On Drugs

The drugs we choose - legal and illicit - and the ways we use them, are at least partly determined by gender expectations. This episode explores how those expectations affect our relationships with drugs.

From athletes pumping steroids to tech entrepreneurs microdosing LSD, what happens when people use drugs to make themselves stronger, smarter and faster than their normal healthy selves?

If most recreational drug users do it because it feels good, why is pleasure always left out of policy conversations about drugs?

In this episode of On Drugs, it's the story of a very important drug that you've probably never heard of. The Drug is called Miltown and it changed the world of psychiatric medicine forever.

We explore the topic of drug addiction and how to think about it in this extended interview with Bruce Alexander

From berzerkers on mushrooms, to Nazis on meth and Iraq vets on ecstasy, armies and soldiers have used drugs to fight, cope with and recover from war since ancient times.

If you want to learn about drug addiction, Vancouver is a good place to start. The city has struggled with opioid abuse nearly as long as it's existed. This episode explores Vancouver's narcotic past and present through the voices of residents struggling

The relationship people have with drugs is complicated and a little bit messy, but not as messy as the relationship people have had with sex throughout history. Combine the two and things get interesting.

Drugs don't exist in a vacuum. In many cases, they've been used to prop up mythologies around race and justify discriminatory policies against already struggling communities.

We dig deeper into our conversation about the historical intersection between drugs and music with author Martin Torgoff.