Dr.'s office and the therapist's couch. And it appears to be an incredibly effective tool of psychotherapy.
Dr. Ben Sessa has called MDMA the "antibiotic of psychotherapy." He joins me to explain why it works so well as a therapeutic tool. We discuss addiction and treatment applications, Big T versus little t trauma and their connection to self-medication, cannabis as a replacement for other drugs, and how much it costs to produce legal MDMA (spoiler alert: its a lot!)
I will also cover the history of MDMA production, legality and public perception.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Pure heroin currently costs up to $400 dollars per gram on the streets. But it only costs around $2 per gram to produce. The 40,000% profit margins go to street dealers and traffickers--the cops can't exactly sell it at auction when they confiscate it.
This episode details the history, production and use of opium products. From Tramadol to Fentanyl--how strong is each drug, and how is it best consumed?
From pills to injections--what dangers do drug users face in the ongoing war on drugs?
From black tar heroin to "China White"--what's the difference, and where do these different forms of heroin come from?
If you are looking for information about heroin, morphine, fentanyl or other opioids, this is the episode for you.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Opium is one of human-kind's oldest drugs. We have been eating, smoking, snorting and injecting it for at least 6,000 years, and fighting wars over it for more than 500 years.
Its been cultivated, distilled, processed, and synthesized ever since we realized it was a good buzz, and now there are so many different types of opioids that most of us have no idea what we are taking, or how strong it is compared to other types.
This episode details the history, production and use of opium products. From Tramadol to Fentanyl; from pills to injections; from black tar heroin to "China White"--if you are looking for information about heroin, morphine or other opioids, this is the episode for you.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Veterans Advocate Dr. Jeni Hunniecutt joins me to discuss her latest research involving veterans using cannabis as an alternative to opioids & benzodiazepines, and MDMA therapy in veteran populations.
We talk about the difficulty of beginning mindful meditation practices, the concept of spirituality as a drug, our cultural conceptions of love, and how to get drugs legalized.
We also dive into the connection between Christianity and our current state of affairs in the US, as a COVID-19 pandemic and a social movement (#BLM) blow up at the same time.
Are we in the midst of Civil War II? Would we know it if we were? Is the end of the war on drugs a way to move forward?
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
In the United States we often find ourselves confronted with the sins of our ancestors: racism, sexism, able-ism, classism. We could just begin the long-overdue project of cultural self-improvement, but the comfort in putting that project off has proven so tempting that for hundreds of years our parents, and their parents have done just that--put off a project that should have long ago been completed.
It feels good to be woke, so we learn a few feminist terms and put an equality sticker on our laptop--problem solved, right? This is why generation after generation of US citizens continues to face the same tipping point when it comes to racism (and sexism, and genderism, and phobias, and religious privilege).
2020 is proving to be yet another in a long line of woke moments--historic events that cause everyone to acknowledge a problem, propose a solution, run the clock, and then pretend the issue was fixed when nothing ever actually changed. Its always been that way. It probably always will be.
When did it begin? Why don't we just fix it? And why does it feel so good to just remain chronically woke even though hardly anything changes?
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Honest answers about marijuana and its active ingredients.
Marijuana doesn't actually contain any chemicals that get us high. But with a bit of chemistry--like lighting it on fire--we can produce psychoactive ingredients that many of us enjoy regularly. Join me to discuss how weed works in the body, and how to use it without wasting your buzz. Plus the history of marijuana, from homeopathic healers to racist politicians, the drug has taken an interesting route through US history.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Power works, in part, through the creation and sustainment of cultural myth, and the US has no shortage of mythological identities which don't pan out when closely examined. Santa Clause, meritocracy, justice, delicious diet products, slavery reparations, and (central to this podcast) the war on drugs as a righteous endeavor of harm reduction.
Before the war on users began, drugs were legal in the United States. And believe it or not, everything was fine. Few people had issues with addiction and nobody wound up in prison...ever.
Join me to talk about the roots of the war on drugs, and I will share 5 common myths about drugs and drug users which are used to legitimize an unbelievably expensive and brutal war against us.
This episode will also introduce power through an intersectional lens, so if you have no idea what the hell that means, hold on and enjoy.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Have you ever wondered.....
What is cocaine and what does it feel like?
How can I practice responsible use?
Why is cocaine illegal anyway?
What happens if I drink alcohol when I am on cocaine?
Oh, and why do I always have to shit right after my first dose?
I'll answer these questions and explain where cocaine comes from, how much it costs to produce, and who gets rich when it's sold on the streets. Plus, a look back at the history of cocaine, from Sigmund Freud, to Coca-Cola, to prohibition, to a permanent war.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Join me on this journey of truth and discovery. I'll detail the purpose of the podcast and explain why I am your host. Plus, a bit about my history of addiction, crime and prison.
Drug users are dying in record numbers, and we have learned to blame it on the drug dealers, the doctors, the pharmaceutical manufactures, but it is clear that most of the dangers drug users face are the result of the war on drugs, not the drugs we use.
Dr Junkie: One Man's Story of Addiction and Crime that will Challenge Everything you Know about the War on Drugs is available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.