Maia Szalavitz is an award-winning, best-selling author and opinion writer, whose focus is on changing the narrative of addiction and recovery. Two of her books Undoing Drugs: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction and Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction, are among a long list of publications that address this issue.

In this podcast, she talks about:

• Her New York Times opinion piece about Oregon decriminalizing drug possession
• How external force undermines internal motivation
• How the Black Lives Matter Movement shows the racial disparities in the justice system
• That criminal drug laws aren’t based on science and how emotions are decision algorithms
• The debate over decriminalization is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what actually works
• Explaining the analogy of addiction to that of falling in love or having a baby; people do crazy things
• People with addiction are not lazy, they are hurting
• Trying to punish our way out of addiction is not the answer
• Why it’s important to meet people where they are and welcome them to treatment
• Not calling doctor prescribed medication Medically Assisted Treatment (MAT)
• Why we need more expansive definitions of recovery
• How chronic pain patients are being negatively affected by the opioid epidemic