C. Dreams, Dr. Christina Perez's moniker while incarcerated, joins me today to talk about addiction, recovery, reentry, education, stigma, social movement, reappropriation, colorism, plus she shares her story of doing interviews (including for this show) on a contraband cell phone smuggled into her prison cell.

Check out C. Dreams' work at Filter Magazine. You can also find her on Twitter/X @UnCagedCritique.

Support the Show.

This week I revisit a topic I've discussed repeatedly on this show: the reported success rates of 12-Step programs like AA and NA. I talk about the reason these programs persist as the norm despite an odd lack of data to verify their success, and I walk through the reasons AA and other 12-Step programs are highly religious while almost always claiming (and appearing) not to be.

Read Cochrane's new(er) meta-analysis of 12-step success rates on their website.

Read more about aging out of addiction in Zimburg's work.

14% - 31% of people who walk into a 12-Step meeting keep coming for at least 1 year.
21% - 22% of people who stay in a 12-Step program for more than a year remain sober.
5% - 8% of people who walk into a 12-Step meeting will remain sober for at least 1 year.

Some studies show that those who try a 12-Step program actually have worse success rates than non-treatment groups.

Support the Show.

This week I talk about the medication shortages across the United States. Drugs used to treat ADHD, chronic pain, and other conditions have been in short supply lately for reasons unexplained. Different groups have blamed the shortage on one anther: the manufacturers blame the DEA, while the DEA blames manufacturers. But as usual, the problem comes down to a design issue.

For more about Assent's issues with the DEA, check out the Reason article, "DEA Shuts Down Factory even as Adderall Shortage Persists."

Support the Show.

This week I wrap up a multi-part discussion of Foucault's theories of panoptic power, institutional knowledge, and discourses used to endorse awful ideas and beliefs about drugs and drug users. I also talk about Michel Foucault's car accident while high on opium, the notion of panoptic power, Jeremy Bentham's panoptic prison, discourse, stigma and stereotype.

Foucault audio at intro and outro from Century of the Self lecture series.

Support the Show.

Captured Words/Free Thoughts is an annual, non-profit publication packed with art, poetry and prose inspired and written inside US prisons. Every year a group of volunteers records some of the submissions in audio form to share with the world.

An online version of the full magazine (and all previous volumes) is here. If you or someone you know (in prison or out) would like a paper copy, contact me and I'll make sure to send one out (for free). You can reach us by mail at CW/FT, 1201 Larimer St, Suite 3014, Denver, CO, 80204.

Intro: Ben Boyce
"My Freedom Kite," by Monica Petrosian
"What's in a Name?" by Gary K. Farlow
"Pledge of Allegiance," by Gary K. Farlow
"Nana," by Tanya Austin
"Attempting Sobriety," by Dylan Lapointe (DJ)
"To My Trans Brothers (My Incarcerated Word)," by H.L. Tapia
"Quiet Night," by Anthony Enis
"Prison is not a Depository," by Abdullah Muhammad
"Mr. Box," by Larry N. Stromberg
"Methamphetamine," by Dylan Lapointe (DJ)
"To Imprisonment," by Eric Perez
"A Birthday in Prison," by Keith Pertusio
"Prison World" by Larry N. Stromberg
"Bound," by Christian J. Weaver
"Living are the Dead," by David Neff
"A Better Way," by Todd Broxmeyer
"No," by Eugene "Tsunami” Miller
"The Beast in the Mirror," by David Zenquis
"Incarcerated but Inspired," by David Richardson
"My First Day on Death Row," by Anthony Enis
"Black Boy Dark Child," by Daniel Mopkins
"Can’t Breathe," by Larry N. Stromberg
"Pain," by Shawn Harris
"Lockdown," by Gary K. Farlow
"The Man Not Taken," by Christian Weaver
"Convict Chronicles: An Ode to Time," by Leo Cardez
"Loving a Convict," by Debbie Magee
"Meaningful," by Taveuan Williams
"Finally," by Manuel G. Sisneros Sr.
"QUO VADIS?" by Troy Brownlow
Outro: Meghan Cosgrove & Ben Boyce
Cover art painting of MLB pitcher Satchel Paige by Warren Worthington

Sestina Godspell
Six months in prison became a theater
Uniforms became just another costume
Not knowing that all of life is a stage
Every man a star to the director
Expectations changed the meaning of dance

Soon this chaotic troupe began to dance
together breathing freedom into theater
Even the gods came to absorb their song
Commitment was fit to wear the costume
guided by the light of the director
All his tender loving care set the stage

A bus transported All actors and stage
where even the law could begin to dance
with shackle and chain requested one director
whose eye was trained on a different theater
Attempting to restrain men in costume
all the while each was singing the same song

Unforgettable Nights echoed their song
Ancestors followed footprints to the stage
where reality wore a different costume
the love of family improved the dance
Never before hade HOME become theater
except in the heart of our director

Five shows meant oneness with their director
A certain harmony in their song
could be felt in the vibrating theater
Hugging hands joined families on stage
where every soul entered the act of love dance
stripping away Lucifer's green costume

In the next act gone was every costume
Filled with satisfaction our director
coordinated the tear down dance
of this newly formed society's song
echoing in their love of theater
Their hearts will Never leave the magic stage

Empty feels the dance without the old song
and costumes feel senseless without a theater
directed by

Support the Show.

If we wanted to design a culture from the ground up to maximize both the potential and severity of addiction, we would build it exactly like the United States today.

Once upon a time, humans received contentment and fulfilment from their work, and they often went home feeling connected to their communities and identified with the service or goods they offered for sale. But for the last hundred years we've steadily changed that. Today, 1 in 8 of us in the United States has worked at McDonalds, a job that might pay the bills, but certainly isn't showing anyone how much they are truly capable of doing or connecting them to a sense of identity related to their work. We just do it to get a paycheck.

In this episode I will cover the various ways our medical, educational, employment, legal and political systems are all built to maximize addiction potential and severity, and to hide their tracks by blaming drugs and drug users for problems caused by the environment in which we life.

Cocaine and heroin costs around $1 per gram to produce from coca leaves and opium poppies, respectively. Yet these substances will cost a consumer upwards of 50x that much on the streets.

Find out more about behavioralist B.F. Skinner here. Read about his use of Operant Conditioning here.

In Bruce Alexander's experiments, rats that were put in a toyless, friendless cages used 19 times more morphine than those placed in comfortable, familiar homes with other rats.

For more about maximizing button-pressing by rewarding the button-presser randomly, in unexpected and unpredictable patters, check out this article.

Support the Show.

This week I dive into neoliberalism and oligarchy, 2 systems the USA has repeatedly rejected despite their current resurgence of late. The war on drugs is part of a larger move to privatize public systems like medicine, post office services or policing, and to allow profiteering by rich folks who can step in to provide gear and services for these new markets once managed and paid for by the government.

For more about Clarence Thomas 's grifts, see The Nation article here.
Read more about the call for Clarence Thomas to excuse himself in Trump ballet case here.
For more about 6 corporations controlling 90% of our media, see the short article here.
More about Newt Gringrich's (and Frank Luntz's), "Language: A Mechanism of Control" here.
For stats on wealth/income gains between 1944-2014, check out this article by Thom Hartmann.

Support the Show.

Why do humans have such an odd fascination with criminals and outlaws? What happened to all the kings and queens who used to be in charge of everything...where did they go? Why? And what does any of this have to do with drugs?

In this episode I pick up where I left off last time by introducing Michel Foucault's concept of panoptic power, which explains why now days we all self-discipline to conform to social regulations. The war on drugs thrives in spaces where most citizens are thoroughly convinced of the stereotypes that surround drug use: immorality, contagion, degradation, the "disease" of addiction. Today I explain how that cultural knowledge comes to exist, and perhaps how we might be able to disrupt and rewrite those scripts.

Support the Show.