The Fix

Summary

Radiolab – "The Fix"
Release Date: December 18, 2015
Hosts: Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich
Produced by WNYC Studios

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Episode Overview

Theme:
This episode dives deep into the question: Can addiction—particularly alcoholism—be “fixed” with a pill? Using compelling stories, recent research, and a broad array of voices, the episode explores the potential and limitations of medications in treating addiction, the cultural resistance these treatments face, and the personal complexities that can make recovery more than just a pharmacological problem.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Search for a Fix

• Origin Story: Amy O’Leary, a former intern and now editorial director at Upworthy, recounts her personal connection to alcoholism and her discovery of Dr. Olivier Ameisen’s memoir, The End of My Addiction, where he claims the drug baclofen eliminated his compulsive drinking.
  • Amy O’Leary (03:21): “He'd been in, you know, detoxes and medical treatment facilities, you know, upwards of a half dozen times. His practice had fallen off. He was losing everything in his life.”
• Ameisen experiments with baclofen after reading about its effects on cocaine cravings and reportedly becomes “totally indifferent to alcohol.”
  • Amy O’Leary (04:16): “And then at one point he says the switch flipped. And once the switch hit, he just became absolutely indifferent to alcohol.”

2. Scientific Examination of Baclofen

• Addiction Researcher’s Perspective: Dr. Anna Rose Childress from the University of Pennsylvania discusses her early research involving baclofen and how it inspired Ameisen. She describes both disappointment with early clinical results and striking anecdotes from individuals like Ed Coleman—who found his cocaine cravings vanished after increasing his baclofen dose for spasms.
  • Anna Rose Childress (10:07): “He had had a drug deal gone wrong, been shot in the neck, paralyzed... when he doubled his baclofen dose... cocaine no longer had the highest.”
  • Ed Coleman (10:47): “I would try to use cocaine. I couldn’t feel the effects of it... I didn’t have no cravings.”

3. Other Medications and Off-Label Treatments

• Beyond Baclofen: The conversation reveals a suite of medications (acamprosate, gabapentin, topiramate, disulfiram, naltrexone, etc.) that target cravings or block alcohol’s effects, with varying levels of evidence and acceptance.
  • Dr. Mark Willenbring (12:46): “There’s another drug, acamprosate or campral... and this other drug, Gaba... disulfiram, Chantix, Suboxone, Naltrexone, buprenorphine.”
• Success Rates: Naltrexone, in particular, is cited as effective, drastically helping many heavy drinkers reduce consumption—yet it remains vastly under-prescribed.
  • Jad Abumrad (14:19): “One particular study in Finland with about 150 people showed that this drug had a 78% success rate in helping very heavy drinkers reduce their drinking to normal levels.”
• Cultural and Systemic Barriers:
  • Gabrielle Glaser (15:08): “About 1% of people who suffer from alcohol use disorder are ever given the choice or an option to take any sort of medication.”

4. Cultural and Historical Divide

• The separation between medical treatment and community-based/12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous is rooted in logistical and historical quirks—such as early AA founders appropriating TB hospital wards for alcoholism “units,” which led to cultural separation.
  • Gabrielle Glaser (16:24): “It has been completely segregated... Thus began 80 years of separation. And that’s where we are now.”
• Philosophical Divide: Medicine views addiction as a disease to fix biologically; 12-step and AA traditions frame it as a spiritual/moral struggle.
  • Jad Abumrad (17:42): “On the one hand, you’ve got someone in the medical sciences who might be inclined to see addiction as a purely biological phenomenon… On the other hand… there’s something deeply wrong here, something in the person, in the spirit, in the soul.”

5. Efficacy and Controversy of AA

• Research suggests AA’s one-year success (retention) rates are in the single digits, but this is hard to measure due to the nature of voluntary participation.
  • Gabrielle Glaser (18:32): “For every 100 people who show up in an AA meeting… only five… will be sitting there on December 31.”
  • Jad Abumrad (18:59): “AA… doesn’t claim to be a treatment. And also, when you start talking about success rates, that gets really squishy…”

6. Public Response and Sea Change?

• Through a phone-in with Brian Lehrer’s show, listeners share a wide spectrum of experiences—some cynical about the “pill fix,” others hopeful and finding real help through these medications.
  • Caller (27:09): “There is no quick fix. There is no magical medication.”
  • Caller (27:23): “I have been offered naltrexone… it's very effective. It does help cut the craving.”
• Many are desperate for alternatives, frustrated with the lack of available pharmaceutically-based treatment options.

7. Personal Story: Billy Webb

• Billy’s journey (29:11–39:55): Illustrates the complexity of addiction—even when medication works to suppress cravings, identity, loss, and emotional pain can remain. Billy’s trajectory involves repeated treatment attempts, moderate success on naltrexone, and ongoing struggles despite being able to “drink like a normal person” for the first time.
  • Billy Webb (34:11): “When I took the naltrexone, I actually was able to limit my drinking to two to six drinks a night… I was blown away.”
  • Billy Webb (35:53): “I missed feeling like myself... That’s the only person that I knew.”
• Ultimately, his story highlights that medication may help with craving, but does not “undo” the underlying emotional and existential void—the “thing that makes the addiction go is really deep.”
  • Jad Abumrad (39:17): “Pills will be a big part of that, seems to me. But the pills can’t get all the way down, you know?”

8. Why Addiction Hooks Us

• Dr. Nora Volkow (Director, National Institute of Drug Abuse) and Dr. Anna Rose Childress suggest addiction exploits the very brain circuits that evolved to let us love, bond, and seek rewards.
  • Nora Volkow (40:31): “Drugs will light up the same circuits in your brain that are usually engaged when you're in love, when you're hanging out with your friends, when you're being hugged by your kid.”
  • Anna Rose Childress (41:14): “They would be exquisitely attuned to the promise of rewards... for our patients, in some sense, they're the fittest of the fit and being punished for it.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Addiction’s Medical ‘Switch’:
  • Jad Abumrad (08:04): “What if it’s simply a switch in your brain that got stuck in the on position and you can use a pill to just switch it right off?”
• Why Meds Are Invisible:
  • Gabrielle Glaser (15:08): “About 1% of people who suffer from alcohol use disorder are ever given the choice or an option to take any sort of medication.”
• Identity and Addiction:
  • Billy Webb (35:53): “I missed feeling like myself. I didn’t. I didn’t...”
  • Andy Mills (36:29): “He came out of his shell alongside alcohol, being creative, writing music, performing music. Alcohol's there. His first girlfriend, alcohol was there... you take that alcohol away, what was left was an empty guy that I didn't know.”
• Evolutionary Irony:
  • Anna Rose Childress (42:02): “For our patients, in some sense, they’re the fittest of the fit and being punished for it.”

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Key Timestamps

• Introduction and Amy’s Story: 01:05–07:36
• Baclofen Research & Dr. Childress: 08:39–12:25
• Other Medications & Dr. Willenbring: 12:34–14:44
• Medical vs. 12-Step Model: 15:03–19:47
• Brian Lehrer Listener Call-In: 25:06–28:39
• Billy Webb’s Story: 29:07–39:13
• Psychological Depth/Evolutionary Framing: 39:41–42:09

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Conclusion

Main Takeaways:

• While certain medications can dramatically reduce cravings and facilitate moderation or abstinence for some, their use is rare due to cultural, systemic, and philosophical barriers.
• Addiction remains a complex, multi-layered problem—one that medication alone cannot completely “fix.” The psychological, social, and existential dimensions are as important as the biological.
• A potential cultural shift towards integrating medical treatments with traditional psychosocial support is beginning, but faces skepticism, stigma, and resistance.
• Crucially, addiction exploits the same neural circuits that make us loving, creative, and social—turning an evolutionary strength into a vulnerability.

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Memorable Closing Reflection

• Jad Abumrad (39:17): “Pills will be a big part of that, seems to me. But the pills can’t get all the way down, you know? The thing that makes the addiction go is really deep.”
• Pat Roos (42:21): “How do you live your life when you have to be sober?”

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For listeners and readers alike, “The Fix” offers hope, caution, and a nuanced look at both the promise and the limits of modern medicine in the fight against addiction.

Transcript

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[Jad Abumrad]

Wait, you're listening.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

Okay.

[Jad Abumrad]

All right.

[Andy Mills]

Okay.

[Jad Abumrad]

All right. You're listening to Radiolab Lab. Radio Lab from wnyc. 3, 2, 1. Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Pulwich.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Radiolab and for today, do, do, do, do.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm going to begin with a conversation that we had actually quite a while ago.

[Amy O'Leary]

I would benefit from a little bit of framing about kind of what we're like, our goal of this session.

[Jad Abumrad]

Sure. We could frame it.

[Robert Krulwich]

We make you blab a lot and then we edit it later.

[Jad Abumrad]

Right.

[Andy Mills]

That's kind of it.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's a conversation that we had with a reporter, actually, someone we used to work with. Yeah, an ex intern, one of our great interns who's gone off in the world.

[Robert Krulwich]

Amy o' Leary is her name.

[Jad Abumrad]

Amy o' Leary is her name. She at the time was a New York Times reporter, but is now the editorial director of Upworthy.

[Amy O'Leary]

So this started actually through a personal interest. So I was in a relationship with an alcoholic and was very open about that, talked about it with all my friends.

[Jad Abumrad]

Were you open with him about it too?

[Amy O'Leary]

Yeah, I mean, he was in some denial, but yeah. I regularly would tell him, hey, you have a problem with this? And he would be clear back and say, if you're going to make me choose between me and vodka, I'm going to choose vodka.

[Jad Abumrad]

He would say that. Really?

[Amy O'Leary]

He did say that once. Yeah. And I was, you know, young, but every night after 11 o', clock, my.

[Jad Abumrad]

Life became sh tty without getting into a lot of detail. There were fights, arguments, a lot of.

[Amy O'Leary]

Rage, and I didn't know what to do and felt really out of control. And, you know, I'd been to Al Anon meetings and it just seemed like this like, terrible, tragic problem that, like a really smart, cool person would turn really awful on you.

[Robert Krulwich]

But then one day, Amy found herself in Barnes and Noble on Union Square.

[Amy O'Leary]

Union Square, I think I'm on the third floor. And there was a table of mostly self help books. And there was this one called the End of My Addiction.

[Jad Abumrad]

She picked it up.

[Amy O'Leary]

This book was super fascinating. It was the memoir of a French cardiologist, this French doctor who had had his life completely ruined by alcoholism. And I looked at it and I probably stood there, like feet glued to the floor and just like read 70% of the book.

[Jad Abumrad]

The book described in very vivid detail this successful doctor just sliding off the rails.

[Amy O'Leary]

He'd been in, you know, detoxes and medical treatment facilities, you know, upwards of a half dozen times. His practice had fallen off. He was losing everything in his life.

[Jad Abumrad]

At one point, he describes this terrifying moment of waking up in the back of a taxi, blood all over himself. Doesn't know whose blood it is, doesn't know where he's going.

[Amy O'Leary]

He was totally desperate. Killing himself was the next option. And then at one point he says that he had read this tiny nugget.

[Jad Abumrad]

New York Times, and this is like.

[Amy O'Leary]

The early 90s, I think.

[Jad Abumrad]

Apparently he'd stumbled across this short piece about a guy who'd been addicted to cocaine, taken some muscle relaxants, and his.

[Amy O'Leary]

Cravings for cocaine completely ceased.

[Jad Abumrad]

It was just one guy, one guy's experience.

[Amy O'Leary]

But he saw that and he basically just felt like, well, I might as well try this. I'm just gonna experiment on myself.

[Jad Abumrad]

So he gets the drug, starts taking.

[Amy O'Leary]

It, and he slowly, like, doses up more and more amounts of the.

[Jad Abumrad]

Nothing happens. Nothing happens.

[Amy O'Leary]

And then at one point he says the switch flipped. And once the switch hit, he just became absolutely indifferent to alcohol.

[Robert Krulwich]

Like, boom.

[Amy O'Leary]

Yep.

[Robert Krulwich]

Apparently this obsessive need for alcohol that had burdened him his entire life just went away.

[Amy O'Leary]

Total indifference.

[Jad Abumrad]

What is a drug called, by the way?

[Amy O'Leary]

Baclofen. B, A, C, L, O, F, E, N. Baclofen.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

Mm.

[Jad Abumrad]

Amy says at this point, standing there in the Barnes and Noble, she was interested. Skeptical but interested.

[Amy O'Leary]

Yeah, so I found an email address like you do as a reporter. I googled every combination of his name till I found some little.fremail address and emailed him and he, you know, he wrote back right away.

[Jad Abumrad]

And they set up a time to talk.

[Amy O'Leary]

You know, I'm all ready. We have it planned in advance. I confirm it with them. I'm all set up at my desk in New York. And he picked up. And I was like, Dr. Amison, how are you? It's so good to speak with you. And Amit was like, amy, Amy, I am so sor. Rescuing my girlfriend. We are in the Alps. I'm carrying her down a mountainside. Can I call you back?

[Robert Krulwich]

Did you hear wind in the background and the sound of.

[Amy O'Leary]

I heard no sound effects, no. But he did seem like he was exerting himself to some extent. So we schedule a second appointment and I recorded the phone call.

[Dr. Amit Miesen]

Hello?

[Amy O'Leary]

Hello, is this Dr. Emissen?

[Dr. Amit Miesen]

Yes. It's Amy. Yes, Amy, finally.

[Amy O'Leary]

I'm like, hi, nice to talk to you.

[Dr. Amit Miesen]

It's like, you know, the last time we spoke, I was rescuing my girlfriend. My God, it was like a Hitchcock. It was a nightmare. We were in Switzerland at 10,000ft.

[Jad Abumrad]

So he launches into the mountain story and then just kind of goes off.

[Dr. Amit Miesen]

When Moses opened the Red Sea, people say it was a miracle. Although there is some science, like nature said, become who you are, and I am who I wanted. Einstein might have been wrong. And they were wrong. Einstein was right. And I mean, still holding. Rubenstein told me he's never heard a pianist like me. He's heard Rachmaninoff or Horowitz. He thought, you know, if comes a Nobel, you never know. People tell me it may have made the discovery of the century. I mean, there's no.

[Amy O'Leary]

He like literally went on for 20 minutes before I got in. Well, I wanted to ask you with a little question. You know, I read your book, I think close to when it first came out in the United States.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

Oh, really?

[Dr. Amit Miesen]

Yeah. It's really like a thriller and it's humorous and it's fun.

[Jad Abumrad]

I mean, then he was off again.

[Dr. Amit Miesen]

I sometimes read it and I can't believe sometimes I want to see. And I see that and that certainly a lot has happened, but I mean, if you look at just the back, you know, I just have it in.

[Amy O'Leary]

And then like, literally it was 20 minutes of how important our shared mission was to like, save the world.

[Dr. Amit Miesen]

What I want to break is the shame.

[Amy O'Leary]

Red flags going off left and right. And I sort of started to downshift my thought of doing a story. And right about this time, my reporting group got disbanded due to an internal reorganization. And so I moved to a different desk, and it was just like, okay, maybe someday Radiolab will be interested in.

[Jad Abumrad]

The story because we'll eat anything. No, in all fairness, Dr. Meeson, who unfortunately passed away a few years ago, may have been in the middle of a manic episode, which doesn't necessarily negate the story he was telling.

[Dr. Amit Miesen]

No, not at all.

[Jad Abumrad]

And even after dropping the story, Amy.

[Amy O'Leary]

As a journalist and as someone who'd been personally affected by alcoholism, I was incredibly torn. As a journalist, you have to be skeptical of everything. But at the same time, like, wouldn't it be great if we lived in a world where you could deal with this problem which, you know, tears apart so many lives, kills so many people, creates all kinds of pain and agony with, like, a medication? That just seems great.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. You know, and, like, the question for me is, like, we often see addiction as, like, the thing that you've got to morally conquer, like a spiritual calamity that you've got to somehow reorganize your entire being in order to get through. But what if it's not that way? What if it's. What if it's simply a switch in your brain that got stuck in the on position and you can use a pill to just switch it right off?

[Robert Krulwich]

That would be nice.

[Jad Abumrad]

Now, we were super skeptical of this idea, but we also couldn't stop thinking about it. So recently we started making some calls.

[Anna Rose Childress]

Hi, it's Anna Rose Childress. I'm all here.

[Jad Abumrad]

Dr. Anna Rose Childress is an addiction researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. And Amy pointed us to her because it was her work that actually inspired Dr. Emesen.

[Anna Rose Childress]

I don't know if you mentioned throbbing, pulsing desire states, but somehow that comes to mind.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's her specialty.

[Andy Mills]

Throbbing, pulsing desire states. That sounds great.

[Jad Abumrad]

She spoke with producer Andy Mills and I in the studio, and for decades, she's been studying that craving state in addiction. She's interviewed people about it.

[Anna Rose Childress]

So what patients described that they would sometimes describe as sort of a wave.

[Jad Abumrad]

Of sensation, some enormous wave just pulsates.

[Dr. Amit Miesen]

Throughout your whole body.

[Anna Rose Childress]

Go from their toes up to their head and back down again.

[Robert Krulwich]

From my toes to my head to.

[Alex Honnold]

My toes to my head.

[Anna Rose Childress]

Sort of a zoom, A zoom, a zoom.

[Robert Krulwich]

Rushing, pulsating.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay. One day in 1995, she's at a conference. She bumps into a guy who tells her he has managed to get some rats addicted to cocaine, give them Baclofen, and they totally lost interest in the coke.

[Anna Rose Childress]

They were disinterested for several. So I saw this, and I Thought, wow.

[Jad Abumrad]

So she began to give Baclofen to people who were addicted to crack, small doses. And initially there was a lot of disappointment. Results weren't great. Then she says one day she was sitting in the staff lounge just chilling, and a colleague ran in and said.

[Anna Rose Childress]

You know, there's this guy over at the hospital next door, and, you know, animals, you've got to talk to him.

[Jad Abumrad]

His name was Ed Coleman. He was a paraplegic.

[Anna Rose Childress]

He had had a drug deal gone wrong, been shot in the neck, paralyzed.

[Jad Abumrad]

From the waist down. So he was in a wheelchair taking Baclofen.

[Robert Krulwich]

I was having bad spasms because he.

[Jad Abumrad]

Was having these spasms in his legs.

[Anna Rose Childress]

And he recounted this to me, and I actually have the tape of it. You were doing the low dose at first, and that was 10 milligrams, four times a day.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah.

[Anna Rose Childress]

And then you upped the dose. Tell me why you upped the dose.

[Robert Krulwich]

I upped the dose because I found that the 10, 10 dose was to take care of the muscle spasm. I would still get up, and my legs were still just tightening up in shape. So I said, well, maybe if I take two of these, it'll calm it down.

[Anna Rose Childress]

What did you notice? Well, what Edward found was that when he doubled his baglofen dose, I would.

[Robert Krulwich]

Try to use cocaine. I couldn't feel the effects of it.

[Anna Rose Childress]

Cocaine no longer had the highest.

[Robert Krulwich]

When I was taking it, I didn't have no cravings.

[Jad Abumrad]

He then went on to tell her that when he stopped taking Baclofen, because he did stop for two days, I.

[Robert Krulwich]

Was having bad spasms.

[Jad Abumrad]

The leg spasms came back, but I.

[Robert Krulwich]

Was getting the full effect of the cool.

[Anna Rose Childress]

He could get the high again, and the craving went through the ceiling. So Edward had been doing his own experiments. He had doubled the dose. He had halved the dose to see what was the dose where he could still feel the cocaine high, but his spasms wouldn't be driving him crazy.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wow. So he was like a one man study. Yeah. Now, this was actually the specific story that inspired Dr. Miesen to do his one man study and to write that book which held Amy glued to the floor in Barnes and Noble. Now, even though none of this was rock solid science by any means, Amy says that since then, people have begun to quietly take this drug, and some doctors have even begun to prescribe it.

[Amy O'Leary]

You know, I talked to a guy who runs a halfway house in Youngstown, Ohio, who was using Baclofen with people that were under his. There was a doctor in Chicago who was prescribing it to a lot of.

[Jad Abumrad]

People that this is all off label use.

[Amy O'Leary]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[Jad Abumrad]

She told us that after a misen's book, message boards popped up.

[Amy O'Leary]

Hundreds of people on these boards swapping stories about how much they took, when they took it, they were crowdsourcing their own cure, in effect.

[Jad Abumrad]

But the really surprising thing is that as we kept calling around, we realized that Baclofen was just the tip of the iceberg.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yes, yes. There's another drug, acamprosate orcamprol, and this other drug, Gaba. There's Topiramate or Topamax, a disulfiram, Chantix, Suboxone, Naltrexone, buprenorphine.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is Dr. Mark Willenbring.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm an addiction psychiatrist here in St. Paul, Minnesota.

[Jad Abumrad]

Mark says that some of these drugs try to target the craving. They try and block the craving. Others try to target the high that you get.

[Robert Krulwich]

The simple way to put it is this. It's a buzz kill.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's a buzz kill. Interesting. So you drink, but you don't get the.

[Robert Krulwich]

You don't get the happy warm feeling.

[Jad Abumrad]

Apparently it takes all the fun out of it. According to one journalist that we talked to, Gabrielle Glaser, who does a ton of reporting about mental health and addiction.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

Took my 6:30 pill.

[Jad Abumrad]

She tried one of these drugs during the course of reporting and it honestly.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

It made a second glass of wine seem about as enjoyable as a big glass of dimetap. I mean, really, it was, it was just, it was like drinking water.

[Jad Abumrad]

Why? What is the drug supposedly doing?

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, it blocks opioid receptors in the.

[Jad Abumrad]

Brain, which is our pleasure system, according to Dr. Willenbring. Basically, if you think of a good buzz as like a chemical handshake, like you've got the alcohol molecules and they need to click in with the receptors in your brain and that's what creates ultimately the good feeling. What this category of drugs do is they get in the middle of the handshake. They sort of like a blanket, prevent the hands from shaking or muffle them. Right. And if you're not getting as much enjoyment out of the drinks, then the idea is you're not going to drink as much.

[Robert Krulwich]

And these are home run drugs. These are drugs that you just don't see these kinds of effects in medicine in hardly anything.

[Jad Abumrad]

Mark pointed us to some studies that have been done in Finland, the Netherlands, the uk, Iran, a bunch that have been done in the US they look at this one particular drug called naltrexone and, and show that it has a very high success rate. Like one particular study in finland with about 150 people showed that this drug had a 78% success rate in helping very heavy drinkers reduce their drinking to normal levels.

[Robert Krulwich]

Right, right.

[Jad Abumrad]

So are these drugs being used?

[Robert Krulwich]

No, no. Basically the pickup has been near zero.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is something that we heard over and over again. These drugs are out there, that there is some evidence that they work, but they're kind of invisible.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

Yes, exactly.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's Gabrielle Glaser again here.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

About 1% of people who suffer from alcohol use disorder are ever given the choice or an option to take any sort of medication.

[Jad Abumrad]

She says maybe 1 2% at best.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

Yes.

[Jad Abumrad]

Which is particularly weird, she says, because that drug naltrexone that was used in the Finnish study that did. Well, it's been out for a while.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

This drug was approved by the FDA in 1994.

[Robert Krulwich]

And by the way, for the purpose of treating alcoholics.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yes.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

We never heard about it.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's so weird.

[Robert Krulwich]

Why wouldn't we have heard of that?

[Gabrielle Glaser]

Well, that's a very complicated question.

[Jad Abumrad]

She said it's sort of hard to pin down, but that there has basically just been this psychic barrier that we've all had to seeing addiction as something a pill can help. I mean, just look at med schools.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

I think there are something around 140 medical schools in the United States. In only 14 medical schools was there a single course in addiction medicine.

[Jad Abumrad]

That number has since gone up a little bit, but not a lot. And so we asked her, why would that be? And she said, well, it's just that addiction treatment has never really been part of the rest of medicine.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

It has been completely segregated.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's been its own self contained world. And this actually goes back to how it was set up at the very beginning. And this I found fascinating. If you go back about 80 years.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

We had in hospitals at the time, late 1930s and early 1940s, we had.

[Dr. Amit Miesen]

The white plague, tuberculosis, TB wards.

[Jad Abumrad]

But then suddenly after World War II.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

TB had a cure. You got better. You didn't have to stay in the hospital, in the sanitarium, just to recover. And suddenly these TB units were empty.

[Jad Abumrad]

And she says it was just a few years earlier that a group of mostly men had gotten together to form alcoholics, synonymous. Now, at the time, doctors had no idea what to do with alcohol addicted people. They were called drunkards.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

Inebriate was another word that was commonly used.

[Jad Abumrad]

They were basically seen as hopeless cases. And of course, the founders of AA knew this. So when they saw all those empty TB wards, they went to the hospitals.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

And said, let's make those alcoholism units in your hospital.

[Jad Abumrad]

Really?

[Gabrielle Glaser]

Yes. Doctors thought, okay, we don't have an answer for these guys, so we'll just let them do. Will let them do it. And thus began 80 years of separation. And that's where we are now.

[Jad Abumrad]

Out of this physical separation. According to Gabrielle Glaser, you got a cultural separation. Two very different ways of seeing addiction.

[Robert Krulwich]

Cultural.

[Jad Abumrad]

All right.

[Robert Krulwich]

What does that mean?

[Jad Abumrad]

Just to state it in the extremes, on the one hand, you've got someone in the medical sciences who might be inclined to see addiction as a purely biological phenomena. You know, that's all this is.

[Robert Krulwich]

And we'll just fix it.

[Jad Abumrad]

We'll just fix it. On the other hand, you have the idea that, no, you can't just fix this biologically. There's something deeply wrong here. There's something in the person, in the spirit, in the soul.

[Robert Krulwich]

This is a reflection of your inner broken self.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. Which just has to be addressed at.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

A higher level in the AA curriculum. I may have my facts wrong. I believe five out of the 12 steps mention God.

[Jad Abumrad]

Actually, when we checked, it's six out of the 12 half.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

And the big book, which is the bible of Alcoholics Anonymous, there's a mention of God or him or your higher power on almost every page.

[Robert Krulwich]

What is the recovery rate from the AA crowd?

[Gabrielle Glaser]

Well, what many researchers say is that the success rate of AA is in the single digits. One study showed that for every 100 people who show up in an AA meeting on January 1, only five of those people will be sitting there on.

[Robert Krulwich]

December 31 of the same year.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

In that same year, really.

[Jad Abumrad]

So the. What do you call that? The dropout rate is 95%. Yeah.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

I was really surprised to find that out.

[Jad Abumrad]

Now, to be fair, I think we should be fair. We have to say that a couple things, like, first of all, AA is a volunteer organization. It's a support group. Doesn't claim to be a treatment. And also, when you start talking about success rates, that gets really squishy. I mean, if a person doesn't show up to an AA meeting, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're drinking again. They may be doing just fine, or.

[Robert Krulwich]

Perhaps they've switched groups. They've moved and moved.

[Jad Abumrad]

Exactly. So it's really, really hard to sort of define your terms here. Clearly, AA is important to a lot of people, and that's something that actually Gabrielle Glaser found out last spring when she published an article in the Atlantic where she Basically laid all this out.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

When that article came out, I received thousands of emails. You are a horrible person. You deserve to die. AA saved my life. I hope your kids get killed by drunk drivers.

[Jad Abumrad]

But.

[Robert Krulwich]

So there was this article in the Atlantic in April when we talked to.

[Jad Abumrad]

Dr. Willingbory, who Glaser mentioned in the article as somebody who believes more in medication than 12 step. He said that when that article came out.

[Robert Krulwich]

Since then, our phone has rung off the hook. We get about half of our calls from out of state. Is there anybody in North Carolina or in New York or in Texas or in California or wherever it is? And they're desperate, and the families are desperate, desperate for an alternative and they can't find one.

[Jad Abumrad]

He says all of this makes him think back about 30 years.

[Robert Krulwich]

When I was a resident, there was this debate raging. There was this big debate about depression, whether people should be treated with antidepressants.

[Jad Abumrad]

But he says the debate completely shifted.

[Billy Webb]

Here we go, here comes the Prozac.

[Jad Abumrad]

When we got Prozac, doctors have prescribed.

[Alex Honnold]

Prozac to 2 million Americans.

[Jad Abumrad]

Suddenly you had this drug that was a massive success, spawned other drugs, and in the process changed how people fundamentally see depression.

[Robert Krulwich]

And now most people, you know, get treatment for anxiety or depression with antidepressants compared to psychotherapy.

[Jad Abumrad]

Do you think we're heading in the same place with addiction?

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh, we are. Oh, we are, we are. There's no question. I do predict in 10 or 15 years we'll have a Prozac mom.

[Anna Rose Childress]

This is Jean Pelletier in Boston, Massachusetts.

[Amy O'Leary]

Radiolab is supported in part by the.

[Anna Rose Childress]

Alfred P. Sloan foundation, enhancing public understanding.

[Amy O'Leary]

Of science and technology in the modern world.

[Anna Rose Childress]

More information About [e-mail].

[Alex Honnold]

Radiolab is supported by Rippling. Finance teams often spend weeks chasing receipts, reconciling spreadsheets and fixing errors across disconnected spend tools. This can be frustrating. And that's not software as a service, that's sad software as a disservice. If you've been thinking about replacing stitched together tech stacks with one platform for all departments, Rippling can help. Rippling is a unified platform for global hr, payroll, IT and finance. Helping people replace their mess of cobbled together tools with one system. Designed to help give leaders clarity, speed and control. By uniting employees, teams and departments in one system, Rippling works to remove the bottlenecks, busywork and silos in business software. With Rippling, you can choose to run hr, IT and finance operations as one, or pick and choose the products that best fill the gaps. Right now you can get 6 months free when you go to rippling.com Radiolab learn more at R I P P l I n g.com Radiolab terms and conditions apply. Radiolab is supported by Planet Visionaries, the podcast created in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. The show is hosted by Alex Honnold, who you may recognize from Free Solo, where he climbed El Capitan without ropes. Now he's turning his focus to the biggest challenge of protecting the only planet we've got. Every episode brings you stories that prove climate optimism isn't naive, it's a strategy. The episodes span the globe, from Arctic scientists and Amazon forest guardians to entrepreneurs reimagining fashion and food systems. You'll hear from explorers, scientists, activists and storytellers who are working to reshape the future in practical human ways. In one episode, Alex sits down with wildlife photographer Bertie Gregory to discuss how animals can teach humans resiliency, empathy and hope in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Check out Planet Visionaries Listen or watch on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Lowe's Announcer]

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[Billy Webb]

The people who we are and what.

[Jad Abumrad]

Our new show is.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Smith and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money.

[Jad Abumrad]

And now we're back making this new.

[Andy Mills]

Podcast about the best ideas and people.

[Robert Krulwich]

And businesses in history and some of the worst people, horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business. We struggled to come up with a name, decided to call it Business History.

[Jad Abumrad]

You know why?

[Robert Krulwich]

Why? Because it's a show about the history.

[Jad Abumrad]

Of business, available everywhere you get your podcasts. All right, welcome back. I'm Jad Robert, and if you know this music, you already know it's the.

[Robert Krulwich]

Brian Lehrer show on wnyc. Good morning, everyone. This is the Brian Lehrer show at our own home station, WNYC in New York. Very, very popular show.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yes. And to explain, we wanted a gut check because we had been hearing all of these things from experts saying that we're undergoing a sea change and we wanted to know is that actually happening out there in the world.

[Robert Krulwich]

And the world, at least our local world, is full of Brian Lehrer listeners. It's your stories of what kinds of treatment you were offered and actually used for alcohol and substance abuse.

[Jad Abumrad]

So we asked the Brian Lehrer team if they would help us out.

[Robert Krulwich]

Call us at 212-433.

[Jad Abumrad]

And they helped us out big time.

[Robert Krulwich]

And we'll explain more now with Radiolab host Jad Abumrand. Hi, Jad.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hey, Brian. Thank you for having me on.

[Robert Krulwich]

And you believe we're in the midst of a cultural and medicinal shift for the way we both view and treat people with addictions, right?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. So, I mean, we, we're not sure, to be totally honest. You know, we, we bumped into a reporter a couple years ago who told us the story of a guy. So I sort of summarized Amy oleary's story about Dr. Amesen. He described a moment where the addiction just switched off. Then I sort of summarize what the experts had told us, that maybe something is happening, but we weren't sure. We're just not sure. And so we're curious to hear from people who've struggled with substance abuse. I'm wondering what sorts of treatments they've been offered. Have they seen pills like naltrexone or baclofen? Have they used them? Have they worked? What's been the experience? So, listeners, and just like that, help.

[Robert Krulwich]

JAD report this story.

[Dr. Amit Miesen]

My name is Paul. My name is Nicole. I'm calling from New Hampshire. I'm actually in Afghanistan. I've overdosed many times on heroin, cocaine. Celebrating a year of sobriety next month.

[Jad Abumrad]

There is an explosion of calls.

[Robert Krulwich]

Ginger and mayo pack. You're on wnyc.

[Amy O'Leary]

Hi.

[Dr. Amit Miesen]

How are you? I'm an alcoholic and an addiction, and I've been in recovery for 18 years. I'm sitting outside of an AA meeting listening to this.

[Jad Abumrad]

We heard from a lot of people who felt like this idea of a pill that can treat addiction was idiotic.

[Dr. Amit Miesen]

I just don't think psychotropics is really a solution. There is no quick fix. There is no magical medication. If it was just a physical disease, it would all be cured.

[Jad Abumrad]

But we also heard from a lot of people who had just been offered these drugs.

[Dr. Amit Miesen]

I was prescribed camp. I have been offered naltrexone and naltrexone, and it is it's very effective. It does help cut the craving. One guy who called it's just so incredibly crazy that I heard the show today as I'm about to embark upon this thing.

[Jad Abumrad]

He just got prescribed addiction medicine that morning.

[Dr. Amit Miesen]

One way or another, I'm going to fix this.

[Jad Abumrad]

He was excited, as were a lot of the callers in this category, because.

[Dr. Amit Miesen]

It'S a huge social stigma.

[Jad Abumrad]

If these pills work for them, it kind of means that they're just sick. They're not bad people.

[Dr. Amit Miesen]

It's not something that people choose, even though it seems that way.

[Robert Krulwich]

Demara in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hello, DeMara.

[Dr. Amit Miesen]

Hi.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, one caller called in to say that her dad had had a terrible time with alcohol. It was destroying the family.

[Dr. Amit Miesen]

And, you know, we were thinking about putting him in rehab or something, but afraid of the stigma of it. And my mom is a doctor, so she was working in a hospital. She told me that one day, if she took matters into her own hand and she gave him injection shots of something called Voltaren, or, you know, the way we say it is like Voltarene.

[Jad Abumrad]

It actually turns out to be a muscle relaxant, not too dissimilar from Baclovin.

[Dr. Amit Miesen]

And it worked one day like everything was okay, and he was over it. I mean, it wasn't something that was controlling our lives anymore.

[Billy Webb]

Let me ask you this.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's producer Andy Mills again. After the Brian Laris show, we had so many calls that he set up a Google voicemail, and he talked with an additional 40 or so people, and he asked everyone, do you feel that.

[Andy Mills]

We'Re headed toward a sea change where we're gonna start treating addictions in a new way?

[Dr. Amit Miesen]

No, I completely do. You know, you got a drug problem, Find the drug that fixes the drug problem. There's no pill that will make you want to put down the drink in the drop.

[Billy Webb]

Hello, Billy.

[Andy Mills]

Hey, Will you just introduce yourself, tell me who you are?

[Billy Webb]

Yeah, and you can use my full name if you want. My name's Billy Webb. I am from Shaker Heights, Ohio, and I currently live in St. Paul, Minnesota.

[Andy Mills]

Hey, this is Andy. So in talking to all those people on the phone, Billy's. It was the story that I just kept thinking about over and over again. And so eventually we ended up getting him into the studio. Do you remember what it was like the first time that you had alcohol?

[Billy Webb]

Yeah, it was the summer that I turned 16, and I was a quieter kid, and I was kind of a nerd, you might say. I was into computer games. But then the tide sort of swung, and I got into music, and most specifically, punk rock and ska.

[Andy Mills]

He says it was this time that he was coming out of his shell. He learned how to play the bass. Started practicing all the time. He made these new friends, and they started a band.

[Billy Webb]

We were horrible, but we were willing to put ourselves out there, and we started playing gigs. And I had gotten my first girlfriend at that time, and I was very excited and nervous to see her. So I figured, why not? Why not loosen myself up a little bit?

[Andy Mills]

So one day, he breaks into his father's liquor cabinet, takes a couple shots of Mount Gay rum.

[Billy Webb]

It was euphoric, to be honest with you. And I finally felt like I was myself. And it just felt like I was on top of the world and I could do anything. And I had all these creative ideas that came to me. I wanted to talk to people. That's sort of when things started to take off.

[Andy Mills]

By the time Billy was 24, I.

[Billy Webb]

Was becoming an entrepreneur.

[Andy Mills]

He was running his own business. It was a storage facility that he planned to convert into art spaces where.

[Billy Webb]

We would have shows and maybe even a little small record shop. I was in a relationship. We had a dog.

[Andy Mills]

He was in a new band that toured.

[Billy Webb]

It was fun, I can say that for sure. I could even conduct business out of the bar down the street if I wanted to, because the business line forwarded to my cell.

[Andy Mills]

But he said that it was also around this time that he started to wake up in the morning with the shakes.

[Billy Webb]

And I remember drinking beer in the morning in the bathroom.

[Andy Mills]

How much do you think you were drinking at this point?

[Billy Webb]

20 drinks a day? 25 sometimes. Wow. And usually the night before, before I passed out or went to sleep, I would say, you know, I'm gonna turn it around in the morning. I'm gonna. I'm gonna get out of bed and work out, eat a full meal. And that never ended up happening.

[Andy Mills]

What eventually did end up happening is that Billy asked for help. Both his mom and his sister, they flew Billy up to Minnesota, where he checked into one of the best rehab centers in the Midwest.

[Billy Webb]

And when I got there, looks like a small college campus. I mean, it's very serene, sort of peaceful setting, Very welcoming.

[Andy Mills]

He started going to group meetings, started working out, and was like, all right.

[Billy Webb]

I was actually excited. I thought that things would turn around when I got back.

[Andy Mills]

But within just a day of being.

[Billy Webb]

Back in Cleveland, it was right back to where I was. 20 drinks a day, 25 sometimes. So I ended up back in treatment. We figured, you know, I just didn't do it right the first time, so. So if we go back, we'll get it right this time. And once again, you know, I Crashed and burned.

[Andy Mills]

This time, not even in Cleveland.

[Billy Webb]

I had relapsed at the airport. I didn't even make it to Cleveland.

[Andy Mills]

And he said, this is just how things went for years.

[Billy Webb]

It was just the same old story of in n out, in n out.

[Andy Mills]

In the span of about four years time, Billy tried seven different treatment centers and detox centers. Lots of AA meeting.

[Billy Webb]

I went to 110 meetings in 70 days. I went to 28 in one week. One time nothing worked.

[Andy Mills]

He says that his AA sponsors would.

[Billy Webb]

Tell him, you know, you can do this, you'll get it right.

[Andy Mills]

So he'd leave those meetings feeling positive, end up at a liquor store.

[Billy Webb]

I just considered myself a failure at this point in time, that I was never gonna get better. And that led to more and more drinking.

[Andy Mills]

He said that he lost his girlfriend, pretty much all his friends got fired.

[Billy Webb]

From his job due to drinking. And my days just consisted of walking to the liquor store, buying two fits and walking home. That's all I did. I just laid in bed and drank. It's hard to even think about without being completely horrified that that's what my life had turned into. And then I woke up one day with severe, severe pain in my abdomen. And I couldn't move or walk or keep water down. And it was really scary. And it was pancreatitis. So I ended up checking myself into a hospital in Grand Rapids. And I saw these people and they said, wow, we don't even, we don't see this condition until people are usually in their mid-40s.

[Andy Mills]

Billy was only 29 years old when I got out.

[Billy Webb]

I moved into a Sober House in St. Paul. And that's when I got hooked up with the Altier Clinic.

[Andy Mills]

Now at the Altier Clinic, which I should say really quick, is run by Dr. Mark Willenbring, who we talked to earlier. There, they do something that they call evidence based treatment. So if a patient shows up looking for help, they are given a therapist to treat any underlying mental health conditions that they may have. And for everything connected to their addiction, they're given medications. In Billy's case, they gave him naltrexone.

[Billy Webb]

When I took the naltrexone, I actually was able to limit my drinking to two to six drinks a night, which was, quite frankly, felt like a normal amount to me.

[Jad Abumrad]

He was able to drink moderately?

[Andy Mills]

Yeah, almost overnight.

[Billy Webb]

I was blown away. That's all I wanted was to be like everyone else who can have a couple drinks and set it down.

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, what does that tell you then? That tells You. That you are cured or.

[Billy Webb]

I just felt like there was no compulsion to keep going and going.

[Andy Mills]

Like, what was different, though? Did it not taste as good?

[Billy Webb]

It tasted as good. I can say that for sure. Especially if it was a micro brew or something like that. But I didn't get that same rush in my head.

[Andy Mills]

And being able to drink without that rush for a while, that made all the difference.

[Billy Webb]

For a couple months, I was okay, you know, now I can just have a couple. But what happened was I was taking it, and then on one weekend, I just decided, you know what? You know what? I'm not going to take it this weekend. It's a long weekend. I don't need it.

[Andy Mills]

Billy says that even though the urge to drink, which was something that had been nagging at him for years, even though that was now gone, he told me that there was just some part of him that missed being drunk.

[Billy Webb]

I wanted to be intoxicated.

[Andy Mills]

Even with this medication that was helping you, you missed it?

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah.

[Andy Mills]

Knowing all that it cost you. What about it did you miss?

[Billy Webb]

I missed feeling like myself. I didn't. I didn't. Hey, guys, this is Cory, the engineer.

[Jad Abumrad]

I hate to interrupt, but we have to. The studio is being booked in, like.

[Billy Webb]

The next 10 minutes. I'm sorry, guys.

[Andy Mills]

So with poetically bad timing, we got kicked out of the studio. And this was several months back, actually. Then it took about another month and a half before we could all get back in the studio again.

[Robert Krulwich]

Billy.

[Billy Webb]

Hey.

[Andy Mills]

Well, I. Yeah, so I started by asking him, so when you said that you didn't feel like yourself, what did that mean?

[Billy Webb]

I didn't picture life being possible without alcohol. That's the only person that I knew.

[Andy Mills]

And basically what he told me is that if you think back to the beginning of his story, he came out of his shell alongside alcohol, being creative, writing music, performing music. Alcohol's there. His first girlfriend, alcohol was there. He's had drinking associated since puberty with the best parts of himself. And so, like, you know how we all have this sense of, like, who we are inside of us? Like, you know, I have, like. You have, like, your inner jed where, like, people can think what they want about you and you've got your reputation, but you know who you are down deep. Well, his was all wrapped up in alcohol. So you take that alcohol away, what.

[Billy Webb]

Was left was an empty guy that I didn't know.

[Andy Mills]

Just this void. And filling up that void, he says, was this onslaught of these terrible memories.

[Billy Webb]

Sequestered detox wards and punitive treatment, and all the people I've alienated over the years, all the lost opportunities and all the failed attempts.

[Andy Mills]

He says that's what he would think about when he was sober, and he just wanted not to. Last time we talked to Billy, he was doing really well.

[Billy Webb]

I had the job, I had the girl. I had a band back.

[Andy Mills]

But he says that in the course of just this month and a half since the last time that we talked.

[Billy Webb]

Lost the girl, isolated a bunch of friends, and lost a good job that I wanted to keep for a while until I could get into grad school. So kind of having to start over.

[Andy Mills]

Now, even just listening to your voice right now, you sound so different.

[Billy Webb]

I know that I sound different because I was coming in here with a more of a positive spirit last time. I really was flying high last time. People were excited for me to come in, and now they said, are you sure you want to come in today and talk to them? I mean, and the people who even talk to me right now. So it's hard to do a triple backflip. You know, I tried to. Didn't want to come in here crying or anything, but, you know, it's pretty sad. It's pretty sad. But at the same time, you know, I feel hopeful that I can beat this.

[Jad Abumrad]

Now.

[Andy Mills]

Billy's still seeing a therapist. He's still going to Altair. He's actually on this new medication now called Gaba Pittin, which he says has been helpful.

[Billy Webb]

And I know I was pretty staunchly against the 12 steps last time, but I am actually going back to meetings these days.

[Andy Mills]

Just to be with people who are in the same boat.

[Jad Abumrad]

So he's doing both.

[Billy Webb]

Yeah, Huh.

[Jad Abumrad]

I hear a story like that, and I think, yeah, I think we're ready to see addiction in a new way. And we're definitely. I think pills will be a big part of that, seems to me. But the pills can't get all the way down, you know? Right. The thing that makes the addiction go is really deep.

[Billy Webb]

Well, right.

[Andy Mills]

And this reminds me of when we were talking to Nora Volkov, and I'm.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

Director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse at the nih.

[Andy Mills]

She sort of pointed at the same idea in a really interesting way.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

One of the questions that I've always had in my brain is, why do we become addicted? I mean, why is it that we can fall into a state where we actually become obsessed about something and compulsive, despite the fact that it can have negative consequences? And romantic love is exactly that situation.

[Andy Mills]

Nora says that one thing that biologists know and actually have known for a.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

While, is that drugs hijack systems in our brain that are there for other purposes.

[Andy Mills]

She says, literally, drugs will light up the same circuits in your brain that are usually engaged, like when you're in love, when you're hanging out with your friends, when you're being hugged by your kid.

[Gabrielle Glaser]

It's almost like randomness of chemistry that you have these chemical compounds that can go directly and activate these centers.

[Jad Abumrad]

So it hijacks the very things that make us good friends and good parents.

[Robert Krulwich]

Correct.

[Jad Abumrad]

So it's like a weakness born of a strength, in a way.

[Andy Mills]

Yeah. And actually, according to Anna Rose Childress, who we had talked to earlier, people.

[Anna Rose Childress]

With addictions, ironically, they are the fittest of the fit in evolutionary terms. Right. They are the people who would have been earliest for the food, earliest for the sexual partner.

[Andy Mills]

The idea here is that deep down inside of them, like we're talking at a genetic level, they have the greatest sensitivity.

[Anna Rose Childress]

They would be exquisitely attuned to the promise of rewards. And most of the time, and for most of the millennia, all the priorities were on being good reward appreciators. That was our only job.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's interesting, but now we're in a.

[Anna Rose Childress]

Different environment where we've got huge opportunities for many sexual encounters that carry lethal viruses, rather than just the possibility of survival of thittist. And we've got, you know, calorie dense meals that we can acquire without expending a calorie. And see, in almost every circumstance that you can think of, except for the last, you know, 50 years, being on the side of being overly responsive to reward was probably mostly an advantage.

[Jad Abumrad]

You know, that's so interesting. I've never heard it said that way.

[Anna Rose Childress]

And for our patients, in some sense, they're the fittest of the fit and being punished for it.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, it's like a terrible joke.

[Andy Mills]

And the terrible reality of that joke is something that just kept showing up on our voicemail over and over again.

[Dr. Amit Miesen]

Hello? Yes, this is Pat Roos. I was listening to the Brian Lehrer show on the way home from work today, and I have a son who died of heroin addiction, alcohol abuse, last May. And since then, I've been trying to come to terms with it. This is my son. He was a great person. I think he just couldn't see how to be sober in this world that he knew. That was really hard for him. How do you live your life when you have to be sober?

[Jad Abumrad]

This story was reported and produced by Mr. Andy Mills. Special thanks to Tim Howard and to Aver Mitra, Leanne Donegan, Deborah Snyder, John Kelly, George Koob.

[Andy Mills]

And this is Andy. And I wanted to say to the dozens and dozens of people who were willing to talk to me, some of them for hours, about their recovery, thank you very much.

[Jad Abumrad]

And a very special thanks to Brian Lehrer and Megan Ryan and that whole.

[Robert Krulwich]

Team and of course to Amy o' Leary, who started the whole thing off.

[Jad Abumrad]

Exactly. I'm Jad Abumran.

[Robert Krulwich]

I'm Robert Prowich.

[Jad Abumrad]

Thank you guys for listening.

[Dr. Amit Miesen]

To play the message, press 2. Hi, this is Billy Webb. Radiolab is produced by Jad Abumrad. Our staff includes Brenna Farrell, David Gable, Dylan Keefe, Matt Kitely, Robert Crowley, Andy Mills, Latif Nacer, Kelsey Padgett, Arian Wach, Molly Webster, Soren Wheeler and Jamie York, with help from Simon Adler, Alexandra Lee Young, Abigail Keel, Stephanie Tam and Michael Lowenger. Our fact checkers are Eva Dasher and Michelle Harris. End of mailbox.