Email us at DrJunkieShow@gmail.com 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...
Mar 07, 2024•28 min•Season 1Ep. 139
Email us at DrJunkieShow@gmail.com 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 ar...
Feb 14, 2024•28 min•Season 1Ep. 138
Email us at DrJunkieShow@gmail.com 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...
Feb 03, 2024•25 min•Season 1Ep. 137
Email us at DrJunkieShow@gmail.com 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,...
Sep 08, 2023•22 min•Season 1Ep. 136
Email us at DrJunkieShow@gmail.com 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 b...
Jun 23, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 135
Email us at DrJunkieShow@gmail.com 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 edu...
May 13, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 134
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. Support the show...
Apr 22, 2023•58 min•Season 1Ep. 133
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. Support the show...
Apr 14, 2023•30 min•Season 1Ep. 132
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. Support the show
Mar 30, 2023•55 min•Season 1Ep. 131
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. Support the show...
Mar 21, 2023•37 min•Season 1Ep. 130
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 alcoh...
Mar 15, 2023•18 min•Season 1Ep. 130
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...
Mar 02, 2023•43 min•Season 1Ep. 128
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 Comm...
Feb 15, 2023•58 min•Season 1Ep. 127
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 dif...
Feb 07, 2023•53 min•Season 1Ep. 126
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 dr...
Jan 31, 2023•28 min•Season 1Ep. 125
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 ...
Jan 21, 2023•41 min•Season 1Ep. 124
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. Support the show...
Jan 16, 2023•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 122
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, ...
Jan 10, 2023•29 min•Season 1Ep. 121
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 arti...
Jan 05, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 121
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 Opio...
Dec 20, 2022•31 min•Season 1Ep. 120
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 &...
Nov 30, 2022•35 min•Season 1Ep. 119
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. ...
Nov 10, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 118
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 loc...
Nov 05, 2022•32 min•Season 1Ep. 117
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...
Oct 23, 2022•22 min•Season 1Ep. 116
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,...
Oct 12, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 115
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....
Oct 05, 2022•14 min•Season 1Ep. 114
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 incredible claim, but the evidence bears it out. Since the first laws restricting the sale, possession and/or use of drugs in the Uni...
Sep 27, 2022•34 min•Season 1Ep. 113
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 u...
Sep 11, 2022•25 min•Season 1Ep. 112
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 ...
Aug 31, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 112
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 y...
Aug 15, 2022•27 min•Season 1Ep. 110
