The Dr. Junkie Show

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. ...

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 di...

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...

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.  Support the show

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 cou...

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.  Support the show

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.  Support the show

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. Support the show

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.  Support the show

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...

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 o...

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 loo...

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 j...

(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 di...

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 anythin...

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.   Support the show

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 chan...

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...

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 ta...

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.  Support the show

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 therapeut...

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 bes...

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...

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 int...

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 comple...