stimulants

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 36: Moral Hazards and Naloxone, A Toxicologist’s Perspective with Ryan Marino

February 13, 2020 Narcotica Episodes 0:49:30 0 Comments

An opioid overdose can be a terrifying experience. When too much of a  drug like heroin or fentanyl floods the brain, it can cause your  breathing to stop. Sometimes you wake up, sometimes you don’t. But  there’s a miraculous drug called naloxone or brand name Narcan that can  reverse an opioid overdose and save your life.  

Today’s guest is Ryan Marino, an emergency room physician and medical  toxicologist at Cleveland University Hospitals. We discuss moral  hazards about naloxone, one of the most important drugs on the planet,  but also buprenorphine, competitive antagonists for benzos and  stimulants, and dispelling drug myths on social media. 

How to Get Naloxone by Zachary Siegel in VICE

Also visit: naloxoneforall.org

Follow Ryan on Twitter.

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 / Min Y Llan

Photo: Naloxone via Wikipedia / Edit Troy Farah  

Episode 9: Speed Up, Slow Down Pt. 3 — The Cocaine Fentanyl Blues

November 19, 2018 Narcotica Episodes 00:29:56 0 Comments

For more than a century, Americans have had a love-hate relationship with cocaine. Once viewed as a cure-all tonic for everything from hemorrhoids to morphine addiction, the drug has inspired infamous rock songs and brought people to their knees.

In the third and final segment of Narcotica’s ‘Speed Up, Slow Down’ series on stimulants, reporter Christopher Moraff examines the strange and perplexing history of cocaine and it’s latest demonization—fentanyl adulteration. He speaks with toxicologist Kevin Shanks, Dennis Cauchon of Harm Reduction Ohio and fentanyl test strip guru Tino Fuentes.

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Photo credit: Christopher Moraff, edit by Troy Farah.

Episode 5: Speed Up, Slow Down Pt. 1

October 10, 2018 Narcotica Episodes, Stimulants 00:24:54 0 Comments

With all the focus on opioids, Narcotica has decided to launch a series on stimulants called “Speed Up, Slow Down.” In the first installment, Zachary Siegel takes a critical look at how media depicts meth and cocaine use. He interviews two users about how stimulants actually help them function. Then, he talks to Sheila Vakharia from the Drug Policy Alliance about harm reduction, and Kat Humphries from the Harm Reduction Action Center about her “Methamphetazine” that features art from Denver stimulant users.

Download link for the zine.

More info on harm reduction for stimulants here. Follow Sheila Vakharia: @MyHarmReduction

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If you liked this episode, here are others you might enjoy:
Episode 38: Dead People Don’t Recover — The Importance of Safe Supply with Mark Tyndall
Episode 33: Party and Play—An Intro to Chemsex with David Stuart
Episode 20: The Pitfalls of Mainstream Harm Reduction with Eliza Wheeler

Producers: Christopher Moraff, Troy Farah, Zachary Siegel
Music: Glass Boy
Intro voice: Jenny Schaye
Image: Composite of Wikimedia images by Troy Farah