Dear Listeners:
Maia Szalavitz is my latest podcast guest. Maia is the author of Undoing Drugs: How Harm Reduction is Changing the Future of Drugs and Addiction, Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction, and Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids, along with several other books.
We met up at her office in New York City last November to talk about her extraordinary life and career. She describes a tough childhood that led into a period of hardcore drug addiction, a period capped by a major drug bust that could’ve landed her in jail for many years. In the midst of trying to navigate the legal system at the height of the War on Drugs, she launched her now very successful career in journalism. She’s got some really brilliant insights on addiction and our misguided approaches to it, along with many stories about encounters with fascinating people ranging from Jerry Garcia to Bill Moyers and Charlie Rose. It’s great stuff.
As always the podcast is available through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Pocketcasts, and the Substack app.
Episode Outline
0:00-6:02: Introduction.
6:02-15:20: Rough time growing up in upstate New York in the ‘70s, high school, dreaming of being a journalist, getting into drugs to fit in, psychedelics.
15:20-24:28: Enrolling at Columbia, the early ‘80s cocaine boom, doing cocaine with Jerry Garcia, becoming a drug dealer and solving the social dilemma, the roots of addiction, quitting psychedelics in order to avoid facing up to her addiction to other drugs.
24:28-32:34: Trajectory as a dealer, getting busted, sinking into severe addiction, the courts, treatment.
32:34-46:46: The racism of the War on Drugs, Oregon’s decriminalization, why the narratives about recovery are often wrong, the problem with punishment, the problem with Synanon-style treatment.
46:46-51:35: The story of getting busted with two kilos of cocaine.
51:35-1:06:38: After rehab, early “neuroscience,” writing for High Times, working for Charlie Rose, freelance writing, working for Bill Moyers, the Alan Leshner “highjacking the brain” episode, the brain disease model of addiction, 12-step.
1:06:38-1:21:35: Her books and the term “harm reduction.”
1:21:35-end: Outro.
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