New Books in Drugs, Addiction and Recovery

Odcinki

• David Petruccelli, "A Scourge of Humanity: The Origins of Interpol and the End of Empire in Central and Eastern Europe" (Oxford UP, 2025) 31.05.2026 1godz 3min

  As the First World War came to a chaotic end, Europeans feared that a wave of crime and anarchy would sweep across their continent. The upheavals of the war and of the subsequent violent breakup of the Habsburg, German, and Ottoman empires magnified longstanding fears that an increasingly interconnected world offered the enterprising and unscrupulous new opportunities to break the law and evade capture. New kinds of international criminals and criminal enterprises demanded novel forms of international cooperation. Thus was born the International Criminal Police Commission, known today as Interpol. In the 1920s and 1930s, Interpol's police officials and the lawyers who collaborated with them created lasting programs to combat counterfeiting, sex and drug trafficking, terrorism, and human smuggling, and other forms of international crime, which they labelled "a scourge of humanity." Drawing on press reports, police files, and criminal records in numerous languages and across multiple countries, in A Scourge of Humanity: The Origins of Interpol and the End of Empire in Central and Eastern Europe (Oxford University Press, 2025), Dr. David Petruccelli explores the origins of Interpol and the role Central and Eastern European actors played in developing criminal policing and law during the interwar period to bring stability to their region and reshape international institutions and norms. He shows how legal experts replaced a liberal focus on individual rights with an emphasis on a collective of international societies and of police officers who looked to the international sphere as a space for eluding the constraints of the rule of law at home. In doing so, their initiatives posed an alternative to the imperial and liberal internationalist programs pursued by many Western Europeans and Americans and laid the groundwork for more radical forms of persecution during the Second World War. While bringing to life the stories of individuals involved in shady activities across borders, A Scourge of Humanity explores the vigorous policing and harsh criminal laws established by Interpol to combat their crimes and highlights illiberal forms of internationalism that have left a lasting mark on our world. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/drugs-addiction-and-recovery
• Benjamin Robert Siegel, "Markets of Pain: Opium, Capitalism, and the Global History of Painkillers" (Oxford UP, 2026) 12.05.2026 37min

  Markets of Pain offers a sweeping history of the business of licit opium--following cultivators, merchants, scientists, and policymakers--and shows how this potent crop reshaped global trade, medicine, and geopolitics. For centuries, opium has been a source of both profit and peril, its legacy entangled with addiction, imperialism, and the complex interplay of global trade and national development. While the illicit opium trade is infamous, the history of licit opium--how it was farmed, refined, and used to build modern medicine and shape state power--has remained largely untold.Drawing on archival sources from Asia, Europe, and the United States, Markets of Pain: Opium, Capitalism, and the Global History of Painkillers (Oxford UP, 2026) traces the global arc of licit opium from poppy fields and processing plants in India, Turkey, and Australia to the clinics and laboratories of modern medicine. It shows how both the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic treated the opium poppy as a national resource and a means of securing global stature. In postcolonial India, by contrast, nationalist leaders initially rejected opium's imperial legacy before embracing its strategic value amid the shifting currents of the Cold War. At the heart of this story are the cultivators, scientists, bureaucrats, and policymakers who shaped the licit opium trade and grappled with its far-reaching consequences. Their work and visions demonstrate how colonial empires and postcolonial states helped forge the global pharmaceutical industry as it struggled to govern a drug it could not abandon.Markets of Pain reveals how a seemingly marginal crop became an unlikely engine of modernization, a tool of Cold War geopolitics, and a harbinger of today's global opioid crisis. Blending vivid scenes from opium's fields and factories with incisive analysis of scientific and diplomatic archives, Benjamin Robert Siegel recovers a buried history with urgent relevance for global supply chains, international power, and public health. Markets of Pain offers an account of the global drug trade in the twentieth century, focusing on the transformation of opium from a colonial commodity into a modern resource for the American and European pharmaceutical industries. Challenging simplistic ideas of licit and illicit drugs in the twentieth century, it reveals how the modern global drug regime was formed by India and Turkey's navigation of the international anti-opium movement, the rise of the pharmaceutical industry, and the complex relationship between agriculture, medicine, and global capitalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/drugs-addiction-and-recovery
• Kenneth Anderson, "Sanitariums, Hospitals, and the Belladonna Cure: Volume Three of the Untold History of Addiction Treatment in the United States" (The HAMS Harm Reduction Network, Inc., 2022) 29.04.2026 1godz 8min

  Author and experienced harm reductionist Kenneth Anderson is back on the New Books Network to discuss the three new titles in his series exploring the history of America's addiction treatment industry. We discussed the first two books of his series, Strychnine and Gold, in 2022. Today, Emily and Ken discuss the books he's published since:  From Inebriate Asylums to Narcotic Farms (2022), which covers the inebriate asylum movement of the 19th and early 20th century, which sought to rival the insane asylums of the era;  Sanitariums, Hospitals, and the Belladonna Cure (2022), which covers the history of for-profit institutions for the treatment of drug and alcohol habits which were established prior to the Repeal of Prohibition, as well as a number of miscellaneous entities such as mail-order opium cures; and  Alcoholism Treatment Rebirth (2025), which covers the alcoholism treatment facilities established between the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 and 1956. Anderson has produced this series of encyclopedia-like compilations of America's vast network of treatment facilities to satisfy his own curiosity, but his work benefits the reader, too. Serious scholars of American drug and alcohol history will benefit from his thorough mining (and many useful reproductions) of primary sources, as well as the charts and graphs he's compiled. These are both damning and illuminating.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/drugs-addiction-and-recovery
• Kaitlin P. Reed, "Settler Cannabis: From Gold Rush to Green Rush in Indigenous Northern California" (U Washington Press, 2023) 27.04.2026 1godz 23min

  Despite it's centrality to a hippie counterculture which claimed an environmentalist ethos, California's "green rush" of cannabis growing from the mid-twentieth century onwards has been anything but. In Settler Cannabis: From Gold Rush to Green Rush in Indigenous Northern California, Cal Poly Humboldt Native American Studies professor Kaitlin Reed (Yurok/Hupa/Oneida) argues that the state's booming cannabis industry can be situated squarely within other extractive settler colonial enterprises such as gold mining and overfishing. From illegal land use practices to toxic pollutants in rivers, cannabis growing in northern California has been disruptive to Indigenous relations to the land and nonhuman life, and has been for decades - a problem only worsening as the industry grows from an underground enterprise into an economic engine worth billions. Yet, as Reed argues, cannabis-as-colonialism is only part of the story, as the Yurok and other California Native people engage in acts of survivance from the court room to the cannabis field here, fighting and insisting that northern California is still Native land. Kaitlin Reed (Yurok/Hupa/Oneida) is assistant professor of Native American Studies at Humboldt State University. Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann has been hosting New Books Network podcasts since 2017. Currently, he is a an assistant professor of American environmental history at Appalachian State University. He can be reached at hausmannsr@appstate.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/drugs-addiction-and-recovery
• Am Yisrael High: The Story of Jews and Cannabis 20.04.2026 1godz 7min

  Mentioned in the Bible and discussed in numerous traditional texts, cannabis has long been a part of Jewish life. For millennia, Jews have been buying, selling, and using cannabis for religious and medicinal purposes and as an intoxicant. The opening of YIVO’s latest exhibit, Am Yisrael High: The Story of Jews and Cannabis, will feature a panel discussion moderated by Eddy Portnoy, who will provide a brief overview of the relationship between Jews and cannabis. He’ll then moderate a discussion with Ed Rosenthal, Adriana Kertzer, Rabbi/Dr. Yosef Glassman, and Madison Margolin. Their discussion will consider the many connections of the Jews to cannabis – religious and spiritual, historical, scientific, and more. Find more information about the exhibit here: https://yivo.org/Cannabis This panel discussion originally took place on May 5, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/drugs-addiction-and-recovery
• Kim Embrey, "Coca and the Victorians: From Botanical Curiosity to Regulated Drug, 1835–1912" (Transcript Publishing, 2025) 12.04.2026 24min

  The South American coca plant was established in 19th-century Britain as a medical product before it became a globally restricted drug. Drawing on botanical, economic, pharmaceutical, social, and political perspectives, in Coca and the Victorians: From Botanical Curiosity to Regulated Drug, 1835–1912 (Transcript Publishing, 2025), Dr. Kim Embrey analyses how the use and perception of coca changed as it was transferred to Europe. In a process of cultural dissimilation, coca was not simply adopted, but embedded into new medical, social, and scientific contexts. The study shows how a plant from the Andes was repositioned in British modernity. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/drugs-addiction-and-recovery
• Alex Diamond, "Governing the Excluded: Rural Livelihoods Beyond Coca in Colombia's Peace Laboratory" (U Chicago Press, 2026) 06.04.2026 1godz 4min

  The Colombian village of Briceño might, at first glimpse, look like many communities in the rural Global South. Many of the people living there rely on small-scale farming, even as a newly constructed hydroelectric dam threatens traditional livelihoods. Yet after decades where Briceño suffered from a bloody conflict, the village has more recently become central to the nation’s hopes for peace. In Governing the Excluded, sociologist Alex Diamond shares a closer look at Briceño and offers unique insight not only into the contemporary Colombian state but to how people across the Global South are struggling to maintain rural livelihoods amid economic dispossession.Governing the Excluded describes a landmark peace process between the Colombian government and the radical FARC guerrillas from the perspective of Colombian farmers, drawing links between economic transformation, drug economies, and armed conflict. Exclusion from global markets for traditional crops like coffee first pushed farmers to grow coca, the raw material for cocaine. This ushered in an era of violent conflict for control of the illicit economy, while farmers continued to be priced out of legal markets. In exchange for peace and state protection, farmers ultimately agreed to sacrifice profitable coca. But with its disappearance, they now find themselves dependent on the state: for machinery to maintain the roads they need to get legal harvests to market, municipal jobs that are the only decent work available, and for public resources to subsidize food crops with razor-thin profit margins. Ongoing economic struggles in the legal sector make the state’s newfound authority tenuous, as some villagers replant coca, abandon the village for uncertain urban futures, or join a rearmed guerrilla group.Informed by deep ethnographic research and firsthand stories from Briceño residents, Governing the Excluded shows that when it comes to the forces driving dispossession—be they international corporate megaprojects, global food prices, or national initiatives to replace coca cultivation—state authority goes only so far as its ability to sustain local livelihoods. Sneha Annavarapu is Assistant Professor of Urban Studies at Yale-NUS College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/drugs-addiction-and-recovery
• 167* Addiction with Gina Turrigiano (EF, JP) 26.03.2026 46min

  In Recall This Book's second episode (January 2019) John and Elizabeth spoke with their brilliant Brandeis colleague, the MacArthur-winning neuroscientist Gina Turrigiano, about a number of different facets of addiction. The conversation seems as timely as ever. What makes an addiction to a morning constitutional different from–or similar to–an addiction to Fentanyl? What are the biological and social factors to consider? Should the addict be thought of in binary terms, or addiction as a state that people move into and out of? They contemplate these questions through biological, anthropological, and literary lenses, drawing on Marc Lewis, Angela Garcia, and Thomas de Quincey. Late in the episode, there’s also a Sprockets joke. Then, in Recallable Books, Gina recommends David Linden’s The Compass of Pleasure, Elizabeth recommends When I Wear My Alligator Boots by Shaylih Muehlmann, and John recommends Sam Quinones’s Dreamland. Discussed in this episode: Marc Lewis, The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction Is Not a Disease Angela Garcia, The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession Along the Rio Grande Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater: Being an Extract from the Life of a Scholar David Linden, The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good Shaylih Muehlmann, When I Wear My Alligator Boots: Narco-Culture in the U.S. Mexico Borderlands Sam Quinones, Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/drugs-addiction-and-recovery
• Helen Redmond, "Liquid Handcuffs: Policing and Punishment in Methadone Clinics and the Future of Opioid Addiction Treatment" (North Atlantic Books, 2026) 03.03.2026 56min

  A hard-hitting exposé of how methadone clinics fail people in recovery—and an urgent, unapologetic case for their abolition.  Methadone is a life-saving medication. But the current system for obtaining it—the opioid treatment program, commonly known as the methadone clinic—is punitive, unjust, and often humiliating. In this eye-opening book Liquid Handcuffs: Policing and Punishment in Methadone Clinics and the Future of Opioid Addiction Treatment (North Atlantic Books, 2026), social worker and journalist Helen Redmond takes readers inside the hidden world of methadone clinics, exposing the “culture of cruelty” that polices, punishes, and profits from those they’re meant to serve. Through patient stories and extensive interviews with methadone users and clinic workers, Redmond weaves a compelling argument against the current clinic system. She provides a detailed history of how methadone was first developed and why the current system for dispensing methadone arose in the U.S., tracing its entanglement with the carceral system and the “War on Drugs” as well as private equity firms and tech companies. She details the numerous barriers to enter and remain and treatment, as well as standard practices that shame and discriminate against patients, such as restrictions on take-home doses; daily attendance requirements; regular urine testing; and threats of cutting off medication for any infraction of clinic rules. She also explores the nuances of resistance to methadone clinics within communities of color, unpacking the political, racial, and cultural circumstances behind the opposition to methadone. Redmond persuasively makes the case for removing police agencies like the DEA from clinic administration, and shows how a transition to provider-prescribed pharmacy pickup, along with other tools of harm reduction such as safe-supply and peer-support services, would restore dignity to patients struggling with addiction—and save thousands of lives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/drugs-addiction-and-recovery
• John Beyer, "Live a Little Better: One Man's Journey of Survival, Sobriety, and Success" (Worth, 2025) 25.02.2026 44min

  John Beyer is the founder and owner of Men on the Move, one of the East Coast's premier moving and self-storage companies. While although John's journey to the top of the moving game has brought him incredible success, the ride up was a bumpy one. From the dark stairwells of LeFrak City, to the Manhattan discos of 1970s, to the dive bars of Long Island and the truck cabs of a man on the move, Beyer's highs and lows have been as extreme as the personality that got him in and out of trouble along the way.Live a Little Better: One Man's Journey of Survival, Sobriety, and Success (Worth, 2025) is the story of a talented kid in an alcoholic household, an alcoholic young adult himself turned entrepreneur, a recovering addict whose life was saved by AA, and the devoted parent of a child with special needs. Above all, it is a story of perseverance, discernment, and transformation.If you have a child with special needs or have ever struggled with addiction, directly or indirectly, Live a Little Better speaks to you as a peer. Beyer will make you believe in success against the odds, in hope in the face of adversity, in rising above a broken home. You never know what crisis will teach you. No matter your circumstances or mistakes, John Beyer's incredible life is proof that you too have every chance to live a little better. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/drugs-addiction-and-recovery
• Hanna Pickard, "What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing But Cocaine?: A Philosophy of Addiction" (Princeton UP, 2026) 24.02.2026 48min

  Dr. Hanna Pickard has written a revolutionary new paradigm for understanding addiction.  Why do people with addiction use drugs self-destructively? Why don’t they quit out of self-concern? Why does the rat in the experiment, alone in a cage, press the lever again and again for cocaine—to the point of death? In this pathbreaking book What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing But Cocaine?: A Philosophy of Addiction (Princeton UP, 2026), Johns Hopkins University professor Pickard proposes a new paradigm for understanding the puzzle of addiction. For too long, our thinking has been hostage to a false dichotomy: either addiction is a brain disease, or it is a moral failing. Pickard argues that it is neither, and that both models stifle addiction research and fail people who need help.  Drawing on her expertise as an academic philosopher and her clinical work in a therapeutic community, Pickard explores the meaning of drugs for people with addiction and the diverse factors that keep them using despite the costs. People use drugs to cope with suffering—but also to self-harm, or even to die. Some identify as “addicts," while others are in denial or struggle with cravings and self-control. Social, cultural, and economic circumstances are crucial to explaining addiction—but brain pathology may also matter. By integrating addiction science with philosophy, clinical practice, and the psychology and voices of people with addiction themselves, Pickard shows why there is no one-size-fits-all theory or ethics of addiction. The result is a heterogeneous and humanistic paradigm for understanding and treating addiction, and a fresh way of thinking about responsibility, blame, and relationships with people who use drugs. Emily Dufton is the author of Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America (Basic Books, 2017). Her new book, Addiction, Inc.: Medication-Assisted Treatment and America's Forgotten War on Drugs, will be released in April 2026. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/drugs-addiction-and-recovery
• Emily Dufton, "Addiction, Inc: Medication-assisted Treatment and America's Forgotten War on Drugs" (U Chicago Press, 2026) 18.02.2026 1godz

  How the war on drugs created the gold standard treatment for addiction--until America's opioid crisis got privatized for profit, to the detriment of patients. Despite epidemic levels of overdoses in the United States, by 2020, only twenty percent of Americans suffering from opioid use disorder (OUD) received medication-assisted treatment (MAT), the gold standard of addiction treatment, which uses methadone, buprenorphine, or naltrexone to reduce illicit drug use and curb the symptoms of withdrawal. While MAT is the most effective treatment available for OUD, it's also the most controversial, the most expensive, and the most difficult to access. And yet, the medications at the center of this treatment--and the private industries that distribute them--generate roughly sixteen billion dollars each year, on par with national sales of coffee and pet food. In Addiction, Inc: Medication-Assisted Treatment and America's Forgotten War on Drugs, historian Emily Dufton explains how this promising avenue of treatment emerged during President Richard Nixon's war on drugs in 1971 as a radical experiment in public health, when hundreds of federally-funded treatment clinics opened nationwide. Dufton then explores how these nationalized clinics gave way to an immensely profitable private industry that offers poor care at high costs to an insufficient number of people. Drawing on original research and over a hundred interviews with policymakers, medical experts, pharmaceutical lobbyists, and patients and their families, she tells a gripping story of squandered potential and missed opportunities, as MAT transformed from a revolutionary political project launched from the White House itself into a commercial success--and a public health disaster. Urgent, eye-opening, and deeply human, Addiction, Inc. reveals how, over the past fifty years, the United States built an addiction treatment system that made recovery harder instead of easier, and what it will take to change its course. Despite epidemic levels of overdoses in the United States, by 2020, only twenty percent of Americans suffering from opioid use disorder (OUD) received medication-assisted treatment (MAT), the gold standard of addiction treatment, which uses methadone, buprenorphine, or naltrexone to reduce illicit drug use and curb the symptoms of withdrawal. While MAT is the most effective treatment available for OUD, it's also the most controversial, the most expensive, and the most difficult to access. And yet, the medications at the center of this treatment--and the private industries that distribute them--generate roughly sixteen billion dollars each year, on par with national sales of coffee and pet food. In Addiction, Inc., historian Emily Dufton explains how this promising avenue of treatment emerged during President Richard Nixon's war on drugs in 1971 as a radical experiment in public health, when hundreds of federally-funded treatment clinics opened nationwide. Dufton then explores how these nationalized clinics gave way to an immensely profitable private industry that offers poor care at high costs to an insufficient number of people. Drawing on original research and over a hundred interviews with policymakers, medical experts, pharmaceutical lobbyists, and patients and their families, she tells a gripping story of squandered potential and missed opportunities, as MAT transformed from a revolutionary political project launched from the White House itself into a commercial success--and a public health disaster. Urgent, eye-opening, and deeply human, Addiction, Inc. reveals how, over the past fifty years, the United States built an addiction treatment system that made recovery harder instead of easier, and what it will take to change its course. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/drugs-addiction-and-recovery
• Chris Washburn and Ron Chepesiuk, "Out of Bounds: From Broken NBA Dreams to Redemption" (WildBlue Press, 2025) 09.02.2026 51min

  Highly promising basketball player Chris Washburn was selected third overall in the 1986 NBA Draft by the Golden State Warriors. But a chance encounter with famed basketball player Len Bias introduced him to crack cocaine. Soon, the overwhelming temptations of fame, fortune, and drugs derailed his promising career. And by 1989, after failing his third drug test, Chris was banned from the NBA. His life then spiraled into addiction, homelessness, incarceration, and near-death experiences. Yet, in 2000, a turning point came when he lost his father. This loss fueled Chris's resolve to change. With incredible strength and determination, he fought back from the depths of addiction. Today, Chris is a beacon of hope and resilience. He is a motivational speaker, entrepreneur, and advocate, inspiring others with his journey of recovery from addiction, and redemption. From speaking to youth groups and drug rehab centers to sharing his powerful story with the NBA, Chris is now making a positive difference in the world. Co-written with bestselling author Ron Chepesiuk, Out of Bounds: From Broken NBA Dreams to Redemption (WildBlue Press, 2025) describes in dramatic, heart-wrenching detail Chris's remarkable journey, which included finding his birth mother, and proves that it's never too late to rise again. Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, is now available. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/drugs-addiction-and-recovery
• Jonathan Gleason, "Field Guide to Falling Ill" (Yale UP, 2026) 27.01.2026 52min

  Jonathan Gleason spent ten years writing the ten essays in his debut collection, Field Guide to Falling Ill (Yale UP, 2026). In them, Gleason braids together strands from a variety of sources – from his experience with a potentially-lethal blood clot, to his imprisoned uncle, to his journey to access medication to prevent HIV – to analyze America’s healthcare system and the humiliating, confusing, and depersonalizing effects it can often have. The essays approach medicine from a variety of viewpoints, from Jonathan’s perspective as a gay man analyzing the development of HIV medications like AZT and Truvada, to his experience as a Spanish language medical interpreter at a free clinic in Iowa City. But each essay also reminds readers of the importance of understanding the history of our healthcare institutions, and the necessity of feeling less alone when confronted by their myriad failures. Lyrical, poignant, and deeply human, Field Guide to Falling Ill is a poetic approach to understanding medicine in America. For more information on Jonathan and his writing, visit: Jonathan’s website: here Jonathan’s Substack, Histories of Present Illness: here Emily Dufton is the author of Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America (Basic Books, 2017). Her new book, Addiction, Inc.: Medication-Assisted Treatment and America's Forgotten War on Drugs, will be released in April 2026. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/drugs-addiction-and-recovery
• Lesly-Marie Buer, "RX Appalachia: Stories of Treatment and Survival in Rural Kentucky" (Haymarket, 2020) 26.01.2026 44min

  Using the narratives of women who use(d) drugs, this account challenges popular understandings of Appalachia spread by such pundits as JD Vance by documenting how women, families, and communities cope with generational systems of oppression. Prescription opioids are associated with rising rates of overdose deaths and hepatitis C and HIV infection in the US, including in rural Central Appalachia. Yet there is a dearth of studies examining rural opioid use. RX Appalachia: Stories of Treatment and Survival in Rural Kentucky (Haymarket, 2020) explores the gendered inequalities that situate women’s encounters with substance abuse treatment as well as additional state interventions targeted at women who use drugs in one of the most impoverished regions in the US. Lesly-Marie Buer is a harm reductionist and medical anthropologist in Knoxville, TN. Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine. She teaches and writes about health behavior in historical context. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/drugs-addiction-and-recovery
• George Fisher, "Beware Euphoria: The Moral Roots and Racial Myths of America's War on Drugs" (Oxford UP, 2024) 24.01.2026 1godz 3min

  George Fisher, the Judge John Crown Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, just released his new book Beware Euphoria: The Moral Roots and Racial Myths of America’s Drug War, with Oxford University Press. George has been teaching and writing in the realms of evidence, prosecution practice, and criminal legal history since 1995. He began practice as a prosecutor in Massachusetts and later taught at the law schools of Boston College, Harvard, and Yale. Beware Euphoria is the most recent among a slew of other books, articles, and essays that he’s published over the years, and perhaps the most contrarian. In this interview, George discusses his research methods and how he came to the conclusion that the history of America’s drug war, while racially motivated, was not meant to target minorities, but protect the morals and health of America’s white youth. Emily Dufton is the author of Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America (Basic Books, 2017). A drug historian and writer, her second book, on the development of the opioid addiction medication industry, is under contract with the University of Chicago Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/drugs-addiction-and-recovery
• How Do We Treat Opioid Addiction? 19.01.2026 55min

  Mark Parrino has been involved with the delivery of health care and treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD) since 1974. As the president of the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence, Inc. (AATOD), he works with treatment providers across the country to develop and improve treatment protocols. In December 2022, AATOD worked with the National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors (NASADAD) to initiate a first-of-its-kind census of all patients currently receiving treatment from government-certified opioid treatment programs (OTPs). Their findings, based on responses from over 1,500 OTPs nationwide, show the breadth and distribution of addiction treatment in America, and are the product of almost fifty years of medication-assisted treatment (MAT) in the United States. I spoke with Mark about his census results, as well as the history of MAT, and specifically methadone, treatment in America. You can see the full report here. Emily Dufton is the author of Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America (Basic Books, 2017). A drug historian and writer, her second book, on the development of the opioid addiction medication industry, is under contract with the University of Chicago Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/drugs-addiction-and-recovery
• Elizabeth Kelly Gray, "Habit Forming: Drug Addiction in America, 1776-1914" (Oxford UP, 2023) 18.01.2026 58min

  Habitual drug use in the United States is at least as old as the nation itself. Elizabeth Kelly Gray's book Habit Forming: Drug Addiction in America, 1776-1914 (Oxford UP, 2023) traces the history of unregulated drug use and dependency before 1914, when the Harrison Narcotic Tax Act limited sales of opiates and cocaine under US law. Many Americans used opiates and other drugs medically and became addicted. Some tried ‘Hasheesh Candy’, injected morphine, or visited opium dens, but neither use nor addiction was linked to crime, due to the dearth of restrictive laws. After the Civil War, American presses published extensively about domestic addiction. Later in the nineteenth century, many people used cocaine and heroin as medicine. As addiction became a major public health issue, commentators typically sympathized with white, middle-class drug users, while criticizing such use by poor or working-class people and people of color. When habituation was associated with middle-class morphine users, few advocated for restricted drug access. By the 1910s, as use was increasingly associated with poor young men, support for regulations increased. In outlawing users' access to habit-forming drugs at the national level, a public health problem became a larger legal and social problem, one with an enduring influence on American drug laws and their enforcement. Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. She was chair of the doctoral program in acupuncture and Chinese medicine at Pacific College of Health and Science in San Diego before moving to the UK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/drugs-addiction-and-recovery
• Jamie Rowen, "Worthy of Justice: The Politics of Veterans Treatment Courts in Practice" (Stanford UP, 2025) 15.01.2026 25min

  Over the past three decades, jurisdictions across the United States have developed alternatives to traditional criminal procedures and punishments for adults accused of crimes that are associated with substance use and mental health disorders. The Veterans Treatment Court (VTC) is one example of these problem-solving courts. VTCs benefit from the availability of extensive (and free) medical and social services through the Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as the social and political legitimacy that comes with serving veterans. Worthy of Justice: The Politics of Veterans Treatment Courts in Practice (Stanford UP, 2025) takes this specific form of problem-solving court as lens for examining broader social inequalities in the criminal legal system. Jamie Rowen argues that the rationale for VTCs flows not from what veterans have done but from who they are. Their operations are fueled by the notion that their participants' criminal behavior is the result of military service rather than other personal choices made, thus making them uniquely worthy of public support. In this way, VTCs powerfully expose the contradictions inherent in the idea that criminals deserve punishment. Rowen draws on fieldwork at three such courts across the US. Ultimately, she illustrates how the politics of crime and the politics of welfare increasingly intersect and, together, construct classes of Americans who are either worthy, or not. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/drugs-addiction-and-recovery
• Mike Jay, "Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind" (Yale UP, 2023) 06.01.2026 43min

  Mike Jay's Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind (Yale UP, 2023) is a provocative and original history of the scientists and writers, artists and philosophers who took drugs to explore the hidden regions of the mind. Until the twentieth century, scientists investigating the effects of drugs on the mind did so by experimenting on themselves. Vivid descriptions of drug experiences sparked insights across the mind sciences, pharmacology, medicine, and philosophy. Accounts in journals and literary fiction inspired a fascinated public to make their own experiments--in scientific demonstrations, on exotic travels, at literary salons, and in occult rituals. But after 1900 drugs were increasingly viewed as a social problem, and the long tradition of self-experimentation began to disappear. From Sigmund Freud's experiments with cocaine to William James's epiphany on nitrous oxide, Mike Jay brilliantly recovers a lost intellectual tradition of drug-taking that fed the birth of psychology, the discovery of the unconscious, and the emergence of modernism. Today, as we embrace novel cognitive enhancers and psychedelics, the experiments of the original psychonauts reveal the deep influence of mind-altering drugs on Western science, philosophy, and culture. Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/drugs-addiction-and-recovery