Podcasts about flourishing after addiction

Hey friends,I'm giving a talk tonight at a beach party

In this episode of Alcohol Minimalist, Molly speaks once again with Dr. Carl Erik Fisher, an addiction psychiatrist, author, and person in recovery, to discuss the complexities of addiction beyond just alcohol. We explore the fascinating (and often overlooked) intersection between behavioral addictions—like gambling—and substance use disorders.Dr. Fisher recently penned a compelling piece for The New York Times about the public health consequences of gambling addiction, especially in light of the recent surge in sports betting. He shares insights on why we need to move beyond a binary approach to addiction—where you're either "an addict" or "fine"—and instead recognize the spectrum of harmful behaviors that can impact anyone. They also discuss:✅ How gambling and alcohol addiction share common psychological patterns✅ Why addiction isn't just about loss of control but also about societal and environmental influences✅ The impact of marketing and corporate interests in promoting problematic behaviors✅ How our cultural narratives around addiction shape recovery and treatment options✅ Practical ways to rethink our own habits and reduce harmDr. Fisher's expertise and thoughtful perspective challenge conventional ideas about addiction and highlight why we need a more nuanced public health approach to substance use and compulsive behaviors. If you've ever wondered where you fit on the spectrum of alcohol use—or how to better navigate your relationship with alcohol—this episode is for you.About Dr. Carl Erik Fisher:Dr. Carl Erik Fisher is an addiction physician, bioethicist, writer, and person in long-term recovery. He is an associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University and author of The Urge: Our History of Addiction, which was named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker and The Boston Globe. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and Scientific American Mind. Dr. Fisher also hosts Flourishing After Addiction and runs the Rat Park newsletter on Substack.Links & Resources:

Carl Erik Fisher, M.D., is an addiction psychiatrist, bioethics scholar, author, and person in recovery. He is an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, where he studies and teaches law, ethics, and policy relating to psychiatry and neuroscience, especially issues related to substance use disorders and other addictive behaviors. He also maintains a private clinical practice focused on complementary and integrative approaches to addiction and recovery. He is the author of the nonfiction book The Urge: Our History of Addiction, named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker and The Boston Globe. The Urge is an intellectual and cultural history of addiction, interwoven with his own experiences as an addiction psychiatrist at Columbia and as someone in recovery himself. His other writing for the general public has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Slate, Scientific American MIND, and elsewhere. He is also the host of the podcast Flourishing After Addiction, an interview series focused on addiction and recovery. Carl's scholarly work addresses the role of neuroscience and psychiatry in society, primarily as reflected in ethics, law, and policy. His academic writing has been published in JAMA; The American Journal of Bioethics; The Journal of Medical Ethics; and The Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics, among others. He is a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, and he is an appointed member of the American Psychiatric Association's Council on Psychiatry and Law.  In this episode: Shares his personal and professional journey Why it was important for him that his book focus on the history of addiction Can and should personal recovery inform professional treatment?  Why he believes if you can do so safely, you should recover out loud Why he wrote the book The Urge: Our History of Addiction What are his thoughts on models of addiction?  Is there a false dichotomy between harm reduction and abstinence-based treatment? He addresses some common misconceptions about addiction Dr. Fisher turns the tables and walks Vera & I through an exercise to see how our treatment are more aligned than different What he would say to his younger self about addiction Follow Carl: Twitter: @DrCarlErik Instagram: @drcarlerik His Podcast: Flourishing After Addiction Website: https://www.carlerikfisher.com    

Carl Erik Fisher, M.D., is an addiction psychiatrist, bioethics scholar, author, and person in recovery. He is an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, where he studies and teaches law, ethics, and policy relating to psychiatry and neuroscience, especially issues related to substance use disorders and other addictive behaviors.  He also maintains a private clinical practice focused on complementary and integrative approaches to addiction and recovery. His book, The Urge: The History of Addiction, is available on Amazon. And his podcast, Flourishing After Addiction, is available wherever you listen to podcasts.  Dr. Carl Erik opens the show by telling Laura about his alcohol and stimulant dependency before and throughout college. This led to a manic episode that resulted in him being admitted to a psych ward he had previously interviewed at. He goes on to explain some of his manic behaviors while being treated, including thinking that he knew better than the doctors caring for him. He also explains the specialized program he was put into and given a specialized 5-year contract so it wouldn't negatively affect his career.  Dr. Carl Erik then talks about “good drugs” vs “bad drugs” and how they disproportionately affect minority communities. This leads to a conversation about the history of addiction and how addiction can become your identity.   Before they finish, Laura asks about his time after getting out of the psych ward, as well as what someone should do when they don't think they're getting the right treatment for their substance abuse issues.  For More on Carl:Email_carl@carlerikfisher.comSocial Media: @DrCarlErik on most platforms:http://www.twitter.com/@drcarlerikhttps://www.instagram.com/drcarlerik/https://www.facebook.com/DrCarlErik/Also: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carl-erik-fisher-937360/Website: https://www.carlerikfisher.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-only-one-in-the-room--6052418/support.

Carl Erik Fisher, M.D., is an addiction psychiatrist, bioethics scholar, author, and person in recovery. He is an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, where he studies and teaches law, ethics, and policy relating to psychiatry and neuroscience, especially issues related to substance use disorders and other addictive behaviors.  He also maintains a private clinical practice focused on complementary and integrative approaches to addiction and recovery. His book, The Urge: The History of Addiction, is available on Amazon. And his podcast, Flourishing After Addiction, is available wherever you listen to podcasts.  Dr. Carl Erik opens the show by telling Laura about his alcohol and stimulant dependency before and throughout college. This led to a manic episode that resulted in him being admitted to a psych ward he had previously interviewed at. He goes on to explain some of his manic behaviors while being treated, including thinking that he knew better than the doctors caring for him. He also explains the specialized program he was put into and given a specialized 5-year contract so it wouldn't negatively affect his career.  Dr. Carl Erik then talks about “good drugs” vs “bad drugs” and how they disproportionately affect minority communities. This leads to a conversation about the history of addiction and how addiction can become your identity.  Before they finish, Laura asks about his time after getting out of the psych ward, as well as what someone should do when they don't think they're getting the right treatment for their substance abuse issues.  For More On Carl:Email_carl@carlerikfisher.comSocial Media:@DrCarlErik on most platforms: http://www.twitter.com/@drcarlerikhttps://www.instagram.com/drcarlerik/https://www.facebook.com/DrCarlErik/Also: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carl-erik-fisher-937360/Website: https://www.carlerikfisher.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-only-one-in-the-room--6052418/support.

“I want to say that it's not just some idea about suffering, it's also a function of social and economic systems that are deliberately weaponizing an individualized view of suffering as a technique, as a strategy. I found across eras and eras and eras in the book is that addiction supply industries, which is what one scholar calls them, like the alcohol industry, the tobacco industry, they constantly come back to this hyper individualization in saying, you know, like, the problem is not in the bottle, the problems in the person. If so many people can drink, quote unquote normally, that means the problem is really with these sick people over here. And that happened with tobacco. And then very directly and deliberately, things like the processed food industry and other modern addiction supply industries have used the same language.” So says Carl Erik Fisher, an addiction psychiatrist, bioethics scholar, author, and person in recovery. Carl is also an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, where he teaches law, ethics, and policy relating to psychiatry and neuroscience, particularly where they converge with substance use disorders and other addictive behaviors. He hosts a podcast called Flourishing After Addiction and is launching a Substack, where he'll organize his thinking around treatment paths and modalities. Most pertinent to our conversation today, he's the author of The Urge: Our History of Addiction, which is a fascinating deep dive into our long cultural fascination with addictive substances, interlaced with his own story, and stories from his practice: In fact, the book opens in Bellevue where Carl is not functioning as a doctor—in this case, he's the patient, after suffering an addiction-induced manic episode that put him into recovery. Carl is brilliant and kind, and also fluent in all the prevailing science about addictive behavior…science that hasn't really ruled the day until recent years. Instead, the addiction space has been one of binaries—you're compulsive, or you exercise choice; you're normal, or an addict; you have no control to stop, or you have all the control and refuse to use it; and on and on and on. MORE FROM CARL ERIK FISHER: The Urge: Our History of Addiction Carl's Podcast: Flourishing After Addiction Carl's Website Follow Carl on Instagram Carl's Newsletter Carl's Substack Further Listening on Pulling the Thread: PART 1: Holly Whitaker, “Reimagining Recovery” ADDICTION: Anna Lembke, M.D., “Navigating an Addictive Culture” TRAUMA: Gabor Maté, M.D., “When Stress Becomes Illness” BINGE EATING DISORDER: Susan Burton, “Whose Pain Counts?” To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Valerie Mason-John (Vimalasara) is a writer, Buddhist teacher, a person in recovery, and the founder of Eight Step Recovery. In this episode of Flourishing After Addiction, Vimalasara shares their transformative journey, beginning with childhood in an orphanage and evolving through various addictions, with a particular focus on their struggle with bulimia, to arrive at their current role as a spiritual teacher and author. Their story is a testament to the complexity of eating disorders and their commonalities with traditional addictions, with implications for all varieties of compulsive behavior.Through probing the nature of compulsive eating, Vimalasara describes the essence of addiction from the Buddhist perspective. We discuss how to work with craving, chronic relapse, and the drive toward substitute addictions, redirecting oneself instead toward “sobriety of thoughts and feelings,” highlighting Vimalasara's journey toward finding balance and peace, rather than simply stopping the behavior.This discussion is also a great exploration of various recovery methods and pathways, including especially the mutual help recovery community Vimalasara created, the Eight Step Recovery program. If you are curious to learn more about what actually happens in these types of alternative mutual help groups, this is a great introduction. This part of the conversation also highlights the value of a pluralistic, diverse approach to recovery, one that is necessarily in constant flux—for example, how Vimalasara is now in a relationship with a “big book thumper!”Finally, we discuss Vimalasara's perspective on how addiction intersects with timeless issues in mental health and wellness, from her first addiction—“to be in control of life”—to her biggest addiction: “to be loved and noticed.” They give us practical pointers for practice, working with difficult feelings, and concludes with a brief guided practice that can be helpful for a variety of habitual behaviors.Valerie Mason-John (Vimalasara) is an award-winning author and editor of ten books, including Eight Step Recovery: Using The Buddha's Teachings to Overcome Addiction, and Detox Your Heart: Meditations for Emotional Trauma. Their book I Am Still Your Negro: An Homage to James Baldwin was shortlisted for both the Dorothy Livesay and Gerald Lampert Awards. They are the co-founder of the mutual help group Eight Step Recovery, which holds meetings in the UK, USA, Canada, Mexico, India, Finland, and online. They are a senior teacher in the Triratna Buddhist community.In this episode: - Their book - Eight Step Recovery - The ethical precepts of Buddhism, stated positively. - Kevin Griffin, friend of the pod. My interview with him here.Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my own free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings.

Clancy Martin is a philosopher, an author, a recovering alcoholic, and the survivor of more than ten suicide attempts. His new book, How Not to Kill Yourself, is a chronicle of his suicidal mind, and—of particular interest to us here—an investigation of the ways his suicidal thinking functioned like an addiction. We dive into all that and much more in this week's episode of Flourishing After Addiction. One of Clancy's central arguments is: "thinking about killing oneself and addictive thinking have a lot more in common than is normally recognized." There is a clear connection to his experience with alcoholism, and beyond that, he describes how he was addicted to a certain idea of himself and his life, including the ways he used luxury, consumption, and sex in similar ways. He argues that addiction is far more insidious and pervasive than usually believed. Also, while Clancy identifies as an alcoholic, he challenges the on/off or binary way of looking at addiction.During his recovery, Clancy turned to Buddhism and took a leap of faith in an existential sense. He explains how Buddhist practice is the centerpiece of his recovery and compares it to his experience with 12-step recovery, and he discusses the contribution of existentialist philosophy in his recovery.Speaking more broadly in the philosophical sense, Clancy is interested in the role of practical ethics in recovery. We discuss his changing perspectives on family life, work, and interconnectedness, including lessons from Bertrand Russell on how to be “free and happy,” as well as considerations about ego and self-centeredness. In the end, there's even a little time to talk a little bit about craft and writing.Clancy Martin is a philosopher, an author, a recovering alcoholic, and the survivor of more than ten suicide attempts. He is professor of philosophy at the University of Missouri in Kansas City and Ashoka University in New Delhi. His previous books include the novel How to Sell and many books on philosophy, and his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, New York, The Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, Esquire, The New Republic, Lapham's Quarterly, The Believer, and The Paris Review.In this episode: - LitHub excerpt of Clancy's new book - The Drunks' Club, Harper's Magazine - Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind,  Shunryu Suzuki - Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche - Ethan Canin, of the Iowa Writers' Workshop - Bertrand Russell on How to be Free and Happy (a book; here is a fun gloss)Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my own free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings.

Judson Brewer ("Dr. Jud") is a renowned addiction psychiatrist and neuroscientist who has spent over two decades studying the mechanisms of addiction and the effects of mindfulness on behavior change. On this episode of Flourishing After Addiction, it was great to talk with him about some extraordinary connections between the science of addiction and contemplative practice. We talk about Jud's own experience with panic attacks, how he found mindfulness to be a powerful tool to work with anxiety, and how this personal experience helped him to see the connections between addictive cravings and the fundamental processes of anxiety. More broadly, we discuss how the urge to control our experiences is often the root of our suffering ("control is the problem, not the solution"). He connects this notion in how the brain's reward-based learning system works and how it can lead to perversely reinforcing unhelpful habits. And connecting this work to broader topics in contemplative practice, he describes how Buddhist philosophy and the concept of craving relates to the underpinnings of addiction he's uncovered in his neuroscience lab. We talk about the role of values and ethics in recovery and in treatment, including how to work with ethics as a practice without getting bogged down by a sense of obligation or guilt--approaching ethics with a sense of curiosity and openness, rather than judgment or rigidity.And, to conclude the episode, Jud leads us through a beautiful guided practice of opening and curiosity, a mini-meditation to help us cultivate awareness and non-judgmental acceptance.Dr. Jud Brewer is an addiction psychiatrist, neuroscientist, mindfulness practitioner, and author. He is the Director of Research and Innovation at the Mindfulness Center and an associate professor at the School of Public Health at Brown University. His research focuses on the neural mechanisms of mindfulness and how it can be used to treat addiction and other behavioral disorders. He has published numerous scientific articles, and he is the author of The Craving Mind (Yale University Press, 2017) and the New York Times best-seller, Unwinding Anxiety (Avery/Penguin Random House, 2021). He is also an experienced mindfulness teacher and has trained thousands of people in the art of meditation and mindfulness-based approaches to behavior change.In this episode: - Jud's website- his apps for habit change - Episodes mentioned: Melissa Febos, John Kelly, Elias Dakwar, and Eric Garland - Jud's academic work connecting addiction science to the Buddhist concept of dependent origination: "Craving to quit"- "Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity"Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my own free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings. 

“I'm twenty-nine years old, writing in my journal in a sloppy felt-tip pen (no ballpoints are allowed), trying to understand how I went from being a newly minted physician in a psychiatry residency program at Columbia University to a psychiatric patient at Bellevue, the city's notorious public hospital.”That's a quote from the first page of Carl Erik Fisher's The Urge: Our History of Addiction (Penguin Random House, 2022). As he reckons with what has brought him to that point and enters recovery, Carl revisits his own history of alcohol and drug use and comes to pose broader questions. “Why was there a totally separate system for addiction treatment? Why do we treat addiction differently from any other mental disorder? If everyone seems to know that the system is broken, why isn't anyone changing it?” he writes. “The Urge” explores these and other questions, offering a history of addiction and medicine and society's response to it through the ages. Drawing on sociology, anthropology, and theology along with psychology, neuroscience, and of course medicine, Carl's book is part memoir, part work of popular science. But it's also something more. That's why I was so eager to explore it with him.Carl Erik Fisher is an addiction physician, bioethicist, and person in recovery. He is an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University and maintains a private psychiatry practice focused on complementary and integrative approaches to addiction and recovery.  His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, and elsewhere. The Urge was named one of the best books of 2022 by The New Yorker and The Boston Globe. He also is the host of the Flourishing After Addiction podcast, which I highly recommend.Carl's work is so compelling to me because it combines his scholarly curiosity with his clinical experience and personal past. It's one thing to write a history of addiction; it's quite another to do so while also working with patients who struggle with addiction and who are in recovery while being in recovery yourself. The result is work that I'd describe as integrated, a rich whole that combines the general and the specific, the scientific and the experiential, the analytic and the critical. It's no exaggeration to say that The Urge helped me see the world around me – both current events and medicine's particular role in them – as I hadn't seen it before. ***Links:Carl's websiteCarl's podcastThe Urge website ***Recorded December 13, 2022Music: Mr Smith  Art: Jeff LandmanPhoto of Carl: copyright Beowulf Sheehan

Zach Siegel is one of our most respected and prolific journalists on addiction and drug policy. He is also a thoughtful, introspective soul who thinks deeply about his own history of opioid addiction. In his many writings, he has often referenced that personal history, but he's never really had the chance to tell his own addiction story from start to finish. Until now! Listen to this episode of Flourishing After Addiction to hear Zach's origin story, plus a deep dive into his recent cover story in Harper's magazine about surgery for opioid addiction.Zach and I talked about some enlightening moments along his path, including the role of Suboxone in his treatment, anti-medication stigma, as well some big questions about identity: what does it mean to say you're in recovery, and how does Zach make sense of that idea in his own life?We also focus in on his recent, fascinating Harper's story: a feature about deep brain stimulation surgery for addiction. In the piece, he describes how people with serious, intractable addictions receive this (technically) non-invasive surgery--a kind of neuroscience advance I myself researched as part of a fellowship in medical school. It's a terrific story in its own right, but it also invokes some big themes, such as the purposes of addiction treatment, or how human factors like relationships, care, and hope continue to be relevant even in what seems like the most reductionist biomedical treatment settings.Zachary A. Siegel is a freelance journalist and researcher living in Chicago. His work focuses on public health, mental health, and the criminal-legal system; he also reviews books, movies, and TV shows, on occasion; and he co-writes Substance, a newsletter about drugs and crime, with journalist Tana Ganeva. He's reported for a variety of news outlets and magazines: Harper's, New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and more. He holds a journalism position at The Action Lab of Northeastern University's Law School, working on projects like Changing The Narrative. He also co-hosts a podcast called Narcotica with his friends and fellow drug journalists Troy Farah and Chris Moraff. Find him on his website and on Twitter.In this episode: -  Substance - his substack newsletter - his podcast Narcotica - Changing the Narrative (project of Health action lab at Northwestern)- Only Lovers Left Alive - A Hole in the HeadSign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my own free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings. 

A little over 40 years ago, Dr. Steven Hayes experienced his first panic attack—when he was a young assistant professor in psychology, no less! In the intervening years, and drawing in part on his own recovery from panic disorder, he developed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and produced a huge body of work that has revolutionized our understanding of human language and cognition. Today, he is one of the most highly-cited scholars in the world, across all disciplines of study. And, he remains a soulful and wise clinician, who generously shared some of his insights about addiction for this episode of the Flourishing After Addiction podcast.Steve and I talk about “psychological flexibility:” a revolutionary pivot toward working with our thoughts and feelings, rather than trying to fight or change them. One definition of psychological flexibility is to be open, grounded, and committed to values-based action. We discuss making sense of addiction in his framework, and he speaks out against the biomedicalization and over-categorization of the phenomenon. He talks about the centrality of values and why it's necessary to find a life worth living as part of recovery. We discuss Steve's understanding of spirituality and transcending a limited self-concept, and how that fits into his work. And—something I'm so happy Steve prompted me to do—he leads us all through a guided exercise to take perspective and to get a taste of dropping the small self.  I'm really happy that he's given us this practice experience. Find a quiet place and give it a try (it's only about 8 minutes or so, toward the end of the interview). Steven C. Hayes is a Nevada Foundation Professor of Psychology at the University of Nevada. An author of 46 books and nearly 650 scientific articles, he is especially known for his work on "Acceptance and Commitment Therapy" or “ACT”, which is one of the most widely used and researched new methods of psychological intervention over the last 20 years. His popular book Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life for a time was the best-selling self-help book in the United States, and his more recent book A Liberated Mind was released to wide acclaim. Dr. Hayes has been President of several scientific societies and has received several national awards, such as the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies. According to major indices like the Institute for Scientific Information and Google Scholar, he is ranked among the most cited scholars in all areas of study in the world. Read more at his website.In this episode: - His faculty page- the "new paradigm" in mental health treatment we only briefly discussed (good for clinicians to check out!): Learning Process-Based Therapy: A Skills Training Manual for Targeting the Core Processes of Psychological Change in Clinical Practice- His TEDx talk on psychological flexibility: How love turns pain into purpose - His  2nd TEDx talk: Mental Brakes to Avoid Mental BreaksSign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my own free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings.

Emily and Stassi speak with Dr. Carl Erik Fisher: addiction expert, person in recovery, private practice psychiatrist, and professor at Columbia University. We discuss his book, The Urge, and his personal journey with addiction and recovery. Find him at www.carlerikfisher.com , @drcarlerik, anywhere books are sold, or on his podcast Flourishing After Addiction!

In the weeks prior to this episode, the story broke that the UK's Middlesbrough clinic, which offered a pioneering Heroin Assisted Treatment (HAT) program, is slated to close because of budget cuts. Patients were allowed to self-administer medical-grade heroin (officially, diamorphine) under medical supervision. One of the key scientific studies that supports this intervention is the RIOTT Trial—“Randomised Injectable Opiate Treatment”—and I got to speak to the principal investigator of that trial, a giant in the field of addiction research, and the first knight to appear on the Flourishing After Addiction podcast: John Strang.Prof Sir Strang is a pioneering addictions researcher and practicing physician who, over the course of his distinguished career, has made major contributions to national and international policy. Of particular interest to those of us who are fascinated with the intellectual and cultural history, he's had a front-row seat to the scientific and cultural evolution of views on addiction, including studies under his mentor, Griffith Edwards, another major figure in the addictions field who was instrumental in shaping modern medical definitions of substance use problems. We cover a lot of ground in this one, and while we tackle some weighty topics, ranging from fundamental principles in addiction treatment to the very definition of addiction, Prof Sir Strang has a gift for explaining these concepts in clear, articulate terms—a skill no doubt honed by years of interfacing with governments and departments of health. Above all, I think he does a fantastic job of returning to some of the key, pragmatic questions raised by these topics: what does it mean to have an addiction problem, and how do I make sense of my issues? What is the point of medications and other treatments for addiction? What are the core principles in addiction care? And in the end, just what kind of contribution can science make to better public policy and practice? I hope you find this conversation as useful as I did.Professor Sir John Strang is a physician and an academic. He's the Director of the National Addiction Centre (NAC) and Head of the Addictions Department at King's College London. He has been an addictions psychiatrist for nearly 40 years, and has led the group at the Maudsley Institute since 1995. He has published more than 500 scientific papers in the addiction field and has contributed to national and international policy, chairing policy committees and expert groups. In 2016, he was awarded a Knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours for ‘services to Medicine, Addictions and Public Health'. Read more at his faculty page, and for more about the King's College London addiction center, see this link.In this episode:- the RIOTT trial-Griffith Edwards and some of his writing on the dependence syndrome-Drug Policy and the Public Good-Setting Limits: Gambling, Science and Public Policy- BBC: "Pioneering Middlesbrough heroin addiction clinic to close"- Gerald Klerman: Psychotropic Hedonism vs. Pharmacological CalvinismSign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my own free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings.

As I've written before, Beth Macy has an extraordinary gift for encapsulating our nation's greatest challenges in gripping, intimate, and wise stories of everyday American struggles. She is a bestselling author of several books about addiction, inequality, and justice, and it was a great pleasure to talk to her about her latest book, Raising Lazarus, on this latest episode of Flourishing After Addiction. On a personal note, I've enjoyed seeing this book take shape behind the scenes, and we get to talk about her writing and research process a bit too—I was lucky to make a connection with her early in the process of releasing my own book, so it was fun to talk about how our work has informed each other and how her thinking has evolved over time.In our conversation, Beth opens up about her personal experiences growing up as a child of alcoholics and what she did to heal—as she notes, something she's never discussed in prior interviews. Of course, we also talk a fair bit about her book, including how this work is focused on what she sees as the most likely solutions to our current crisis. It's a big departure for her and a full-throated celebration of harm reduction. We talk about the innovative people she profiles, folks working tirelessly to provide evidence-based care and harm reduction services even in really inhospitable communities and situations. It's a daunting topic, but Beth has also found a great deal of hope there too.Beth Macy is a Virginia-based journalist with three decades of experience and an award-winning author of three New York Times bestselling books: Factory Man, Truevine, and Dopesick. Her first book, Factory Man, won a J. Anthony Lukas Prize and Dopesick was short-listed for the Carnegie Medal, won the L.A. Times Book Prize for Science and Technology, and was described as a “masterwork of narrative nonfiction” by The New York Times. Dopesick has now been made into a Peabody award-winning and Emmy-winning Hulu series on which she acted as an executive producer and cowriter. Her latest book, Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America's Overdose Crisis, was published on August 16, 2022. You can find her on Instagram, Twitter, and her personal website. In this episode:- The work of Gail D'Onofrio, MD, Professor of Emergency Medicine at Yale and pioneer in ED-initiated buprenorphine - Estimation of the Time Needed to Deliver the 2020 USPSTF Preventive Care Recommendations in Primary Care- Beth's personal essay about her childhood on Oprah Daily- “By the book” interview with Beth- Beth's guest essay in the New York Times: “The Two Simple Edicts of Successful Addiction Treatment”. Those edicts are: (1) “You can get better.” (2) “Don't disappear.”- Link to all of Beth's  books: Raising Lazarus, Dopesick, Truevine, and Factory ManSign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my own free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings.

Join Dr. Jennifer Reid as she speaks with Carl Erik Fisher, MD, addiction psychiatrist, bioethicist, and person in recovery.  He is the host of the Flourishing After Addiction Podcast as well as author of The Urge: Our History of Addiction, sharing historical, ethical, and highly personal aspects of addiction treatment and recovery in the United States. We Discuss:*Dr. Carl Erik's journey from medical school through an inpatient psychiatry unit to recovery*Why is the language around addiction and substance use disorder so important?*What is his opinion of AA and other 12-step groups for addiction?Carl Erik Fisher is an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University. He also maintains a private psychiatry practice focused on addiction. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Nautilus, Slate, Scientific American MIND, and elsewhere. He also is the host of the Flourishing After Addiction podcast, a deep-dive interview series exploring addiction and recovery.Social Media@DrCarlErik on most platforms:http://www.twitter.com/@drcarlerikhttps://www.instagram.com/drcarlerik/https://www.facebook.com/DrCarlErik/Also: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carl-erik-fisher-937360/Website: https://www.carlerikfisher.comJennifer Reid, MD on Instagram: @TheReflectiveDocLooking for more from The Reflective Doc? Subscribe today so you don't miss out!Also check out Dr. Reid's regular contributions to Psychology Today: Think Like a Shrink**********************Seeking a mental health provider? Try Psychology TodayNational Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255SAMHSA's National Helpline - 1-800-662-HELP (4357)Dial 988 for Mental Health EmergencyThank you to Brendan Callahan for the original music featured on the podcast.Disclaimer:The information and other content provided on this podcast or in any linked materials, are not intended and should not be construed as medical advice, nor is the information a substitute for professional medical expertise or treatment. All content, including text, graphics, images and information, contained on or available through this website is for general information purposes only.If you or any other person has a medical concern, you should consult with your health care provider or seek other professional medical treatment. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something that have read on this website, blog or in any linked materials. If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor or emergency services (911) immediately. You can also access the National Suicide Help Line at 1-800-273-8255

Dr. Ayana Jordan is a renowned expert in addiction and other mental health conditions, newly recruited to NYU to an endowed professorship for her fascinating research. For this episode of Flourishing After Addiction, I was excited to talk to her about new frontiers in her research, such as incorporating spirituality and health equity in addiction medicine. What I was not expecting was for her to share so openly and courageously about the way substance use problems have impacted her own family. It was a powerful conversation with a powerful voice in the field. It never fails to astonish me: the scope and reach of addiction into so many people's lives. Reading the stats is one thing, but to experience how it touches so many people, again and again, is truly striking.Ayana talks about her longstanding interest in integrating spirituality in addiction treatment, while simultaneously respecting people's values and beliefs, and doing so in a responsible and effective way. We discuss her work on harm reduction, racial justice, and health equity. She helps us think through how to work effectively with the social and structural determinants of health. And, we tackle the controversial question: what's the point of spirituality in the medical treatment of addiction in the first place?Ayana Jordan, MD PhD, is a renowned expert in addiction and other mental health conditions in underserved populations. She is the newly appointed Barbara Wilson Endowed Associate Professor of Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at NYU, also with appointments and leadership positions in their department of Population Health, as well as NYU Langone's Institute for Excellence in Health Equity. The fundamental message of equity and inclusion has informed her research, clinical work, and leadership duties at NYU and beyond. She earned her MD PhD at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and while training in the South Bronx, Dr. Jordan became passionate about serving racial and ethnic minoritized populations. She did her general adult psychiatry residency at Yale University, where she also served as chief resident. She has published dozens of peer-reviewed articles in numerous top-tier medical publications, serves on multiple editorial boards, and she is a thought leader who has given a wide range of keynote presentation both nationally and internationally. You can find her on her faculty page, Twitter, and Instagram.In this episode: - Information on naloxone (Narcan), including naloxone's availability in all 50 states.- Lancet Psychiatry profile of her- for more on her research, see many more of her publications linked on her NYU pageSign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my own free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings.

Melissa Febos is one of our most accomplished memoirists and essayists, a passionate and fiercely honest writer who, across several of her works, has often discussed her own path through addiction and into recovery. (Among her many, many accolades, she is the recipient of a 2022 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and a National Book Critics Circle Award.) I was thrilled to talk with her on this latest episode of Flourishing After Addiction and learn more about this harrowing and inspiring part of her life.There are so many gems in this episode. We talk about Melissa's experience of addiction and how she works her recovery program today . We discuss how her creative practice is part of that recovery; how evaluation, performance, and internal and external criticism was problematic for her; and how writing helped her in recovery. How her definition of recovery expanded over time. How she had to write to survive, and then to thrive. Whether you're interested in the craft of writing, or just how to craft a life, you shouldn't miss this one.Melissa Febos is the bestselling author of four books, most recently, Girlhood, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative. She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from The Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, LAMBDA Literary, The British Library, and others. Her work has appeared in publications including The Paris Review, Granta, The Believer, The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, and many more.She is an associate professor at the University of Iowa. You can find her on Twitter, Instagram, her faculty page and her author website. In this episode: - her books:      Whip Smart     Abandon Me     Girlhood     Body Work Some of her recent longform: - "The Kindest Cut" in the New York Times Magazine- “Jeanette Winterson, My Therapist, and Me” in the New York Review of Books-  Girlhood excerpt in the New York Times-  “Do You Want to Be Known For Your Writing, or For Your Swift Email Responses?” in CatapultAlso mentioned:  Resmaa Menakem, author of My Grandmother's Hands and The Quaking of AmericaSign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my own free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings.

From quite early in her life, Peg O'Connor felt a “double dose of shame” - from her lesbian identity on one hand, and her struggles with alcohol on the other. Her drinking problems almost got her expelled from high school, but instead she was able to stop. In her view, philosophy helped her immensely to get and stay sober, especially considering how she was not fully on board with traditional religious views or with Alcoholics Anonymous.Peg eventually became a philosophy professor, studying Wittgenstein, ethics, and feminist philosophy, and for decades she remained abstinent from alcohol. But then, 19 years into her recovery, searching for “something more,” she got more curious about 12-step recovery. At the same time, she turned her academic focus to face addiction more directly, and since then she has been writing about some of the most challenging ideas about recovery, such as surrender, powerlessness, spirituality, and “higher powers.”For this episode of Flourishing After Addiction, I was excited to speak with Peg about her most recent book, Higher and Friendly Powers, a compulsively readable, clear, and humane exploration of the notion of “Higher Powers,” using the philosopher and psychologist William James as a guide. It's great fun. I hope you enjoy.Peg O'Connor is Professor of Philosophy at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. She is the author of the forthcoming book, Higher and Friendly Powers: Transforming Addiction and Suffering (Wildhouse Publications) and Life on the Rocks: Finding Meaning in Addiction and Recovery (Central Recovery Press, 2016). A recovering alcoholic, she believes philosophy has much to offer people who struggle. You can find her at her faculty page and her author website (

In this edition of The Way Out, our prodigious co-host with the most has an outstanding discussion with person in long term recovery, peer recovery specialist, mental health professional and recovery advocate Tom Jackson. Tom is a longtime and self-proclaimed "policy nerd" who has been doing recovery advocacy work on the national legislative level since the days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980's. Tom shares his decades long journey to and through recovery to this point with us along with his hard earned wisdom and experience, all of which is yours to relish in the interview that's about to unfold before your very ears, so listen up. Contact Info: jacksonta@gmail.com Resource links: http://wsh.dbhds.virginia.gov/ https://www.facebook.com/VirginiaRecoveryAdvocacyProject http://recoveryvoices.com/ Book recommendation: The Urge: Our History of Addiction by Carl Erik Fisher: https://www.harvard.com/book/the_urge/ Listen to Carl Erik Fisher's interview with Charlie in Episode 254: Flourishing After Addiction with Dr. Carl Erik Fisher | The Way Out Podcast Episode 254 https://anchor.fm/the-way-out-podcast/episodes/Flourishing-After-Addiction-with-Dr--Carl-Erik-Fisher--The-Way-Out-Podcast-Episode-254-e15vi9a Best piece of advice: "Don't take yourself so damn seriously" Song that symbolizes recovery: Elton John - The One: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85B_REWeNcM (c) 2015 - 2022 The Way Out Podcast | All Rights Reserved Theme Music: “all clear” (https://ketsa.uk/browse-music/) by Ketsa (https://ketsa.uk) licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-way-out-podcast/message

Dr. Mark Epstein is a hero of mine. He is a Buddhist psychiatrist and author who has been a voice of kindness and wisdom in our field for decades, and I've long looked to his work for inspiration and guidance. So it was an honor to speak with him for this episode of the Flourishing After Addiction podcast!Mark does not have a personal history of a “classic” addiction like a substance problem, but as he articulates so nicely in our interview: “from the Buddhist point of view, we're all addicted.” We talk about addiction to thinking, addiction to the self as the primary addiction, and how Mark worked with his own anxieties and insecurities—a path that led him to psychiatric training at Harvard, almost 50 years of meditation practice, and many influential books at the interface of Buddhism and psychotherapy. (There were so many fun surprises in this interview, such as Mark's training with George Vaillant at Harvard, a giant of psychiatric research and a non-alcoholic member of the board of trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous.) In particular, we focus on his fantastic new book, The Zen of Therapy: Uncovering a Hidden Kindness in Life. It's a lovely account of meditation practice, therapy, recovery, ease, and working with the self. Mark Epstein, M.D., is a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City and the author of a number of books about the interface of Buddhism and psychotherapy, including Advice Not Given, The Trauma of Everyday Life, Thoughts without a Thinker and Going to Pieces without Falling Apart. His newest book, out now, is The Zen of Therapy: Uncovering a Hidden Kindness in Life. He received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Harvard University. For more, check out his website, and you can find him on Instagram and Twitter.In this episode:- Mark's most recent book: The Zen of Therapy (also discussed: Advice Not Given)- George Vaillant (a summary of his book, The Natural History of Alcoholism)- A fun book about Ram Dass and others at Harvard, The Harvard Psychedelic Club ("How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America")- Gestalt therapy- More on the Emmanuel Clinic - a repository of several articles on the early 20th century, pre-Freudian psychotherapy in the US that reported great success in working with alcoholism. (I like this article in particular)- Revenge bedtime procrastination Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings.

With so much suffering today, and in the midst of a historic overdose crisis, you might wonder: why bother looking to the distant past of addiction? How can the history of addiction actually help us? For me, I found that I needed history to make sense of what happened to me and my family. After studying addiction for a little while, I saw that ideas dating from the origin of the global drug trade, hundreds of years ago, exert a powerful influence on how we understand and treat—or still fail to treat—addiction.  Today, I'm convinced that this history is a crucial route for giving addiction the care, nuance, and attention it deserves. But in the beginning, I needed some help from thoughtful scholars to see those connections.In today's episode of the Flourishing After Addiction podcast, I was really happy to talk with my friend and colleague Ben Breen, a noted historian at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who studies the history of science and drugs. Many years ago, it was Ben's help, and his living example of wholehearted devotion to the field, that helped me to see the promise of this history for helping us in the present.We talk about how ideas about drugs from the colonial period onward have shaped how we think about good and bad drugs—and so much more. He sketches the deep history of psychedelics, from the Amazon rainforest to the overlooked early history of psychedelic therapy. Drug scares about coffee. Cinnamon, tobacco, and unicorn horns. “Dry goods,” bath salts, and decriminalization. Imperialism, capitalism, and cosmopolitanism. How opium was turned into an exotic substance despite originating from Europe. And generally, how all these ideas come back to the present to affect how people make sense of themselves and their suffering.Benjamin Breen, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he teaches classes on early modern Europe, the history of science, environmental history, and world history. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University, and a lecturer in Columbia's history department. He grew up in California and earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of Texas at Austin in 2015. He is the author of The Age of Intoxication: Origins of the Global Drug Trade, and he is currently at work on a new history of “psychedelic science” and Cold War drug experimentation. He has contributed to The Paris Review, The Atlantic,  Lapham's Quarterly, and many more publications. He also created the history blog Res Obscura. For more, check out his website and find him on Twitter.In this episode:- George Psalmanazar, a mysterious Frenchman who posed as a native of Formosa (now Taiwan) and gave birth to a meticulously fabricated culture... and who also provided remarkably detailed descriptions of opioid addiction as early as 1764 - Decriminalization in Santa Cruz.- Mike Jay's new book on Mescaline- Khat and cathinones Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my own free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings. 

How have people living at other times or in other places understood compulsive behavior? How does our modern, western understanding of addiction shape our treatment or mistreatment of addicts.  Carl Erik Fisher, M.D., author of the groundbreaking new book The Urge: Our History of Addiction, addresses these and other questions a fascinating conversation with David and Nate. Dr. Fisher is an addiction physician and bioethicist. He is an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University's Division of Law, Ethics, and Psychiatry. He also maintains a private psychiatry practice focused on addiction.  His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Nautilus, Slate, and Scientific American MIND. He also is the host of the Flourishing After Addiction podcast, a deep-dive interview series exploring addiction and recovery. He lives between Brooklyn, New York, and Lisbon, Portugal, with his partner and son.   The best link is to my website:  www.carlerikfisher.com/book   my own podcast is: https://www.carlerikfisher.com/flourishing   And here is an updated bio: Carl Erik Fisher is an addiction physician and bioethicist. He is an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University's Division of Law, Ethics, and Psychiatry. He also maintains a private psychiatry practice focused on addiction. He is the author of the nonfiction book The Urge: Our History of Addiction, published by Penguin Press in January 2022. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Nautilus, Slate, and Scientific American MIND. He also is the host of the Flourishing After Addiction podcast, a deep-dive interview series exploring addiction and recovery. He lives between Brooklyn, New York, and Lisbon, Portugal, with his partner and son.   https://www.carlerikfisher.com

How do we best tap into the positive side of recovery, beyond abstinence, sobriety, and remission? What does the science actually show about growing and changing in life after addiction?There is perhaps no one better equipped to answer those questions than my guest on today's episode of the Flourishing After Addiction podcast: Dr. John Kelly, Harvard Medical School's Elizabeth R. Spallin Professor of Psychiatry in Addiction Medicine, and founder and Director of the Recovery Research Institute at the Massachusetts General Hospital. John is a pivotal figure in the world of this research, studying not just what goes wrong and how to stop addictive behavior, but also how people find their pathways and thrive in recovery. In this episode, we talk about the “active ingredients” or “mechanisms” for recovery, what drives people's trajectories in recovery, what the research shows about how long it takes to make significant change once someone starts making an effort, and what all this research shows about how to best care for people with addiction and what we must improve in our current treatment system. We also talk a bit about his research on Alcoholics Anonymous and what that shows about the active elements of recovery.John Kelly, Ph.D., is the Elizabeth R. Spallin Professor of Psychiatry in Addiction Medicine at Harvard Medical School - the first endowed professor in addiction medicine at Harvard. He is also the Founder and Director of the Recovery Research Institute at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the Associate Director of the Center for Addiction Medicine (CAM) at MGH, and the Program Director of the Addiction Recovery Management Service (ARMS). Dr. Kelly is a former President of the American Psychological Association's (APA) Society of Addiction Psychology, and is a Fellow of the APA and a Diplomate of the American Board of Professional Psychology. He has served as a consultant to U.S. federal agencies and non-federal institutions, as well as foreign governments and the United Nations. Dr. Kelly has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles, reviews, chapters, and books in the field of addiction medicine, and was an author on the U.S. Surgeon General's Report on Alcohol, Drugs, and Health. His clinical and research work has focused on addiction treatment and the recovery process, mechanisms of behavior change, and reducing stigma and discrimination among individuals suffering from addiction. For more on John and his work, go to https://www.recoveryanswers.org.In this episode: - A nice blog post by John about the many pathways to recovery. - "A biaxial formulation of the recovery construct", with remission/abstinence/sobriety on one axis, and the positive consequences of recovery on the other. - The 2020 Cochrane Review on Alcoholics Anonymous and 12-Step Facilitation Treatments for Alcohol Use Disorder. A summary of that work here. - many more briefs of research studies available here.Sign up for my newsletter and immediately receive my own free guide to the many pathways to recovery, as well as regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings.

According to the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics, since 2000, the United States has experienced over 700,000 deaths due to drug overdose. Addiction and substance use disorders are at the root of this enormous loss, and about half of people who struggle with substance use disorder will experience some mental health disorder during their life. And vice versa—many individuals struggling with mental health disorders also struggle with various forms of addiction. Carl Erik Fisher, author of The Urge: Our History of Addiction, has expertise in law, ethics, and policy related to psychiatry and neuroscience. His personal struggle with addiction in combination with his professional expertise converges to help us understand the forces that have shaped addiction throughout our history. On this episode of POTC, Carl and Yael discuss the social contingencies and historical contexts that lead to addiction, substance use disorder, and co-morbid mental health issues. Join us in this episode to learn more about commonly held beliefs about addiction, prescribers' blind spots to certain medications, and much much more! Listen and Learn: Yael and Debbie discuss the importance of contextualizing human behaviorHow society tends to neglect the historical context of addictive behaviors (and why it's so important to overcome this neglect)The issues that come with treating addiction differently than other mental health disordersPractical advice for clinicians and patients working with co-morbid addiction and other mental health disordersCarl provides insights on how addiction has been weaponized to serve corporations and politiciansAn important, historical example of what happens when scientists and researchers rigidly adopt a particular view (read: biases) but find information that conflicts with that viewThe expert-approved definition of harm reductionCarl answers commonly held beliefs about addiction (e.g., is addiction a brain disease?)How Carl, a practicing psychiatrist with an in-depth knowledge of the history of addiction and mental health, approaches prescription by balancing values, change, and harm reduction Things consumers should know about prescribers' blind spots to certain medicationsCarl's personal story of addiction and recoveryWhat to consider when balancing evidence- and RCT-based treatments with clients' individuality and choicesPractical advice for helping those who are in denial of their substance abuse problem Resources:  Read Carl's book, The Urge: Our History of Addiction! Check out Carl's recent New York Times piece, Why It's misleading to call addiction a diseaseListen to Carl's podcast, Flourishing After Addiction! Read RAND reports on drug policy research, prescription drug abuse, and substance abuseGrab your copy of all our favorite books at bookshop.org/shop/offtheclockpsych.Check out Debbie, Jill's, Yael, and Diana, websites to access their offerings, sign up for their newsletters, buy their books, and more! About Carl Erik Fisher: Carl Erik Fisher (USA), psychiatrist and author of The Urge: A History of Addiction, New York, May 24, 2021. Photograph © Beowulf Sheehan Carl Erik Fisher, M.D., is an addiction psychiatrist, bioethics scholar, and author of The Urge: Our History of Addiction. He is an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, where he studies and teaches law, ethics, and policy relating to psychiatry and neuroscience. He received his B.A. in Music (vocal performance) and Biology from the University of North Carolina, his M.D. from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and completed psychiatric residency at Columbia University. He then completed fellowship training in forensic psychiatry in the Columbia/Cornell Residency in ... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At 29, as a newly minted physician in the psychiatry residency program at Columbia University, Dr. Carl Erik Fisher had much to look forward to – that is until his alcohol addiction landed him in New York City's Bellevue hospital and nearly cost him everything. In this episode, we talk with him about that experience and how it inspired his new book, The Urge: Our History of Addiction. In it, he shares his personal experience with addiction and recovery, and offers a comprehensive look at how society has defined, treated, and tried to control addictive behavior for centuries. Is there a better way to think about addiction? And, can that help us to create more compassionate and effective treatments and strategies? GUEST: Dr. Carl Erik Fisher, Author, The Urge: Our History of AddictionGUEST BIO:Dr. Carl Erik Fisher is the author of The Urge: Our History of Addiction, which explores how, over the centuries, society has historically, philosophically, scientifically, and socially grappled with the nature of addiction, its complexity, and how to treat it. In the book, he draws on his experiences as an addiction physician, bioethicist, and assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia, as well as an alcoholic in recovery, as he examines treatments and strategies that have helped, as well as hurt, those struggling with addiction. He has also written for various publications, including Nautilus, Slate, Scientific American MIND, and other outlets. His clinical work focuses on applications of meditation and mindfulness. He also hosts the podcast Flourishing After Addiction, an interview series focused on addiction and recovery. Born and raised in New Jersey, he  lives between Brooklyn, New York, and Lisbon, Portugal, with his partner and son.LINKS:The Urge: Our History of Addiction  (https://www.carlerikfisher.com/book)Twitter, Instagram: @DrCarlErik Dr. Carl Erik Fisher on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/DrCarlErik/)Flourishing After Addiction podcast (https://www.carlerikfisher.com/flourishing)Follow us on Twitter @speakgoodpodCheck out our blogGot an episode idea?

Today I talk to author and addiction physician Carl Erik Fisher. Carl is an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, where he works in the Division of Law, Ethics, and Psychiatry. He also maintains a private psychiatry practice focusing on complementary and integrative approaches to treating addiction. He is the author of a new book – The Urge: Our History of Addiction, which is out now on Penguin Press. He is the host of the amazing podcast “Flourishing After Addiction.” And last but not least, Carl Erik Fisher is a recovering high school marching band geek. Find out more about Carl's book and podcast at carlerikfisher.com. For more information on us, visit https://OffScrip.com and follow @MZOutofPatients, @MatthewZachary, @VaxOnPod, and @OffScripMedia on Twitter. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A lot of us folks in recovery have big collections of self-help and memoir books, and with good reason. Books give us solace, they help us see how other people deal with similar challenges, they are a source of community through contact with other minds, and, as articulated by Eva Hagberg, this week's guest on the Flourishing After Addiction podcast, books, and particularly memoirs, are a way of trying on different “moral selves.” Eva is an author who has written beautifully about her own addiction and recovery in her  memoir, How to be Loved. It's an honest and raw account that includes her experiences with chronic medical conditions, grief, loss, romances, and friendship. In this episode, we talk about being seen and wanting to be known, the creative process, what she has learned from memoirs—addiction and otherwise—and her own experience with different varieties of 12-step recovery. And, with my own book coming out soon, she gives me some great advice about focusing on what matters most. Eva Hagberg is an author, cultural and architectural historian, architecture critic, speaker, and more. Her critically-acclaimed memoir, How to Be Loved, is out now from Mariner Books. In a fun twist, we also talk about an unexpected set of connections between recovery and architecture, related to her next project: a biography of Aline Louchheim Saarinen, forthcoming from Princeton University Press.  She teaches at Columbia University in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, and at Bard College in the Language & Thinking Program. She lives in Brooklyn. Find her at her website, or on Twitter.In this episode: - Ira Glass on the “taste gap:” “Nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish somebody had told this to me — is that all of us who do creative work … we get into it because we have good taste. But it's like there's a gap, that for the first couple years that you're making stuff, what you're making isn't so good, OK? It's not that great. It's really not that great. It's trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it's not quite that good. But your taste — the thing that got you into the game — your taste is still killer, and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you're making is kind of a disappointment to you”- Melissa Febos, author of Whip Smart, Girlhood, Abandon Me, and Body Work. - A Round-Heeled Woman: My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance, by Jane Juska- Dani Shapiro, author of Slow Motion, Devotion, Inheritance, and other books. - The sociologist Robin Room analyzing codependency and Adult Children of Alcoholics, in the context of other 12-step thinking: Alcoholics Anonymous as a Social Movement - Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life - Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, by Peter CameronSign up for my newsletter for regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings.

What happens when we define ourselves in terms of group memberships? How does culture and society affect our capacity for self-control and self-regulation? Why does the toxic binary of “us” versus “them” seem to be so powerful these days? How can we instead use our shared identities to improve our wellbeing and work toward harmony and flourishing?  My guest for this episode of Flourishing After Addiction is Dr. Jay Van Bavel, a social psychology researcher who studies questions like these in his Social Identity and Morality Lab at NYU. “From neurons to social networks,” he investigates how culture and group identities influence our feelings, self-control, and even our sense of morality. We talk about the relevance of his work for addiction and recovery: how to harness his findings to work toward personal change, why to be skeptical of the usual narrative about self-control, and the urgent need to wake up to the “gravitational pull” of social groups.    Jay Van Bavel, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Psychology & Neural Science at New York University, an affiliate at the Stern School of Business in Management and Organizations, and Director of the Social Identity & Morality Lab. He is the co-author of “The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony." Find him on Twitter, and see more at his personal page, his lab website, and his book website. In this episode: - See this page on Jay's lab website for his publications -note in particular Jay's research on maple syrup, and what that means for the relationship between food and identity - Against Willpower, my article about why we should be skeptical about the usual model of self-control - Identity Economics: How Our Identities Shape Our Work, Wages, and Well-Being. George A. Akerlof and Rachel E. Kranton - Conspirituality: “a neologism portmanteau describing the overlap of conspiracy theories with spirituality”. - Ward, Charlotte and Voas, David (2011) ‘The Emergence of Conspirituality', Journal of Contemporary Religion, 26(1): 103-121.  - See also the Conspirituality podcast by Julian Walker, Matthew Remski, and Derek Beres: “A weekly study of converging right-wing conspiracy theories and faux-progressive wellness utopianism.” - Jay on polarization in the Guardian: The big idea: are we really so polarised? - My interview with addiction recovery advocate Ryan Hampton on ideology and recovery Sign up for my newsletter for regular updates on new interviews, material, and other writings.

Associated Links: Blog link: https://harrisees.wordpress.com/2021/08/30/will-power-with-dr-carl-erik-fisher/ Youtube (where this content is replicated): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoS6H2R1Or4MtabrkofdOMw Twitter: https://twitter.com/TracieHarris Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/tharris1773/ Paypal: http://paypal.me/athomeinmyhead Helpful Resources: Dr. Fisher's Podcast, Flourishing After Addiction: https://www.carlerikfisher.com/flourishing Podcast landing page, with links to major platforms: https://podcast.carlerikfisher.com/ Follow him on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drcarlerik or Instagram: instagram.com/drcarlerik NPR segment with Dr. Joyner: https://www.npr.org/2021/07/03/1012907963/what-to-know-about-olympic-marijuana-bans Dr. Fisher's "Against Will Power" article at Nautilus: https://nautil.us/issue/45/Power/against-willpower Dr. Fisher's article on coercion and treatment in Slate: https://slate.com/technology/2018/01/coerced-treatment-for-addiction-can-work-if-you-coerce-correctly.html "How should we do drugs now?" by Michael Pollan: https://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/how-should-we-do-drugs-now/ Music Credits: “Wishful Thinking” - Dan Lebowitz [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOg3zLw7St5V4N7O8HSoQRA] “Caballero” - Ofshane [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC34Wh4ysdP50H-ThbZFFfsAIHf1zxftA] --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/tracie-harris/support

In this edition of The Way Out we have a stellar interview with Clinical Psychiatrist, Addiction Medicine Specialist and Bio Ethicist Dr. Carl Erik Fisher. As a person in long term recovery himself along with his clinical and scholarly work, Carl brings a unique perspective to the treatment of addiction, and the positive change that occurs in recovery. Easily one of the most enlightening and instructive ideas forwarded by Dr. Fisher is the concept that recovery can be thought of and defined as any positive change in one's life, which affords us the freedom to take the transformational power of the tools contained within our chosen recovery pathway and apply them broadly across any or all areas of our lives to affect constructive improvement. Recovery, in its purest form is a holistic wellness journey and we don't have to limit it to one unhealthy habit, or just one addiction. Applying our recovery process that worked for a drug or alcohol addiction can work for addictive behaviors and even for behaviors and negative or counterproductive habits that haven't reached the threshold of addiction. Recovery is a process, and it doesn't happen all at once nor is it often linear. When we continue to remove the harmful and addictive behaviors, we can begin and indeed continue the process of healing our minds, bodies, and spirits through our preferred recovery pathway. Carl and I explore an array of fascinating areas in and around addiction and recovery including stigma, mindfulness in recovery, and how Buddhist practices can be a primary recovery pathway or incorporated into your existing recovery practice, and a whole lot more so listen up. Contact Dr. Carl Erik Fisher: https://www.carlerikfisher.com/ Book Recommendation (Quit Lit): The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh: https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/Thich%20Nhat%20Hanh%20-%20The%20Miracle%20of%20Mindfulness.pdf Anything by Buddhism and Recovery Author and Speaker Kevin Griffin: https://www.kevingriffin.net/ The Best Piece of Advice Received: Surrender, let go, and ask for help New book coming in January 2022: The Urge: Our History of Addiction New podcast coming soon: Flourishing After Addiction Song that symbolizes Recovery: Doctor Atomic: Batter My Heart https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDTFyinS3zA (c) 2021 The Way Out Podcast | All Rights Reserved Theme Music: “all clear” (https://ketsa.uk/browse-music/) by Ketsa (https://ketsa.uk) licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-way-out-podcast/message

I'm Carl Erik Fisher, and this is Flourishing After Addiction, a new podcast exploring addiction and recovery from the widest possible diversity of perspectives.I'd love to hear from you. Please head over to http://www.carlerikfisher.com to connect.