MICHAEL: on Drugs, substance use and its societal effects

To what extent does society have a responsibility to help those in need? I chat with a long-time friend and an addiction case manager. We discuss drug policy, and decriminalization as well as approaches of abstinence and harm reduction. We talk about fiscal responsibility, the power of language, addictions medicine, and public perception of safe/supervised injections sites and methadone clinics; with a view on saving money regarding preventative measures. We talk about Universal Basic Income and the Canada Emergency Response Benefit while at times getting off topic and reminiscing about old days in school and as bandmates. We touch on vaccines and the housing market in Canada and observe a trend of people fleeing cities leading to bidding wars in suburban and rural communities. We loop back to differentiate ‘mental health’ and ‘mental illness’ and the resurgence of empirical evidence about psychedelics. This episode is centered around topics of compulsivity and habits that reward us based on chemicals in the brain - leading to realizations of self-improvement, weight loss, and addressing intergenerational trauma. We conclude chatting with strategies of self-care, compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and the insidious effects of occupational stress in a chaotic work-life balance, especially for folks required to work from home.   

LISTEN

UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME: A Conversation with Andrew Yang

READ

 How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan; Punishing the Poor by Loïc Wacquant; 

MORE REFERENCES

• Crime Control as Industry by Nils Christie
• Less Law, More Order by Irvin Waller
• Dr. Carl Hart (Columbia University) and his book Drug Use for Grown-Ups
• Universal Basic Income News Article (CBC) People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report