the "our history of addiction" episode
(feat. Dr. Carl Erik Fisher, Author of "The Urge")
Image by Beowulf Sheehan
Trigger Warning: All episodes discuss addiction, depression, anxiety, mental health and the recovery process in depth. If there is any additional triggering material that needs noting there will be mention at the beginning of the episode.
Today, DeAnn interviews Dr. Carl Erik Fisher, author of the The Urge: Our History of Addiction. This has been DeAnn's favorite recovery read of the past couple of years, so it was an honor to have Carl on the Show. The episode is a high level discussion of the key themes in the books, as well as about the meaningful ways that Carl integrated his own story into this well researched and smart history of addiction. If you have not read the book, we believe this episode will make you want to! But if not, you will hear about some interesting cycles about responses to epidemics. And even more importantly, come to understand the hard truth that rings true on the macro and micro level: that medicine alone is not enough for healing.
Carl Erik Fisher is an addiction physician, bioethicist, writer, and person in recovery. He is an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University and also maintains a private psychiatry practice with a particular focus on the evolving science of mindfulness and meditation. He is the author of the nonfiction book The Urge: Our History of Addiction, published by Penguin Press in January 2022 and named one of the best books of the year by both The New Yorker and The Boston Globe. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Slate, Scientific American MIND, and elsewhere. He also is the host of the Flourishing After Addiction podcast, a deep-dive interview series exploring addiction and recovery.
Book Description: Carl Erik Fisher draws on his experience as an addiction physician, researcher, and alcoholic in recovery to trace the history of addiction: a phenomenon that’s troubled us for centuries, yet we hardly appear closer to understanding. As a psychiatrist-in-training fresh from medical school, Fisher was soon face-to-face with his own addiction crisis, one that nearly cost him everything. Desperate to make sense of the condition that had plagued his family for generations, he turned to the history of addiction, learning that the current quagmire is only the latest iteration of a centuries-old story: humans have struggled to define, treat, and control addictive behavior for most of recorded history, including well before the advent of modern science and medicine. A rich, sweeping account that probes not only medicine and science but also literature, religion, philosophy, and public policy, The Urge is at once an eye-opening history of ideas, a riveting personal story of addiction and recovery, and a clinician’s urgent call for a more expansive, nuanced, and compassionate view of one of society’s most intractable challenges.
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Website: https://www.carlerikfisher.com
