The Dr. Junkie Show

This week I invited long-time incarcerated student (recently released--finally!) Jake Carlock to the show to talk about prison education, drugs in prison, recovery, the potential resexualization of prison populations, the importance of peer recovery coaches, transitional services to aid incarcerated people in reentering society, community in and out of addiction, the "warm blanket" of heroin, art and theater in prison, and lots more. This November, Jake and I will be presenting our paper, "Crafting Convict Criminologists: An Invitation to Join us in Prison," which was recently published in The Prison Journal, at the National Association of Communication annual convention in New Orleans, so if you plan to be in the French Quarter during the third week of November, holla! Buy us a drink😊

You can check out Jake as lead singer in the DU PAI production of Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released" along with the Death Row story we talked about here (audio included in podcast): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU8y5UaY-fU&t=39s

You can find Jake and Sean Mueller's Westword article here: https://www.westword.com/news/prison-education-incarceration-commentary-15720107/

You can check out Jake and I's Prison Journal paper here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00328855241286492

If you want a free copy, send me an email and I'll hook you up: [email protected] Corrections from our convo: it was Bob Saget, not Katt Williams, who delivered the "weed is not a drug, man" line from the film Half Baked. 

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This week I get person and talk about a recent conversation I found myself in with some new friends at a prison education conference. We talked about morality, utilitarianism, monogamy and feminism, and as our conversation played out, someone overheard it and jumped in, pointing out that we were doing what MacIntyre has described as acting like we are taking a "view from nowhere," which MacIntyre says doesn't exist (and Thomas Nagel agreed, but not until 5 years later in 1986). And they were both right, but I had to think about what the stranger said for a few days before it clicked and I had one of those moments we've all had: "dammit, why didn't I say that?!?" 

Sam Harris has done a lot of work explaining why we need not take a "moral view from nowhere" to claim that some things are moral and others are not, but we do have to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps, so to speak, and choose some basic framework for where to start, and since there are so many of us, and since we agree on so little, Harris says we ought to start with things that almost everyone agrees on. As conscious creatures, that means we have to go with the concept of a "good life," or maximizing the well being and minimizing the suffering of conscious creatures. Why? Because we are conscious creatures, and as far as we can tell, all conscious creatures experience both suffering and well-being, and as far as we know all conscious creatures prefer well-being to suffering. Therefore we ought to (from an is--wink, wink, David Hume) work to maximize well-being and to minimize suffering of conscious creatures since we are conscious creatures.

Intro/Outro audio from He Said/She Said (1991) and Trainwreck (2023). Image from Fremont St., Las Vegas ;)

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On this episode I introduce Stuart Hall's theory of encoding/decoding in media, and Maddy and I talk about Breaking Bad, black tar versus "China White" heroin, geographical differences in drug use, the truth of addiction versus the spectacle, patriarchy and how Breaking Bad's Walt becomes the most toxic version of it possible, and lots more. 

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Maddy is back to talk about the film Bodies, Bodies, Bodies from 2022, a cool, thriller-horror film that plays on the generational zeitgeist of Gen Z. We talk about how the film reflects cultural fears, cultural fetishes, and unspeakable taboos, and how it keeps us all engaged by appealing to our preexisting cultural stereotypes, our natural reaction to protect certain groups of people while fearing others, and a generational gap that has many Gen Zers stuck on their phones living a life that's fake, digital, and maybe where we are all headed in the future. 

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This week I discuss the secret drugs developed in Nazi Germany during WWII, and I cover the role of methamphetamine in the Nazi Blitzkrieg attacks, the role of amphetamine in the Allies ability to eventually win the war, and I also cover Hitler's drug addiction, technologies of war, social stigma and how easy it can be disassembled in times of war, and lots more. 

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Madeline is back to finish up our conversation from last week, and to jump into some new topics. We talk about how education works in neoliberalism, the returning appreciation of learning for learning's sake, objectification in sex work and how feminist can think about navigating that sexwork landscape ethically, cocaine and why it's so hard to get good blow when you're young, the increasing popularity of completely selling out, the way capitalism objectifies nearly everyone who works for a corporation, and lots more, including cocaine injection, MDMA and other drugs. 

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This week Maddy Grace returns to talk about all sorts of stuff, mostly focused on Gen Z and the different world they grew up in compared to Gen X oldies like me. We talk cocaine and it's increasing popularity in Gen Z, Cigarettes, sex work, politics, protest, power, and we dive into the current pornscape and its impact on young heterosexual men, who have a very different relationship with their sexuality on the whole than Gen X did. 

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This week I talk about alcohol prohibition and the birth of the 18th Amendment. Mainstream media, strategically manipulated by a woman named Carrie Nation and her posse of temperance propagandists, talked the United States into responding to problems stemming from rapid industrialization (addiction, homelessness, etc.) by outlawing alcohol in 1919, and they pulled it off by using Christianity and Femininity as tools of social change despite being unable to vote as women at that time. 

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This week author, academic and previously incarcerated rock star David Carrillo stops back by to talk about his new book, Kiko: From Life without Parole to Life with Purpose, available wherever you buy books. We discuss prison politics, drugs in prison, slow and fast changes in perspective through aging and experience, academics in prison, the concept of redemption, morality, prison media and his continuing role as an in-prison educator working with multiple colleges in Colorado. 

You can find the Territorial Prison story of the warden's wife and the death row letter-writing DU-PAI video on YouTube here.

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Today I talk about the US military missions against alleged drug boats near Venezuela using Foucault's theory of knowledge/power. 

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