The Synthetic Era
The 2010s introduced a decisive shift in the risk environment for drug use. Synthetic opioids—principally fentanyl and analogs—overtook heroin in many regions, not because demand suddenly expanded, but because supply changed.
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Addiction
Verified podcast archive on addiction, hunger, behavior, and recovery.
The Pain Revolution
The period from the early 1990s through the first decade of the 2000s marked a decisive change in how modern societies understood and treated pain, and in how prescription opioids moved from tightly guarded…
Punish or Heal
The war on drugs described a set of policies that treated drug use primarily as a criminal problem to be contained by force. It drew authority from moral panic and from the belief that…
The Void and the Brain
Addiction’s psychological core can be described as a search for relief that gradually hardens into routine, identity, and necessity. At the beginning, a substance or behavior reduces tension, numbs pain, or delivers focus and…
Temperance: The First Culture War
Out of this stew of concern, the Temperance movement gained incredible momentum. It started earlier, in the nineteenth century, as a call for moderation.
From Sacrament to Commodity
As settlements grew into cities, intoxicants became staples and status goods. In Mesopotamia, thick barley beer nourished laborers and accompanied rites.
Naming the Hunger
Addiction often begins in silence, creeping into households and histories without a clear warning. For generations it lived behind closed doors and careful smiles, a subject traded in whispers and euphemism.