podcast

Episode 60: Perinatal Panic—Drugs, Pregnancy and Stigma with Ria Tsinas, Joelle Puccio and Erika Goyer

July 16, 2021 Narcotica Episodes 01:40:24 0 Comments

One area where drug stigma especially persists, even among harm reduction advocates, is the prejudice against mothers and pregnant people who use drugs. Even some people in syringe exchange or who work in drug policy are against the idea of people with the capacity for pregnancy, (i.e. anyone with a uterus), using pretty much any drugs for any purpose.

It’s not clear why the principles of harm reduction that we extend to almost everyone else suddenly stop when it involves a fetus or a uterus. But the lives of pregnant people are no less important than anyone else who uses drugs, and the same attitudes of stigma, abstinence-only and surveillance don’t work here either—they just make the situation worse.

Narcotica co-host Troy Farah speaks with not one, but three guests from the Academy of Perinatal Harm Reduction, a non-profit that focuses on people with the capacity for pregnancy, who also happen to use drugs. They are:

Ria Tsinas, based in Portland, Oregon, who works at Outside In as a syringe exchange specialist and community health worker. She is also the mother of a wonderful kid.

Erika Goyer, based in Austin, Texas, Advocate at National Perinatal Association and co-founder at Academy of Perinatal Harm Reduction. She is also a parent.

And Joelle Puccio, a travel nurse who is sometimes based in Seattle, Washington and works as a voard of directors at The People’s Harm Reduction Alliance.

Learn more at perinatalharmreduction.org/

Follow Joelle on Instagram @joellepuccio
Follow Ria on Instagram @gtsinas
Follow Erika on LinkedIn

Follow Narcotica on 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!

If you liked this episode, here are others you might enjoy:
Episode 48: Moms And Methadone with Elizabeth Brico
Episode 30: Getting Wrecked with Dr. Kim Sue
Episode 24: How To Get Abortion Pills Feat. Lynn Paltrow and Francine Coeytaux

Producers: Christopher Moraff, Troy Farah, Zachary Siegel
Co-producer: Garrett Farah
Music: Glass Boy / done with fish
Intro voice: Jenny Schaye
Image: Pixabay edit: Troy Farah

 

Episode 52: The Fundamental Human Right to Get High with Casey William Hardison

February 22, 2021 Narcotica Episodes 00:58:15 1 Comment

Maybe it seems like an obvious question, but why is certain drug use illegal in the first place? Don’t you, as a human being, have some bodily autonomy and doesn’t that extend to alterations in the mind as well? What about the fundamental right to change your mind?

On this episode of Narcotica, co-hosts Troy Farah, Chris Moraff and Zachary Siegel talk with Casey William Hardison about cognitive liberty, the freedom of thought, and how that relates to prohibiting some drugs but not others. Hardison is a giant in the underground chemistry scene, who has rubbed shoulders with many legends in obscure chemistry: Sasha Shulgin and Darrell Lemaire, for example, and he was featured on Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia, in the episode ‘The Lazy Lizard School of Hedonism.’

In the past, Casey operated several infamous drug labs producing things like MDMA, LSD and 2C-B. That’s all behind him, but unrelated to that, Casey has had a bit of legal trouble lately, which we’ll discuss more, but his central argument in court is quite unique. 

This episode is being produced in collaboration with Filter Magazine. Troy wrote an article that goes into some more detail about Casey’s life and the implications for this court case. You can read the article at filtermag.org

You can follow Casey on Twitter @asthouwilt

If you liked this episode, here are others you might enjoy:
Episode 49: Salvia: Psychedelic Oddity (Plus, Canada’s Emerging Psilocybin Scene)
Episode 15: Accurate, Compassionate Drug Journalism with Filter Magazine
Episode 17: Using DMT To Contact Aliens

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 / Checkie Brown
Intro voice: Jenny Schaye
Image: Pixabay // 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 39: Pain Patients Are Still Fighting For Their Lives with Kate Nicholson

March 14, 2020 Narcotica Episodes 00:48:38 0 Comments

In 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laid out guidelines for primary care doctors prescribing opioids to treat chronic pain. Essentially, these guidelines stated that opioids should not be the first line treatment for pain, and that other methods should be tried first. Which is perfectly sensible.

But when it came to dosing and duration, these guidelines — not laws — guidelines, started to become widely misinterpreted. We don’t need to get in the weeds of morphine milligram equivalents here, but what wound up happening across the country is that doctors, medical boards, and even legislators took the guidelines as black letter law. And clearly mistook the intended audience for the guidelines: primary care providers. Not pain management specialists, primary care providers. The one you might go see for a wellness check up or if you have strep throat.

Why is all this important? Aren’t prescription opioids, after all, the very substance that ignited a massive wave of overdose deaths across the country? It’s not so simple. Well intended efforts to reduce everyday people’s exposure to high doses and long durations of opioids started to hit the wrong target: patients with chronic, intractable, debilitating pain.

And we have an excellent guest, civil rights attorney, writer, and advocate, Kate Nicholson. Kate has been a critical asset for the pain community, who has been speaking up about how policy intended to help is actually causing more harm. She has consulted on several Democratic presidential candidates, including Bernie Sanders, Julian Castro and even Joe Biden.

Follow Kate Nicholson on Twitter @speakingabtpain

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 / Garrett Farah / A A Aalto
Photo: U.S. Air Force photo illustration/Tech. Sgt. Mark R. W. Orders-Woempner // 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 26: Housing As Harm Reduction

August 12, 2019 Narcotica Episodes 00:49:08 0 Comments
Sarn is a Pathway to Housing participant in Philadelphia via Chris Moraff

The Kensington neighborhood in Philadelphia is often described as “ground zero” in the overdose crisis. The New York Times Magazine gave Kensington’s open air drug market the dubious title, “The Walmart of Heroin.” Of course, if you take a tour of Kensington without a DEA agent nearby, you might meet someone like Sarn, who after years of unstable housing and chaotic drug use, now has his own place to live. Operating from a Housing First model, organizations like Pathways to Housing are fighting the tides of endemic poverty, homelessness, and addiction. On today’s show, the crew interviews Sarn and Matt Tice, of Pathways to Housing, about how “Housing First” is a critical response to Philly’s overdose crisis.

Follow Matt Tice on Twitter and learn more about Pathways on their website.

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, Aaron Ferguson
Image: Christopher Moraff, Troy Farah

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

Episode 21: Ethically Documenting Drug Use Activism with Nigel Brunsdon

June 13, 2019 Narcotica Episodes 00:41:22 0 Comments

Sometimes, you’ll be reading a great piece on the drug overdose crisis that is just ruined by a crappy stock image of a gigantic syringe and a mountain of what is obviously flour or someone nodding out on the sidewalk. On this episode, Narcotica explores what accurate, tactful drug imagery should look like.

The team speaks with Nigel Brunsdon, the official/unofficial photographer of the modern day harm reduction movement, who is joining us via from the UK. He has shadowed the Chicago Recovery Alliance, Harm Reduction International, and many others on the front lines of the so-called drug war. His photos of the workers, advocates, people who use drugs, and the academics are loaded with grief, emotion, hope, and solidarity. He explains balancing privilege, relationships and representation of impacted communities through drug war photojournalism.

Follow Nigel on his website nigelbrunsdon.com and check out harmreductionphilosophy.com for more on how harm reduction works as an ideology.

Follow Narcotica on Facebook, Twitter and support us on Patreon. Your support is appreciated!

We talk a lot about this image that we used from Nigel for Episode 3, memorializing harm reduction activist Dan Bigg. Here it is for reference:


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

Episode 15: Accurate, Compassionate Drug Journalism with Filter Magazine

April 3, 2019 Narcotica Episodes 0:54:12 0 Comments

Mainstream media doesn’t really ‘get’ drugs, but there’s one place that has consistently gotten it right: Filter Magazine. Narcotica hosts Christopher Moraff, Zachary Siegel and Troy Farah talk with Filter’s co-founder and editor-in-chief Will Godfrey. This conversation covers a lot of ground on media literacy and compassionate reporting on drug use.

Full disclosure: all three of us at Narcotica have worked with Godfrey in some way. But we completely support the work that Filter is doing, which is what we hope Narcotica accomplishes: responsible, scientific, and compassionate reporting on drugs.

Learn more about Filter Magazine on their website and follow Will Godfrey on Twitter.

Follow Narcotica on Facebook, Twitter and support us on Patreon. Your support is appreciated!

Producer: Christopher Moraff / Troy Farah
Image credit: Eduardo Verdugo
Music: KieLoKaz, Glass Boy and Aaron Ferguson
Co-Producer: Aaron Ferguson — https://soundcloud.com/knowmad1

Episode 11: Beyond Borders — How the U.S. Exports Dangerous Drug Policy with Sanho Tree

February 4, 2019 Narcotica Episodes 00:45:49 0 Comments

America practically invented prohibition, or at least popularized it to the point where nearly every country models itself after U.S. drug policy. The results have been nothing short of disastrous. Troy Farah talks with foreign policy expert Sanho Tree about how the ‘Land of the Free’ have exported draconian drug laws, enslaving the rest of the planet. This discussion covers poppy fields in Afghanistan, Central American migrants fleeing gangs, the Bolivian model for cocaine regulation, death squads in the Philippines and how Trump’s wall is just more bad drug policy.


Follow Sanho Tree on Twitter.

Follow Narcotica on Facebook, Twitter and support us on Patreon. Your support is appreciated!

Producer: Troy Farah
Image credit: Alastair Rae, Flickr / Edit by Troy Farah
Music: Inaequalis and Glass Boy