methadone

Episode 83: The Parents Who Oppose The War on Drugs with Tamara Olt and Gretchen Bergman

June 14, 2023 Narcotica Addiction, Episodes, Overdose Crisis 1:19:30 0 Comments

The War on (People who Use) Drugs has claimed over a million victims in the last two decades, every fatal overdose representing deep policy failures that attempt in vain to control normal human behavior: self-medicating and inducing euphoria.

None of this wonky policy bullshit matters much when you’re the parent of a child who dies from an overdose.

Few things in life are as devastating as losing your kid. It stirs up some of the deepest, darkest emotions humans are capable of and when drugs are involved, that typically turns into a thirst for retribution. That can mean demanding stricter penalties for drug use, like so-called drug homicide laws, or calls for increased police surveillance. But we have over a century of data proving that prohibition doesn’t work. More cops, more draconian drug laws — it all just backfires. We have more police, more prisons and yet more drug overdose deaths than ever before. That’s why it’s such a breath of fresh air when parents whose children struggle with drug use or addiction advocate for harm reduction and sensible drug policy.

Narcotica co-host Troy Farah spoke with Gretchen Burns Bergman, whose two grown sons who are in long-term recovery from heroin addiction, and Tamara Olt, M.D., who lost her 16-year-old son Joshua to an accidental heroin overdose in 2012. Both strongly advocate for a more rational approach to how we treat substance use in the U.S. They discuss everything from safe supply, to the myths of “tough love” and “enabling” to buprenorphine access to the ridiculous (but trending) idea that fentanyl is a weapon of mass destruction.

This interview, which was conducted last November, was also featured in Salon.

Read Tamara’s essay in Elle here: https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a29036663/syringe-exchange-grief-recovery/

Lear more about GRASP (Grief Recovery After Substance Passing) here: https://grasphelp.org/

Learn more about A New PATH (Parents for Addiction Treatment and Healing), a non-profit organization that works to reduce the stigma associated with substance use disorders through education and compassionate support at https://www.anewpath.org/

Learn more about Moms United at: https://www.momsunited.net/

Also, Narcomedia is excited to announce a new project, all from the perspective of people who use drugs: Naturally Noncompliant is a new podcast all about people who use methadone. Listen to the first episode here or on iTunes or Spotify: https://rephonic.com/podcasts/naturally-noncompliant

If you liked this episode, here are others you might enjoy:
Episode 62: Policing Pleasure — The Intersection of Sex Work and Drug Use with Tamika Spellman and Caty Simon
Episode 56: Drug Use During Disaster with Aaron Ferguson
Episode 67: Methadone in the Time of Covid with Danielle Russell

Follow Narcotica on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and support us on Patreon. We just opened a shop where you can order Narcotica merch: narcocast.myshopify.com Help keep this podcast ad-free! Your support is appreciated! We’re on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher and more. Tell your friends about us! Rate us! And thanks for your support!
Producers: Christopher Moraff, Troy Farah, Zachary Siegel, Aaron Ferguson
Music: Glass Boy / Nomad1
Image: Image via The Noun Project // edit: Troy Farah
Intro voice: Jenny Schaye

Episode 80: A Messy History of Methadone with Dr. Zoe Adams

December 31, 2022 Narcotica Addiction, Episodes, Opioids 01:16:58 0 Comments

At Narcotica, we’ve often talked about how methadone is one of the most over-regulated substances on the planet. It’s not a perfect drug — nothing is — but it helps a lot of people. So why is it so hard to access?

On this episode, the crew (Zachary Siegel, Chris Moraff and Troy Farah) speak with Dr. Zoe Adams, an internal medicine resident at Massachusetts General Hospital, whose thesis was a narrative history of methadone. It’s a long, strange chronicle, from its development in Germany, to becoming a mainstay in Nixon’s War on Drugs, but what’s most surprising is how little has changed. Learn about why this drug is so scrutinized, stigmatized and what people are doing to make it more available.

Follow Zoe on Twitter at: @zoe_m_adams

Read Zoe’s thesis here: https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/ymtdl/4049/

If you liked this episode, here are others you might enjoy:

Episode 73: Oh No! Not Naltrexone! with Nancy Curran

Episode 65: Restoring Trust in Doctors Amidst The Overdose Crisis with Dr. Ben Cocchiaro and Dr. Ashish Thakrar

Episode 67: Methadone in the Time of Covid with Danielle Russell

Episode 48: Moms And Methadone with Elizabeth Brico

Follow Narcotica on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and support us on Patreon. We just opened a shop where you can order Narcotica merch: narcocast.myshopify.com Help keep this podcast ad-free! Your support is appreciated! We’re on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher and more. Tell your friends about us! Rate us! And thanks for your support!

Producers: Christopher Moraff, Troy Farah, Zachary Siegel, Aaron Ferguson

Music: Glass Boy / Nomad1

Intro voice: Jenny Schaye

Episode 73: Oh No! Not Naltrexone! with Nancy Curran

June 25, 2022 Narcotica Addiction, Episodes, Opioids 01:08:35 0 Comments

Naltrexone, also known by its brand name, Vivitrol, is an opioid antagonist that kicks opioids off of opioid receptor in the brain, not unlike naloxone. But thanks to a combination of overprescription, unscrupulous marketing practices and ubiquitous use over more effective alternatives, naltrexone is a very controversial drug. In fact, a common reaction is Oh no! Not naltrexone!

Of course, naltrexone has some benefits and many people say their life has been saved by it. And at Narcotica, we don’t believe any drug is “bad” or “evil.” So where does this substance fit into the broader scheme of things? We’ve spoken about naltrexone many times on this show, but never this indepth before.

Narcotica co-hosts Zachary Siegel and Troy Farah speak with Nancy Curran, a nurse practitioner who has been practicing for 5 years in an OBOT clinic in the Lowell Massachusetts area, treating both opioid and alcohol use disorders. She prescribes buprenorphine (both Suboxone and Sublocade), as well as naltrexone (Vivitrol). She also treats patients who need Hep C treatment. Nancy is passionate about advocating for and educating her patients on their medication options, as well as their rights.

They discuss the history of hallucinogenic opioids, the shrewd and quasilegal marketing practices of Alkermes, Inc., how naltrexone stacks up against buprenorphine and methadone, why stigma persists against people who take certain opioid use disorder drugs but not others, the difference between addiction and dependency, some basic opioid receptor science, and much, much more.

Follow Nancy on Twitter at: @cashboygo

More background on naltrexone and the XBOT Studay can be found here and here. We also recommend reading Walter Sneader’s book: Drug Discovery, A History and also Nancy Campbell’s book OD: The Politics of Overdose.

You can read Zach’s article on Four Good Days and more here: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/magazine/addiction-movies.html

If you liked this episode, here are others you might enjoy:
Episode 19: Debunking Bupe Diversion Myths with Molly Doernberg
Episode 30: Getting Wrecked with Dr. Kim Sue
Episode 36: Moral Hazards and Naloxone, A Toxicologist’s Perspective with Ryan Marino

Follow Narcotica on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and support us on Patreon. We just opened a shop where you can order Narcotica merch: narcocast.myshopify.com Help keep this podcast ad-free! Your support is appreciated! We’re on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher and more. Tell your friends about us! Rate us! And thanks for your support!

Producers: Christopher Moraff, Troy Farah, Zachary Siegel
Co-producer: Aaron Ferguson
Music: Glass Boy / Nomad1
Intro voice: Jenny Schaye
Image: edit: Troy Farah

Episode 67: Methadone in the Time of Covid with Danielle Russell

February 8, 2022 Narcotica Episodes, Opioids, Overdose Crisis 00:58:10 0 Comments

Harm reduction programs like syringe access, supervised consumption or even just handing out condoms on the street, can be some of the only access to healthcare some people encounter. Definitely not all, but some people who use drugs routinely shun going to the doctor—not because they don’t care about their health, but because our for-profit healthcare system treats almost everyone who uses an illicit substance like complete shit. And people who use drugs have been treated like pariahs long before the covid pandemic, but things got way worse once the virus came to town.

Previously on Narcotica, co-host Chris Moraff did an episode all about how doctors need to work harder to rebuild the patient-trust relationship. And many medical professionals are doing that work, which makes such a huge difference. It’s hard to understate how valuable it can be to receive nonjudgmental medical care that doesn’t hinge on absolute abstinence.

That episode, number 65, which we encourage you to listen to after this one, came from the perspective of two amazing doctors, Ashish Thakrar and Ben Cocchiario. However, on this episode, we want to talk to someone from the other side of the aisle to get a different viewpoint from someone with lived experience in this area.

Why would you go to a healthcare provider for an infection or injury if you’re going to be lectured about your drug use, even if it has nothing to do with why you’re there? Or you might be forced to hand over your urine or have your possessions rifled through by a nurse. Even for people that don’t use illegal substances, our healthcare system is a nightmare to try and navigate. It only gets worse if you happen to self-medicate or enjoy chemicals that aren’t sanctioned by the FDA.

Narcotica co-host Troy Farah speaks with Danielle Russell of Phoenix, Arizona, who is currently a justice and social inquiry PhD student at Arizona State University. She studies how the criminalization of substances used for personal pleasure has become a key issue and tool for social control, contributing to the ongoing legacy of racialized criminalization and mass incarceration in the U.S. Having personally experienced many of the harms that impact people who use illicit drugs, she is passionate about mutual aid and working to change the structures that impose harms on the bodies of drug users. Her research interests are oriented towards community-based participatory research.

Follow Danielle on Twitter @DopefiendPhD and you can read the study she co-authored here:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33461838/

If you liked this episode, here are others you might enjoy:
Episode 65: Restoring Trust in Doctors Amidst The Overdose Crisis with Dr. Ben Cocchiaro and Dr. Ashish Thakrar
Episode 48: Moms And Methadone with Elizabeth Brico
Episode 56: Drug Use During Disaster with Aaron Ferguson

Follow Narcotica on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and support us on Patreon. Help keep this podcast ad-free! Your support is appreciated! We’re on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher and more. Tell your friends about us! Rate us! And thanks for your support!

Producers: Christopher Moraff, Troy Farah, Zachary Siegel
Co-producer: Garrett Farah / Troy Farah
Music: Glass Boy / Holly Mangler
Intro voice: Jenny Schaye
Image: Noun Project // edit: Troy Farah

Episode 65: Restoring Trust in Doctors Amidst The Overdose Crisis with Dr. Ben Cocchiaro and Dr. Ashish Thakrar

November 19, 2021 Narcotica Episodes, Overdose Crisis 01:05:20 0 Comments

Over the past two decades, as fatal drug overdoses have risen precipitously, few professions have been hit harder by the crisis than the medical community. Physicians in particular have found themselves in the no-win position of being both blamed for the overdose crisis, which claimed more than 100,000 American lives in the past 12 months, while being tasked with containing it.

According to one dominant narrative, it was cavalier doctors who sparked the crisis in the first place, by overprescribing habit forming narcotic painkillers to millions of Americans after being softened up at lavish dinners and then duped by nefarious pharmaceutical reps using fudged data.

But that’s overly simplistic. For starters, it ignores the fact that the greatest spike in drug deaths came when doctors reigned in opioid prescribing after authorities started targeting so-called pill mills. This left tens of thousands of pain patients stranded and paved the way for the introduction of illicitly made fentanyl into the U.S. to fill unmet demands.

Narcotica co-host Christopher Moraff delves into this topic, asking how the medical community can work to restore trust from their patients who are justifiably suspicious of the U.S. healthcare system, speaking with doctors Ashish Thakrar and Ben Cocchiario, who both work for the University of Pennsylvania medical system in Philadelphia, a focal point of the overdose crisis. They cover everything from methadone prescribing to overfunding the DEA, all of it underlining the importance of patient autonomy.

Follow Ben Cocchiaro at UPenn
Follow Ashish Thakrar on Twitter @especially_APT

If you liked this episode, here are others you might enjoy:
Episode 46: Behind The Pharmacists’ Counter with Jessica Moreno
Episode 36: Moral Hazards and Naloxone, A Toxicologist’s Perspective
Episode 30: Getting Wrecked with Dr. Kim Sue

Follow Narcotica on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and support us on Patreon. Help keep this podcast ad-free! Your support is appreciated! We’re on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher and more. Tell your friends about us! Rate us! And thanks for your support!

Producers: Christopher Moraff, Troy Farah, Zachary Siegel
Co-producer: Aaron Ferguson
Music: Glass Boy / Nomad1
Intro voice: Jenny Schaye
Image: Stockvault // edit: Troy Farah

Episode 56: Drug Use During Disaster with Aaron Ferguson

May 1, 2021 Narcotica Episodes 00:56:22 0 Comments

Our planet is in crisis, plagued by an increase in wildfires, floods, hurricanes, freak storms and outbreaks of disease. As a result, we’re seeing more and more people isolated, left to fend for themselves, as the cracks in public infrastructure only seem to widen.

To use one prominent example, the state of Texas has been slapped with recurrent cataclysms and catastrophes of late, most recently the February winter storm that crushed the power grid, leading to food and water shortages, which left at least 111 people dead.

At Narcotica, we always wonder about what happens to people who use drugs whenever ecological disaster strikes. Co-hosts Zachary Siegel and Troy Farah talk with Aaron Ferguson, who works as an outreach provider in Austin, Texas and is also on the leadership team of the National Drug Users Union. (Aaron was also a our co-producer on the show for about 20 episodes and volunteered to help with sound editing this one as well!)

We discuss everything from the evolving drug trade in Texas to the cult-like mentality that can sometimes manifest in the addiction recovery community and much more.

You can follow Aaron Ferguson on Twitter: @sciencenotheism and watch The Methadone Manifesto, a recent webinar hosted by the Urban Survivors Union. Aaron also co-authored a piece in the National Academy of Medicine discussing some of the public health challenges addiction treatment services faced during the recent Texas storm.

Follow Narcotica on Facebook, Twitter and support us on Patreon. Your support is appreciated! We’re on Spotify, iTunes, YouTube, Stitcher and more. Tell your friends about us!

If you liked this episode, here are others you might enjoy:
Episode 51: The Joy of Drug Use with Dr. Carl Hart
Episode 18: Drug User Unions – The Rebirth of Harm Reduction with Jess Tilley and Albie Park
Episode 42: Supervised Consumption is an Essential Service

Producers: Christopher Moraff, Troy Farah, Zachary Siegel
Co-producer: Aaron Ferguson / Troy Farah
Music: Glass Boy / Suhov
Intro voice: Jenny Schaye
Image: Justin L. Flickr edit: Troy Farah

Episode 48: Moms And Methadone with Elizabeth Brico

October 1, 2020 Narcotica Episodes 01:06:14 1 Comment

Is there any class of people who receive more stigma, who get more shit and abuse for using drugs, than mothers? Probably not! For whatever reason, society really looks down upon mothers who use drugs. And too often, Child Protective Services use evidence of drug use, even prescribed drugs like methadone or buprenorphine, as a pretense for seizing children from parents, even when there are no signs of abuse or neglect.

At Narcotica, we believe in safe drug use no matter who it is. On this episode, Troy, Zach and Chris talk about how stigma against drug use is contributing to an overloaded foster care system, how so-called ‘fetal assault laws’ are used to control women and pregnant people, and the various ways the war on drugs can be used to dehumanize parents.

Our guest is Elizabeth Brico, a freelance journalist and author from the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared in Politico, Columbia Journalism Review, VICE, Undark and many others. She is also the mother of two little girls.

Follow Elizabeth Brico on Twitter @elizabethbrico

You can read some of Elizabeth’s work here: https://filtermag.org/motherhood-legally-terminated/

Sign Elizabeth’s petition to get her kids back: https://www.change.org/p/florida-department-of-children-and-families-reunite-the-brico-girls-ages-5-and-6-with-their-mama

If you liked this episode, here are others you might enjoy:
Episode 24: How To Get Abortion Pills
Episode 30: Getting Wrecked with Dr. Kim Sue
Episode 6: Speed Up, Slow Down Pt. 2 — Myth Evolution: From Crack Kids to Addicted Babies

Follow Narcotica on Facebook, Twitter and support us on Patreon. Your support is appreciated! We’re on Spotify, iTunes, YouTube, Stitcher and more. Tell your friends about us!

Producers: Christopher Moraff, Troy Farah, Zachary Siegel
Co-producer: Garrett Farah
Music: Glass Boy / A.A. Aalto
Image: Wacky Stuff // edit: Troy Farah

Episode 30: Getting Wrecked with Dr. Kim Sue

October 4, 2019 Narcotica Episodes 00:57:51 0 Comments

Doctors are often blamed for prescribing America into the opioid crisis. Their reckless actions, relying on opioids to relieve just about every morsel of pain, ignited the deadliest overdose crisis in history, so we’re told. Of course, the narrative around doctors is much more complex than that.

But one truth is inescapable: Without doctors prescribing methadone and buprenorphine, and taking care of some of the most marginalized people in the health care system, like incarcerated women, there is no end to the crisis in sight. Meet Dr. Kimberly Sue, the medical director of the Harm Reduction Coalition, and a leader in addiction medicine. Dr. Sue wrote a new book, Getting Wrecked: Women, Incarceration, and the American Opioid Crisis. In this episode, co-host Zachary Siegel interviews Dr. Sue, and they talk about women’s self-determination, the brutality of incarceration, and they imagine a world where women are treated humanely, not criminalized. 

Buy Dr. Sue’s book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520293212/getting-wrecked
Follow Dr. Sue on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrKimSue

Follow Narcotica on Facebook, Twitter and support us on Patreon. Your support is appreciated! We’re on Spotify, iTunes, YouTube, Stitcher and more. Tell your friends about us!
Producers: Christopher Moraff, Troy Farah, Zachary Siegel
Co-Producer: Aaron Ferguson
Music: Glass Boy, Pictures of the Floating World

Episode 23: Bring Back Prescription Heroin! with Travis Lupick

July 3, 2019 Narcotica Episodes 00:42:04 0 Comments

With perhaps the exception of fentanyl, no drug is seen as more dangerous or controversial than heroin. But when you look at decades of medical literature, it’s clear that heroin, also known as diacetylmorphine, is just another opioid, and it has a place in medicine. On this episode, Troy Farah and Zachary Siegel discuss the controversial idea of prescription heroin with Canadian journalist Travis Lupick, author of Fighting for Space.

You can follow Travis Lupick @tlupick Twitter here.

Follow Narcotica on Facebook, Twitter and support us on Patreon. Your support is appreciated! We’re on Spotify, iTunes, YouTube, Sticher and more. Tell your friends about us!

Producers: Christopher Moraff, Troy Farah, Zachary Siegel
Co-Producer: Aaron Ferguson
Music: Glass Boy and Aaron Ferguson
Image Credit: Wikipedia / Edit by Troy Farah