The Dr. Junkie Show

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 Sta...

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 incarc...

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 Instagr...

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...

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 synth...

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...

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' wor...

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...

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,&q...

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...

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...

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 environm...

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...

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 conspira...

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 w...

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 a...

Note that I switched "set" and "setting" when recording this episode and didn't realize it until after production. Set is you: your biology, your beliefs, your past experiences. Setting is where you take a drug: the casino versus the forest.  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 incredi...

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 e...

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...

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-pr...

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 wor...

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, an...

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 region...

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...

In this episode I talk about "poppers," aka "rush"—both nicknames for amyl nitrite (and some additional alkyl nitrites sometimes sold as substitutes). 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...