Addiction - Not a Moral Failing
Selenius Media
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About This Podcast
For decades, policy favored punishment over healing. From crack-era laws to “zero tolerance,” governments built enforcement-heavy systems that filled prisons while leaving demand untouched. This episode examines how deterrence failed: supply adapted, markets shifted, and harm multiplied. Meanwhile, treatment and harm reduction proved what punishment could not—reduced death, improved safety, restored lives. We explore the choice societies still face: criminalize people for the substances they use, or design systems that address why use begins and why it persists. The war on drugs was never a war on molecules—it was a war on communities.
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Recent Episodes
S1E19 No Abandonment
For more than two thousand years, physicians have known that opium and its derivatives bind tightly—not only to receptors in the human body, but to lives. The knowledge is ancient; the pattern is…
S1E18 One Step Forward - Three Steps Back
For three consecutive years, the United States has recorded more than one hundred thousand overdose deaths. That figure is often repeated as a headline number, but it obscures the churn underneath:…
S1E17 A Responsibility Deferred
America’s overdose crisis now claims over 100,000 lives every year – a staggering human cost that exceeds the toll of car crashes and gun violence. Each death is a son or daughter, a friend or…
S1E16 Make The Map- Do The Work. From Pilot To Policy
How do we move from pilot projects to permanent systems? We outline the architecture: inventory services, fund what works, publish dashboards that measure outcomes, and tie metrics to budgets.…
S1E15 Paychecks, Not Punishments - The Shift That Saves Lives
Recovery requires structure, and nothing provides it like a paycheck. Employment is not an afterthought but a treatment in itself: steady schedules, supportive supervisors, and income that stabilizes…
S1E14 From Cuffs To Clinic
The justice system is often the first system to meet addiction—but rarely the one designed to help. Patrol, booking, court, jail, reentry: at every stage, a choice exists. This episode shows how…
S1E13 Seed And Collapse
Stimulant use disorder is widespread, but unlike opioids, it lacks a simple antidote. Meth and cocaine create different risks, but both heighten psychosis and destabilize lives. This episode dives…
S1E11 Adolescence At Risk
Adolescence is a crucible: developing brains, fragile routines, volatile social norms. Risk is highest here, and prevention matters most. But effective prevention looks nothing like scare films or…
S1E10 Why This Person, Why This Drug?
Exposure to intoxicants is nearly universal, but trajectories diverge. Why does one person spiral while another walks away? We explore how co-occurring mental illness, trauma history, housing…
S1E9 Pathways That Work
Crisis care too often ends with a discharge slip. We reimagine the pathway: emergency departments initiating buprenorphine with next-day follow-up, methadone programs eliminating waitlists, overdose…
S1E8 Recovery is a System
People don’t recover in programs—they recover in systems. This episode blueprint a recovery ecosystem: same-day access to medications, peer navigators who bridge trust, housing that stabilizes…
S1E7 The Synthetic Era
Illicit fentanyl has transformed the landscape of risk. Its extreme potency, counterfeit formulations, and volatile supply chain turn dependence into a gamble where every dose could be the last. We…
S1E6 The Pain Revolution
In the 1990s and 2000s, a campaign to correct undertreated pain changed medicine. Clinicians were told pain was the “fifth vital sign,” metrics demanded its eradication, and powerful analgesics were…
S1E5 Punish or Heal
For decades, policy favored punishment over healing. From crack-era laws to “zero tolerance,” governments built enforcement-heavy systems that filled prisons while leaving demand untouched. This…
S1E4 The Void and the Brain
Addiction is not a mystery of weak character; it is the brain responding to absence. Trauma, neglect, and unmet needs carve out voids—of safety, attachment, or meaning—into which substances fit…
S1E3 Temperance: The First Culture War
In the early 1900s, temperance promised to rescue society from the bottle’s grip. Instead, it sparked America’s first culture war, a battle waged in pulpits, parliaments, and saloons. We follow how…
S1E2 From Sacrament to Commodity
Ritual gave way to marketplace. In ancient times, intoxicants carried symbolic and spiritual meaning—wine poured for gods, hallucinogens shared by shamans, sacred plants used to bridge the human and…
S1E1 Naming the Hunger
Addiction is older than morality. Long before psychiatrists and courts defined it, people sought solace and transcendence in plants, potions, and fermented drinks. This episode challenges the myth…
Frequently Asked Questions
Addiction - Not a Moral Failing has published 18 episodes since September 2025, covering topics in Education, History.
Addiction - Not a Moral Failing is currently dormant with new episodes hourly. Average episode length is 22m.
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